Spy Vs Spy
Reuters says that a Russian spy ring operating in the US has been broken up. “Authorities charged 11 individuals with the plot, 10 of whom were arrested on Sunday in Boston, New York, New Jersey and Virginia on charges including conspiracy to act as unlawful agents of the Russian Federation and money laundering.” Their job was to pass as Americans but spy for Russia.
The arrests are the culmination of a multi-year investigation that used extensive surveillance of communications and wiretaps, including putting listening devices into the homes of the accused individuals. … The individuals were accused of collecting information ranging from research programs on small yield, high penetration nuclear warheads and the global gold market to trying to obtain background information about people who applied for jobs at the Central Intelligence Agency, according to court papers.
CBS reports the agents were working for the SVR (Служба Внешней Разведки Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki ) which is described by Wikipedia as “Russia’s primary external intelligence agency. The SVR is the successor of First Chief Directorate (FCD) of the KGB”. Robert Hansen of the FBI, Aldrich Ames of the CIA and John Walker of the Navy are prominent examples of actual Americans who have been recruited by the Soviets/Russians.
North America has long been an espionage target. CBC reports the Canadian government has “known for years that foreign countries have been trying to win influence over Canadian politicians and public servants. This follows on reports that some of the Russian spies recently arrested by the US posed as Canadians during their operations. Earlier reports of foreign influence into Canada identified China as the controlling hand.
That information comes a day after CSIS director Richard Fadden said he had never warned officials close to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that some provincial cabinet ministers may be under the sway of countries like China — even though he told the CBC earlier this week the agency was discussing the issue with the Privy Council Office.
According to the Boston Globe two of the persons arrested were based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “A Cambridge couple were among 10 alleged Russian spies arrested Sunday on charges that they plotted to act as unlawful agents of the Russian Federation inside the United States. … A couple who went by the names Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley were arrested on Trowbridge Street in busy Harvard Square around 7:30 pm Sunday by a team of FBI agents.” One of them was reported by Wicked Local Cambridge to have donated $50 to State Representative Mary Walz (D) House Chair of the Joint Committee on Education.
I don’t know who she is,” said Foley. “She must be a friend of a friend.” According to state records, Foley had a real estate license.
Yahoo News reports that one of the suspects, Donald Howard Heathfield attended the Harvard Kennedy School in 1999 and ran a consulting company called Future Map. Its mission was to “help governments, enterprises and international organizations better prepare for the future and make better strategic decisions. We create methodologies and software tools that constitute the framework for organizations’ future management systems.”
Future Map’s website claims that the technology for the software was “born as an initiative involving a group of graduates from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and private-sector specialists in the USA, the UK and France working to support forward-looking decision processes.”
The LinkedIn profile also lists Heathfield as a past partner at Global Partners Inc., a management consulting firm that lists Abbott Labs, Boston Scientific, and GE as clients. Global Partners’ website also lists a Donald Heathfield. When Yahoo! News told Carolyn Quintin, one of Heathfield’s partners at the firm, of his arrest, she replied, “that doesn’t make much sense.”
“I’m in total shock,” she said. “He’s got such good training skills.” Quintin said she believed that Heathfield is a Canadian with U.S. citizenship. She first met him, she recalled, “around 2001,” before she had joined the firm herself. She hired Global Partners Inc. to do training for the American division of Essilor, a French lens manufacturer.
“He was a great facilitator,” she said. “He was great at looking at international cultures and communications.”
The complaint filed by the FBI alleges that “have been operating in the United States since the mid-1990s, and have been under FBI surveillance since at least 2002.” Their job was to get inside the the circle that generated policy ideas. … ‘You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. — all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e., to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels [intelligence reports] to C[enter].’”
The alleged spies communicated with their handlers by special wireless computer networks set up through their laptops. Through that network, they were able to exchange data without meeting. FBI surveillance of Chapman showed her going to coffee shops and bookstores in New York at the same time that a representative from the Russian consulate was in the immediate vicinity; both would allegedly open their laptops and exchange data without speaking or being in the same room.
But, like all computer programs, the spy software was bug-ridden, and complaints about it helped two undercover FBI agents convince Chapman and Semenko, a D.C. operative, that they were working with the Russians. One undercover agent posing as a Russian met with Chapman and asked how everything was going: “Everything is cool apart from the connection,” she replied. “I am not the technical guy… I don’t know how to fix it,” the agent said. “But if you tell me, I can pass it up.”
The complaint also details the use of steganography, or the practice of embedding encrypted data in innocuous-seeming photos, and radiograms — rapid bursts of encrypted radio information that sound like static — to transmit information to handlers.
Some of the evidence contained in the complaint comes from listening devices stored in the moles’ homes going back as far as 2002, suggesting that once the FBI discovered the network, it decided to spy on it for nearly a decade rather than wrap it up immediately.
From reports in the press it seems that unlike agents recruited to access specific information inside the military or security services, the sleeper’s job was to enter a broader social network. They would have spied from the vantage of the private party, the Little League baseball game, the seminar and the cocktail party.The spies did not necessarily need access to classified data and probably would have avoided it in order not to bring suspicion on themselves. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. Their role was to “make friends and influence” people and if they succeeded, their opinions would have carried weight and would have been placed to detect broad, long term trends in United States policy. They would been situated to spot individuals within US intelligence which the FSB recruiters could target; known who was weak; who needed money; who was disgruntled.
Why did the FBI wrap it up now rather than continue poison the cell’s sources with disinformation? Now was the time to ‘play it back’ and make the Russians dance to their tune. Normally a cell left to run this long would be rolled up for two reasons:
- There was no remaining value to be extracted, which is doubtful;
- The FBI suspected that the cell might be alerted in the near future and escape their grasp so they grabbed it now.
Reason number two seems far more probable, though that is only speculation. The FBI had invested a great deal in of time and effort into letting the cell ripen and the payoff was now within their reach. US intel could turn the tables on the Russian by following the recruiters and scooping up the spies sent by the sleepers to exploit targets. And maybe some of the harvesting had already occurred and some playback had already happened; maybe the Bureau decided to tie things up while they were ahead. Or maybe not. Interesting to see who jumps. The sleepers knew a lot of people.
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Nothing will come of this. If I was an American in Russia, I would be getting out. ASAP. The Russians will pick up the first 10 Americans they see and offer to trade them for their spies. If the Usurper had any balls, he would order the Russian Embassy closed.
I want to know if any of them were named Boris or Natasha.
Well, since Wretchard has Cambridge (MA) connections, maybe he’s an undercover agent of some kind . . . incidentally, the state rep’s name is Marty Walz, not Mary Waltz.
the timing is interesting; sounds like they’d gotten into policy making circles to some extent, so you’d think they may already have had their case together for some time. i wonder why so close to medvedev’s visit, particularly in light of obama admin’s aggressive attempts to treat russia like a country to be indulged and accommodated. this could get good!
Foreigners who assume the names and identities of natural-born citizens! Like Emil Goldfus, who was arrested in New York in the mid-1950s. He turned out to be Colonel Rudolf Abel. Years after his death it emerged that Rudolf Abel was also a cover name for Viliam Fisher. And for we can tell, Fisher might conceal yet a deeper alias. As Abel, he obtained notoriety when convicted of espionage, and later exchanged for Francis Gary Powers. Goldfus/Abel/Fisher is one of the few unmasked instances of foreigners equipped with a completely new identity and legend. Such training and preparation takes vast investment of effort and time. The name Goldfus was expropriated from an individual who died in New York City as an infant, decades earlier. The identity was found by a KGB researcher digging in the obituary files at the NYC Public Library.
This is one serious reason some people are so concerned about an individual who accedes to high office when his actual citizenship and birth identity have been plausibly questioned, and who has taken extraordinary care to conceal all information about his background has been obscured. Joking aside, we can be reasonably certain the idividual in question is not Chinese, or a Klingon but beyond that, all is up for grabs.
It will be interesting to see whether this “spy ring” consists of persons recruited from US agencies like Ames, Hansen or Walker or whether they were attempting to pass themselves off as long term agents of influence by leading “ordinary” lives. In which case you would expect them to be seeking positions as academics, journalists, political activists, bloggers or industry. In that case the approach would be closer to that of the British Cambridge spies whose objective was the corruption of the enemy culture.
From the Reuther’s link:
snip
“Their goal was to “become sufficiently ‘Americanized’ such that they could gather information about the United States for Russia and can successfully recruit sources who are in, or are able to infiltrate, United States policy-making circles,” according to criminal complaints filed in U.S. federal court.”
snip
They should have moved to Chicago. There they could learn from the best how to buy politicians. It is a long established practice there.
snip
“The FBI decrypted a coded message in 2009 sent to two of the individuals accused of being part of the ring. The message instructed them to “search and develop ties in policy making circles in US and send intels” back to Moscow, according to court papers.”
snip
They should have infiltrated the Democrat Party and some of it’s subsidiaries. They most likely wouldn’t even had to pay much for assistance and information. Heck they might have risen to the top tier in a short time.
Of course Russia will deny all of this and unless they have ironclad proof or even if they do, I don’t see much coming of this either. Obama and Hidabeast mean to keep Russia close as a friend of America, while sabotaging our real friends.
Papa Ray
Marty Walz, …Mary Waltz. Whats the diff.????? They gonna vote for Kerry anyway. Klingons. Obviously.
I, for one, welcome our new Massachusetts Masters.
I heard that one of the goals of this cell was to become or get close to American policymakers. Like Alger Hiss. But wait! He WAS a Russian spy. Oh shit.
If the Russkies can do it, why cant real Americans get close to American Policymakers.
Because, dummy, you (or they) di’n’ go to Hahvad
W said:
“persons recruited from US agencies”
No need for local recruitment.
You havent gotten the Word: We are an Open and Inclusive Society ™ We welcome all that want to come to our shores regardless of ….. motive. If an enemy wants to destroy us, send him on, we’re (including our children, democrats, elderly and other defenseless) capable of withstanding any assault.
After which and an exhaustive investigation we will try the culprit in Federal Court (mind you FEDERAL Court) and sent them to a Federal Prison for at least 20 years.
If that wont curl their toenails nothing will.
Could “Mary Waltz” be a sort-of Freudian slip?
With (D) you never know.
the British Cambridge spies whose objective was the corruption of the enemy culture
I have sometimes wondered how Anthony Blunt fits into that picture of cultural corruption. I read Miranda Carter’s 2001 biography of Blunt– she came to the tentative conclusion that Blunt was drawn to espionage out of a perverse desire to prove he was smarter than most other people rather than for money (the Russians paid him rather poorly) or for political power. Blunt was an expert on Nicolas Poussin, a classical painter who rejected the extravagance of 17th-century Baroque style– and my impression from Carter’s book is that Blunt was regarded as an art historian’s art historian– i.e., not an iconoclast or aficionado of “subversive” or “edgy” trends in art. Of course his interest in what would now be considered traditional French and Italian art up to the early 18th century could simply have been part of his cover.
I read Miranda Carter’s 2001 biography of Blunt– she came to the tentative conclusion that Blunt was drawn to espionage out of a perverse desire to prove he was smarter than most other people rather than for money.
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men”. You can get people to do greater things for free than any amount of money. Napoleon claimed he could make people die for colored bits of ribbon. What he meant of course, was that motivations such self-respect, cameraderie, allegiance — were far more powerful than the mere offer of a paycheck. What agent handlers realize is that the dark side develops powerful motivations too. Self-hatred, the thirst for revenge against slights, the desire to betray, malice — these are almost as powerful as love, some would say more powerful.
I recall a statistic from the 1980′s. The Soviets had more agents in the USA than did the FBI. Of course, many were tourists, students, and businessmen who were told that their continued residence in the West was contingent on their coming up with useful data.
I am stunned at the casual attitude that exists regarding American traitors. Two authors, Haynes and Klehr, have been cross referencing KGB files with other data and finding spies that were never caught. For example, Russell McNutt, the Manhatten Project’s last surviving spy, lived into his nineties, the very comfortably retired chief engineer of a large oil company. And these traitors all seem to think it proper and normal that they live in comfort in the country they tried to destroy. We should dig them up and ship them to Russia, with love.
This simply does not make sense!
The Obamination has already ripped aside all secrecy about the US nuclear deterrent, as well as cancelling every advanced military project he can get his hands on. The US has voluntarily de-industrialized, is about to lose the capacity for manned space flight, and none of the Beautiful People would ever be caught driving a US automobile. What possible reason could an adversarial Russia have for trying to influence US policy? Surely the Russians are already getting all they could ask for from Obama?
The only way that this would make sense is if Russia wants to influence US policy to make it, well, more CAPITALIST!
Putin has previously made public statements advising Obama to cut back on his Debt Addiction. Maybe Russia is concerned about instability in a world where the US becomes New Argentina, and would prefer the devil they know? And perhaps Russia has realized the best way to boost US performance is to push changes surreptitiously. Lots of our Democrat overlords would love to go along with a secret Russian plan, just to stick it to their ungrateful constituents. And we know those Democrats are too dumb to ask what is in the plan before they support it.
I just finished reading the complaint filed in the southern district of new york (posted on msnbc’s website) and it’s a little unsettling: these spies don’t seem especially great at spying. According to the FBI Special Agents’ affidavits, the illegals operating under different names – as opposed to their russian consulate contacts, for example – speak like ordinary 20/30 somethings. Supposedly this is the result of the long training they received in Russia (or from SVR operatives), but it sounds more native than that. Unfortunatley the Complaint docs only appear to be those required to establish probable cause, which is a pretty low standard, so there aren’t a lot of details in there about how the FBI became interested in these folks, what they did for a living, or similar interesting facts. I wonder if the whole thing will be seald or what.
One of the greatest achievements of the Western left has been to create a market for treachery. Not only has it been able, by gradual effort, to effectively make treachery “the highest form of patriotism”, it has also been able to cancel the social and criminal sanctions that used to attach to it. Even the word “treason” has become Colonel Blimpish. Treason is cool. The BBC miniseries on Kim Philby and his buddies glamorized them.
Do you want fame, celebrity, a high-paying job? Money for nothing and your chicks for free? Then the last thing you should do is drive an MRAP down an IED-infested road in Afghanistan. That’s for losers … and eventually the message comes across.
If the culture wars do but one thing: restore unto the name Judas the infamy that was formerly his, it will have achieved far, far more than it has heretofore attained.
Wretchard– I don’t doubt that for a moment. In fact what I found one of the most fascinating aspects of Carter’s bio was the way she peeled away the usual financial and prestige-related justifications and explanations of Blunt’s behavior. He seems to have been an enigma to most people who knew him or worked with him. Carter herself notes in her introduction that “Blunt had spent much of his life in flight from being known and understood. He was a habitual compartmentalizer and withdrawer from the world.” Even after Blunt was exposed by Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and stripped of his positions and honors, his remaining friends were stunned by the way in which he regarded his past as a closed chapter not to be revisited. It is almost as if he suffered from some kind of dissociative disorder that allowed him to alternately indulge his dark side and seal it off until the hidden compartment was opened by outsiders.
well this was too beautiful,
I wrote yesterday:
Obama and Medvedev Meet Yet Again http://nyti.ms/casR9O c’est l’euphorie à Washington, Medvedev & Obama voient la vie en rose, mais Putin veille, et le State Department aussi, eh bientôt les coups fourrés !
It’s euphory in washington, Medvedev & Obama are celebrating “la vie en rose”, But Putin is watching out, and state Department too, eh, soon the tricks will come !
Here we go, the first tricks, the spies !10
If the culture wars do but one thing: restore unto the name Judas the infamy that was formerly his, it will have achieved far, far more than it has heretofore attained.
There was a good reason why Dante placed traitors in the lowest circle of Hell, a place of perpetual ice rather than fire. Satan is depicted in Canto 34 of the Inferno as frozen in ice up to his waist, unable to escape, while he chews on Judas with one of his three faces. Judas suffers the most horrifying torture of Dante’s three arch-traitors [Brutus and Cassius are the others], his head gnawed by Satan’s mouth, and his back forever skinned by Satan’s claws.
http://www.redstate.com/jdurbin/2010/06/28/missouri-is-the-concord-bridge-for-obamacare-repeal/
sry for going OT, but I know a lot of the good guys come here, somplease take a moment and lend a voice.
Gee, I hope they let Mr.X out soon.
The Cambridge Ring was a homosexual cabal. They were more dangerous than just corruptors of the culture. Some years ago in the basement of the US Navy’s facility in Munich I found some maps in the basement. One of them was a chart of the Adriatic coastline of Albania with operational markings. During the late 1940s to early 1950s the nascent CIA and MI6 attempted to run agents into Albania. The liaison between the British and American intelligence agencies was Kim Philby. Every man sent on those operations died. I held their death certificate in my hands. Frozen adolescents playing at espionage have real world consequences.
Now Pootie Poot the Pederast Midget is reduced to carrying China’s water and sending trolls to call his enemies “tie eater.” The pity is that if the Russians really believed in themselves and freed themselves from an addiction to self pity that manifests itself in self destruction and parasitism, in a Stockholm Syndrome reflection of the Islamists that they have been fighting for a thousand years, they could achieve great things as a bulwark and partner of the West.
As a Red Diaper baby come to the darkside, this is not surprising. Dad always said it was going on and that the International Commintern was operative even after 1989.
But still us ‘birthers’ are treated as if we were deluded. When is someone going to question whether The Won maybe a “Manchurian Candidate”?
13. RWE, not sure spying is important. Once in a blue moon it matters a little.
Mostly it is a matter of timing. The codes Walker stole were replaced within a month. Ames wasn’t a typical spy. He got several CIA assets burned and covered for more then one spy ring here in the states.
All those things are tactical. As far as strategy, spying isn’t much of an advantage. Yes, the Russians stole the blueprints for the Nimitz. Then they sold them to the Chi-coms. Neither nation was able to turn those stolen plans into actual ships.
It’s sorta like stealth. The Chi-Coms stole the blueprints for the thrust vectoring nozzles used in the F-22. That doesn’t mean they can build one. The Chi-Coms stole the blueprint for the W-84 nuclear warhead. Rumor is they sold it to the Norks, Pakistan and Iran. It doesn’t matter. None of that pack of thieves is capable of building the critical parts needed to make the W-84 work. So until they are advanced enough to manufacture those critical components, having the design makes no difference. By the time they are able to build those parts, they will also have the ability to create their own designs.
What really matters is the process by which the USA creates all those marvelous things. They don’t have to steal that since it is free for the taking. Democratic Capitalism is a concept and available to everyone at no cost.
Obama would capitulate for two illegal aliens and a english shepard.
The Russians have known the heart of the American people and for this reason are seeking uptake into our system while there is a green light. The CIA was long ago taken over by progressives but the regime is reckless and it is possible that democracy may piece itself back together again and prevail. The Muscovites are just hedging their bets. There is no danger that can be brought from abroad that the regime is not exercising now in extreme. Your government hates you and wants you to die.
elfman,
… and a english shepard
Obama doesn’t like the English, they were mean to his dad. Surprised he choose a Portuguese Water Dog over an uber aristocratic Borzoi.
LotM said: “The Cambridge Ring was a homosexual cabal. They were more dangerous than just corruptors of the culture.”
Keynes was part of that same set. In his book “Degenerate Moderns: Modernity as Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior” E. Michael Jones reveals a great deal about the Cambridge Ring’s betrayal and sexuality. He also makes some interesting arguments about Keynes’ sexual perversions impacted his intellectual work.
http://amzn.to/akOM9R
Alrighty, then;
It has been decided by all and sundry that a birth certificate really is not important in a presidential election.
What if were to turn out that we had elected one of these Russian spies as president? Would it mean anything? What could or would be done about it?
I’ve been thinking about whether there is any difference about these so called spies and the Journolisters (spelling?). We don’t seem to want to prosecute illegal aliens either, so given that we will just give them sanctuary somewhere, what have the Russians done that the Journolisters haven’t done? Influence policy? If all the liberal addle pated policies are examined, it appears that there is very little that an enemy can do to us that the freakin’ liberals aren’t already doing. Except nuking us,…oh wait, they are waiting for Iran or North Korea to do that for them.
programmer – As ‘The Operative’ in “Serenity” says ‘they have no place for me in their world. I am not of it but I have my uses.’
It may be the time for the long knives grows closer. Watch what happens when the internet is shut down soon and we probably go into a false flag war with the former USSR.
“After all, we have always been at war with East Asia.”
Let me get “double agent” here, for just a second.
What if there’s no way in Hades, that they are foreign agents. And yet, after a certain amount of time, that becomes incredibly obvious. Of course, if the bust is fallacious the FBI would then be discredited as bumblers or painted as a group who is willing even to pull in “regular citizens.” Perhaps that suggestion might eventually cause the American Citizens to begin to distrust or disrespect another American institution. Or worse, that the FBI might do the same to you – for no reason. All the while internal anxiety rises with every such event.
There is a group on the internet who call themselves “Oath Keepers.” I’ve asked a couple of my “online” acquaintances who profess to be 1) a current campus cop, and 2) a retired cop with a long history of firearms training in his curriculum vitae. Both think Oath Keepers are a group of rogue cops and disgruntled ex-military guys who have trouble with authority. Reading some of their site, their main intent is to disregard orders that violate the Constitution. They say they will not follow orders mandating firing on U. S. citizens, or rounding up the same to put them in concentration camps.
http://oath-keepers.blogspot.com/2009/03/oath-keepers-declaration-of-orders-we.html
I’d love to get Subotai’s comments on them.
Also on the internet, 10 cops showed up and tazed an 86 year old woman after her son called 911 because of a medical problem. Reading that story makes the cops involved look awfully thin-skinned or brutish. That reaction is also disturbing. If they will taze a woman of that age, what would they do to a 40 year old?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/60261.html
All of these incidences and stories create a certain level of unease…a la Nyquist’s “Grey Terror.” And it might point us in the wrong direction. Or not. Like the prestidigitator, it’s all about the hand you’re not watching. What’s going on behind the prestidigitator’s back, if this is now what we are seeing right in front of us?
The incredible debilitating spending.
Threats of 18 million new citizens – accomplished on a whim, outside the law.
A border that the president abjectly refuses to guard.
Suing a state because they have the chutzpah to enforce a law that the President won’t.
Not addressing “at all” the incredible natural disaster in the Gulf
Turning the world “upside down” in relation to our enemies and our allies.
What does the Alinsky model say about “Spies?”
My bible study last year fall 2009/spring 2010 studied the book of Genesis.
A very large segment of Genesis is devoted to Joseph. Genesis ends with Joseph being pharaoh’s right hand man and the pharaoh gives Joseph’s family the choicest lands in Egypt. At the same time the Egyptians first sold their livestock to the pharaoh for food. Then they sold their land to the pharaoh for food. Finally they sold themselves into bondage to the pharaoh for food. Joseph is the Pharaoh’s overseer.
I argued in bible study that the history of the Jews in Egypt during this period maps very closely over on to the history the Jews in the Old Soviet Union. That the relationship of the people to the state in Pharaoh’s Egypt was pretty much the same as the relationship of the people of the soviet union to the state. That the relationship of Joseph and his people to Egypt was mapped pretty closely over onto the relationship of soviet Jews to the soviet state–up until the Doctor’s Plot in 1953. Even the religious practices of the Soviets –in the way they embalmed Lenin seems remarkably like the pharaonic Egypt.
When Exodus opens up the roles are reversed. The Jews are enslaved by Egyptian overseers. At the end of Exodus Moses has lead the Jews out of Egypt and on their way to the promised land.
Even this looks remarkably like the history of Russian Jews with the soviet union. Stalin would have killed most Russian Jews in 1953 as he instigated the Dr’s Plot. Why did instigate the Dr’s plot.
According to Wikipedia:
In a December 1, 1952, Politburo session, Stalin announced:
“Every Jewish nationalist is the agent of the American intelligence service. Jewish nationalists think that their nation was saved by the USA (there you can become rich, bourgeois, etc.). They think they’re indebted to the Americans. Among doctors, there are many Jewish nationalists.”[15]
One of the agenda items of a December 4 meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU was “The situation in MGB and sabotage in the ranks of medical workers.” It was brought up by Stalin and vice-minister of MGB (Ministry of State Security) S.A. Goglidze. “Without me,” Stalin declared, “the country would be destroyed because you are unable to recognize enemies.”
Compare this to Exodus 1:8-11
8 Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelite s have become much too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”
11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.
Stalin had the whole state propaganda machine revved up and had some concentration camps set up in Siberia for “repatriating” Russian Jews. He’d killed a couple hundred or so. Then he died.
Khruschev and Breznev spent the next two decades pushing Russian Jews off the politburo. Then the communists laid the blame for the failure of communism on Russias Jews in the 1970′s. They were thrown out of the party and the state stripped them of many privileges. Things would have gotten much worse but for the prodding of the USA (with some prompting by Meyer Kahane)that brought a large percentage of Soviet Jews out of Russia to Israel and points west.
It was the particular genius of the communists to reach into the anti Semitic soul of Joseph Stalin and impute the evil that he was about to do to Russia’s Jews to… Joseph McCarthy.
This blood libel stuck for decades. Because America is covenantal rather than contractual this communist lie has wrecked enormous damage to the American body politic.
There are so many details available in this BBC article as to how the Russian spies were tracked that its likely that none of them had anything to do with how this group of spies were originally detected.
Likely none of the spies were Jewish.
Not too shabby is 14. Kinuachdrach take that if these were agents of influence– not implausible would be that their goal would be to make Americans more capitalist.
What makes this story odd is that the stated goals of these “spies” look mostly like stuff a person could obtain byo open source or at most lexis nexus. And they wouldn’t even have to leave Moscow Centre.
“Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley”.
Once upon a time, we’d have ripped them apart. Today they’re professors with tenure.
Now the news from the afghan capital is that afghan’s have shipped 3.7 billion dollars of aid and drug money through the airport in Kabul out of the country since 2007. Congress is pissed.
This comes as Karzai meets with the head of the Haqqani network.
Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, and its director of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha are leading the vacuum-filling efforts. The two recently facilitated a meeting between Mr. Karzai and Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated Haqqani network, according to an Al Jazeera news report over the weekend.
It was reported in the last two weeks that Afghanistan has 1 trillion in mineral deposits. As well, that the ISI hold 7 out of the 15 seats on Taliban shura council in Quetta. And that some of the arrests in recent months of top taliban war chiefs have been more like protective custody.
These reports look to be true given the the way the ISI has accompanied Sirajuddin Haqqani on his visit with Karzai.
imho there is a deal here.
26. Annoy Mouse
Soviet Colonel Lunev seemed to indicate there were lots of pre-positine Spetsnaz in many places in the United States, judt waiting for “the word.” Might they be too old now?
32. Charles
The Book of Daniel worries me. Especially since it indicates that “God is in control,” and that we should never doubt that fact.
I don’t doubt it, but does that mean that I should be willing to live as a slave under Nebucanezer for the duration?
Or should I be a tad more aggressive about how the rest of my life – however short – ought to play out?
r/24; good post, but for that super-silent naval screw stolen –it DID make a difference –or so i read.
i’ve got the Weiner, Johnston, Lewis book Betrayal –about Aldrich Ames –somewhere around here. I’m scared to read it –afraid John Brennan will be in there as someone who should’ve known –evidently Ames sullyed quite a few who let him slide, and then suffered no career harm over it. And they’re around still –
#31 Sgian Dubh
There is a group on the internet who call themselves “Oath Keepers.” I’ve asked a couple of my “online” acquaintances who profess to be 1) a current campus cop, and 2) a retired cop with a long history of firearms training in his curriculum vitae. Both think Oath Keepers are a group of rogue cops and disgruntled ex-military guys who have trouble with authority. Reading some of their site, their main intent is to disregard orders that violate the Constitution. They say they will not follow orders mandating firing on U. S. citizens, or rounding up the same to put them in concentration camps.
http://oath-keepers.blogspot.com/2009/03/oath-keepers-declaration-of-orders-we.html
I’d love to get Subotai’s comments on them.
I cannot speak for all, but those Oathkeepers I know [some military, some law enforcement] are sober, and serious, and worried about the future of the Constitution. Peace Officers, like the military, swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution from all enemies; foreign or Domestic. We also swear to uphold our state constitution.
We may be a bit different here in the West. In my small mountain city, the question of obedience to orders that might be in violation of the Constitution does come up, between officers and between officers and civilians. The general tenor is that the orders will not be obeyed, and the badge will if necessary come right off. Unlike in urban areas, we know our cops and deputies. And their families. They are part of our community, and not drive-by strangers like in urban areas and back East.
The question is on a lot of minds. At our Republican Party Precinct Caucuses, both candidates for Sheriff were asked openly what their response would be if they received orders from the state or the Feds to act in violation of the Constitution. Separately, each said that they would obey their Oaths to the state and Federal Constitution, and if pressed the law enforcement in our county would stand its ground. The fact that the questions were asked, and the enthusiastic response to their answers says something about our people here.
There is an undercurrent perhaps, that no one should vote for Democrats precisely because the Constitution is in peril, and putting more Democrats in ANY office at ANY level increases the danger.
I am retired, and have not formally joined the Oathkeepers. But the Oath has no expiration date, and as you might guess from my other appearances here, I am an Oathkeeper in my own heart.
Your mileage may vary, with those you encounter. I cannot speak for all.
As far as the cops with the tazer, I don’t know what kind of ambulatory football-bats they have there, but I admit that there are cops who should not be cops.
There will be cops who will stand with the regime over the Constitution. They will make their choice, and they will ride the heat for it. As will those cops who are Patriots, if the Democrats should win.
I suspect our host has an understanding of the situation that surpasses ours, for now.
Times are going to become “interesting” in the sense understood by my ancestors. If you carry the “black knife” of your moniker keep it close at hand in case of need. And keep your claidheamh mòr keen.
Subotai Bahadur
The NYT is pooh-pooing the spy ring and just now confirms what I suspected. The Feds were scared they’d get away.
Why were they scared they’d get away now? And what will the effect be on the Medvedev summit? And is the President right to be miffed? What did he rather the FBI did?
But the NYT is wrong about the uselessness of the ring. These were not conventional spies sent to take Minox photos of “blueprints”. They were there to do perform activities that are functionally indistinguishable from something a lobbyist, consultant, academic or journalist might do. The Russians rightly or wrongly believed that useful subversion could be performed in this way.
One of the real problems with the modus operandi of the sleepers is that the distinction between espionage at the behest of a foreign power and activism becomes vanishingly small. They wrote articles, expressed opinions, challenged assumptions, probed and suggested — they were influencing policy and that’s what people in policy circles do! The difference between spy and nonspy comes down to a spy destroying America for the love of his country and an activist doing the same thing out of hatred for his country. The circles the spies traveled in mean that a lot of ordinary people, innocent in their own minds, must face up to the possibility that they were unwittingly but objectively furthering the goals of the former First Directorate.
For this reason I think this espionage case will stir up a hornet’s nest of op-eds. When the behavior of Russian agents is outwardly no different from people who are practicing the “highest form of patriotism” then the discussion of means and ends becomes interesting indeed. Nobody wants to ask the question: “whose side are you on?” The presumption till now has always been that you could express any degree of hostility to America, leak any document, support any foreign tyrant and still be indignant at anyone who ‘questioned your patriotism’. And if real spies found value in doing precisely what a whole social millieu did for fun or vanity, save that they did it for the love of the Rodina, then a lot of people might not like what they see in the mirror when they recognize what what is there for the first time.
Don’t worry, the guilt, if felt, will only be momentary.
–we do it here all the time –engage in subversive rhetoric –complaining about the national leadership –no, more than complaining –actually accusing it of what is or might as well be treason.
What sort of talk could be more helpful to a foreign hostile power interested in delegitimizing the national leadership?
The difference is in intent –we want improvement. but the practical effect on a stranger, any difference what our intent is or isn’t?
If we were hostile agents we’d like this admin fine just as it is, going to hell in a handba$ket. In that case we wouldn’t be complaining at all, would we? We’d be (if only in our not complaining) endorsing this national leadership –and strengthening the nation in the short run, even though we’d be trying to collapse it!
Look at Dmitri Orlov and his 2007 internet sensation Social Collapse Best Practices –he’s a Russian immigre, his story goes, an engineer living in (*cough*) Massachusetts, and traveling around the country on apparently a more or less charitable humanitarian mission giving talks to clubs and classes and companies et cetera on how Russians handled the USSR collapse –in order to help Americans when our inevitable time comes.
The art is in his tone –reading his manifesto, it doesn’t really seem to matter if he’s a KGB agent or not, he’s such a nice guy! And he ridicules all the right people! And he speaks to teacher’s associations in Frisco! And if you google him looking for that piece that was on the Oil Drum a couple years ago, why, there’s a pretty girl with a youtube titled “America Must Collapse”.
Hmmm, why, this ‘collapse’ –it looks so warm and cuddly, this surrender, this relaxing, this quit worrying and fretting…so like they say about freezing to death…you just get…sleepy…so…tired….
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8&q=dmitri+orlov&rlz=1I7GGLL_en
***
(unrelated to orlov, well, sorta not, but –just a good site:)
http://www.victimsofcommunism.org/media/article.php?article=4752
Buddy,
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/06/27/no-secret-place/#comment-113157
Here’s what one Russian nationalist who had his 15 minutes of fame (cited on the Glenn Beck Show, no less) thinks is the American equivalent to what the 10 are accused of doing:
http://mat-rodina.blogspot.com/2010/01/ngos-agents-of-us-empire.html
Mr. Stanislav Mishin (I have no idea who slipped him that list, no doubt the wags here will say it was Lubyanka) does have a point that a disproportionate share of the U.S. taxpayer grants to Russian NGOs occur in the Caucases/Kavkaz, the most sensitive spot for our Muscovite friends. But discussing what Soros money does in the former USSR? Verboten, you won’t see it in either the ‘Right’ or ‘Left’ media. Does that make them patriotic, or meek mice who know where not to go to avoid a phone call from the State Department or an audit? I report, you decide.
Again, I do not make these points to trash our government or suggest that every NGO in the former Soviet space is just a front for Western espionage or ‘agents of influence’. I merely want to point out that if our government and George Soros have been doing this for years in Russia and possibly China why would we not expect Moscow and Beijing to mirror-image U.S. (I should not say our since foreign policy making in America is for the most part even in a democracy, a very elite driven thing, and who’s to say the Sorosian transnationalists haven’t hijacked our Russia policy?) propaganda efforts at some point? And unlike the Soviet machine, as Buddy seems to be getting paranoid about, this time they won’t merely appeal to the Left.
Buddy, you are getting positively Angletonian my friend. Just remember how WFB’s book ends, with his hero undone and 100% positive that William Colby is the missing man he’s been chasing all those years. Are you going to start accusing Ron and Rand Paul of being Russki agents next? How far down the McCarthyite rabbit hole do we want to go (Brother John Birch, after all, accused Ike of being influenced by the Communists)?
Tip of the iceberg.
All way too late.
Heck, half our politicians are enemy agents these days{Edit: and they don’t even know it … well, perhaps most of them].
Maybe Russia threw these useful idiots away to make Obama look bad.
The great weakness of the West.
We are generally open and wanting to believe the best of others; we believe in free speech and are too busy doing the simple things – working, raising families, believing in God … all those silly, stupid things – to waste our time defending ourselves from covert and incredibly overt attempts to subvert our civilization.
Our enemies consider our strengths(such as free speech, and open borders to potentially hostile ideologies) to be our greatest weaknesses; and they are right.
@22. Lifeofthemind
“The pity is that if the Russians really believed in themselves and freed themselves from an addiction to self pity that manifests itself in self destruction and parasitism, in a Stockholm Syndrome reflection of the Islamists that they have been fighting for a thousand years, they could achieve great things as a bulwark and partner of the West.”
Exactly right.
Russia and the West have so much in common and should not be enemies.
What a bloody shame.
What a damn waste.
The Fifth Column Estate: the ‘ists.
Jornolist. Journalist. Columnist. Leftist. Communist.
…-
“Alleged spy’s newspaper commentaries pretty much what you’d expect
The Rightosphere is well-acquainted with stories about the mainstream media working against US interests, but even so, this is still a bit much.”
“One of the suspects is Vicky Pelaez, a columnist for “El Diario” for more than 20 years covering politics, immigration and other issues, her lawyer confirmed. Pelaez is married to Juan Lazaro, another of the suspects arrested Monday, and the couple resided in Yonkers, a New York suburb.”
“No, what I find remarkable about Ms. Pelaez’s writings is how… unremarkable they, in fact, are. Each commentary I’ve cited above — America as slave-driving prison state, America as xenophobic racists, America as human rights hypocrite — is pretty much a derivative recitation of just some of the choicer themes in modern Leftist thought. That Pelaez felt comfortable writing about it at all even as she was spying for another country shows a curious misappreciation for the irony of her situation — charged to undermine a free and open America for the benefit of a not-so-free and not-so-open Russia, and doing so in some the free-est and open-est modes available. And might I add, not that creatively.
If Ms. Pelaez believed that Russia was more deserving of her allegiance than the US, she could have skipped the spying and just moved there. For her and her compatriots, that window appears to have closed. But at least she’ll have time to work on her writing.”
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/06/29/alleged-spys-newspaper-commentaries-pretty-much-what-youd-expect/
Good to see you’re still around Mr. X. I was worried for ya. But be careful denigrating Saint Jo, he’s been resurrected.
AM/44; LOL –Mr X has no trouble at all typing between the iron bars –his only problem is the return carriage on the Underwood, and loading new sheets of bond with handcuffs on.
bond? JAMES Bond? From Russia with Love ?
Why, it all fits –the mkts opened on rails to hell, Rosa Klebs/Kagan is being confirmed for the United States Supreme Court, and Agent 007 is singing a song!
31 Sgian Dubh “Perhaps that suggestion might eventually cause the American Citizens to begin to distrust or disrespect another American institution”.
Way out ahead of you there, friend!
Hey – these are merely the spies that the Russians wanted us to catch, knew we would catch – planned for us to catch. They’re just shrimp – bait for another misdirection move by the KGB. It’s like we’re playing checkers and the Russians are playing chess. Maybe one day we’ll have leaders who are awake enough to see what’s going on.
The international communist movement, since WWII, has never ceased their strenuous efforts to subvert and corrupt our society and culture – and we have done a lousy job at resisting them and preserving our American values and ideals. So much so, that we now have a President who openly disavows us as a force for good in the world.
It’s a horrifying, shameful, and extremely dangerous situation.
Some people walk around with their BS detectors off (even spring loaded or wired to the Off position) and some folk walk around with them on “High.” A veteran of the Cold War, however, mine seems to be fine tuned to the “nth” degree – keeping mine on high all the time would drive me crazy. It would be like having your trigger set to 2 lbs in a Glock. So for me, it’s best to keep mine on low. I’ll accept the occasional words I hear from TV or radio in a distant room that peg my BS detector all the way to the right.
I recently heard this without knowing exactly who the “speaker” (no pun intended) was, but I went from “Off” to “On” in about 10 microseconds when I realized who I was listening to. Of course, after realizing who it was, I drifted back into very, very “Low,” since I figured all I’d hear was BS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSko2ixEB8U
Since I know a little about the Word, all I could do is simply shake my head at the ignorance and inarticulate buffoonery of the speaker – of course, a devoutly faithful Christian.
It is the same way with a number of outliers who wish to paint themselves as part of a group, but refuse to do their homework. Refusing to do the homework, however is understandable when the subject you have to study is so boringly passé and distasteful. So I can understand how difficult it would be to train as a spy. Would not the best Russian spy be an American thoroughly drenched in our culture? Especially one who knows of Christ and is then able to use generic sounding words to play “wink, wink” with their Christian audiences? And then they would become a politician?
Unfortunately however, our politicians think that we are too stupid to figure them out, and as a result, they forget the homework part…much to our appreciation. But also as a result of their halfhearted performance, their “words” do little but bring up the feeling of utter disgust when those charlatans attempt to strike the pose. With what we have learned lately is that they probably don’t do the homework because they apparently get this perverse pleasure at shoving their lies down our throats…sideways.
With respect, you neglected a third reason to roll them up at this time. Once an intelligence ring has been discovered, they potentially become more useful to the discoverers as a source of intel being given, a means through which misinformation can be passed or a lead to other agents and techniques. Rolling up the network when it is working in your favor can only mean you are protecting the other side. Too Machiavellian? Isn’t all espionage?
Thanks to all you folks examining the why’s and wherefor’s of the tactical aspects of when to “roll up” a spy ring once detected…
Why Russia Still Spies
Some radio commenters raise the question of why Russia would still be spying on the U.S. They reason that the current administration is already freely giving away U.S. strategic advantages in nuclear weapons, and hemorrhaging top secret information from government officials who despise their own country anyway. So why bother with spies when the U.S. government under Obama is already doing the work the spies wouldda had to do?
The “new” Russia formed since the collapse of the Soviet Union does not include among its deficiencies mass-amnesia. Putin, Medvedev, and their associates surely have vivid memories of life under “communist” system, and thus few illusions about what sort of paradise such a system fosters.
Nations like Russia don’t share the American Marxists’ infantile delusions of a workers’ paradise powered by windmills and sunshine or the “Cumbaya” joys of One World governed by the United Nations or the death of the notion of sovereign nationhood midwifed by the Treaty of Westphalia. They are doing their damnedest to maintain, consolidate, even enhance and expand the robustness, independence, and power of their Rodina.
In contrast, the great majority of hardline Marxists in the West have come of age two or more generations after any crisis or war that would have required them to put their lives on the line to defend any damn thing. Their belief in perpetual motion machines and their own infallibility has been allowed to persist because they’ve survived to adulthood in a culture that applauds and rewards them from infancy for “just showing up and participating,” handing out ego-propping trophies regardless of ability or performance; a culture that condemns teachers and parents that attempt to discipline them or even objectively evaluate their abilities and deficits.
Now our freely-elected President is populating the government with spitting loons who exuberantly profess their goal of handicapping, strangling, and punishing the country that has protected and nourished them since their conception.
However much they love their own homeland, the leaders of Russia and many other countries have grown up wishing they could enjoy the benefits Americans have had. (Even if they mark the indiscipline and untidiness of American politics and culture.)
Leaders in other countries must look at the current prolonged spasm of self-mutilation in stunned disbelief. It’s like the townspeople paralyzed by the sheriff in “Blazing Saddles” putting his gun to his own head, being hostage and kidnapper in a single body.
“Surely, some brain-eating parasite hath wormed itself in among American Leaders,” sez they, “I must needs send in my most trusted agents to tease out the truth, and so discern twixt pose and deed…”
Another words, WTF? I can’t believe these guys are actually, seriously, on purpose, crippling and de-balling the most productive and successful economy ever. I can’t believe they’re gutting their own military, education, hospitals, research, manufacturing, and energy systems.
What gives? What Fiendish trick is this?
They’re trying to CONFUSE US TO DEATH!*
*(h/t to Douglas Adams; line from the character Ford Prefect…)
Kinuachdrach (#14):
We obviously need to make sure that the capitalist rope factories continue to prosper.
Charles (#32):
I don’t particularly disagree with your Biblical interpretation. In fact, one can see the Joseph story as a prototypical strategy for Jewish survival: if the general population (and the religious establishment) is anti-semitic, then it makes sense (and is morally justified) to ally with (an even help build) a strong centralized (secular) authority. The downside to this strategy is made clear in the original story itself.
(As an aside, we find that the Egyptians, destitute and starving, are willing to become slaves, and that Joseph trades their offer of slavery for a 20% tax. What this says about current levels of taxation is left as an exercise for the reader.)
It’s also not sufficiently known that kindly ol’ Uncle Joe was likely planning his own holocaust, less than a decade after the first.
Regarding your comment #34, if I were Karzai, I would be making my own separate arrangements too, whether in the form of Swiss bank accounts or an accommodation with the Taliban. Counting on lasting US support is not always particularly wise.
Sgian (#31), Subotai (#37): I cannot speak for individual Oathkeepers, but isn’t the alternative “I was just following orders”?
wretchard (#38): “The NYT is pooh-pooing the spy ring”
Quite understandable. According to the reports so far, when it comes to classic espionage, the NYT makes them look like pikers.
Sgian (#48):
Bird!
Mad Fiddler (#50):
Heh. (Or “sob”, if you prefer.)
More seriously, at the risk of stating the obvious, of course Russia is spying on the US, as is China. As is France. As is the UK, for that matter. Not being terminally naive, I fully expect them to, to the extent that I don’t have much of a problem with such attempts. I do expect the US to act against these efforts. Hmm, maybe that‘s naive.
Bob @ 51, you forgot to add Israel. And Mexico to that list.
Mr X:
No; I just didn’t see the point of providing an exhaustive list. But were I to do so, these two countries would certainly be on it. And just to make you happy: if Georgia has the means, then it too is on the list.
“if Georgia has the means, then it too is on the list.”
yessss, McCain was paid by a georgian lobby !!!!
yes –it’s the Savannah nest –trying to build a movement to make all vowels into two-syllable pronunciations.
51. Bob
It’s also not sufficiently known that kindly ol’ Uncle Joe was likely planning his own holocaust, less than a decade after the first.
……….
The problem here is one of language and associated meanings. What Hitler did in Germany was called a Holocaust. Joe Stalin Did similiar things in the Soviet Union. They were called purges. Millions died in Joe Stalin’s purges. The Dr’s Plot was a build up to a major purge and that for the same reason as the purges of the 30′s, real –but mostly imagined disloyalty to Joe Stalin. He planned a purge of Russian Jews from the party and from the society.
It did not happen because old joe died.
By Soviet standards the extermination of the Jews would not have been that big a deal.
Seven million died in the ‘forgotten’ holocaust – Eric Margolis
“For Jews and Armenians, the genocides their people suffered are vivid, living memories that influence their daily lives. Yet today, on the 70th anniversary of the destruction of a quarter of Ukraine’s population, this titanic crime has almost vanished into history’s black hole.
So has the extermination of the Don Cossacks by the communists in the 1920s, the Volga Germans in 1941 and mass executions and deportations to concentration camps of Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and Poles. At the end of World War II, Stalin’s gulag held 5.5 million prisoners, 23% of them Ukrainians and 6% Baltic peoples.
Almost unknown is the genocide of two million of the USSR’s Muslim peoples: Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Tajiks, Bashkirs and Kazaks
James Robbins the man who writes for National Review & others is a FBie of mine. He put up a post today he had met one of the arrestees in this spy case. He said the person came up to him after a panel presentation he was a part of, present his biz card, and chatted with him.
James is a smart man but I don’t think he is privy to any real deep & dark stuff, just a think tank guy doing his thinktanery. However, one other FBie of Jim’s expressed skepticism and Jim pointed out this was very much in the MO of the group. Nothing more than networking, never know what person is going to put us on our next whale. Increasing your network increases your chance of finding that whale.
I’m guessing it was McCarthy but don’t recall. Someone also noted that if you are in this country acting on behalf of another nation you need to make that fact known to the USG otherwise your activity is a crime, even if you are watching the price of carrots at the nearest Wholefoods, which roughly describes some of the missions in the NYT snippet.
Mad Fiddler/50
I am starting to entertain a notion that you may be very right in that line of thinking. There is a prediction that during the American civil war (about 4 years from now) Russia will side with and arm the flyover part, in opposition to the federal socialist/statist administration. It always puzzled me, but I am now on the fence regarding that possibility.
(Mr.X – that still does not get Russians off the hook re Georgia!)
MC, “georgian lobby”… LOL, that sound ominous!
58. twobyfour
Mad Fiddler/50
I am starting to entertain a notion that you may be very right in that line of thinking. There is a prediction that during the American civil war (about 4 years from now) Russia will side with and arm the flyover part, in opposition to the federal socialist/statist administration.
………
That’s a nice thought but in practice the moles took the anti american line.
NY Times
The elder Mr. Lázaro had been known among his students at Baruch College for his outspoken left-leaning politics, and his comments in class offended some but earned respect from others, just as Ms. Peláez’s columns for El Diario La Prensa, one of the country’s most popular Spanish-language newspapers, had earned her a following of both fans and critics.
At El Diario, where she had worked for more than 20 years, Ms. Peláez’s columns had a following, broaching topics that were openly sympathetic to Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela and that were critical of the Bush and Obama administrations. Her work was reprinted on leftist Web sites, including some sponsored by the Cuban government.
twoby, unless we quickly quit spending, we’ll be so broke by then that the chinese and russians both will probably come in. we can call it “Red Dun”
Charles, you know the term “useful idiot”, I presume. Usually you don’t have to pay them, or pay them much. The old cadres were for the most part retired, and the leftovers were used for mostly false flag ops, since about 1995. I am not sure what is the story as the redhead goes. Something’s fishy there–her start on the “job” since january… can’t quite put my finger on it, but something does not add up. The timing is also odd.
Someone put out theory that maybe “rogue” FBI elements wrapped this up to damage Obamistration. I think that is unlikely. Maybe Russians were getting close to something, some nice goods and the order went from the top. The story about a “ring” seems to me also contrived. Likely these people worked independently and were all taken into a custody to obscure the actual reason. 90% of the affair is kabuki.
Of course Russians are keen to protect their interests and gather intel so they can do so based on data. Everyone is doing it. Well, with the exception of the Obamistration. Their interest do not exactly coincide with national interests.
So, in summary, Russians substituted patsys (possibly one real operative in the group) and Americans do not want the real reason to be known, so they take patsys too as a cover. Though, I would not put it past Russians that they have 3 tiers and their main man (or woman) is enjoying whatever they do, using quite un-spy like methods.
Buddy, Russians, not sure, but Chinese could then invoke foreclosure. Then something may happen similar how Vietnam was reducing their debt to East European countries–by sending de facto slave labor to work it out. Though, that is a hard thing to do with armed people. So, the “recruits” would be selected from non-armed people, the SWPL urbanites (thence SWPNL) .
That would happen if a big war was not in cards. But it is in cards and things would likely get mixed up quite differently.
Odd that this would erupt during Bill Clinton’s visit with Vlad Putin.
62. twobyfour
What makes this story different is that these spies are not american and they are–PURPORTEDLY–not going after classified information.
we are entering a Fourth era of soviet intel.
The first was the venona period roughly 1935-57. all spies were ideological some were foreign some were homegrown.
The second from roughly 1957-72 wherein no spies were caught in america–thanks to McCarthy. though many were caught in england and the continent.
The third period from 1972 to the end of the cold war showed mostly just non ideological americans spies selling out for vanity or money.
Once again there was a break as the KGB broke up and reorganized under a new name and offices for a period of say 15 years from roughly 1990-2005.
Now there’s is new staff and new agenda dating from 2005 going forward. The techniques looks very much like those–as mentioned above–for Rudulf Abel.
The thing about Abel was that he was not the norm for the venona period. Abel was a direct soviet plant where as most if not all of the spies of venona were useful american idiots.
I think the point of the operation was not simply to get contacts within “policy-making circles,” but to actually infiltrate them and add a Russian lever to affairs in the event that one of them should be swept into a future victorious administration or Senate staff or what have you. It wasn’t merely to collect gossip.
Also keep in mind that these affidavits and other public disclosures are surely limited to non-classified information – in fact I’m not sure how it was leaked since it was filed under seal. i just subpoena’d the FBI the other day in a sealed Federal case and i know that, by law anyway, anyone but the FBI special agent on the case is forbidden to access it.
It’s pointless to speculate, really, because conspire and penetrate is what these people do for a living (FBI, KGB, etc.), but yknow maybe it was an FBI team not quite happy with the DOJ’s sudden lowering of the temperature on known foreign assets since February ’09. on the other hand, it could have been an Obama Admin signal to Russia – perhaps a warning of some kind, mafia-style, or a tit for a tat we merely of the Publick don’t know about. or it could really be that one of them – perhaps the guy who made it to Cyprus, or “Cyprus” – really were going to flee, and the FBI really does, for some juridical reason, have “to catch them all at once or not at all.” sounds reasonable if they’re compartmentalized enough but materially related enough that you need the whole kaleidescope of testimony to meet all the elements against each and all of them. Will be fun to watch though.
I still don’t find the story particularly interesting, but for those people asking about the timing and the publicity, here’s a WAG: Rosinante (#1) is right, but backwards. The Russians arrested a US spy, and the US has now picked up several relatively insignificant agents to barter with.
How did the FBI twig to this spy ring in the first place. I read somewhere about FBI accessing a safety deposit box somewhere and finding phots of one of the women that analysis showed were made in in Russia/Soviet Union. But what got them into that box?
Bob, plausible, except the notion of an American spy. I thought they died out.
Ken, you are asking too many questions!
(“So what do we tell them?”
“The box.”
“But that was after…”
“Nobody would suspect we reversed the causality. It would suffice to prevent them from poking their noses into it further”.)
I can’t believe how brilliant the SVR/KGB were in this case, and that no one is even talking about it here on BC.
Here’s Heathfield’s software site:
http://www.futuremap.com/
Read it carefully. You may think it’s all vaporware, but of course, that’s not the point.
When I was at a defense contractor, we were always trying to write and improve decision analytics software systems–the fbi, cia, nsa, DoD intel houses all have them or want them, and they are good to varying degrees.
The big idea being how to you comb through all sorts of information to tell the big picture strategy stuff from the remnants of the data. Thiessen tries to explain this in his book, but the general gist is that if you want to know what al qaeda’s 5 year strategy is, or Chavez’s, or some other org we don’t know of yet, you have to connect the dots on all the low level intel garbage you have, hoping to sift it all out to make the picture. As Thiessen says, it’s like putting together a puzzle without the picture on the top of the box.
But how BRILLIANT is it to instead:
1. create a startup whose software helps companies/govts/orgs to write down and track as requirements their
a) strategic objectives
b) stakeholders for those objectives
c) tactics for those objectives
d) obstacles to those objectives
and then, to use that information, and what else you know, to give the client probabilities of success/failure/risk for each objective.
2. get it funded by VC Dollars
3. and then sell it to all of the major companies and govts in the world,
when
4. you’re the KGB! and you’ve just collected the information from every organization of any value at all, so you know every internal goal, and therefore, what to target, who to target, AND you can directly influence them since you’re the one feeding them the probabilities on success, failure, and risk?
Greifer, conceptually, yes and prolly a good way to get intel. But the problem is how to make ET call home without anyone noticing. Not that easy. You have to rely on shoddy security of your buyers. And it may be statistically a good bet that is is reasonably shoddy in general. But some buyers may notice and if enough buyers will you goose may be cooked.
That does not address the problem all the conspirational movements (and the SVR game would be its subset) have–despite their brilliant and fine detailed plan, eventually they go on the heap because they couldn’t model the complexity of the system–which human society is in spades.
The best chances of success — something that is done out in the open and based purely on broad statistical frameworks. A numbers game. Like the original program of KGB to recycle useful idiots. Now that was a resounding success!
G/70; astonishing alright –this is what nyquist said, down in the 3rd-from-bottom para of this snip:
“Undoubtedly we are approaching a dangerous passage; and the country to watch, above all others, is Russia — the country with the best intelligence services on the planet, and with a unique history of successfully penetrating the intelligence services of other countries (including the United States). The Russians can see around corners, anticipate events, and manipulate the thinking of Western politicians. If you want to peer into the future, and see what the future holds for Korea and the Middle East, watch Russia. Weeks before September 11, 2001, the Russian Duma held hearings that featured a Kremlin advisor, Tatyana Koryagina, who predicted something she called “Tidal Wave 21.” The main blow from this tidal wave, she said, “will be inflicted on the United States of America.” She did not mention who would be inflicting the blow, but later referred to “shadow forces.” She noted that the world had accumulated $400 trillion in financial assets, but the global GDP was only a $30 trillion. The entire structure of global finance was bloated, and ready to burst.
Whenever something big is expected to happen in the world, it is difficult for those who know about it to say and do nothing in advance. Russian policies and pronouncements often provide signals to the wise. Prior to the Russian invasion of Georgia, the intended war and its diplomatic exploitation was alluded to in a speech delivered by President Dmitri Medvedev on 15 July 2008 at the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow. In another prescient sequence, Russia urged China to dump Fannie and Freddie bonds in August 2008, a month before the historic U.S. financial meltdown. It is worth noting that the Russians sold $65.6 billion in Fannie and Freddie debt at the beginning of that same year. (As it happens, Fannie and Freddie were seized by regulators on 6 September 2008.) The Russians have spies everywhere, who keep close tabs on global finance, military affairs and politics. The Russians piggy-back on international organized crime, which is a key source of information on corruption and the global underground economy.
The Russians also do more. They make the future, directly, instead of merely reacting to events. Back in the 1980s, for example, you might ask whether Europe was going to use Russian natural gas or continue to build nuclear power plants. The answer appeared by way of a nuclear reactor accident at a place called Chernobyl. Europe’s future dependence on Russian natural gas was thereby sealed. To take another, more recent, example: a KGB analyst in Moscow has predicted civil war in the United States. According to Russia’s Igor Panarin, America’s breakup will occur sometime around 2010 or 2011. In this instance, the Chernobyl component has yet to be detonated.
Consider recent events: Russia’s Foreign Ministry has been given a new security template, which suggests some kind of pre-war mobilization. Meanwhile, under the cover of a slick “peace offensive” aimed at Europe and the United States, Russia is sending powerful warships to the Far East. Does Moscow expect the Korean crisis to worsen? Perhaps the Russians know something that we don’t. In an interview earlier this month, President Medvedev discussed the establishment of a special “history commission.” This has become necessary to counter the work of a former GRU officer, Victor Suvorov. In a recent book titled The Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Design to Start World War II, Suvorov unveils the modus operandi of Kremlin grand strategy. “Stalin’s tactic relied on doing everything with someone else’s hands,” noted Suvorov, “eliminating one enemy with the hands of the other.” As Robert Conquest once wrote: “Stalin always found monkeys, who brought him nuts from the hottest fire.” Whether those nuts are fetched from Kim’s North Korea, or the Ayatollah’s Iran, monkeys can always be found, and somebody’s nuts are always in the fire. Ask yourself the following questions: Why did Moscow help to train Hitler’s army in the 1930s? Why has the Kremlin facilitated the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran? And who, for that matter, supplied North Korea with the technical know-how to build a nuclear device (which may, in fact, be an EMP device)? The answer is Moscow.
No doubt, Suvorov’s work hits too close to home, and must be challenged by way of Medvedev’s newly formed commission.
((ends snip, read more at
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2010/0528.html
i wondered if Tatyana Koryagina’s “Tidal Wave 21″ is related to “Agenda 21″. on search, there’s not much on ‘tidal wave 21′ in English, but some in German. However ‘agenda 21′ (spooky ref has been around, refers to the supposed ‘new world order’) in google returns almost six million hits.
***
Something else a little spooky, when the FBI bust came down, AG Eric Holder (who has just been outed trying to provoke race conflict if he did in fact order that no voter intimidation victim can be ‘white’) was in Afghanistan, and his old boss Bill Clinton (for whom Holder notoriously enabled the infamous Marc Rich pardon, on Clinton’s last day in office, of a convicted on-the-lam agent for the Russian and Israeli mafias) was next door in Moscow visiting with Vlad Putin.
***
meanwhile, there’s several articles up, from –heck, i’ll just copy/paste, you can find ‘em:
Afghan heroin took million lives last decade: Russia
AFP – Jun 7, 2010
MOSCOW – Heroin trafficked from war-torn Afghanistan has killed more than a million people worldwide in the past decade, the head of Russia’s federal …
Russia Says Afghan Drug Trade Threatens World Peace Voice of America
Kremlin ‘Unhappy’ With Antidrug Efforts In Afghanistan RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty
AFPRadioFreeEur…AFPRIA NovostiThe Voice of…The Voice of…all 277 news articles »
Starred 2 hours ago Afghan heroin took million lives last decade: Russia AFP
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dots dots dots –connect connect connect –go crazy go crazy goc ra zy
Buddy and the most devious… they tried to cover up Chernobyl for quite a while, so no one would suspect a thing when they finally admitted it!
(What you do when every dot looks like a nail and every connection like a hammer!
)
heh –it IS rather a huge concept. I’ll see if i can find his sources –