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No one is surprised that the United States uses sophisticated electronic spying techniques against its enemies. But Europeans are increasingly worried about allegations that the U.S. uses those same techniques to gather economic intelligence about its allies.
The most extensive claims yet came this spring in a report written for the European Parliament. The report says that the U.S.

National Security Agency, through an electronic surveillance system called Echelon, routinely tracks telephone, fax, and e-mail transmissions from around the world and passes on useful corporate intelligence to American companies.

Among the allegations: that the NSA fed information to Boeing and McDonnell Douglas enabling the companies to beat out European Airbus Industrie for a $ 6 billion contract; and that Raytheon received information that helped it win a $ 1.3 billion contract to provide radar to Brazil, edging out the French company Thomson-CSF. These claims follow previous allegations that the NSA supplied U.S. automakers with information that helped improve their competitiveness with the Japanese (see “Company Spies,” May/June 1994).

Is there truth to these allegations? The NSA is among the most secretive of U.S. intelligence agencies and won’t say much beyond the fact that its mission is “foreign signals intelligence.” The companies involved all refused to comment.

“Since the NSA’s collection capabilities are so grotesquely powerful, it’s difficult to know what’s going on over there,” says John Pike, an analyst at the watchdog group Federation of American Scientists, who has tracked the NSA for years.

This much is known: The NSA owns one of the largest collections of supercomputers in the world, and it’s an open secret–as documented in the European Parliament report–that Echelon vacuums up massive amounts of data from communications satellites and the Internet and then uses its computers to winnow it down. The system scans communications for keywords–“bomb,” for instance–that might tip off analysts to an interesting topic.

Fueling allegations of corporate espionage is the fact that defense contractors and U.S. intelligence agencies are linked extensively through business relationships. Raytheon, for instance, has large contracts to service NSA equipment, according to the European report.

Englishman Glyn Ford, the European Parliament member who initiated the study, wants the NSA to come clean about its activities in Europe. And the Europeans have some leverage on this issue, if they decide to use it. In a drive to improve surveillance, the United States is pressuring European governments to make telephone companies build eavesdropping capabilities into their new systems. But if that’s what the U.S. wants, says Ford, it’s going to have to be open about what information it’s collecting: “If we are going to leave the keys under the doormat for the United States, we want a guarantee that they’re not going to steal the family silver,” he says.

In the meantime, congressional critics have started to wonder if all that high-powered eavesdropping is limited to overseas snooping. In April, Bob Barr (R-Ga.), a member of the House Government Reform Committee, said he was worried by reports that the NSA was engaged in illicit domestic spying.

“We don’t have any direct evidence from the NSA, since they’ve refused to provide any reports, even when asked by the House Intelligence Committee,” Barr says. “But if in fact the NSA is pulling two million transmissions an hour off of these satellites, I don’t think there’s any way they have of limiting them to non-U.S. citizens.”

Last May, after the NSA stonewalled requests to discuss the issue, Congress amended the intelligence appropriations bill to require the agency to submit a report to Congress. (The bill is still in a conference committee.) And the NSA will face more questions when the Government Reform Committee holds hearings on Echelon and other surveillance programs.

“We ought to prevent any agency from the dragnet approach–where they throw out a net and drag anything in,” Barr says.

Kurt Kleiner
Mother Jones November 1, 1999

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Copyright Mother Jones

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Oleg GordievskyA Soviet double spy, who secretly defected to Britain 30 years ago this month, has revealed for the first time the details of his exfiltration by British intelligence in 1985. Oleg Gordievsky was one of the highest Soviet intelligence defectors to the West in the closing stages of the Cold War. He joined the Soviet KGB in 1963, eventually reaching the rank of colonel. But in the 1960s, while serving in the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark, Gordievsky began feeling disillusioned about the Soviet system. His doubts were reinforced by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. It was soon afterwards that he made the decision to contact British intelligence.
Cautiously, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (known as MI6) communicated with Gordievsky, and in 1974 he secretly became an agent-in-place for the United Kingdom. Eight years later, in 1982, Gordievsky was promoted to KGB rezident (chief of station) in London. While there, he frequently made contact with his MI6 handlers, giving them highly coveted information on Soviet nuclear strategy, among other things. He is credited with informing London of Mikhail Gorbachev’s imminent ascendency to the premiership of the Soviet Union, long before he was seen by Western intelligence as a viable candidate to lead the country.
But in May of 1985, Gordievsky was suddenly recalled to Moscow, where he was detained by the KGB. He was promptly taken to a KGB safe house in the outskirts of Moscow and interrogated for five hours, before being temporarily released pending further questioning. Remarkably, however, Gordievsky managed to escape his KGB surveillance and reappear in Britain less than a week later. How did this happen? On Sunday, the former double spy gave a rare rare interview to The Times, in which he revealed for the first time the details of his escape to London. He told The Times’ Ben Macintyre that he was smuggled out of the USSR by MI6 as part of Operation PIMLICO. PIMLICO was an emergency exfiltration operation that had been put in place by MI6 long before Gordievsky requested its activation in May of 1985.
Every Tuesday, shortly after 7:00, a British MI6 officer would take a morning stroll at the Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow. He would pass outside a designated bakery at exactly 7:24 a.m. local time. If he saw Gordievsky standing outside the bakery holding a grocery bag, it meant that the double agent was requesting to be exfiltrated as a matter of urgency. Gordievsky would then have to wait outside the bakery until a second MI6 officer appeared, carrying a bag from the Harrods luxury department store in London. The man would also be carrying a Mars bar (a popular British candy bar) and would bite into it while passing right in front of Gordievsky. That would be a message to him that his request to be exfiltrated had been received.
Four days later, Gordievsky used his skills in evading surveillance and shook off (or dry-cleaned, in espionage tradecraft lingo) the KGB officers trailing him. He was then picked up by MI6 officers and smuggled out of the country in the trunk of a British diplomatic car that drove to the Finnish border. Gordievsky told The Times that Soviet customs officers stopped the car at the Finnish border and surrounded it with sniffer dogs. At that moment, a British diplomat’s wife, who was aware that Gordievsky was hiding in the car, came out of the vehicle and proceeded to change her baby’s diaper on the trunk, thus safeguarding Gordievsky’s hiding place and masking his scent with her baby’s used diaper. If it hadn’t been for the diplomat’s wife, Gordievsky told The Times that he might have been caught.
After crossing the Soviet-Finnish border, Gordievsky traveled to Norway and from there he boarded a plane for England. Soviet authorities promptly sentenced him to death, but allowed his wife and children to join him in Britain six years later, after British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher personally lobbied the Soviet government. Gordievsky’s death penalty still stands in Russia. In 2007, the Queen made Gordievsky a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George for services rendered to the security of the British state.

JULY 6, 2015 BY JOSEPH FITSANAKIS LEAVE A COMMENT

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Oleg Gordievsky told the prime minister that without his wife and young daughters his “life has no meaning”, papers released by the National Archives show

Oleg Gordievsky, the most prominent Soviet agent to defect to Britain during the Cold War, personally pleaded with Margaret Thatcher to help secure the release of his family from Moscow.
The KGB colonel told the prime minister that without his wife and young daughters, who were prevented from following him to London, his “life has no meaning”.
Files released by the National Archives reveal that MI6 secretly sought to broker a deal with the Russians to secure the safe passage of his family. When the offer was rejected, Mrs Thatcher insisted on expelling every KGB agent in Britain.
Mr Gordievsky, who was one of the most important spies during the Cold War, provided Britain with reports on Soviet operations for more than a decade.
When he issued his appeal to Mrs Thatcher in 1985, she responded personally in an emotive note on Sept 7 1985 urging him to have hope.
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“Our anxiety for your family remains and we shall not forget them,” she said. “Having children of my own, I know the kind of thoughts and feelings which are going through your mind each and every day. But just as your concern is about them, so their concern will be for your safety and well-being.
“Please do not say that life has no meaning. There is always hope. And we shall do all to help you through these difficult days.”
Mrs Thatcher went on to suggest that the pair should meet when the “immediate situation” – the public announcement of Mr Gordievsky’s defection to Britain – had passed.
Her personal involvement was greeted with extreme gratitude by Christopher Curwen, the MI6 chief who had arranged Mr Gordievsky’s extraction from Moscow.
Curwen said: “The reassurance that his family would not be forgotten provided the help and support which he most needs at this difficult time.”
Her comments “greatly assisted” MI6’s dealings with Mr Gordievsky at a “very dificult time,” he added.
Mr Gordievsky arrived in London as a result of an emergency extraction sanctioned by Mrs Thatcher in the summer of 1985. Originally recruited in 1974, Mr Gordievsky became Britain’s star source inside the KGB after being posted to the Soviet secret service’s London bureau.
However, on May 17 1985, having just been promised the job of head of station in London, he was suddenly summoned back to Moscow and subsequently accused of being a spy. He eventually escaped to London with the help of MI6, who smuggled him across the border into Finland, after giving his KBG minders the slip.
When she formally announced Mr Gordievsky’s defection Mrs Thatcher said she hoped that “on humanitarian grounds” the Soviet authorities would agree to his request for his family to join him in London.
However it was another six years before he was reunited with his wife Leila and children. His elder daughter Mariya was 11 on her arrival in London in 1991, and his second child Anna was 10.
The National Archives files show that the prime minister took a close interest in Mr Gordievsky’s well-being, asking his handlers “whether he has some sort of companion to talk to and confide in at what is obviously a very difficult time for him.”

By Edward Malnick7:00AM GMT 30 Dec 2014

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© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2015

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In the 50s and 60s, Soviet and American spies waged a secret war of espionage across the city of Toronto.

At the height of the Cold War, Toronto was the site of an elaborate game of espionage played between the U.S and the Soviet Union, declassified CIA documents show.
The records provide new details about how the CIA and the KGB spied on the city’s growing community of eastern European immigrants.
And those details came as a surprise to at least one Toronto target who learned she was the subject of the CIA investigations.
“I’m amazed. I’m absolutely in shock,” says Ukrainian-born Natalie Bundza, 78, who worked as a travel agent at an agency on Bloor St. when the CIA first began to monitor her travels.
Because of her line of work, Bundza was used to being singled out by Soviet authorities. But when the Star showed her the declassified CIA file bearing her name, Bundza was stunned. The depth and breadth of the information that had been collected on her was startling.
In one of Bundza’s trips to Ukraine in the late ’60s, the CIA had amassed enough intelligence to describe everything from the people she met with overseas to the content of her suitcase, even going as far as to mention the art books she had packed.
“Took many books to Ukraine: several copies of Archipenko’s monograph Hnizdovsky monograph, poetry collections of the New York group, a Bible for Ivan Mykolaychuk,” the file reads.
As a young travel agent in her early 30s, Bundza, who now lives in a bungalow in Etobicoke, would often accompany performance groups and tourists across the Iron Curtain and to the Soviet Union. She believes her job and her friends in the art world made her an attractive target for CIA spies.
Mykolaychuk, an actor, and her other friends, she says, were part of what she calls the “Ukrainian intelligentsia.”
They included famous sculptor Ivan Honchar, poet Ivan Drach, and prominent political activist Dmytro Pavlychko — names which were all dutifully noted by the CIA spy.
“I was constantly followed (by the Soviets). They just knew my background. They knew I was a patriot, that I wasn’t a communist,” she says.
She kept abreast of news from her home country, and she wasn’t afraid to take risks. In her early 30s, Bundza was “all guts, no brains,” she remembers. “I would have knocked on the president’s door if I had to.”
“We were great tourist guides. We took no BS from (the Soviets),” she says.
During one of her organized trips, she noticed that a Soviet customs official had been eyeing the stack of Bibles she carried with her. And so, without prompting, Bundza handed him a copy.
Still, as far as Bundza remembers, she never divulged the minutiae of her travels to anyone — let alone an American spy. How, then, was the CIA able to monitor her travels?
In Toronto, many served as the agency’s eyes and ears.
“This was a period of time when the United States did not know nearly as much about the Soviet Union, whether it be its intentions or its capabilities,” said Richard Immerman, a Cold War historian at Temple University in Philadelphia. For the CIA, the goal was to “put different pieces (together) in the hope that one pattern would emerge.”
Eyewitness accounts were deemed especially important by American intelligence officials.
At the time, it was not uncommon for those venturing beyond the Iron Curtain to spy on behalf of the CIA, says Immerman. “Our aerial surveillance was limited (so) in many cases, those who did travel to the Soviet Union willingly co-operated with the CIA to provide information — whatever information,” he says. “These could be tourists. These could be businessmen. This was not a time when thousands of people from the West would travel to the Soviet Union.”
http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/1705143/AERODYNAMIC%20%20%20VOL.%2021_0111.pdf
But for the CIA, Toronto was also rife with potential enemies. In a 1959 declassified file, an American spy describes how 18 Canadians, 11 of whom lived in Toronto, were suspected of working for the KGB. According to the CIA agent, the Canadians had secretly travelled to the Soviet Union and received special training, only to return years later as undercover KGB operatives.
Other suspected KGB spies, such as Ivan Kolaska, had apparently immigrated to Toronto as part of a bold Soviet plan to infiltrate Ukrainian communities overseas. Kolaska, along with other alleged KGB operatives, one of whom lived a double life as a Toronto City Hall employee, regularly met with Soviet diplomats in Toronto, the files say.
http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/1705143/AERODYNAMIC%20%20%20VOL.%2033%20%20%28OPERATIONS%29_0048.pdf
In one of those meetings with Soviet embassy staff, the files say, Kolaska revealed the identities of dozens of Ukrainian students who had held a secret meeting in Kyiv. They were later arrested by Soviet authorities, according to the files.
In many of the declassified documents, the CIA’s informants are named. Bundza’s file contains no such information, leaving only one clue as to the identity of the mysterious spy: Bundza’s full name.
There is no mention of a “Natalie Bundza” in the file. Her name is listed as “Natalka” instead.
Only another Ukrainian, she says, would have known her as “Natalka.”
“It must have been someone from the community here.”

By: Laurent Bastien Corbeil Staff Reporter, Published on Thu Jul 02 2015

Find this story at 2 July 2015

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Jack Barsky held a job at some of the top corporations in the U.S. and lived a seemingly normal life — all while spying for the Soviet Union

The following is a script from “The Spy Among Us” which aired on May 10, 2015. Steve Kroft is the correspondent. Draggan Mihailovich, producer.

Tonight, we’re going to tell you a story you’ve probably never heard before because only a few people outside the FBI know anything about it. It’s a spy story unlike any other and if you think your life is complicated, wait till you hear about Jack Barsky’s, who led three of them simultaneously. One as a husband and father, two as a computer programmer and administrator at some top American corporations and three as a KGB agent spying on America during the last decade of the Cold War.

The FBI did finally apprehend him in Pennsylvania but it was long after the Soviet Union had crumbled. What makes Jack Barsky’s story even more remarkable is he’s never spent a night in jail, the Russians declared him dead a long time ago, he’s living a quiet life in upstate New York and has worked in important and sensitive jobs. He’s now free to tell his story…as honestly as a former spy ever can.

Jack Barsky CBS NEWS
Steve Kroft: So who are you?
Jack Barsky: Who am I? That depends when the question is asked. Right now, I’m Jack Barsky. I work in the United States. I’m a U.S. citizen. But it wasn’t always the case.

Steve Kroft: How many different identities do you have?

Jack Barsky: I have two main identities. A German one, and an American one.

“Who am I? That depends when the question is asked. Right now, I’m Jack Barsky. I work in the United States. I’m a U.S. citizen. But it wasn’t always the case.”
Steve Kroft: What’s your real name?

Jack Barsky: My real name is Jack Barsky.

Steve Kroft: And what name were you born with?

Jack Barsky: Albrecht Dittrich. Say that three times real fast.

Steve Kroft: Just say it once slowly…(laughs)

Jack Barsky: Albrecht Dittrich.

How Albrecht Dittrich became Jack Barsky is one of the untold stories of the Cold War, an era when the real battles were often fought between the CIA and the KGB. Barsky was a rarity, a Soviet spy who posed as an American and became enmeshed in American society. For the 10 years he was operational for the KGB, no one in this country knew his real story, not even his family.

Steve Kroft: Did you think you were going to get away with this?

Jack Barsky: Yeah, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it (laughs).

youngbarsky.jpg
Young Jack Barsky
What Barsky did can be traced back to East Germany, back to the days when he was Albrecht Dittrich. A national scholar at a renowned university in Jena, Dittrich was on the fast track to becoming a chemistry professor, his dream job.
Jack Barsky: Didn’t work out that way, because I was recruited by the KGB to do something a little more adventurous.

Steve Kroft: Spy?

Jack Barsky: We called it something different. We used a euphemism. I was going to be a “scout for peace.”

Steve Kroft: A KGB “scout for peace”?

Jack Barsky: That is correct. The communist spies were the good guys. And the capitalist spies were the evil ones. So we didn’t use the word spy.

He says his spying career began with a knock on his dorm room door one Saturday afternoon in 1970. A man introduced himself, claiming to be from a prominent optics company.

Jack Barsky: He wanted to talk with me about my career, which was highly unusual. I immediately, there was a flash in my head that said, “That’s Stasi.”

Steve Kroft: East German secret police?

Jack Barsky: East German secret police, yeah.

60 MINUTES: SEGMENT EXTRAS
HOW DOES A COVERT SPY GET AROUND?
It was a Stasi agent. He invited Dittrich to this restaurant in Jena where a Russian KGB agent showed up and took over the conversation. The KGB liked Dittrich’s potential because he was smart, his father was a member of the Communist party and he didn’t have any relatives in the West. Dittrich liked the attention and the notion he might get to help the Soviets.

Steve Kroft: And what did you think of America?

Jack Barsky: It was the enemy. And, the reason that the Americans did so well was because they exploited all the third-world countries. That’s what we were taught, and that’s what we believed. We didn’t know any better. I grew up in an area where you could not receive West German television. It was called the “Valley of the Clueless.”

For the next couple of years, the KGB put Dittrich through elaborate tests and then in 1973 he was summoned to East Berlin, to this former Soviet military compound. The KGB, he says, wanted him to go undercover.

Jack Barsky: At that point, I had passed all the tests, so they wanted, they made me an offer.

Steve Kroft: But you had been thinking about it all along, hadn’t you?

Jack Barsky: That’s true. With one counterweight in that you didn’t really know what was going to come. Is– how do you test drive becoming another person?

It was a difficult decision, but he agreed to join the KGB and eventually found himself in Moscow, undergoing intensive training.

Jack Barsky: A very large part of the training was operational work. Determination as to whether you’re being under surveillance. Morse code, short wave radio reception. I also learned how to do microdots. A microdot is, you know, you take a picture and make it so small with the use of microscope that you can put it under a postage stamp.

60 MINUTES: SEGMENT EXTRAS
JACK BARSKY SHARES SOME HOW-TOS OF SPYING
The Soviets were looking to send someone to the U.S. who could pose as an American. Dittrich showed a command of English and no trace of an East German accent that might give him away. He learned a hundred new English words every day.

Jack Barsky: It took me forever. I did probably a full year of phonetics training. The difference between “hot” and “hut.” Right? That, that’s very difficult and, and most Germans don’t get that one.

Steve Kroft: Did you want to go to the United States?

Jack Barsky: Oh yeah. Sure. There was New York, there was San Francisco, you know, we heard about these places.

Steve Kroft: Your horizons were expanding…

Jack Barsky: Oh, absolutely. Now I’m really in the big league, right?

Dittrich needed an American identity. And one day a diplomat out of the Soviet embassy in Washington came across this tombstone just outside of D.C. with the name of a 10-year-old boy who had died in 1955. The name was Jack Philip Barsky.

60 MINUTES: SEGMENT EXTRAS
THE ORIGINAL JACK PHILIP BARSKY
Jack Barsky: And they said, “Guess what? We have a birth certificate. We’re going to the U.S.”

Steve Kroft: And that was the Jack Barsky birth certificate.

Jack Barsky: The Jack Barsky birth certificate that somebody had obtained and I was given. I didn’t have to get this myself.

Steve Kroft: Did you feel strange walking around with this identity of a child?

Jack Barsky: No. No. When you do this kind of work, some things you don’t think about. Because if you explore, you may find something you don’t like.

The newly minted Jack Barsky landed in New York City in the fall of 1978, with a phony back story called a legend and a fake Canadian passport that he quickly discarded. The KGB’s plan for him was fairly straightforward. They wanted the 29-year-old East German to get a real U.S. passport with his new name, then become a businessman, then insert himself into the upper echelons of American society and then to get close to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski so that he could spy on him.

Jack Barsky: That was the plan. It failed.

Steve Kroft: Why?

Jack Barsky: Because I was not given very good instructions with regard to how to apply for a passport.

When he went to apply for a passport at Rockefeller Center, Barsky was thrown off by the list of questions.

Jack Barsky: Specific details about my past, for which I had no proof. So I walked out of it.

Steve Kroft: Did the KGB have a pretty good grasp on the United States and how things worked there?

Jack Barsky: No.

Steve Kroft: No?

Jack Barsky: Absolutely not. They made a number of mistakes in terms of giving me advice, what to do, what not to do. They just didn’t know.

Left to fend for himself in a country the KGB didn’t understand, he got himself a cheap apartment and tried to make do with a birth certificate and $6,000 dollars in cash the Soviets had given him. His spying career at that point more resembled the bumbling Boris Badenov than James Bond…

Steve Kroft: So you were working as a bike messenger?

Jack Barsky: Right.

Steve Kroft: That doesn’t sound like a promising position for a spy.

Jack Barsky: No. But there were a lot of things that I didn’t know…

Steve Kroft: So how close did you ever get to Brzezinski?

Jack Barsky: Not very.

To get a Social Security card, which he would need if he wanted a real job, Barsky knew he would have to do some acting.

Jack Barsky: It was unusual for a 30-plus-year-old person to, to say, “You know, I don’t have a Social Security card. Give me one.” So in order to make my story stick I made my face dirty. So I looked like somebody who just came off a farm. It worked! The lady asked me, she said, “So how come you don’t, you don’t have a card?” And when the answer was, “I didn’t need one.” “Why?” “Well, I worked on a farm.” And that was the end of the interview.

The Social Security card enabled him to enroll at Baruch College in Manhattan, where he majored in computer systems. He was class valedictorian but you won’t find a picture of him in the school yearbook. In 1984, he was hired as a programmer by Metropolitan Life Insurance where he had access to the personal information of millions of Americans.

Steve Kroft: You were writing computer code?

Jack Barsky: Right. Yes. Lots of it. And I was really good at it.

What he didn’t write, he stole, on behalf of the KGB.

Steve Kroft: What was the most valuable piece of information you gave them?

Jack Barsky: I would say that was the computer code because it was a very prominent piece of industrial software still in use today.

Steve Kroft: This was IBM code?

Jack Barsky: No comment.

Steve Kroft: You don’t want to say?

Jack Barsky: No. It was good stuff. Let’s put it this way, yeah.

Steve Kroft: It was helpful to the Soviet Union…

Jack Barsky: It would’ve been helpful to the Soviet Union and their running organizations and, and factories and so forth.

Steve Kroft: How often did you communicate with the Russians?

Jack Barsky: I would get a radiogram once a week.

Steve Kroft: A radiogram, meaning?

Jack Barsky: A radiogram means a transmission that was on a certain frequency at a certain time.

Every Thursday night at 9:15 Barsky would tune into his shortwave radio at his apartment in Queens and listen for a transmission he believed came from Cuba.

Jack Barsky: All the messages were encrypted that they became digits. And the digits would be sent over as, in groups of five. And sometimes that took a good hour to just write it all down, and then another three hours to decipher.

During the 10 years he worked for the KGB, Barsky had a ready-made cover story.

Steve Kroft: When somebody’d ask you, you know, “Where you from Jack?,” what’d you say?

Jack Barsky: I’m originally from New Jersey. I was born in Orange. That’s it. American. Nobody ever questioned that. People would question my, “You have an accent.” But my comeback was, “Yeah, my mother was German and we spoke a lot of German at home.”

Steve Kroft: You had to tell a lot of lies.

Jack Barsky: Absolutely. I was living a lie.

Steve Kroft: Were you a good liar?

Jack Barsky: The best.

You had to be a good liar to juggle the multiple lives he was leading. Every two years while he was undercover for the KGB, Barsky would return to East Germany and Moscow for debriefings. During one of his visits to East Berlin he married his old girlfriend Gerlinde and they had a son.

Steve Kroft: Did that complicate matters?

Jack Barsky: Initially it wasn’t complicated at all, it got complicated later.

Steve Kroft: Because?

Jack Barsky: Because I got married in the United States to somebody else.

Steve Kroft: Did she know about your other wife in Germany?

Jack Barsky: No.

Steve Kroft: Did your wife in Germany know about the…

Jack Barsky: Not at all.

Steve Kroft: So you had two wives?

Jack Barsky: I did. I’m, I was officially a bigamist. That’s, that’s the one thing I am so totally not proud of.

Steve Kroft: Being a spy was all right. Being a bigamist…

Jack Barsky: In hindsight, you know, I was a spy for the wrong people. But I, this one hurt because I had promised my German wife, that you know, we would be together forever. And I broke that promise. And the one way I can explain it to myself is I had separated the German, the Dittrich from the Barsky to the point where the two just didn’t know about each other.

Not only did he have two different identities, and two wives, he had a son named Matthias in Germany and a daughter named Chelsea in America. And by November 1988, a radiogram from the KGB would force him to make an excruciating choice.

Jack Barsky: I received a radiogram that essentially said, “You need to come home. Your cover may soon be broken and you’re in danger of being arrested by the American authorities.”

Barsky was given urgent instructions from the KGB to locate an oil can that had been dropped next to a fallen tree just off this path on New York’s Staten Island. A fake passport and cash that he needed to escape the United States and return to East Germany would be concealed inside the can.

Jack Barsky: I was supposed to pick up the container and go on, leave. Not even go back home to the apartment, just disappear. The container wasn’t there. I don’t know what I would have done if I had found it, but I know what I did when I didn’t find it. I did not tell them, “repeat the operation.” I made the decision to stay.

Steve Kroft: Why?

Jack Barsky: Because of Chelsea.

Steve Kroft: Your daughter.

Jack Barsky: Yes. If Chelsea’s not in the mix, that’s a no brainer, I’m outta here.

Barsky had chosen Chelsea over Matthias.

Jack Barsky: I had bonded with her. It was a tough one because on the one hand I had a wife and child in Germany but if I don’t take care of Chelsea, she grows up in poverty.

Steve Kroft: This may be a little harsh but it sounds like the first time in your life that you thought about somebody besides yourself.

Jack Barsky: You’re absolutely right. I was quite an egomaniac. I was.

Jack Barsky was still left with the not insignificant matter of telling the KGB that he was staying in America. In a moment, we’ll tell you how he duped the KGB and how the FBI changed his life.

PART TWO
At the end of 1988, Jack Barsky’s 10-year run as a clandestine KGB agent in the United States was about to come to an end. He had ignored Soviet warnings that his cover had been blown and decided to remain in America and not return to his native East Germany. He was taking a chance that no one in America would ever find out who he really was. And he was taking a bigger chance that the KGB wouldn’t retaliate for disobeying an order. The urgency with which the Soviets seemed to view the situation became clear one morning in Queens.

Jack Barsky says he was on his way to work in December 1988, standing and waiting for an “A” train on this subway platform when a stranger paid him a visit.

Jack Barsky: There’s this character in, in a black coat and he sidles up to me and he whispers in my ear, he says, “You gotta come home or else you’re dead.” And then he walked out.

Steve Kroft: Russian accent?

Jack Barsky: Yes.

Steve Kroft: That’s an incentive.

Jack Barsky: It’s an incentive to go.

Steve Kroft: I mean spies get killed all the time.

Jack Barsky: They do. But not me. The entire time I always had this childlike belief that everything would be all right.

“There’s this character in, in a black coat and he sidles up to me and he whispers in my ear, he says, ‘You gotta come home or else you’re dead.’ And then he walked out.”
Steve Kroft: So what are you going to tell the Russians?

Jack Barsky: Well, I (sighs) I sent them, this “Dear John” letter, the goodbye letter in which I stated that I had contracted AIDS and that the only way for me to get a treatment would be in the United States.

Steve Kroft: You just wrote them a letter and said, ‘I can’t come back. I’ve got AIDS”?

Jack Barsky: There’s three things I tell people that the Russians were afraid of. AIDS, Jewish people and Ronald Reagan. And they were deathly…

Steve Kroft: In that order?

Jack Barsky: I think Ronald Reagan took the top spot. They thought he would push the button.

The AIDS letter apparently worked because in East Berlin the Soviets told his German wife Gerlinde he wasn’t coming back.

Jack Barsky: They went to Gerlinde and told her that I had died of AIDS. So I think they just wrote me off completely.

Steve Kroft: You were officially dead in East Germany?

Jack Barsky: Right. After five years she was able to declare me dead.

Once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union fell apart, Barsky was a man without a country. No one would want him back. He felt his secret was safe in America. He became a family guy, with a wife, two kids, Chelsea and Jessie, and a job. He burrowed himself into suburbia, keeping a low profile.

Jack Barsky: I was settling down, I was living in the, in rural Pennsylvania at the time, in a nice house, with two children. I was, like, typical middle class existence.

And his life would have stayed quiet if a KGB archivist named Vasili Mitrokhin hadn’t defected to the West in 1992 with a trove of notes on the Soviets’ spying operations around the world. Buried deep in his papers was the last name of a secret agent the KGB had deployed somewhere in America: Barsky.

Joe Reilly: We were concerned that he might be running an agent operating in the federal government somewhere. Who knows? In the FBI, the CIA, the State Department. We had no idea.

Joe Reilly was an FBI agent when the bureau got the Mitrokhin tip, and the Barsky case quickly became serious enough that FBI director Louis Freeh got personally involved. The FBI didn’t know who or where he was, but the best lead seemed to be a Jack Barsky who was working as an I.T. specialist in New Jersey, with a suburban home across the border in Mount Bethel, Pennsylvania.

Steve Kroft: Aside from his name was there anything else that made you suspicious and make you think that this was the guy you were looking for?

Joe Reilly: Yes. One thing was the fact that he had applied for a Social Security number late in life. Especially someone like him who was educated and intelligent.

The FBI began following Barsky, and when this surveillance photo caught him talking to a native of Cuba, the bureau grew increasingly concerned.

Joe Barsky: There were some indications that I could possibly be the head of a international spy ring, because I had a friend who was originally from Cuba. And it so happened that this friend owned an apartment that was rented to a Soviet diplomat. So that one and raised all kinds of flags and they investigated me very, very, very carefully.

FBI agent Joe Reilly went so far as to set up an observation post on a hillside behind Barsky’s house. This is a picture he took of his view.

Joe Reilly: I got a telescope and binoculars, as if I was a birdwatcher. But I was looking at his backyard and at him. Over time, I learned a great deal about him.

Steve Kroft: Like what?

Joe Reilly: …just watching him. Well, I became convinced that he loved his children. And that was important because I wanted to know if he would flee. There was less chance of that if, if he was devoted to his children. And he was.

But that wasn’t enough for the FBI. The bureau bought the house next door to get a closer look at the Barskys.

Steve Kroft: Did you get a good deal?

Joe Reilly: I think we paid what he was asking. And we had agents living there so that we could be sure who was coming and going from his house without being too obvious in our surveillance.

Steve Kroft: You had no idea the FBI was living next door to you?

Jack Barsky: No.

Steve Kroft: Never saw…

Jack Barsky: No.

Steve Kroft: …Joe Reilly up on the hill with the binoculars?

Jack Barsky: Absolutely not.

When the FBI finally got authorization from the Justice Department to bug Barsky’s home, the case broke wide open.

Joe Reilly: Within, I’d say, the first two weeks that we had microphones in his house, he had an argument with his wife in the kitchen. And during the course of that dispute, he readily admitted that he was an agent, operating from the Soviet Union.

It was all the FBI needed to move in on Barsky. They set a trap for him at a toll bridge across the Delaware River as he drove home from work late one Friday afternoon in May of 1997.

Jack Barsky: I’m being waved to the side by a state trooper. And he said, “We’re doing a routine traffic check. Would you please get out of the car?” I get out of the car and somebody steps up from, from behind and shows me a badge. And he said, “FBI. We would like to talk to you.”

Joe Reilly: His face just dropped. And we told him that he had to go with us.

Jack Barsky: The first words out of my mouth were, “Am I under arrest?” And the answer was, “No.” Now that took a big weight off of me, so I figured there was a chance to get out of this in one piece. And the next question I asked, “So what took you so long?”

The FBI had rented an entire wing of a motel off Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania for Barsky’s interrogation.

Joe Reilly: But on the way to the motel, I remember turning to him. And I, I told him that this didn’t have to be the worst day of his life. And he immediately realized that he had an out.

Jack Barsky: I said to them, “Listen, I know I have only one shot out of this and that means I need to come clean and be 100 percent honest and tell you everything I know.”

The FBI questioned Barsky throughout the weekend and gave him a polygraph test that he passed. Convinced that his spying days were over, and that his friendship with the Cuban was just that, the FBI decided to keep the whole thing quiet and allowed Barsky to go back to work on Monday morning.

Steve Kroft: Was he charged with something?

Joe Reilly: No.

Steve Kroft: Even though he confessed to being a Soviet spy?

Joe Reilly: Yes.

Steve Kroft: That seems odd.

Joe Reilly: Well, we wanted him to cooperate with us. We didn’t want to put him in jail. He was no use to us there.

Barsky continued to meet not only with the FBI but with the National Security Agency to offer his first-hand insights into the KGB and the Russians.

Jack Barsky: I was able to provide them with a lot of valuable information how the KGB operated.

The only people who were aware of his secret were the FBI and Penelope, his wife in America, who subsequently filed for divorce. His daughter Chelsea, then a teenager, knew only that he wanted to tell her something when she turned 18. That day finally arrived on a four-hour drive to St. Francis University.

Chelsea: He started chuckling to himself and he said, “Well, I’m a, I was a spy. I was a KGB spy.” I was like “What? Really?”

Jack also revealed to Chelsea why he had decided to stay in America.

Chelsea: He said that, you know, he fell in love with me and my, my curls when I was a little baby. And then I cried.

Steve Kroft: Did he tell you everything?

Chelsea: No, he didn’t. He didn’t tell me 100 percent the whole truth. He left some things out at that point.

Jack Barsky: I told her everything that you can tell in four hours that is age appropriate. She was still a teenager. I may not have told her that I was married in Germany.

He waited another two years before he matter-of-factly dropped another bombshell about his past.

Chelsea: He just looked straight ahead at the TV. And he said, “Did I tell you you have a brother?” And I turned my head. I’m like, “What? Are you serious?”

The half brother was Matthias, the boy Jack had left behind in Germany. Chelsea was determined to find him. Jack didn’t like the idea.

Jack Barsky: I did not feel comfortable getting in touch with him. I did not feel comfortable with my acknowledging my German past.

After a year of trying to track him down online, Chelsea finally got a reply from Matthias…

Chelsea: The subject line said, “Dear little sister.” And when I saw, “Dear little sister,” I just started weeping, because that meant everything to me. That meant that he accepted me.

Matthias: And this is me…

A month later, Matthias was in Pennsylvania visiting Chelsea and her brother Jessie. They hit it off. Matthias wasn’t interested in seeing his father, then changed his mind.

barksys-american-kids-with-his-german-son.jpg
Barsky’s children, from left: Jessie, Matthias and Chelsea
Steve Kroft: Was it awkward?
Jack Barsky: I just remember he stared at me for a couple of minutes. He just stared at me.

Steve Kroft: I mean he had reason to be angry with you.

Jack Barsky: When I told him the dilemma that I was faced with, he actually said, “I understand.”

Steve Kroft: And what’s your relationship like with Matthias now?

Jack Barsky: He feels like he’s my son.

Gerlinde, the wife in Germany who thought he was dead, wants nothing to do with Jack today – or with 60 Minutes.

He has remarried and has a four-year-old daughter. They live in upstate New York where Jack has worked as director of software development for a company that manages New York’s high voltage power grid, a critical piece of U.S. infrastructure. When he told his employer recently that he had once been a KGB spy, he was placed on a paid leave of absence. Before becoming an American citizen last year, he had been given a clean bill of health by the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies. But in the world of espionage it’s often difficult to tell what’s true and what’s legend.

Steve Kroft: Are you telling the truth right now?

Jack Barsky: I am, absolutely. The truth as far as I know it. Yes.

Steve Kroft: As far as you know it?

Jack Barsky: Well, you know, sometimes memory fails you. But I am, I am absolutely not holding back anything.

Steve Kroft: Why tell the story now?

Jack Barsky: I want to meet my maker clean. I need to get clean with the past. I need to digest this fully.

The FBI agent who apprehended him, Joe Reilly, still believes in Barsky. And in yet another twist to this story, the two are good friends and golfing buddies.

Joe Reilly: He’s a very honest person. And if you want to find out how honest someone is, play golf with them.

Steve Kroft: But you’re a former FBI guy and he’s a former spy. What’s the bond?

Joe Reilly: It’s personal. He credits me for keeping him out of prison.

After nearly 30 years, Jack Barsky went back to visit a unified Germany, first in October, then again last month.

[Jack Barsky: So that was essentially the very beginning of my career…]

He showed his kids where this improbable tale began and some other key settings in his odyssey. And he caught up with old classmates who knew him as Albrecht Dittrich.

barsky-in-germany-with-his-american-kids.jpg
Barsky in Germany with his American children CBS NEWS
Steve Kroft: When you’re here in Germany…
Jack Barsky: Yeah…

Steve Kroft: …are you Albrecht or are you Jack?

Jack Barsky: No, I’m Jack. I am 100 percent Jack. You know, the, I let the Albrecht out and sometimes he interferes, but they, they get along very well now (laughs)…

The Berlin wall, which once divided east and west, is now gone except for a section that has been turned into an art display. Checkpoint Charlie, once the epicenter of the Cold War, is now a tourist attraction, full of kitsch. Statues of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels still stand in the eastern part of Berlin, relics of another era as is the man who straddled two worlds and got away with it.

2015 May 10 CORRESPONDENT Steve Kroft

Find this story at 10 May 2015

© 2015 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Dupont op Justitie en Veiligheid

Vandaag 3 juli 2015, bericht de NOS het volgende:

‘De particuliere beveiligingsbranche neemt maatregelen om infiltratie van criminelen te voorkomen. Dat zegt Laetitia Griffith, voorzitter van de branchevereniging voor beveiligingsbedrijven, in het Financieele Dagblad. Daarmee reageert de branche op waarschuwingen van de politie dat omstreden motorclubs pogingen doen om beveiligingsbedrijven in handen te krijgen. De branchevereniging heeft maatregelen genomen die het moeilijker moeten maken voor leden van deze motorclubs om actief te worden in de beveiliging. Zo toetst het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie sinds kort bij het verlenen van een beveiligingsvergunning of de aanvrager betrokken is bij criminele activiteiten. Dat dit tot nu toe niet gebeurde, is “een kwestie van voortschrijdend inzicht,” aldus Griffith. Volgens het voormalige Kamerlid moeten bedrijven en overheidsinstanties er beter op letten met welk beveiligingsbedrijf ze in zee gaan. Ze maken nog te vaak gebruik van bedrijven zonder keurmerk.’

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Het is 21 mei 2015. Langs de kant van de straten staan links en rechts ME-busjes. Geuniformeerde politie-agenten, het wapen aan de heup, lopen door de verder verlaten straten. Sommigen hebben over hun politie-uniform een oranje vestje aangetrokken. Geen mens kan er meer langs. Automobilisten keren hun voertuig. Het Binnenhof is hermetisch afgesloten en volledig omsingeld.

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1 juli 2015, De Telegraaf bericht het Nederlandse volk het volgende:

‘Belgen verbieden feesten van motorbendes

BRUSSEL –

Burgemeesters van Belgische grensgemeentes met Nederland hebben feesten van twee motorbendes verboden. De Summerparty van de Outlaws en de Independence Party van de Hells Angels mogen niet doorgaan. Zij waren voor begin deze maand gepland in Lanaken en Maasmechelen, tegen de grens met Limburg.

De politie van de twee gemeenten maakte het verbod woensdag bekend. De burgemeesters besloten tot de maatregel na de recente incidenten met leden van criminele motorbendes in Nederland en Duitsland. De bendes zijn betrokken bij zware misdaden. Zij verdienen geld met onder meer grensoverschrijdende drugshandel, afpersing en prostitutie.’

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Sinds enige jaren worden motorclubs door de overheid anders genoemd. Men zou toch zeggen dat de namen die de clubs zelf hebben gekozen veelzeggend genoeg zijn. Zo is de naam ‘Hells Angels’ synoniem met motorclubs in het algemeen, Harley-Davidson-Rijders, bikers of zelfs Onepercenters. Namen als ‘Demons’, ‘Outlaws’, ‘Veterans’ of zelfs ‘Mongols’, nazaten van de Mongoolse hordes die de oude wereld overspoelden, zijn allemaal vanzelfsprekend genoeg. Dat de overheid zelf een andere naam voor al dat motorvolk bedacht heeft is daarom bijzonder. ‘Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs’, oftewel afgekort ‘OMG’s’, worden de motorclubs genoemd door de Nederlandse overheid. Afgekeken van de Amerikanen, die dezelfde term gebruiken.

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Gisteren was het weer 27 juni. En dan is het Nationale Veteranendag. Op die dag worden de vele duizenden Nederlandse veteranen geëerd die in Nederlandse dienst uitzendingen of missies volbrachten. Jarenlang was er in Nederland helemaal geen veteranenbeleid. Veteranen werden aan hun lot overgelaten. Dat resulteerde in een steeds groter wordend gevoel voor onvrede onder veteranen en hun partners, maar ook in talloze schadeclaims ingediend door mensen die fysieke of psychische schade opliepen door hun militaire missies. Enige jaren geleden besloot men dus in Den Haag, als residentie, een grote veteranenbijeenkomst te houden. Compleet met défilé. De Nationale Veteranendag was hiermee een feit.

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Haagse agenten hebben gisteren (zaterdag 27 juni 2015) na het ‘Night at the Park’ festival in het Zuiderpark de 42 jarige Arubaan Mitch Henriquez doodgeslagen. In een verklaring stelt het Openbaar Ministerie (OM) dat Henriquez onderweg naar het politiebureau onwel werd, echter blijkt uit camerabeelden dat hij al buiten bewustzijn of in coma was voordat hij de politiebus in werd gesleurd zonder medische hulp te krijgen.

Getuigen zeggen dat Henriquez na het festival grapjes aan het maken was met vrienden, toen een groep agenten bovenop hen dook. Henriquez belandde in een coma, en overleed vandaag in het ziekenhuis. Volgens omstanders en zijn familie hebben agenten veel geweld gebruikt bij zijn arrestatie.

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Dupont op Justitie en Veiligheid

Vrijdag 26 juni. De dag voordat Onno Hoes afscheid nam van Maastricht, waar hij burgemeester was. NPO zendt een reportage uit, waarin Hoes wordt gevolgd en geïnterviewd. Volgens Hoes is Maastricht veel veiliger geworden sinds hij daar burgemeester was. Het Algemeen Dagblad kwam enige weken geleden met zijn misdaadmeter en jawel, daarin staat Maastricht op de tweede plaats. Direct achter Amsterdam. Maar desgevraagd was Onno het natuurlijk niet eens met de cijfers van het AD.

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Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

Police are alleged to have been covertly helping companies to blacklist trade unionists since before the Second World War

The blacklisting of trade unionists by major firms over the years has been an inherently secretive practice. Even more secretive, it seems, has been the state’s covert collusion in such a practice.

From time to time, the public get glimpses that reveal how the state has facilitated the blacklisting. These snapshots suggest that there has been regular collusion for many decades.

The police and blacklisters have not welcomed public scrutiny of their relationship. However the trade unionists who were blacklisted are now pressing for the upcoming public inquiry into the failures of undercover policing – to be headed by Lord Justice Pitchford – to scrutinise the allegations (see here for more details).

In all these years, there has never been an in-depth, independent, and public examination of these persistent allegations.

Some of the evidence of this collusion is detailed below – the most recent dates from 2008. According to a leaked document, a secretive police unit that was involved in monitoring political activists met a blacklisting agency that was funded by large companies.

The agency, operating under the bland name of the Consulting Association, unlawfully compiled confidential dossiers on thousands of workers who were considered by company directors to be politically active or potential trouble-makers. Many workers were denied employment for long periods.

A note of the meeting at an Oxfordshire hotel on November 6 2008 records that the purpose of the police unit, which was then expanding, was “to liaise with industry”.

Police ‘spied on activists for blacklisting agency’
Read more
More evidence dates from the 1990s. Peter Francis, a former undercover police officer who has now become a whistleblower, has disclosed that he believes that he personally collected some of the information that later appeared in the files of the Consulting Association. Francis infiltrated anti-racist groups between 1993 and 1997 as a member of the Metropolitan Police’s undercover unit, the Special Demonstration Squad.

The blacklisting files recorded one bricklayer as being “under constant watch (officially) and seen as politically dangerous”.

An official watchdog, the information commissioner, shut down the Consulting Association, after seizing many of its files in a raid. Dave Clancy, a former police officer who worked as an investigator for the watchdog, has testified that “there is information on the Consulting Association files that I believe could only be supplied by the police or the security services”. These details, he added, were specific and came from police records.

An earlier incarnation of the blacklist was run by another clandestine agency, called the Economic League. This organisation had been set up shortly after the First World War, at a time of widespread industrial unrest, and, again, was financed by large corporations.

The Economic League had began to compile secret dossiers on workers around the country.

It seems that from early on, the Economic League received help from the police. Documents chronicle how Economic League officials worked closely with police in Lancashire in the 1930s.

In 1937, they met detectives who were monitoring political “subversives”. The league’s Manchester organiser reported to his superiors that he had “Manchester police in here yesterday and found them extremely helpful and have now arranged to work in the closest co-operation with them. Among other things, they promised to give me as long as I like looking over their Communist industrial file in their office.”

Blacklisted workers seek to prise open secrets of covert police surveillance
Read more
Days later, the league’s Manchester organiser wrote to the chief constable of the local force and thanked him for his help. At one point, the league asked police to carry out surveillance on a meeting of trade unionists as the blacklisters considered it “of considerable importance”.

At another point, the league’s Manchester organiser told his boss that he was due to get a report of a Communist Party meeting from the police without having to send “one of our own men”.

In that same year, Special Branch passed onto the Economic League a confidential list of Manchester communists.

Fifty years on, and collaboration still seemed to exist. In the 1980s, an undercover television sting caught the candid thoughts of an Economic League official who said :”We give all our information to the police. In return, they’re not exactly unfriendly back.”

Michael Noar, then the Economic League’s director-general, said in 1987 said that “of course, the police and Special Branch are interested in some of the things we are interested in. They follow the activities of these groups in much the same way as we do and therefore they do get in touch with us from time to time and talk to us and say ‘were you at this demonstration or that’.” He added that “in the course of discussions, there is an exchange of information just in the ordinary course of talking.”

Phil Chamberlain, co-author of a book on blacklisting, being interviewed
Police and Economic League officials have acknowledged they had meetings together, but say information about individuals was not passed to the league.

One unnamed Special Branch officer recently told an internal police investigation into the undercover infiltration of political groups that the “flow of information was purely one way”. The Economic League was treated solely as a source of information, according to the officer, and it was Special Branch policy not to share any information with the league.

Jack Winder, who worked for the Economic League from 1963 until its closure in the early 1990s, told a parliamentary inquiry two years ago that he had meetings with the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch over a long time for what he called “general chit-chat”. He told MPs that the “exchange of detailed information” about individuals was “absolutely forbidden”.

Sources : Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain, Blacklisted :the secret war between big business and union activists (New Internationalist, 2015); Mark Hollingsworth and Richard Norton-Taylor, Blacklist – the inside story of political vetting (Hogarth Press, 1988). For a detailed and documented history of the Economic League, see the work of researcher Mike Hughes here.

Rob Evans
@robevansgdn
Tuesday 16 June 2015 11.03 BST Last modified on Tuesday 16 June 2015 11.06 BST

Find this story at 16 June 2015

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

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Trade unionists blacklisted by major firms are pushing for the public inquiry into undercover policing to examine alleged collusion between covert police officers and company directors

Blacklisted workers have intensified their campaign to uncover the extent of secret police surveillance operations against them.

Covert police officers are alleged to have passed information they gathered on the trade unionists to multi-national firms who maintained a secret and unlawful blacklist.

The blacklisted workers want the allegations examined by the public inquiry that has been established into the police’s use of undercover officers to infiltrate hundreds of political groups.

That inquiry – to be headed by Lord Justice Pitchford – is drawing up its remit which is due to be announced by the end of July. This here and here gives some background on the inquiry that was set up by home secretary Theresa May.

This week, the blacklisted workers said they have applied to be given a central role in the inquiry. In legal terms, they are seeking to be made a “core participant” in the inquiry.

It is not yet known who will be the “core participants” in the Pitchford inquiry. The status is given to those who, for example, have a direct and significant interest in the issues that will be examined.

On the blacklist: how did the UK’s top building firms get secret information on their workers?
Read more
It allows them to see evidence in advance of it being aired at the inquiry and to seek to cross-examine witnesses.

The application by the Blacklist Support Group (BSG) has been made by Imran Khan, the lawyer who also represents Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered teenager Stephen. (For more details, see this).

Dave Smith, the group’s spokesman, said: “Hopefully by the BSG applying for core participant status, we will be able to guarantee that spying on trade unions and passing over information to private companies becomes a theme within the Pitchford inquiry.”

“Police and security services spying on trade unions is not a one-off aberration, it is standard operating procedure by the state.”

An official watchdog closed down the blacklist in 2009 after discovering that major firms kept confidential files on workers deemed to be “trouble-makers”. Checks were run on trade unionists to deny them work if their names were on the list.

The police’s role in giving information to the blacklist has yet to be fully brought into the public domain.

Imran Khan, the lawyer working for the blacklisted workers. Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Imran Khan, the lawyer working for the blacklisted workers. Photograph: Richard Saker/Richard Saker
Read this, this, and this for accounts of how the police are alleged to have colluded with the blacklisters by gathering and sharing information on trade unionists.

More than 580 blacklisted workers have launched legal action against 40 large construction firms in a case that is due to be heard in the High Court next year. They say the blacklisting files date from at least 1969.

At a preliminary hearing this month, lawyers for the blacklisted workers told a court that the blacklisters had deliberately destroyed documents after they had been raided by the official watchdog, the information commissioner. (Read this for more details).

Meanwhile, Smith, the co-author of a new book, Blacklisted : the Secret War between Big Business and Union Activists, is due to give a talk on the controversy on Tuesday June 2. This here gives details of the talk in London that is being organised by the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers and the Institute of Employment Rights.

Rob Evans
@robevansgdn
Thursday 28 May 2015 11.51 BST Last modified on Thursday 28 May 2015 12.00 BST

Find this story at 28 May 2015

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

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New information on the 2014 activities of European police cooperation groups and networks has been published by the German government (pdf), in response to questions from Die Linke parliamentary deputies. The answers include information on the work of Europe’s secretive undercover policing coordination networks. However, the government claims – as it has done in the past – that many of the questions cannot be answered publicly, due to the need for confidentiality.
The questions concern a number of groups and networks, including:

The European Cooperation Group on Undercover Activities (ECG);
The International Working Group on Police Undercover Activities (IWG);
The Cross-Border Surveillance Working Group (CSW);
The International Specialist Law Enforcement (ISLE) project;
Europol’s ‘Focal Point Dolphin’.
European Cooperation Group on Undercover Activities (ECG)

The ECG was established in 2001 and deals with: “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.” [1]

However, the German government has previously referred to “politically motivated” crime as one of the “main issues” looked at by the group, [2] and has admitted that the work of the exposed police spy Mark Kennedy has been discussed at its meetings.

The extent to which the ECG is involved in coordinating or directing police infilitration of protest movements across Europe is unknown, although a number of the British undercover police exposed in recent years are known to have travelled abroad frequently. German officers have also been sent abroad on a number of occasions. [3] Attempts by a number of women to obtain justice after being deceived into spending years in relationships with undercover police officers are ongoing. [4]

According to the German government, the ECG met in Bucharest from 20 to 23 May, and the group’s third workshop on “Undercover on the Internet” was held in Marburg from 6 to 9 October.

The list of attendees is lengthy. At the main ECG meeting, there were representatives present from 22 EU Member States:

Austria (Federal Criminal Police Office, Vienna)
Belgium (Federal Police)
Bulgaria (Government Agency for National Security)
Croatia (Criminal Police Directorate)
Czech Republic (Czech National Police)
Denmark (Danish National Police)
Estonia (Central Criminal Police)
Finland (National Bureau of Investigation)
France (Central Directorate of Criminal Investigation Department)
Germany (Federal Criminal Police Office, Central Office of the German Customs Investigation Service)
Hungary (Hungarian National Police and Hungarian Customs)
Italy (Carabinieri)
Latvia (Criminal Police Department)
Lithuania (Criminal Police Bureau)
Netherlands (National Police Agency)
Poland (Polish National Police)
Portugal (Policia Judiciária)
Romania (Romanian National Police)
Slovakia (Slovakian National Police)
Slovenia (General Police Directorate)
Spain (Spanish National Police)
United Kingdom (National Crime Agency and Metropolitan Police)
And six non-EU states:

Albania (Central Criminal Police)
Macedonia (Office of Public Security)
Norway (Oslo Police Department)
Russia (Federal Drugs Control Service)
Switzerland (Federal Criminal Police)
Turkey (National Police)
At the October workshop the same organisations were present from Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Slovenia and the UK. Also present were representatives of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The content of the agendas has not been published by the German government. Its justification for the secrecy was lengthy:

“The meetings dealt inter alia with tactical and operational measures in the context of undercover police investigations, for instance on the Internet. In addition to this, joint training measures in a particular area were discussed…

“The said undercover measures are only used in areas of criminal activity in which a particularly high level of conspiracy, danger to the public and willingness to employ violence must be assumed.

“…making public specific contents of discussions of certain operational resources conducted with foreign police authorities, as discussed in the meeting in question, would gravely undermine the trust and confidence of the international cooperation partners in the integrity of German police work and render significantly more difficult continued cooperation in the area of undercover policing.”

The same justification was referred to in response to a wide number of other questions put forward by Hunko and his colleagues, and similar statements have been previously been put forward by the government in response to parliamentary questions on policing issues.

International Working Group on Police Undercover Activities (IWG)

The IWG was established in 1989 and its purpose has previously been described as “international exchange of experience on all matters related to the covert deployment of police officers.” 2014 saw the 45th meeting of the group, which took place from 21 to 24 October in Warsaw. Poland organised the meeting itself, but Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office prepared the invitations and agenda “in close consultation with the Member States.”

The same organisations from the list above were present to represent Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Slovenia, and the UK. Also present were representatives from the Australian Federal Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Swedish National Bureau of Investigation, and the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The IWG also has an International Business Secretariat (IBS), which has been the subject of previous parliamentary questions from Hunko and his colleagues.

In 2014, the IBS held a meeting from 10 to 13 June in Oslo, with Norway organising the meeting and the UK preparing the invitations and agenda.

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office presented an agenda item on “biometrics” to the other delegations, who came from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

Cross-Border Surveillance Working Group (CSW)

The CSW was first convened in 2005. It appears to have been busier during 2014 than some of the other networks asked about by Die Linke deputies – a meeting of the CSW itself was held in Rome from 7 to 9 May, the steering group met on the 16 and 17 October in The Hague, and The Hague also played host to the ‘Assembly of Regional Groups on Surveillance’ (ARGOS), which was attended by CSW representatives. Italy organised the meeting in Rome, while the ARGOS conference was organised by Europol.

The purpose of the meetings was “to enable the various mobile special mission units to exchange experiences and, building on this, the optimisation of cooperation during cross-border surveillance operations.”

In response to questions about the CSW, the German made statements on the content of the agendas. The May meeting saw discussions on:

The organisation of Italy’s R.O.S. Carabinieri force “and a case study of an abduction case”
“Current status and outlook for the European Tracking System (ETS) and European Law”
The European Network of Law Enforcement Technology Services (ENLETS)
“Presentation of the legal situation in Belgium and other Member States”
“Use of different licence plates in the respective Member States”
“Presentation of criminal activities and means of detection”
“Police measures”
“Air-based surveillance in the United Kingdom”
“Challenges and opportunities arising from the use of technology in the fight against crime”
“Legislative amendments and presentation of the organisation and deployment possibilities of the French police force”
“Presentation of the different legal foundation and use of resources for the interception of private conversations in the participating countries”
“Overview and presentation of an EU Framework Programme”
The agenda for the ARGOS conference in November included:

A presentation on the CSW
“Presentation of a case study on cooperation in the field of surveillance (SENSEE)”
The European Tracking System and European Law
ENLETS
“Presentation of the Europol Liaison Officers ‘Working Group on Controlled Delivery'”
“Presentation of the possible impacts of the European Investigation Order on cross-border surveillance” (the European Investigation Order was adopted in March 2014 and includes rules on cross-border covert investigations. [5])
“Advantages of cross-departmental surveillance and administration”
However, less detail was provided about the attendees, with the German government’s response stating:

“The CSW meeting was attended by representatives of the mobile special mission units or comparable units from Belgium, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway and Germany (Federal Criminal Police Office). A representative of Europol also attended. The steering group meeting was attended by representatives from Germany (Federal Criminal Police Office), the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and Europol. Representatives of 37 states attended the ARGOS conference.”

International Specialist Law Enforcement

As the IWG was meeting in Warsaw, organisations involved in the International Specialist Law Enforcement (ISLE) project were meeting in Rome, from 20 to 22 October. International Specialist Law Enforcement began life as an EU-funded project run by Belgium, Germany and the UK that sought to build “a network of [EU] Member State organisations that may develop coordination, cooperation and mutual understanding amongst law enforcement agencies using ‘specialist techniques’.” [6]

Although it appeared in mid-2013 that the project might have been discontinued, [7] the German government’s answers show otherwise.

The meeting was prepared, and the agenda drafted, by the German Federal Criminal Police Office and Europol. Including Germany, “members of mobile special mission units from 16 other EU Member States attended the ISLE meeting”.

According to the German government, “the agenda included the following points”:

“Future development of international cooperation in ISLE”
“Discussion on the possibilities provided by the Europol Platform for Experts (EPE)”
Workshops on using the EPE
Expert Meeting Against Right Wing Extremism (EMRE)

A meeting of the EU-funded EMRE project was held in Bonn, Germany, from 19 to 22 May, and was prepared by Germany’s BKA in cooperation with the Czech Republic and Hungary. Representatives from 25 EU Member States and Switzerland attended the event, which “centred around exchanging information on right-wing extremist and right-wing terrorist structures, right-wing events and Internet activities and their impact on the security situation in all European countries.”

On the agenda was:

“[A] lead-in presentation and presentations on the ‘Counter Terrorism Centre’ service unit in Hungary, a set of investigation files by the Czech Republic, the Joint Centre for Countering Right-Wing Extremism (Gemeinsames Abwehrzentrum Rechtsextremismus, GAR) by the Federal Criminal Police Office and the government exit programme for people seeking to leave the right-wing extremist scene in North Rhine-Westphalia.”

The interest of the German authorities in addressing right-wing extremism is notable, given the well-documented failure to deal with a series of racist murders carried out by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground between 2000 and 2007. [8]

Focal Point Dolphin and Europol’s data systems

Europol’s Focal Point Dolphin is part of the agency’s ‘Analysis Work File’ on counter-terrorism, although it also contains information on political activism. [9]

Two meetings were held during 2014 in relation to Dolphin, both at Europol’s headquarters in The Hague: one of the “target group BAZAAR” on 15 April, dealing with the financing of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party); and one from 12 to 14 November at a “Counter Terrorism Event”.

The April meeting focused on “coordination and comparison of the information available in Europe on the financing of the PKK.” The agenda items for FP Dolphin at the Counter Terrorism Event were: “Overview, EIS [Europol Information System] in CT [counter-terrorism] work, ERWED/RWE Ukraine [RWE presumably stands for right-wing extremism], TG BAZAAR status and Ops MED status.”

No German authorities attended the Counter Terrorism Event, but the Federal Criminal Police Office was present at the April meeting alongside representatives from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Europol.

During 2014, the German government “made 24 data deliveries” to FP Dolphin, a minute amount compared to the overall number of German entries into the Europol Information System. As of 4 October 2012, Germany was responsible for 24,199 items in the EIS; on 18 October 2013, 36,047 items; and 30 September 2014, 49,449 items.

According to the government’s response, “Germany is the second most frequent user of EIS,” and “conducted a total of 20,331 searches in the EIS in Q4 [fourth quarter] 2014.”

The EIS contained entries on a total of 259,359 objects and people, although it is not clear what point in time this number relates to. The data in the system “is used mainly in the following areas of Europol’s mandate: drugs trafficking (28%), theft (19%), illegal immigration (11%), counterfeiting (8%) and fraud (6%).”

The full response from the German government also contains responses to questions on the 2014 activities of:

the ‘TC LI Group’ of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute;
the Southeast European Law Enforcement Centre (SELEC);
“the platform for police from South East Europe ‘Police Equal Performance’ (PEP)”;
“twinning projects” between German authorities and other states;
the Baltic Sea Region Border Control Cooperation (BSRBCC);
agreements and cooperation between Europol and non-EU states and organisations;
agreements and cooperation between Frontex and non-EU states and organisations;
the EU Intelligence Analysis Centre (INTCEN);
EU training for police due to serve abroad in “crisis management” missions;
meetings of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC);
the Police Working Group on Terrorism (PWGT);
the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF); and
the European Expert Network on Terrorism Issues (EENeT).
Some significant information has come to light in recent years on undercover policing and the infilitration of protest movements. However, much remains unknown. The release of new information such as that obtained through the German Bundestag makes it possible to put together a picture of cross-border networks and their activities, but understanding in more detail their work – and holding state authorities to account for their actions – is far more difficult.

In the UK, the police appear to have tried to ‘move on’ from the scandal by renaming and re-organising undercover policing units, most recently establishing the National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit. [10] Keeping track of the organisations, individuals and institutions involved – and what is known of their activities – can help to make clear the wider picture and what can be done about it.

Sources

Statewatch tracks developments in undercover policing; numerous articles can be found in our database
The Undercover Research Group recently published webpages containing further information on numerous aspects of the police infilitration of political movements in Europe, and will at some point launch a Wikipedia-style website on the issue
The Guardian’s Undercover blog has regular updates on developments, mainly focusing on the UK
The Bristling Badger blog frequently contains forensic examinations of issues related to the undercover policing scandal
Document

Minor Interpellation submitted by Member of the Bundestag Andrej Hunko and others and the Left Party parliamentary group, ‘Cooperation and projects by European police forces in 2014’, January 2015

Footnotes
[1] ‘Another secretive European police working group revealed as governments remain tight-lipped on other police networks and the activities of Mark Kennedy’, Statewatch News Online, August 2012
[2] ‘State guidelines for the exchange of undercover police officers revealed’, Statewatch News Online, May 2013
[3] Matthias Monroy, ‘Using false documents against “Euro-anarchists”: the exchange of Anglo-German undercover police highlights controversial police operations’, Statewatch Journal, vol 21 no 2, April-June 2011
[4] Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance; Police Spies Out of Lives
[5] Council of the European Union, ‘Council adopts the “European Investigation Order” directive’, press release, 14 March 2014 (pdf); European Investigation Order (pdf)
[6] ‘Another secretive European police working group revealed as governments remain tight-lipped on other police networks and the activities of Mark Kennedy’, Statewatch News Online, August 2012
[7] ‘Uncertain future for EU-funded police project aimed at enhancing covert surveillance techniques’, Statewatch News Online, July 2013
[8] ‘NSU Crime Spree Report Finds ‘Devastating’ Errors’, Spiegel Online, 23 August 2013
[9] Andrej Hunko, ‘Abolish international databases on anarchy!’, press release, 5 June 2012
[10] ‘Political Secret Police Units’, Bristling Badger, 5 February 2014

20.02.2015

Find this story at 20 February 2015

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