Secret Programs and Real Life Spies

[Umbelina]

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As Bezrukov and Vavilova built up their story, the country that had recruited and trained them ceased to exist. The ideology of communism had failed; the fearsome spy agency that had dispatched agents across the globe was discredited and renamed. Under Boris Yeltsin, post-Soviet Russia seemed on the verge of becoming a failed state. But in 1999, as the family planned a move from France to the US, a new man entered the Kremlin who himself had a KGB background. In the subsequent years, he would work to make the KGB’s successors important and respected again.

With the legend of a hardworking, well-educated Canadian perfected over the years, Heathfield got into Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government towards the end of that year, and was ready to deploy as an agent of the SVR. He would be spying not for the Soviet system that had trained him, but for the new Russia of Vladimir Putin.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/discovered-our-parents-were-russian-spies-tim-alex-foley
 

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If Tim and Alex’s story sounds eerily familiar to fans of The Americans, the television drama about a KGB couple living in the US with their two children, that’s because it’s partly based on them. The show is set in the 1980s, providing a cold war backdrop, but the 2010 spy round-up served as an inspiration. The show’s creator, Joe Weisberg, trained to be a CIA case officer in the early 1990s and, when I speak to him on the phone, tells me he always wanted to put family at the heart of the plot. “One of the interesting things I saw when I worked at the CIA was people lying to their children. If you have young children, you can’t tell them you work for the CIA. And then, at some point, you have to pick an age and a time, and they find out that they’ve been lied to for most of their lives. It’s a difficult moment.”

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Their parents did not discuss their childhood much, but this was how they had always been and the boys had little reason to question it. “I never had anything close to a suspicion regarding my parents,” Alex says. In fact, he often felt disappointed by how boring and mundane they were: “It seemed all my friends’ parents led much more exciting and successful lives.”

Little did he know. Bezrukov and Vavilova had been put under FBI surveillance soon after they moved to the US, probably because of a mole in the Russian agency. Excerpts from their 2010 indictment suggest the couple lived with a level of intrigue most people would assume exists only within the pages of a spy novel. One paragraph recounts an intercepted communication from Moscow Centre (SVR headquarters), explaining how Vavilova should plan for a trip back to her motherland. She was to fly to Paris and take the train to Vienna, where she would pick up a fake British passport. “Very important: 1. Sign your passport on page 32. Train yourself to be able to reproduce your signature when necessary… In the passport you’ll get a memo with recommendation. Pls, destroy the memo after reading. Be well.”

 

 

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Way back in 2001, nearly a decade before her arrest, the FBI had searched a safe-deposit box belonging to Tracey Foley. There they found photographs of her in her 20s, one of which bore the Cyrillic imprint of the Soviet company that had printed it. The family home had been bugged, possibly for many years. The FBI knew the couple’s real identities, even if their own children did not, but the Americans preferred to keep an eye on the Russian spy ring, rather than make a move.

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I have to admit there are some details that bother me. Did they really never suspect a thing?

In 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported that unnamed US officials claimed an FBI bug placed at the family’s Boston home had picked up the parents revealing their true identities to Tim long before the arrest. Furthermore, the officials said, his parents had told Tim they wanted to groom him as a Russian spy. A second-generation spy would be a much more impressive asset than first-generation illegals, who had built up personas that were solid but not impregnable to background checks. Tim, according to the unnamed officials, agreed he would travel to Moscow for SVR training and even “saluted Mother Russia”.

 

Tim strenuously denies the story, insisting it was a total fabrication. “Why would a kid who grew up his whole life believing himself to be Canadian, decide to risk life in prison for a country he had never been to nor had any ties to? Furthermore, why would my parents take a similar risk in telling their teenage son their identities?”

 

Edited May 10, 2018 by Umbelina

[Umbelina]

 

 

speaking of disguises....

[Cardie]

Have any Russian spies murdered as many U.S. civilians as Philip and Elizabeth? That has always seemed off to me.

[Umbelina]

4 hours ago, Cardie said:

Have any Russian spies murdered as many U.S. civilians as Philip and Elizabeth? That has always seemed off to me.

I don't think any of the embedded spies were convicted of murder, but even if they were, I doubt we'd know about it.

KGB or the KGB with it's current name?  I'd guess they've killed quite a few over the years, on purpose or incidentally.

Embedded spies were used mostly to recruit, or handle recruits, possibly do a Martha type operation, certainly a Kimmy of Young Hee type op would be possible, but not do break ins (regular KGB break in teams would have handled that.) It's a conceit of the show to have a bunch of action, when in truth, the real embedded spies certainly did some of what Philip and Elizabeth do, but their main job was not to be visible or take too many risks.  Again though?  We would never know, that stuff is held pretty close to the vest in Intelligence worlds.  Also they wanted to trade for captured US spies, so they weren't likely to release much about the people they simply turned over to the KGB (with it's new acronyms.)

Edited May 15, 2018 by Umbelina

[Umbelina]

A husband and wife CIA team, describe some of the ways they recruited agents around the world while living in other countries.

It's kind of interesting, it is Bob Baer and his wife Dayna.  Syrianna was based on Baer.

[viajero]

Interesting article from a woman who was part of a husband and wife team of spies working abroad for the CIA.  She has a lot of nice things to say about the show.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-spy-cia-intelligence-gina-haspel-0521-20180517-story.html

 

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“The Americans” gets the tradecraft and the technology of the 1980s generally right, at least the way it worked when Ronald Reagan was president. The script is littered with dead drops and communication protocols, disguises and cyanide pills, secret writing and signals that were used for impersonal communication with your agent or your team. It is all properly executed; it is done the way we did it, and it is one of many ways that Joe Weisberg, the creator of this series and a former CIA officer himself, shows his hand and his familiarity with CIA tactics and methods. He and I went to the same tradecraft school at the agency, and we learned the same lessons. When I watched Matthew Rhys, the husband on “The Americans,” speed in reverse through an FBI roadblock in the final episode of Season 1, well, I have practiced that maneuver countless times, wrecking more than one car while learning the procedure. They did it right.

The makeup artists for “The Americans” do too. It is universally recognized that women wear disguises more easily than men do. Women have been disguising themselves from their early teens for generations; men, not so much. Convincing a male CIA officer that he should wear a wig and a fake mustache was one of my first challenges in the disguise business. I went on to become chief of disguise at CIA, and had other, more compelling disguise materials to offer, but the men were never a natural fit. Rhys makes the case, however, for disappearing under nothing more than a knit cap and a pair of glasses, a scruffy mustache and a messy wig. He becomes the consummate little gray man, invisible, the one nobody can remember was even on the elevator.

Where does “The Americans” go astray? The sex and violence are over the top and gratuitous but probably deemed necessary by the writers. I disagree. I was taught to shoot at static targets and out of moving vehicles with a variety of guns, but in nearly three decades on the job I never carried one. Never had to kill anyone, although I almost got shot myself. A gun would not have helped me then.

 

[misstwpherecool]

Technological issues on the Americans included the Star Wars missile defense system among others including a submarine silent motor I think it was. In the final season it's a radiation detector of some kind. To me suspicious deaths or an unusual amount of deaths involving these programs or manufacturers should've/would've raised alarms much earlier with the FBI and others.

Although not American scientists when over a dozen Star Wars scientists die under unusual circumstances suspicions were raised.

http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc826.htm

One things mentioned the Russians weren't the only suspects. There were terrorist organizations that would've loved to stall an arms race with event in the west. Don't forget the anti Vietnam War movement festered a lot of terrorist bombing type activity.

I think many of the murders would've raised a lot more suspicion even from local law enforcement who might have released sketches of suspects to the public.

[Umbelina]

I just finished the book THE COMPANY.

The CIA is much more comparable to the KGB than the FBI is.  The book goes back to the beginnings and ends around the time Gorbachev was ousted.  Anyway, if anyone wants to talk about innocent deaths raking up?  America has plenty of blood on it's hands as well, and though this is technically a fiction book, most of it is taken from real life events.  It's a good book for a perspective on what "we" do and what "they" do.

[crgirl412]

There is a VERY, VERY interesting program on A & E right now- 8 pm EST.  "The Plot Against America" is about a real former FBI agent who is looking for sleeper cells!!!

[crgirl412]

At 10 pm EST (6/4/18) there is another very, very interesting show called "The Spy Who Raised Me."  They are the REAL Paige and Henry!!!!

[kokapetl]

MPs and lawyers defend Lush against 'spycops' backlash 

Leading politicians, lawyers, union officials and victims of the undercover policing scandal have all signed a letter defending the cosmetics retailer Lush over criticism of the company’s campaign to raise awareness of the issue.

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, who was once spied on by police, is among 67 individual signatories to the letter, including Doreen Lawrence, Caroline Lucas, Len McCluskey, and veterans of campaigns for justice over police actions at Hillsborough and Orgreave.

Five women who were tricked into having relationships with undercover officers who were spying on campaign groups they were involved in have also signed the letter, as well as a number of people blacklisted from work over trade union activity, allegedly with the help of information supplied to employers by the police.

[hellmouse]

I haven't seen this video posted. It's a panel discussion called "Reel vs Real with the CIA and FX's The Americans", moderated by Joe Weisberg. There are five panelists: Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys, Costa Ronin and from the CIA, Martha Peterson, former CIA officer and author of the book “The Widow Spy”  and Mark Kelton, former Chief of CIA's Counterintelligence Center. 

I found it fascinating. They discuss tradecraft, running agents, and the emotional toll of being a spy. Peterson and Kelton share real-life stories of their experiences (obviously not all of it!) and the actors answer questions about their characters and preparation, etc. I enjoyed seeing how the actors had questions for the real CIA officers, and the officers were clearly familiar with the show and seemed to be positive about it. They did point out that there is a lot more sex and violence on the show than in real-world spying, and also that real-world spies would never run as many simultaneous operations as they did on the show. But in terms of the emotional toll, they felt it was believable. 

It starts at the 49 minute mark, so unless you want to watch 49 minutes of a silent empty stage, I'd suggest starting there. 

Reel vs Real with the CIA and FX's The Americans

[Umbelina]

A film about the KGB (and it's many name changes through the years) and how Stalin used them to murder soviets of all kinds (awww Gabriel...) then past Stalin and all the way up to and through 1991 and the collapse.

I'm sure it's full of bias, but it's still interesting, if only for the film footage.  Also interviews with some former KGB.  Also the nuclear attack plan on several Soviet Cities by the USA, various presidents of both sides.

 

At the very end, it talks of the Coup, the real one, heavily backed and organized by the KGB.

Edited June 23, 2018 by Umbelina

[Umbelina]

The Coup against Gorbachev, believed to be organized by the head of the KGB.

[SunnyBeBe]

I look forward to watching those documentaries this weekend.  I just see things in such a different light, after The Americans. 

[Nash]

What Americans did well in the real world context was make viewers - I hope - think. The plots were sexed up but the series made it plain that if you follow good tradecraft and keep to your cover, the state will have trouble tracking you. Also that once a mission is launched, any number of factors can derail it or equally stop it from being halted. 

[Roseanna]

The Soviets were very good in such technical matters than making maps about foreign countries (of course that's normal work for armed forces). This article deals Finland and is in Finnish, but it mentions a book about the subject: The Red Atlas. How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World by Davies-Kent (The University of Chicago Press 2017)

:https://suomenkuvalehti.fi/jutut/kotimaa/kestaako-silta-tankin-missa-on-vesitorni-neuvostoliiton-salaiset-kartat-kertovat-miten-hyokkaat-helsinkiin/

However, the Soviets were less good in using sources that were openly available. They used their contacts to get information that they could have read in newspapers. I guess it was because they couldn't deeply understand a society different from theirs.

[Anela]

It's so weird, hearing about a Russian agent being arrested yesterday. I keep picturing Elizabeth.

[Umbelina]

4 hours ago, Anela said:

It's so weird, hearing about a Russian agent being arrested yesterday. I keep picturing Elizabeth.

I did too, there is a bit of a resemblance.

[Inquisitionist]

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Rather than question or confront her, they said, officials decided to track her movements to determine whom she was meeting and what she was doing in the United States — the kind of monitoring that is not uncommon when foreign nationals are suspected of working on behalf of a foreign government.

I guess identifying potential infiltrators is easier when they aren't set up to look and behave like actual Americans.

[Roseanna]

On ‎18‎.‎7‎.‎2018 at 1:48 AM, Anela said:

It's so weird, hearing about a Russian agent being arrested yesterday. I keep picturing Elizabeth.

I don't think there is resemblance. This woman was legally in the country and didn't spy but was (if she is guilty) so called an "influential agent" (hope this is correct term in English).

[Anela]

58 minutes ago, Roseanna said:

I don't think there is resemblance. This woman was legally in the country and didn't spy but was (if she is guilty) so called an "influential agent" (hope this is correct term in English).

I heard she was spying, had access to certain people. I don't think we're allowed to talk about it further than what I posted before, though.

[Umbelina]

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US counter-intelligence investigators discovered a suspected Russian spy had been working undetected in the heart of the American embassy in Moscow for more than a decade, the Guardian has learned.

 

The Russian national had been hired by the US Secret Service and is understood to have had access to the agency’s intranet and email systems, which gave her a potential window into highly confidential material including the schedules of the president and vice-president.

The woman had been working for the Secret Service for years before she came under suspicion in 2016 during a routine security sweep conducted by two investigators from the US Department of State’s Regional Security Office (RSO).

They established she was having regular and unauthorised meetings with members of the FSB, Russia’s principal security agency.

 

Renee lives!

more at link

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/02/suspected-russian-spy-us-embassy-moscow-secret-service?CMP=share_btn_fb

[Roseanna]

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US counter-intelligence investigators discovered a suspected Russian spy had been working undetected in the heart of the American embassy in Moscow for more than a decade, the Guardian has learned.

The Russian national had been hired by the US Secret Service and is understood to have had access to the agency’s intranet and email systems, which gave her a potential window into highly confidential material including the schedules of the president and vice-president.

The woman had been working for the Secret Service for years before she came under suspicion in 2016 during a routine security sweep conducted by two investigators from the US Department of State’s Regional Security Office (RSO).

They established she was having regular and unauthorised meetings with members of the FSB, Russia’s principal security agency.

I can't understand that a Russian citizen can be hired by the US Secret Service and have an access to the agency's intranet and email systems.

Everybody knew that during the Soviet period, if you hired f.ex. a local chauffeur, he would spy you.    

[SlovakPrincess]

On 8/3/2018 at 9:42 AM, Roseanna said:

I can't understand that a Russian citizen can be hired by the US Secret Service and have an access to the agency's intranet and email systems.

Everybody knew that during the Soviet period, if you hired f.ex. a local chauffeur, he would spy you.    

 

Yeah, I don't get it either.  Seems like a bad idea!  

There's also the Maria Buttina story, which I anticipate is just going to get weirder and weirder.  It's gotta suck for "U.S. Person 1" (or whatever they called him in the court papers) -- not only is he possibly in trouble, too, but he now knows this woman was not at all into him and was, in fact, complaining to her handler about having to live with him.  Oh, and probably sleeping with other men to get information / connections out of them, too.

[Roseanna]

We were talking (S6 episode 6) what an aggressive recruiment means. Here is a true example: 

After the WW2 a journalist in the greatest Finnish daily was threatened by the Soviets that his father, a Russian emigrant, would be taken to the Soviet Union and comdemned there as a spy. (That was no idle threat, because the Allied Control Commission had demanded 19 persons to be surrendered. They were mainly Russian emigrants but a half of them had got Finnish citizenship and surrendering abroad only on the basis of some claims was against the Constitution. After the peace treaty was made and soveireignity was reverted, the Miniter or Interior who was responsible got a vote of no confidence from Parliament and had to resign.

As for the journalist, he was given advice not to wrire flatteringly about the USSR for that would have roused suspicion. He got no money and when found, had to resign. 

[Umbelina]

3 hours ago, Roseanna said:

We were talking (S6 episode 6) what an aggressive recruiment means. Here is a true example: 

After the WW2 a journalist in the greatest Finnish daily was threatened by the Soviets that his father, a Russian emigrant, would be taken to the Soviet Union and comdemned there as a spy. (That was no idle threat, because the Allied Control Commission had demanded 19 persons to be surrendered. They were mainly Russian emigrants but a half of them had got Finnish citizenship and surrendering abroad only on the basis of some claims was against the Constitution. After the peace treaty was made and soveireignity was reverted, the Miniter or Interior who was responsible got a vote of no confidence from Parliament and had to resign.

As for the journalist, he was given advice not to wrire flatteringly about the USSR for that would have roused suspicion. He got no money and when found, had to resign. 

How is that spying?

Aggressive recruitment  doesn't have to mean violent or mean.  Paige was aggressively recruited, and in my opinion, it was mean, in some ways extremely mean.  Either way, the entire KGB was involved and determined, from the top down with Paige, and they threw everything at her possible, including the loss of her own parent's lives, and the security of her family, herself, and her brother.

Edited November 1, 2018 by Umbelina

[Roseanna]

12 hours ago, Umbelina said:

How is that spying?

If you mean the journalist, he became a so called "influence agent", although he didn't actually write anything that wasn't the same as many Western Kremnologists. We don't know whether he did other things.

If you mean the journalist's father, in Stalin's time anybody could be condemned as a spy or a terrorist. Or any other "political crimes" according to the infamous 58th paragraph (f.ex. slandering the Soviet Union which may mean to speak some simple truth in private conversations or one's own diary). 

Among the group of the Russian emigrants who were surrended to the Soviet Union there had been members of White organizations that opposed the Bolsheviks. But the father wasn't among them, so obviously he wasn't a prominent figure even in the Soviet eyes.

[Roseanna]

12 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Paige was aggressively recruited, and in my opinion, it was mean, in some ways extremely mean.  Either way, the entire KGB was involved and determined, from the top down with Paige, and they threw everything at her possible, including the loss of her own parent's lives, and the security of her family, herself, and her brother.

I can't remember that Paige was never threatened that if she doesn't agree to become a spy, KGB would do anything to her or her parents or brother. Her parents only told her to keep her mouth shut, so that they wouldn't go to jail or worse and the family wouldn't break up, but that's quite another thing. It wasn't mean, it was simple truth.  

[Umbelina]

Already answered in the Paige thread.\

No argument that Stalin was a bastard and spies are nasty liars.  I agree.

[Roseanna]

Travel agency's worker as a spy - I can't help but remember Zoya Yartseva AKA Zoya Rybkina AKA Aleksandra Kruglova Voskresenskaya. In the 30ies she worked for Inturist (The official Soviet travel agency) in Helsinki but really as a spy. She was allowed the rare priviledge to marry her spy collegue, Boris Yartsev AKA Boris Rybkin who was formally a diplomat but really the leader of "the rezidentura". During the Winter War they worked in Stockholm. As was Stalin's habit, Rybkin acted as an inofficial negotiator both before the Winter War and during it.

She published her memoirs in Russian in 1997 under the name Zoya Voskresenkaya. I can't find anything about her in the internet, but there is something about him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Rybkin
 

[Roseanna]

On ‎2‎.‎11‎.‎2018 at 6:38 PM, Umbelina said:

No argument that Stalin was a bastard 

Stalin was horrible to his own people as well as peoples of East Europe, but otherwise his foreign policy wasn't so different than great powers usually. His strategical view was much like that of the Czars. One could deal with him if one understood that. Plus, that he despised weakness. 

Also, unlike Hitler, he could change his mind and retreat if he noticed that he was in deadlocked.

He generally had very good spies. When Field Marshall Mannerheim told the British that he doubted Finland's ability to defend itself and therefore it should satisfy the Soviet requirements, information reached Stalin immediately. Only he didn't understand that Mannerheim didn't have so great influence as he had later, so he was astonished that Finnish government didn't yield.

When the Finnish military asked his Swedish collegue in Moscow if Sweden would help Finland against the Soviet Union and the latter said no, the conversation was recorded by the Soviets. The Swedish military had of course no authority to say anything about foreign policy decisions which belonged to the government (although it turned he was right) but Stalin had a tendency to believe information that he got through the back door.

On the other hand, about the Finnish international conditions Stalin didn't get valid information, partly because his chief of "Rezidentura" in the fall 1939 was just arrived and had had no time to create networks, but largely because he gave information that he believed Stalin liked to get, that is, what the situation in Finland should have been according to the Marxist ideology.

Stalin's greatest problem was that he wanted to get the raports of the spies on his table, as he wanted to make the analysis himself. That lead to a great mistake (luckily to Finland) that in March 1940 he didn't believe the exact information about the Allied expedition from his British spies - they seemed too good (from his POV) to be true. Instead he believed the exaggerated information from his French spies and decided to sign a peace treaty with Finland.