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“When police forces and intelligence services engage in international cooperation, parliamentary oversight is the loser. The increasing significance of undercover police networks is making this situation far more critical.” These comments were made by Bundestag Member Andrej Hunko in response to the Federal Government’s answer, which is now available in English (see below), to his Minor Interpellation.

The purpose of the interpellation, a written parliamentary question, was to heighten awareness of the following little-known police structures:

•    the Cross-Border Surveillance Working Group (CSW), comprising mobile task forces on surveillance techniques, drawn from 12 EU Member States and Europol;

•    Europol’s analysis work file entitled Dolphin, which entails the surveillance of left-wing activists in areas such as animal rights and anarchism;

•    the Remote Forensic Software User Group, which was created by the Bundeskriminalamt, the German Federal Criminal Police Office, to promote sales of German Trojan software abroad.

•    the European Cooperation Group on Undercover Activities (ECG), comprising spy chiefs from Member States of the EU and from countries such as Russia, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine;

•    the International Working Group on Undercover Policing (IWG), comprising spy chiefs from European countries as well as from countries such as the United States, Israel, New Zealand and Australia;

Mr Hunko went on to say:

“One of the main parts of the interpellation focused on the undercover activity of British police officer Mark Kennedy, whose infiltration of European leftist movements exemplifies police cooperation conducted beyond the bounds of parliamentary oversight. It remains unclear under whose orders the undercover investigator was operating during the years of his activity.

Kennedy used his infiltration of the Icelandic environmental movement to worm his way into leftist circles from Finland to Portugal through the information events he staged. The Icelandic police are stubbornly rejecting requests from the Minister of Justice to release full details of his activity into the public domain, claiming that disclosure would prejudice British security interests. Even though Members of the Icelandic Parliament have a right to ask questions on police matters, they are not being given any information.

The exposure of the British police officer, by contrast, has been the focus of deliberations in the European Cooperation Group on Undercover Activities (ECG), of which Iceland is not a member. The Federal Government has not revealed the substance of German and British contributions to this discussion. The remit of the ECG, which meets behind closed doors, includes the creation of false identities and the examination of legal frameworks in the countries that send and host undercover agents.

Foreign police officers must obtain authorisation before entering the territory of a sovereign state. They must not commit any criminal offences during their stay. Kennedy, however, sought to impress activists in Berlin by setting fire to a refuse container. Arrested by the police, he even concealed his true identity from the public prosecutor. This is illegal, as the Federal Government has indicated now.

Last year, Germany, together with Britain, urged the European Commission to exempt cross-border undercover activities from a planned new directive establishing a European Investigation Order. This would also make parliamentary oversight of such activities even more difficult.

The necessity of this parliamentary oversight is illustrated by the government use of software to hack into personal computers. In 2008, the German Federal Criminal Police Office established a cross-border Remote Forensic Software User Group with a view to helping police forces in other countries to introduce German spyware.

The Federal Criminal Police Office has also sent delegations to Canada, Israel, the United States and other countries to discuss Trojan programs with police forces and intelligence services. Although the German supreme court had imposed rigid limits in 2007 on the widespread practice of searching entire computer systems, representatives of the Criminal Police Office travelled to the United Kingdom and other destinations to ‘share experience’ on that practice.

Even in the national context it is difficult to detect illegal practices on the part of police forces and intelligence services. Securing judicial convictions for criminal offences is even harder. How much more, then, must the increasingly cross-border nature of police cooperation muddy these waters.

This is why the activity of undercover police networks must be relentlessly exposed. This applies especially to cooperation with the private business sector, which became just as blatant in the case of spyware as it had been in the criminalisation of animal-rights activism, to the benefit of British companies such as Gamma International, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca.

I call on the UK Government to disclose all information regarding the activity of Mark Kennedy in Germany and to inform all interested parties retrospectively of his activity. This is the only way in which key questions can be answered, such as whether he had sexual relations on false pretences with targets or contacts in Germany, as he did in the UK.

I must assume in any case that the use of British undercover agents to infiltrate left-wing movements was unlawful, because no police officer is allowed to spend years investigating activists in the absence of any specific grounds for suspicion or any other defined investigative objective.”

Download the answer to the parliamentary question concerning secretly operating international networks of police forces (in English): http://www.andrej-hunko.de/start/download/doc_download/236-concerning-secretly-operating-international-networks-of-police-forces

Download the answer in German (International im Verborgenen agierende Netzwerke von Polizeien): http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/098/1709844.pdf

Find this story at 22 August 2012 

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Statewatch can reveal the existence of a previously unknown international police working group geared towards discussing and developing covert investigative techniques. At the same time parliamentary questions in Germany have seen further details of other police networks emerge – although many questions remain unanswered – in particular on the work and activities of former policy infiltrator Mark Kennedy.

Project ISLE

Recent research by Statewatch has led to the discovery of an EU-funded project known as ISLE (International Specialist Law Enforcement), a project initiated with the aim of building “a network of [EU] Member State organisations that may develop coordination, cooperation and mutual understanding amongst law enforcement agencies using ‘specialist techniques’.” [1]

Project ISLE has its origins in a “pilot seminar consisting of twenty-six ‘specialist technique’ practitioners” held in London in 2006, and was created to increase cooperation and coordination amongst EU law enforcement authorities utilising “specialist techniques”: “covert entry into premises or vehicles and the facilitation of covert searches of property, covert forensic capabilities and covertly installed technical devices.” [2]

In 2010, as part of its programme “Prevention of and Fight against Crime”, the EU awarded €115,614 for the project to the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). SOCA is one of three main “project partners”, alongside Belgium’s Commissariaat-Generaal Special Units (CGSU), and Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt (BKA).

SOCA provides a project manager and administration, and as part of the steering group with the CGSU and BKA has a mandate to “create a larger Working Group” consisting of “full-time practitioners from organisations where their countries [sic] legislation supports ‘specialist techniques’.”

The “workgroup of practitioners” will:

– “Expand on existing partnerships and create new ones, including developing Member States, to promote and develop coordination, cooperation and mutual understanding of ‘specialist techniques'”;
– “Broaden the range of ‘specialist techniques’ by sharing knowledge on capability, identifying common standards and jointly developing new technologies”; and
– “Implement an agreed control strategy with shared responsibility and engagement in achieving a long-term program of activity toward the development of ‘specialist techniques'”

A document outlining the group’s terms of reference states that:

“Participants and their organisations must be prepared to promote and encourage international, inter-agency cooperation in ‘specialist techniques’ and contribute to the establishment of a long-term program.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, secrecy is clearly the order of the day:

“Organisations with diplomatic/political responsibilities may find it difficult to participate openly during information exchanges and due consideration should be given to their role in the project.”

Europol provides a secure database and communication channels in order to permit secure communication and information exchange between participants.

ISLE’s official starting date as an EU-funded project was 9 November 2009, with one document stating that the project “will take no more than 36 months, including three months for the production and submission of the final report.”

The group should currently be moving into the phase of producing this final report. The financing, participants, practices, and accountability of the group are currently the subject of further research.

One of many

Project ISLE is the latest addition to a growing list of publicly-known but highly secretive international police networks concerned with infiltration and surveillance. They include:

– The Cross-Border Surveillance Working Group, made up of “mobile task forces on surveillance techniques, drawn from 12 EU Member States and Europol”;
– The Remote Forensic Software User Group, created “to promote the sale of German Trojan software abroad”;
– The International Working Group on Undercover Policing (IWG), made up of “spy chiefs from European countries as well as from countries such as the US, Israel, New Zealand and Australia”; and
– The European Cooperation Group on Undercover Activities (ECG)

In May this year, the German MP for Die Linke, Andrej Hunko, received a lengthy response to a number of parliamentary questions that have now been translated into English. The answers to some of his questions reveal further details of these the composition and practices of these groups, although many of the government’s responses cite “reasons of confidentiality” for refusing public access to information. [3]

The Cross-Border Surveillance Working Group (CSW) first met in 2005, and its meetings have included representatives from thirteen states (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK) and Europol, whose representative contributes “Europol’s technical perspective.”

The German government has refused to say on whose initiative the group first met and what “operative and tactical options” were raised by the German delegation at CSW meetings. It has also refused to disclose what contributions Europol has made to the group in the last five years. In nine of his thirteen questions about the CSW Hunko was told that for “reasons of confidentiality” the government could not make their answer publically available.

However, there is more transparency over meetings concerned with surveillance software used for telecommunications interception and the remote searching of individuals’ computers – products that German police forces have in the past used to “surveil people’s internet activity beyond what is allowed by the law.” [4]

Details are provided in the German government’s answers at ten different meetings held since 2008, with law enforcement agencies from a number of different states attending, including France, the Netherlands, Canada, the USA and Israel.

Their answers reveal that a meeting in October 2010 was devoted to discussion of the software package FinSpy, produced by the German company Gamma International. Assessment of the product by the BKA was “fundamentally positive” from a technical point of view and they “purchased a licence for the FinSpy software for a limited period of time for test purposes in early 2011.”

Gamma has also offered its products to the authorities of countries such as Oman, Turkmenistan, Egypt, and Bahrain, and in 2012 received a Big Brother Award for its willingness to cooperate with “government agencies of countries where human rights are respected to a far lesser degree than here in Germany.” [5]

In April, the European Parliament called for the introduction of strict rules on the export of tools that could be used to block websites and monitor communications, although no new legislation has yet been drafted. [6]

The German government’s answers also confirm that the International Working Group on Undercover Activities (IWG) was established in 1989, when the BKA joined. The German Customs Investigation Service (Zollkriminalamt) began participating in 2000. Once again, however, the government declined to answer the majority of questions publicly for “reasons of confidentiality.”

The European Cooperation Group on Undercover Activities was also the subject of a number of questions from Hunko, and the German government has stated the group was established for:

“The promotion of international cooperation by law enforcement agencies at the European level with respect to the deployment of undercover investigators to combat organised crime.”

It is unclear why the “covert deployment of the British police officer Mark Kennedy” was discussed at the group’s meeting in 2011, considering its apparent concern with organised crime. Despite seven years undercover, there is no clear evidence that his work succeeded in preventing or exposing any specific incidents that would amount to serious or organised crime.

Global infiltration

Kennedy was exposed as a police spy following the collapse of a prosecution against environmental activists in the UK in early 2011, sparking a public outcry and the subsequent outing of a number of other infiltrators in protest movements. [7]

Whilst deployed undercover, Kennedy visited “11 countries on more than 40 occasions,” feeding back information to the UK’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit (now the National Domestic Extremism Unit) and subsequently police intelligence units from other countries. [8]

Outside of the UK and Northern Ireland, he visited the Republic of Ireland, Germany, Spain, Denmark, the USA, Poland, France, Italy, and Iceland, and according to the ruling of the UK Court of Appeal in the case that finally led to him being exposed, “Kennedy was involved in activities which went much further than the authorisation he was given,” and was “arguably, an agent provocateur.” [9]

Oversight and accountability

Despite fairly detailed knowledge of some of Kennedy’s movements and activities [10] national parliaments are still being denied information on his work, as noted by Andrej Hunko:

“The Icelandic police are stubbornly rejecting requests from the Minister of Justice to release full details of his activity into the public domain, claiming that disclosure would prejudice British security interests. Even though Members of the Iceland Parliament have a right to ask questions on police matters, they are not being given any information.”

Invoking “British security interests” would seem to suggest that there is clearly still much more information on the deployment by British authorities of police infiltrators overseas to come to light.

A report published earlier this year by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary on “national police units which provide intelligence on criminality associated with protest” was condemned by one police monitoring group, Fitwatch, as “a farce” that “fails to address any of the concerns addressed by activists.” [11]

Those concerns include the matter of sexual relations between infiltrators and activists, an issue also raised by Hunko, who has called for the British government to:

“Disclose all information regarding the activity of Mark Kennedy in Germany and to inform all interested parties retrospectively of his activity. This is the only way in which key questions can be answered, such as whether he had sexual relations on false pretences with targets or contacts in Germany, as he did in the UK.”

Numerous examples of infiltrators entering relationships with activists have come to light, and eight women are currently engaged in a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Police alleging that they “were deceived into having long term intimate relationships with undercover police officers.” [12]

Yet despite one chief police officer stating that it would be “morally wrong” and “grossly unprofessional” for infiltrators to sleep with activists, the UK’s policing minister, Nick Herbert, has endorsed the practice, saying that a ban: “would provide a ready-made test for the targeted criminal group to find out whether an undercover officer was deployed among them.” [13]

Kennedy is now reported to be working for the Densus Group, “a US company that targets anti-capitalist demonstrators” run by Sam Rosenfeld, a “former British Army officer who toured Northern Ireland.” Kennedy “provides ‘risk and threat assessments’ to companies that suspect they might fall victim to ‘direct action’,” according to London’s Evening Standard [14] in an article seemingly based largely on reports originally posted on Indymedia UK. [15]

It remains unclear whether the full details of what happened during Kennedy’s seven years of undercover work will ever come to light or be comprehensively addressed by the authorities. As admitted by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary: “no single authorising officer appears to have been fully aware either of the complete intelligence picture in relation to Mark Kennedy or the NPOIU’s activities overall,” and “the full extent of his activity remains unknown.” [16]

Information currently in the public domain makes up only a small piece of a global puzzle of police working groups and networks dealing with infiltration, intrusion and surveillance not just of criminal groups, but political activists.

That there is a pan-European effort to collect and collate information and intelligence on left-wing activists is clear from the existence of Europol’s Analysis Working File Dolphin, which contains information on the No Borders network and “attacks against railway transports,” taken by some to cover either protests against trains carrying nuclear waste, or the No TAV (Treno Alta Velocità) movement in Italy that opposes the construction of a high-speed railway line. [17]

The legal implications of the deployment of undercover officers and intrusive surveillance techniques are significant, as is their impact on individuals. According to Hunko, the internationalisation of police work means that “parliamentary oversight is the loser.” He has called for secret international police networks to be “relentlessly exposed”, stating that:

“Even in the national context it is difficult to detect illegal practices on the part of police forces and intelligence services. Securing judicial convictions for criminal offences is even harder. How much more, then, must the increasingly cross-border nature of police cooperation muddy these waters?” [18]

Note: This article was amended on 28 August 2012 to show the correct amount of money awarded by the EU to SOCA. This was originally published as being €70,000.

Sources
[1] ‘International Specialist Law Enforcement’, Document 1, 2009
[2] ‘International Specialist Law Enforcement’, Document 2, 2009
[3] German Bundestag, ‘Answer of the Federal Government to the Minor Interpellation tabled by the Members of the Bundestag Andrej Hunko, Jan Korte, Christine Buchholz, other Members of the Bundestag and the Left Party parliamentary group’, 31 May 2012, in English and in German
[4] Statewatch Analysis: ‘State Trojans: Germany exports “spyware with a badge”‘ by Kees Hudig, March 2012
[5] ‘Category Technology’, Big Brother Awards, April 2012; Vernon Silver, ‘Cyber attacks on activists traced to FinFisher spyware of Gamma’, Bloomberg, 25 July 2012
[6] ‘Parliament wants EU rules for firms exporting internet censorship tools’, European Parliament, 18 April 2012
[7] Paul Lewis, Matthew Taylor and Rajeev Syal, ‘Third undercover police spy unmasked as scale of network emerges’, The Guardian, 15 January 2011
[8] HMIC, ‘A review of national police units which provide intelligence on criminality associated with protest’, February 2012; Statewatch Analysis: ‘Using false documents against “Euro-anarchists”: the exchange of Anglo-German undercover police highlights controversial police operations’, June 2012; ‘Mark Kennedy: A mole in Tarnac’, Monitoring European Police!, 17 April 2012
[9] Eveline Lubbers, ‘HMIC’s ’empty’ review leaves little hope for robust scrutiny of undercover cops’, SpinWatch, 28 March 2012
[10] ‘Mark Kennedy: A chronology of his activities’, PowerBase
[11] HMIC, ‘A review of national police units which provide intelligence on criminality associated with protest’; ‘HMIC report into domestic extremism – disgusting and farcical’, Netpol, 2 February 2012
[12] Rob Evans, ‘Women start legal action against police chiefs over emotional trauma – their statement’, The Guardian, 16 December 2011
[13] Tom Whitehead, ‘Undercover police not banned from sleeping with targets’, The Telegraph, 2 February 2012; Martin Beckford, ‘Undercover police must be allowed to have sex with activists’, The Telegraph, 14 June 2012
[14] Tom Harper, ‘EXCLUSIVE: Undercover detective in eco trial fiasco now works for US firm that spies on activists’, London Evening Standard, 21 June 2012
[15] ‘Ex-police spy Mark Kennedy’s current business activities’, Indymedia UK, 1 June 2012
[16] ‘A review of national police units which provide intelligence on criminality associated with protest’, p.24
[17] Andrej Hunko, ‘Abolish international databases on anarchy!’, 5 June 2012; ‘Europol boosts its reach, scope and information-gathering’, Statewatch News Online, 1 June 2012
[18] Andrej Hunko, ‘Secret police networks must be relentlessly exposed’, 22 August 2012

Find this story at 28 August 2012

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Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

AMSTERDAM – Eind juli is een journaliste benaderd door ‘twee personen die zich bekendmaakten als agenten’, die haar vroegen om tegen betaling foto’s te maken voor de politie.

Daarvan heeft de Nederlandse Vereniging van Fotojournalisten (NVF) dinsdagavond melding gemaakt.

De 26-jarige studente/fotojournaliste werd op haar privéadres benaderd door twee agenten die zich bekendmaakten als politie. Ze zeiden haar foto’s op Facebook te hebben gezien.

De journaliste gaf ondanks herhaaldelijk verzoek te kennen niet te willen meewerken. Ze voelde zich geïntimideerd, toen de agenten maar bleven aandringen.

AIVD

Ze maakt regelmatig foto’s in de kraakscéne. Enkele weken eerder was haar camera gestolen. In het onderzoek daarnaar had de politie Amsterdam de geheugenkaart bekeken om strafrechtelijk materiaal te verzamelen, bevestigt een woordvoerder van de politie aan de NVF.

Maar de politie Amsterdam weet niets van het voorval, het bezoek staat daar niet geregistreerd. De woordvoerder denkt dat het ‘andere mensen’ zijn geweest.

De NVF heeft de AIVD benaderd, maar die kunnen niks over dit specifieke voorval zeggen. Wel laat een woordvoerster aan de NVF weten dat de AIVD ‘geen politie’ is.

Geen verlengstuk

De NVF is onderdeel van de Nederlandse Vereniging van Journalisten (NVJ), die eerder al te kennen gaf het ronselen van journalisten sterk te veroordelen. “Journalisten zijn geen verlengstuk van justitie.”

NVJ-secretaris Rosa García López van de sectie NVF geeft toe dat de agenten strikt juridisch ‘niets illegaals’ hebben gedaan. “Het enige dat we nu kunnen doen is het signaleren en hopen dat er een waarschuwing van de NVJ vanuit gaat”, zegt ze tegen NU.nl. “Daarom hopen we dat meer journalisten bij wie dit gebeurd is zich melden.”

Peking

In juni werd bekend dat de AIVD tijdens de Olympische Spelen in Peking in 2008 sportjournalisten zou hebben benaderd tegen betaling foto’s te maken van Chinese officials.

…

Find this story at 22 August 2012

Copyright © 1998-2012 NU.nl is onderdeel van het netwerk van Sanoma Media Netherlands groep

“De betrokkenheid van de deelnemende organisaties in de CT Infobox is op verschillende grondslagen gebaseerd. Dit levert naar het oordeel van de Commissie op sommige punten een onduidelijke positie op ten aanzien van ieders taken en verantwoordelijkheden. In dit kader hebben zich in het verleden ook daadwerkelijk fricties voorgedaan.”

Grote stilte gedurende deze verkiezingsperiode over de inlichtingendiensten en het terrorisme beleid. Dat is de laatste tien jaar wel anders geweest, maar misschien zijn de partijen inlichtingendiensten moe, hoewel de debatjes over controle na het tienjarig bestaan van de CTIVD anders doen vermoeden. Minister Spies kondigde zowaar een evaluatie, weliswaar alleen van de wet, aan. Dat allemaal in verband met een nieuwe wet die momenteel voorbereid wordt.

lees meer

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has admitted to destroying even more files relating to the right-wing extremist scene — this time on orders from the Interior Ministry in Berlin. The ministry denies the files contained any clues about the murderous National Socialist Underground trio.

Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s domestic intelligence agency, has admitted to destroying additional files related to investigations on the right-wing extremist scene. A new agency report discloses that six files from secret wiretapping operations were destroyed in response to a Nov. 14, 2011 order from the Federal Interior Ministry in Berlin. The order came just days after revelations that the right-wing terror cell known as the National Socialist Underground (NSU) was responsible for the murders of nine small businessmen of Turkish and Greek origin.

The new incident once again exposes the seemingly chaotic state of the investigation into the murderous right-wing trio. For weeks, the BfV has been under public scrutiny after it became known that a senior agency official had shredded several files on his own initiative relating to informants in the right-wing scene just days after the NSU cell was discovered. The episode, referred to in the German press as the “Confetti Affair,” has cost agency head Heinz Fromm his job.

The BfV says that the two incidents are unrelated and that the deleted files were of no great importance. According to three agency reports, all of which have been obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, none of the lost data contained information relating to the NSU trio. The reports say that the files concerned separate investigations into the right-wing scene. Still, the admission and the timing of the deletions are likely to raise new questions about the agency’s professionalism and the effectiveness of its leaders.

Germany’s Interior Ministry, which oversees the BfV, claims that the destructions of the files were routine and justified the act as being in adherence to rules governing the length of time that surveillance files are allowed to be kept. That the files were destroyed so soon after the NSU trio was uncovered, the Ministry says, is mere coincidence — a claim seemingly substantiated by the fact that the Interior Ministry informed the parliamentary committee investigating the Confetti Affair about the deletions of its own accord at the beginning of this week.

Deepest Crisis in its History

The new agency reports are to be discussed at a special session of the parliamentary committee on Thursday morning. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich is scheduled to brief the committee on the destroyed files. Friedrich repeated on Wednesday his commitment to an extensive investigation into the BfV’s handling of the right-wing terror case. Months of revelations uncovering serious BfV errors during its investigation of the murder spree — which lasted from 2000 to 2007 — have plunged the agency into the deepest crisis in its history.

According to agency documents, the destroyed files related to six surveillance operations in the right-wing scene. One had to do with the formation of a right-wing group to target political opponents in the eastern state of Brandenburg. Another focused on a separate group established to distribute right-wing propaganda. And still another related to a possible presentation by right-wing extremist talking head Horst Mahler, who planned to read from a manifesto at the former concentration camp in Auschwitz in the summer of 2003. The NSU trio did not play a part in any of the surveillance operations.

BfV research also sheds light on the circumstances surrounding last week’s sudden resignation of Reinhard Boos, head of domestic intelligence in the eastern state of Saxony. Boos had asked to be replaced by August 1 after it emerged that transcripts of telephone conversations within the right-wing scene wiretapped by his agency in 1998 had recently come to light. The transcripts put enormous pressure on Boos, who had previously guaranteed Saxony’s state parliament that the responsible state investigative committee had been provided with all relevant documents.

The documents in Saxony include 163 pages of transcripts from BfV wiretaps of conversations between suspected members of the neo-Nazi rock bank “Landser,” the first band to ever be classified as a criminal organization by Germany’s Federal Court of Justice. The conversations were recorded between June 1998 and April 1999. But, for six months, surveillance activities also focused on Jan W., who was briefly suspected of having provided the terror trio with weapons. However, BfV officials said that they hadn’t found any evidence pointing toward involvement with the NSU and that they were only able to determine that W. had been selling outlawed Landser CDs.

Increasingly Embarrassing

As part of their eavesdropping operations, investigators were interested in gathering information on the underground NSU trio, which would later go on its murder spree across Germany. After receiving an informant’s tip from their intelligence colleagues in the state of Brandenburg that Jan W., a Chemnitz-based neo-Nazi, might be in contact with the three extremists who had slipped off the radar, officials in Saxony decided they wanted to eavesdrop on W. as well.

Then, however, they learned from BfV officials that W. was already under surveillance because of his affiliation with Landser as part of an operation known as “AO 774.” Federal officials supplied their colleagues in Saxony with several transcripts of their eavesdropping activities.

For intelligence officials, investigations into the files have become increasingly embarrassing. The documents make clear just how chaotic the situation related to purging and exchanging files had become. This has resulted, for example, in discrepancies between the list of files that BfV officials sent to Saxony and the list of those that have now turned up there.

These new reports might very well lead the parliamentarians on the investigative committee to wonder whether additional files with possible relevance to the NSU trio have also been destroyed. One list itemizing the deleted files indicates that a comparatively large number of dossiers related to right-wing extremism were destroyed after the terror cell had resurfaced. The itemization says that there were seven cases of document destruction in November 2011, 12 for December and seven more in early 2012.

…

Find this story at 19 July 2012

07/19/2012 12:14 PM
Neo-Nazi Terror

By Matthias Gebauer

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2012
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH

In het voorjaar van 2010 was India een paar weken in de ban van een afluisterschandaal, maar vervolgens verdween dat in de vergetelheid. Dit is opmerkelijk gezien de staat van dienst van de inlichtingenwereld in India. Schandalen die gewone Indiërs raken, maar ook corruptie, slecht management, verkeerde technologie en apparatuur en bovenal incompetentie lijken de boventoon te voeren bij de NTRO, die verantwoordelijk wordt gehouden voor het schandaal. NTRO, National Technical Research Organisation, gebruikt IMSI Catchers om voor lange tijd en op grote schaal politici, ambtenaren, zakenmensen, beroemdheden en gewone Indiërs af te luisteren.

Find this story at 20 April 2011

Corporate espionage is a booming industry in India, according to a recent report. And it’s being fueled by executives spying on their rivals as well as their own employees.

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, known by the zingy acronym Assocham, usually releases statements on sober topics like RBI’s midterm credit policy review or industrial production figures. But last week it released a survey on corporate espionage.

“Over 35 percent of companies operating in various sectors across India are engaged in corporate espionage to gain advantage over their competitors and are even spying on their employees via social networking Web sites,” Assocham said in its report.

While checking out people’s activity on social media sites like LinkedIn or Twitter didn’t sound too alarming, Assocham made a stronger claim that about 900 respondents said that they plant a mole in other companies, usually as receptionists, photo-copiers and other low-end jobs.

“Assocham had learned about certain unconfirmed reports of prevalence of corporate espionage from many of its members which prompted us to carry out a survey to ascertain if it really was the case,” a spokesperson for the group told India Ink, asking not to be identified because of association policy.

Assocham said it conducted the “covert” survey by meeting about 1,500 corporate executives in five major cities and roughly 200 private eye agencies and trained sleuths.

Detectives said demand from companies in sectors such as information technology, infrastructure, insurance, banking and manufacturing, is overwhelming, according to D.S. Rawat, secretary general of Assocham.

“Almost all the company representatives in these domains acknowledged the prevalence of industrial espionage to gain access to information and steal trade secrets of their competitors through private deals with sleuths and spy agencies,” the survey notes, although it does not name any companies or cite specific examples.

That’s not all. About 1,200 respondents said they use detectives and surveillance agencies to constantly monitor their employees’ activities and whereabouts, using moles and social media, according to the survey.

Many detectives say that companies working with strong labor unions hire spy agencies and plant undercover agents to monitor union leaders to ensure they were not getting paid by competitors, politicians or others to create trouble, according to the report.

“About a quarter of respondents said they have hired computer experts for installing monitoring software to hack and crack the networks, track e-mails of their rivals and perform other covert activities,” Assocham notes.

Not surprisingly, the findings have been met with skepticism.

“It sounds far-fetched to me,” said Harminder Sahni, the founder and managing director of Wazir Advisors, a management consulting firm.

…

Find this story at 19 June 2012

June 19, 2012, 7:10 am
By SRUTHI GOTTIPATI
Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company

How would you feel if when you arrived at your holiday destination, security staff demanded to read your personal emails and look at your Facebook account?

Israel’s attorney general has been asked to look into claims that security officials have been doing just that – threatening to refuse entry to the country unless such private information is divulged by some tourists. Keith Wallace reports.

Find this story at 31 July 2012

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A pastor admitted in a newspaper interview Wednesday to spying for East Germany’s Stasi secret police for 20 years and said he was leaving his ministry with the Lutheran Church of Sweden.

“I renounce my ministry,” Aleksander Radler, 68, told Swedish daily Dagen. “My work for God, on the one hand, and the dark memories, on the other, are of course incompatible with the Christian message.”

Radler, an Austrian, arrived in Sweden in the late 1960s after studying theology in East Germany, where he says he was recruited by the Stasi.

His confession comes six days after a lawyer for a Lutheran parish said a church investigation had found Radler was a Stasi agent. The probe found that Radler had, among other things, denounced students planning to escape from East Germany in 1968.

The investigation followed a 2011 book on the Stasi by Swedish researcher Birgitta Almgren that named Radler as an agent.

Dagen reported that the church had obtained East German archives that named Radler as an “elite spy”, the highest rank given to Stasi informers working abroad.

“I should have listened to my internal moral compass and broken my ties with the forces of destruction, even if the social and academic cost would have been high,” Radler said.

“Instead, I let the collaboration continue until the end of the 1980s.”

…

Find this story at 2 August 2012

AFP/jcw

Spokesman for Chihuahua state says US agencies don’t want to end drug trade, a claim denied by other Mexican officials.

Juarez, Mexico – The US Central Intelligence Agency and other international security forces “don’t fight drug traffickers”, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico has told Al Jazeera, instead “they try to manage the drug trade”.

Allegations about official complicity in the drug business are nothing new when they come from activists, professors, campaigners or even former officials. However, an official spokesman for the authorities in one of Mexico’s most violent states – one which directly borders Texas – going on the record with such accusations is unique.

“It’s like pest control companies, they only control,” Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva, the Chihuahua spokesman, told Al Jazeera last month at his office in Juarez. “If you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs.”

A spokesman for the CIA in Washington wouldn’t comment on the accusations directly, instead he referred Al Jazeera to an official website.

Accusations are ‘baloney’

Villanueva is not a high ranking official and his views do not represent Mexico’s foreign policy establishment. Other more senior officials in Chihuahua State, including the mayor of Juarez, dismissed the claims as “baloney”.

“I think the CIA and DEA [US Drug Enforcement Agency] are on the same side as us in fighting drug gangs,” Hector Murguia, the mayor of Juarez, told Al Jazeera during an interview inside his SUV. “We have excellent collaboration with the US.”

Under the Merida Initiative, the US Congress has approved more than $1.4bn in drug war aid for Mexico, providing attack helicopters, weapons and training for police and judges.

More than 55,000 people have died in drug related violence in Mexico since December 2006. Privately, residents and officials across Mexico’s political spectrum often blame the lethal cocktail of US drug consumption and the flow of high-powered weapons smuggled south of the border for causing much of the carnage.

Drug war ‘illusions’

“The war on drugs is an illusion,” Hugo Almada Mireles, professor at the Autonomous University of Juarez and author of several books, told Al Jazeera. “It’s a reason to intervene in Latin America.”

“The CIA wants to control the population; they don’t want to stop arms trafficking to Mexico, look at [Operation] Fast and Furious,” he said, referencing a botched US exercise where automatic weapons were sold to criminals in the hope that security forces could trace where the guns ended up.

The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms lost track of 1,700 guns as part of the operation, including an AK-47 used in 2010 the murder of Brian Terry, a Customs and Border Protection Agent.

Blaming the gringos for Mexico’s problems has been a popular sport south of the Rio Grande ever since the Mexican-American war of the 1840s, when the US conquered most of present day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico from its southern neighbour. But operations such as Fast and Furious show that reality can be stranger than fiction when it comes to the drug war and relations between the US and Mexico. If the case hadn’t been proven, the idea that US agents were actively putting weapons into the hands of Mexican gangsters would sound absurd to many.

‘Conspiracy theories’

“I think it’s easy to become cynical about American and other countries’ involvement in Latin America around drugs,” Kevin Sabet, a former senior adviser to the White House on drug control policy, told Al Jazeera. “Statements [accusing the CIA of managing the drug trade] should be backed up with evidence… I don’t put much stake in it.”

Villanueva’s accusations “might be a way to get some attention to his region, which is understandable but not productive or grounded in reality”, Sabet said. “We have sort of ‘been there done that’ with CIA conspiracy theories.”

In 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published Dark Alliance, a series of investigative reports linking CIA missions in Nicaragua with the explosion of crack cocaine consumption in America’s ghettos.

In order to fund Contra rebels fighting Nicaragua’s socialist government, the CIA partnered with Colombian cartels to move drugs into Los Angeles, sending profits back to Central America, the series alleged.

“There is no question in my mind that people affiliated with, or on the payroll of, the CIA were involved in drug trafficking,” US Senator John Kerry said at the time, in response to the series.

Other newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, slammed Dark Alliance, and the editor of the Mercury News eventually wrote that the paper had over-stated some elements in the story and made mistakes in the journalistic process, but that he stood by many of the key conclusions.

Widespread rumours

“It’s true, they want to control it,” a mid-level official with the Secretariat Gobernacion in Juarez, Mexico’s equivalent to the US Department of Homeland Security, told Al Jazeera of the CIA and DEA’s policing of the drug trade. The officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he knew the allegations to be correct, based on discussions he had with US officials working in Juarez.

Acceptance of these claims within some elements of Mexico’s government and security services shows the difficulty in pursuing effective international action against the drug trade.

Jesús Zambada Niebla, a leading trafficker from the Sinaloa cartel currently awaiting trial in Chicago, has said he was working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency during his days as a trafficker, and was promised immunity from prosecution.

“Under that agreement, the Sinaloa Cartel under the leadership of [Jesus Zambada’s] father, Ismael Zambada and ‘Chapo’ Guzmán were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tonnes of illicit drugs… into… the United States, and were protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels,” Zambada’s lawyers wrote as part of his defence. “Indeed, the Unites States government agents aided the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.”

The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico’s oldest and most powerful trafficking organisation, and some analysts believe security forces in the US and Mexico favour the group over its rivals.

Joaquin “El Chapo”, the cartel’s billionaire leader and one of the world’s most wanted men, escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 by sneaking into a laundry truck – likely with collaboration from guards – further stoking rumours that leading traffickers have complicit friends in high places.

“It would be easy for the Mexican army to capture El Chapo,” Mireles said. “But this is not the objective.” He thinks the authorities on both sides of the border are happy to have El Chapo on the loose, as his cartel is easier to manage and his drug money is recycled back into the broader economy. Other analysts consider this viewpoint a conspiracy theory and blame ineptitude and low level corruption for El Chapo’s escape, rather than a broader plan from government agencies.

Political changes

After an election hit by reported irregularities, Enrique Pena Nieto from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is set to be sworn in as Mexico’s president on December 1.

He wants to open a high-level dialogue with the US about the drug war, but has said legalisation of some drugs is not an option. Some hardliners in the US worry that Nieto will make a deal with some cartels, in order to reduce violence.

“I am hopeful that he will not return to the PRI party of the past which was corrupt and had a history of turning a blind eye to the drug cartels,” said Michael McCaul, a Republican Congressman from Texas.

…

Find this story at 24 July 2012

Chris Arsenault Last Modified: 24 Jul 2012 14:16

Follow Chris Arsenault on Twitter: @AJEchris

Source:
Al Jazeera And Agencies

The British government is up for questioning from Parliament over why it has handed over the Olympic Games’ security to a company accused of human rights abuses in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

The UK-based G4S, which describes itself as the “world’s leading international security solutions group,” was selected as the “official provider of security and cash services for the Olympics.”

Moreover, it has already taken on 10,400 new employees for the 2012 Olympiad.

However, the company’s activities in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the UK considers illegal, have raised questions in Westminster.

The matter of fact is that G4S is a known provider of equipment for several Israeli military checkpoints in the occupied West Bank as well as for security systems at the Ofer detention center in Ramallah. That facility houses a jail and a military court, where Palestinian political prisoners, including children, are held and tortured. British Parliament strongly criticized the detention center for human rights abuses in 2010.

G4S also provides equipment to and secures the perimeter of several other Israeli prisons in which prisoners, illegally transferred from Palestinian territories, are held in breach of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

It remains unclear how a company with such a questionable reputation could have been chosen to provide security during the London Olympics. G4S seems to be “about the worst you could pick in the world to do this job,” investigative journalist Tony Gosling told RT.

“This is basically the privatization of the British police force. It’s being sucked in by the G4S,” Gosling says. He added that G4S are even “starting to operate police stations, they are also starting to do a lot of civilian support work for the police.”

And, Gosling adds, the company seems to be receiving the UK’s support – in the form of official contracts. “They are bidding for contracts in Birmingham and elsewhere to actually operate detention facilities inside existing police stations.”

G4S already runs six private prisons in the UK, where several hundred detainees are hired for full-time work paying under $3 a day. The privatization of prisons by companies like G4S creates a very dangerous financial incentive to criminalize poor people and “incarcerate them for private profit,” according to Gosling.

The parliamentary grilling next week will be led by Labour peer Lord Hollick. He will prepare questions to the government on Monday concerning steps it has taken to prevent G4S from continued cooperation with Israeli officials in the illegal Jewish settlements.

The move follows recent international condemnation of Israel’s settlement expansion. On May, 7 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to build another 850 homes in four settlements in the occupied West Bank. New settlements were said to be built to compensate for the “evacuation of 30 apartments” ordered by the Supreme Court.

The British government’s eager cooperation with G4S is in spite of the fact that in September 2011, the firm’s contract to deport migrants from the UK was canceled after it came to light that some 773 complaints of abuse had been filed against it, and following the death of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan asylum-seeker who died as a result of being “restrained” by G4S staff.

…

Find this story at 10 June 2012

Report of Human Rights Watch 2010

Published: 10 June, 2012, 01:43
Edited: 10 June, 2012, 01:43
© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005 – 2011. All rights reserved.

The company has provided equipment for Israeli-run checkpoints and terminals in the West Bank and Gaza, including luggage scanning machines and full body scanners by Rapiscan and L-3’s Safeview to the Erez checkpoint in Gaza and to the Qalandia, Bethlehem and Irtah (Sha’ar Efraim) checkpoints in the West bank.

G4S Israel is one of the major security systems provider to the Israeli government, including the Ministry of defense building (“Hakiria”) in Tel Aviv. It also provides security systems to the Israeli armored corps base of Nachshonim, which was donated by the US army in accordance with the Wye River Memorandum. The company operates security patrol units which secure oceanic facilities, vehicles and transport routs, buildings and equipment of the security and finace industries. These units, as the company states, are manned by “worriers who graduated elite combat units in the Israeli army”.

G4S Israel installed and operates the entire security system of the Ktziot Prison, the central control room of the Megido Prison and security services to Damon prison. The Ktziot, Megido and Damon Prisons, located inside Israel, are incarceration facilities designated for Palestinian political prisoners. G4S Israel clearly indicates in its website that it operates in prisons which hold “security prisoners”, that is Palestinian political prisoners. Ktziot prison is the biggest incarceration facility in Israel and populates 2,200 Palestinian political prisoners, Megido prison populates over 1200 Palestinian political and Damon prison populates over 500 Palestinian political prisoners and illegal aliens from the occupied West Bank. some of these prisoners have not been charged yet and some are administrative detainees.

The company also installed peripheral defense systems on the walls surrounding the Ofer prison and operates a central control room for the entire Ofer compound. Ofer is an Israeli prison for Palestinian political prisoners, located in the West Bank, near the settlement of Givat Ze’ev. The prison populates 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners and includes a military court which judges detainees from the West bank on a daily basis.

In addition, G4S Israel also provides the entire security systems and the central control room in Hasharon compound – Rimonim prison, which is mostly a criminal prison but includes a wing for Palestinian political prisoners.

The company also provided security systems for the Abu Kabir, Kishon (“Al-Jalameh”) and Jerusalem (“Russian Compound”) detention and interrogation facilities. Palestinian political prisoners are usually held in detention facilities without legal proceeding for long periods of time. Human rights organizations have collected evidence showing that Palestinian prisoners are regularly subjected to torture in these facilities.

G4S Israel is the sole provider of electronic security systems to the Israeli police. It provided equipment to the West Bank Israeli Police headquarters, located in the highly contested E-1area next to the Ma’ale Adomim settlement (the Judea and Samaria Police headquarters – “Machoz Shai”).

The company offers its security services to businesses in illegal settlements, including security equipment and personnel to shops and supermarkets in the West bank settlements of Modi’in Illit, Ma’ale Adumim, Har Adar and the settlement neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. In addition, after the company purchased Aminut Moked Artzi, one of the oldest private security companies in Israel, it took over its entire business operations, which includes security services to businesses in the Barkan industrial Zone.

G4S Israel also maintains cooperation with Ariel College in the settlement of Ariel in the West Bank, which included the company’s participation in an open career day in the college.

Click here to read a full report about the activities of the company March 2011

Anti-nuclear protesters’ successful incursion expose security failings at uranium plant

All operations remained suspended yesterday at the sole facility in the US for storing enriched uranium after the area was breached by three anti-nucl ear protesters, including an 82-year-old nun, exposing gaps in security provided by G4S, the same private company accused of bungling security arrangements for the Olympics.

After cutting through three fences around Y-12, a Second World War-era nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the three activists, identified as Megan Rice, 82, Michael Wallis, 63 and Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, got as far as the outer wall of the uranium building and allegedly daubed it with slogans and splashed it with human blood.

A spokeswoman for WSI Oak Ridge, which is contracted by the Energy Department to keep intruders out of the highly sensitive complex, declined to respond to questions yesterday. The company is a subsidiary of the international security firm G4S which acknowledged shortly before the London Games that it had been unable to assemble sufficient numbers of staff to keep them safe, forcing the Government to deploy Army troops.

While the incursion has served once again to embarrass G4S, a spokesman for the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance said that was not the original purpose of the successful protest. “It wasn’t so they could show how easy it was to bust into this bomb plant, it was because the production of nuclear weapons violates everything that is moral and good,” Ralph Hutchinson told Reuters. “It is a war crime.”

The three perpetrators, who seemingly wandered within the perimeter fences of Y-12 for two hours before reaching the key storage building, have been charged with “vandalism and criminal trespass”. They were due to appear before a judge in Tennessee later last night for a bail hearing. They are expected to face trial in early October.

All questions to WSI were being referred to Steve Wyatt, spokesman of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is part of the Energy Department. “We’re taking this very, very seriously,” he said, confirming that the trio had cut through two chain link fences on the edge of Y-12 and a third fence closer to the structure where they left the slogans known as the “Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility”.

…

Find this story at 4 August 2012

David Usborne

© independent.co.uk

A Russian spy ring busted in the U.S. two years ago planned to recruit members’ children to become agents, and one had already agreed to his parents’ request, according to current and former U.S. officials.

When the suspects were arrested in 2010 with much fanfare, official accounts suggested they were largely ineffectual. New details about their time in the U.S., however, suggest their work was more sophisticated and sometimes more successful than previously known.

One of them infiltrated a well-connected consulting firm with offices in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., by working as the company’s in-house computer expert, according to people familiar with the long-running U.S. investigation of the spy ring.

The effort to bring children into the family business suggests the ring was thinking long term: Children born or reared in America were potentially more valuable espionage assets than their parents because when they grew up they would be more likely to pass a U.S. government background check.
Cast of Characters in Russian Spy Ring

View Interactive

A spokesman at the Russian embassy in Washington declined to comment. Officials in Moscow have previously acknowledged the spy ring but haven’t commented further. All the captured suspects eventually pleaded guilty to acting as secret agents for the Russian government.

Tim Foley was among the children most extensively groomed for a future spy career, officials say. Though he wasn’t American-born, his parents lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, under the assumed names Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley. Mr. Foley was 20 when his parents were arrested and had just finished his sophomore year at George Washington University in the nation’s capital.

His parents revealed their double life to him well before their arrest, according to current and former officials, whose knowledge of the discussion was based on surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that included bugging suspects’ homes. The officials said the parents also told their son they wanted him to follow in their footsteps.

He agreed, said the officials. At the end of the discussion with his parents, according to one person familiar with the surveillance, the young man stood up and saluted “Mother Russia.” He also agreed to travel to Russia to begin formal espionage training, officials said.

Officials wouldn’t say where or when the conversation between Mr. Foley and his parents took place or whether he made it to Russia before the spy group was arrested, though they said he eventually went there. Many details of the investigation remain classified.

Peter Krupp, a Boston lawyer, provided a statement from Tim Foley’s parents calling the U.S. officials’ accounts “crap.” The lawyer said it would have been too risky for the parents to reveal the operation to their son.

Mr. Krupp said that since the summer of the spy roundup, Mr. Foley—who wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing—has tried to return to the U.S., but unspecified obstacles have prevented him from doing so, and he remains in Russia. Efforts to find him there were unsuccessful. A lawyer who represented Mr. Foley’s mother during the U.S. case didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Based on their extensive surveillance of the secret agents and their messages to handlers back in Moscow, U.S. counterintelligence officials believe the grooming of Mr. Foley was part of a long-term goal for some of the group’s children to become spies when they got older.

At the time of their arrests, the spies had seven children ranging in age from 1 to 20, most U.S.-born, and one agent also had an older son from a relationship before she joined the espionage network. Anna Chapman, the spy who garnered the most attention because of her glamorous looks, didn’t have children.

Though U.S. officials believe the ring planned to recruit some members’ children, not every child was set along this path. One child, a teenager, was allowed to stay in the U.S. after his parents were arrested, and officials said the son isn’t viewed as a risk to national security. His father, who went by the name Juan Lazaro, wanted his son to become a concert pianist, according to a former colleague of the father. A lawyer for the family declined to comment.

Most members of the ring were what are known in espionage parlance as “illegals”—agents who go to a country using a false identity and without official cover such as a diplomatic position. If caught, illegals have to assume their home country won’t come to their rescue.

Ring members were trained agents of the SVR, a successor agency to the KGB, according to court documents filed by federal prosecutors in New York. U.S. authorities say they worked under the direction of SVR headquarters, known in the West as “Moscow Center.”

Besides the plans to recruit children, the new details about the spy ring show more about what its members were up to.

U.S. officials say one of them, Richard Murphy—whose real name was Vladimir Guryev—worked for several years as the in-house computer technician at a U.S. consultancy called the G7 Group, which advised clients on how government decisions might affect global markets. The firm’s experts included its chief executive, Jane Hartley, an active Democratic fundraiser, and Alan Blinder, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman.

The infiltration is further evidence the spying focused on economic secrets as well as military and political information.

Mr. Murphy came to the G7 Group through a temporary-help agency in the early 2000s and stayed about three years, according to Ms. Hartley, who said she eventually concluded he didn’t have the technical sophistication the firm required. She said she didn’t believe he used his position to steal information.

Mr. Blinder said he didn’t believe he knew or even had heard of Mr. Murphy. “My reaction, of course, is surprise. The G7 Group wasn’t the sort of place a Russian spy would find interesting,” said Mr. Blinder, who is a professor at Princeton University.

A lawyer who represented Mr. Murphy after his arrest said she wasn’t aware he had worked for a firm in Manhattan. After Mr. Murphy left the G7 Group, Ms. Hartley sold it, and many of its principals later reformed under a different name.

The spies’ false identities, also called “legends,” were good enough for them to get jobs and mortgages and start families in America, but they weren’t airtight. A background check for a job with the U.S. government or a government contractor might have exposed them. The spies were careful not to try to get too close to the heart of U.S. government, according to interviews and court documents.

Mr. Murphy spoke with an accent and didn’t socialize well with his co-workers, according to Ms. Hartley. Difficulties he had blending in at the G7 Group underscore the value agents’ children might have had to Moscow, being fully Americanized with flawless English.

One purpose of having such agents in the U.S. was to act as go-betweens for other operatives who might have been more closely monitored by U.S. counterintelligence, the current and former U.S. officials said.

“There was much more to this than just trying to make friends with important people,” said one official. “This was a very long-term operation.”

After the parents were arrested, the children became an important part of the negotiations between the Russian and U.S. governments.

The admitted secret agents were eventually flown to Austria, where, in a scene reminiscent of a Cold War spy drama, they were swapped on a Vienna airport tarmac for four men who had been imprisoned in Russia, most on charges of spying for the West.

Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Peter Krupp, a lawyer for Russian spy known as Donald Heathfield, was relaying a statement from Mr. Heathfield and his wife on U.S. allegations that they had intended to recruit their son into the spy ring. An earlier version of this article attributed the statement that such allegations were “crap” directly to Mr. Krupp.

A Russian spy ring busted in the U.S. two years ago planned to recruit members’ children to become agents, and one had already agreed to his parents’ request, according to current and former U.S. officials.

When the suspects were arrested in 2010 with much fanfare, official accounts suggested they were largely ineffectual. New details about their time in the U.S., however, suggest their work was more sophisticated and sometimes more successful than previously known.

One of them infiltrated a well-connected consulting firm with offices in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., by working as the company’s in-house computer expert, according to people familiar with the long-running U.S. investigation of the spy ring.

The effort to bring children into the family business suggests the ring was thinking long term: Children born or reared in America were potentially more valuable espionage assets than their parents because when they grew up they would be more likely to pass a U.S. government background check.

A spokesman at the Russian embassy in Washington declined to comment. Officials in Moscow have previously acknowledged the spy ring but haven’t commented further. All the captured suspects eventually pleaded guilty to acting as secret agents for the Russian government.

Tim Foley was among the children most extensively groomed for a future spy career, officials say. Though he wasn’t American-born, his parents lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, under the assumed names Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley. Mr. Foley was 20 when his parents were arrested and had just finished his sophomore year at George Washington University in the nation’s capital.

His parents revealed their double life to him well before their arrest, according to current and former officials, whose knowledge of the discussion was based on surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that included bugging suspects’ homes. The officials said the parents also told their son they wanted him to follow in their footsteps.

He agreed, said the officials. At the end of the discussion with his parents, according to one person familiar with the surveillance, the young man stood up and saluted “Mother Russia.” He also agreed to travel to Russia to begin formal espionage training, officials said.

Officials wouldn’t say where or when the conversation between Mr. Foley and his parents took place or whether he made it to Russia before the spy group was arrested, though they said he eventually went there. Many details of the investigation remain classified.

Peter Krupp, a Boston lawyer, provided a statement from Tim Foley’s parents calling the U.S. officials’ accounts “crap.” The lawyer said it would have been too risky for the parents to reveal the operation to their son.

Mr. Krupp said that since the summer of the spy roundup, Mr. Foley—who wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing—has tried to return to the U.S., but unspecified obstacles have prevented him from doing so, and he remains in Russia. Efforts to find him there were unsuccessful. A lawyer who represented Mr. Foley’s mother during the U.S. case didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Based on their extensive surveillance of the secret agents and their messages to handlers back in Moscow, U.S. counterintelligence officials believe the grooming of Mr. Foley was part of a long-term goal for some of the group’s children to become spies when they got older.

At the time of their arrests, the spies had seven children ranging in age from 1 to 20, most U.S.-born, and one agent also had an older son from a relationship before she joined the espionage network. Anna Chapman, the spy who garnered the most attention because of her glamorous looks, didn’t have children.

Though U.S. officials believe the ring planned to recruit some members’ children, not every child was set along this path. One child, a teenager, was allowed to stay in the U.S. after his parents were arrested, and officials said the son isn’t viewed as a risk to national security. His father, who went by the name Juan Lazaro, wanted his son to become a concert pianist, according to a former colleague of the father. A lawyer for the family declined to comment.

Most members of the ring were what are known in espionage parlance as “illegals”—agents who go to a country using a false identity and without official cover such as a diplomatic position. If caught, illegals have to assume their home country won’t come to their rescue.

Ring members were trained agents of the SVR, a successor agency to the KGB, according to court documents filed by federal prosecutors in New York. U.S. authorities say they worked under the direction of SVR headquarters, known in the West as “Moscow Center.”

Besides the plans to recruit children, the new details about the spy ring show more about what its members were up to.

U.S. officials say one of them, Richard Murphy—whose real name was Vladimir Guryev—worked for several years as the in-house computer technician at a U.S. consultancy called the G7 Group, which advised clients on how government decisions might affect global markets. The firm’s experts included its chief executive, Jane Hartley, an active Democratic fundraiser, and Alan Blinder, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman.

The infiltration is further evidence the spying focused on economic secrets as well as military and political information.

Mr. Murphy came to the G7 Group through a temporary-help agency in the early 2000s and stayed about three years, according to Ms. Hartley, who said she eventually concluded he didn’t have the technical sophistication the firm required. She said she didn’t believe he used his position to steal information.

Mr. Blinder said he didn’t believe he knew or even had heard of Mr. Murphy. “My reaction, of course, is surprise. The G7 Group wasn’t the sort of place a Russian spy would find interesting,” said Mr. Blinder, who is a professor at Princeton University.

A lawyer who represented Mr. Murphy after his arrest said she wasn’t aware he had worked for a firm in Manhattan. After Mr. Murphy left the G7 Group, Ms. Hartley sold it, and many of its principals later reformed under a different name.

The spies’ false identities, also called “legends,” were good enough for them to get jobs and mortgages and start families in America, but they weren’t airtight. A background check for a job with the U.S. government or a government contractor might have exposed them. The spies were careful not to try to get too close to the heart of U.S. government, according to interviews and court documents.

…

Find this story at 26 July 2012

Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Peter Krupp, a lawyer for Russian spy known as Donald Heathfield, was relaying a statement from Mr. Heathfield and his wife on U.S. allegations that they had intended to recruit their son into the spy ring. An earlier version of this article attributed the statement that such allegations were “crap” directly to Mr. Krupp.

Copyright ©2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Despite European Union sanctions against the repressive regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, German federal police were training his “experts” as late as last year. The training took place in Belarus just weeks after a crackdown on opposition protesters.

Accusations that German federal police had questionable ties to the despotic regime of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko were summarily dismissed by the head of the force last week. Now, new information has revealed that the rumors were actually true.

The suggestion was “complete nonsense,” said Matthias Seeger, the chief of the federal police, who has since been relieved of his duties for reasons that are unclear. According to Seeger, the federal police merely had contacts with the Belarusian border patrol, and only until two years ago.

But in a response to an inquiry into police operations abroad by the far-left Left Party, which has been seen by SPIEGEL, the German government has revealed that Seeger’s statements were false. As late as last year, the German federal police had not completely ended its training activities for the Lukashenko regime. It was still providing, at the very least, “instruction to Belarusian experts in the area of risk analysis,” according to the German government.

The timing of the training, which was conducted from Feb. 21 to Feb. 25, 2011, is particularly noteworthy. It took place just days after the beginning of show trials in Minsk against opposition members who had protested against questionable presidential election results that further consolidated Lukashenko’s power in December 2010.

…

Find this story at 8 June 2012

By Christian Neef

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2012
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH