Posted on 09/17/2012 9:31:59 PM PDT by Olog-hai
For many in the age of foreign policy "resets" and "win-win" talks, espionage sounds like a thing of the past. But for Alain Winants, the head of Belgium's state security service, the VSSE, the EU capital currently has more spy activity than almost any other city in the world.
Winants told EUobserver in a rare interview with international media that "we are not speaking in the dozens, we are speaking in the hundreds, several hundreds" of foreign intelligence officers and agents in Brussels.
"In Belgium, espionage, Russian espionage and from other countries, like the Chinese, but also others, [is] at the same level as the Cold War … We are a country with an enormous concentration of diplomats, businessmen, international institutions—NATO, European institutions. So for an intelligence officer, for a spy, this is a kindergarten. It's the place to be." He also named Iran as a culprit. When asked if EU-friendly countries such as Israel or the US do it, he said: "It would be naïve to think that only countries like Russia, China, Iran are spying." …
http://euobserver.com/foreign/117553
Thanks Olog-hai.
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