Moscow Spy Scandal - 01.23.2006

Russia Accuses UK of Spying

Jan. 26:	Putin Links Espionage to NGO Funding
Jan. 26:	Editorial: Civil Society Will Emerge, Spies or Not
Jan. 25:	Russian parliament slams spy support for NGOs
Jan. 23:	Echoes of Cold War: Russia Accuses Britain of Spying

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Washington Post - 01.26.2006

Putin Links Espionage to NGO Funding

Russian Uses Scandal to Allege Foreign Involvement in Groups

By Peter Finn, Washington Post Foreign Service

MOSCOW -- In his first comments on the discovery of alleged British spies in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday linked the scandal to foreign financing of nongovernmental organizations in Russia, a connection that grass-roots activists say is tangential and being used to smear their work.

"The situation is regrettable, as we have seen, when attempts are made to use secret services to work with nongovernmental organizations and when financing is carried out through secret services' channels," Putin told journalists in St. Petersburg. "No one can then say the money does not smell. Beneficial aims cannot be attained with unsuitable means."

The FSB, Russia's domestic security service, announced Monday that it had found British electronic equipment hidden in a fake rock in a Moscow park and that a Russian, allegedly recruited by the British, was using it to upload information and receive instructions. Four people said to be British diplomats were videotaped downloading data from the device.

One of the accused spies, Marc Doe, a second secretary in the British Embassy, has been involved in the British government's dispersal of grants to Russian human rights organizations. The British government has refused to comment on the espionage charges, but has denied it was doing anything illegal with nongovernmental organizations.

The Russian authorities have so far presented no evidence that the alleged spy ring recruited human rights activists. An unidentified Russian citizen has been arrested, but what kind of information the British may have been attempting to obtain or who the Russian is remain unknown.

Still, Doe's work with nongovernmental organizations has been seized on by many Russian politicians. The lower house of parliament, by a vote of 401 to 6, passed a resolution Wednesday condemning the involvement of foreign intelligence services with the private groups. "Such actions undermine trust in NGOs as a universally recognized institution of civil society," the resolution said.

The Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, a private group, said in a statement Wednesday that "the idea is being imposed on society that public organizations are involved with espionage activity. This injures their reputation and defames the name of NGOs in public opinion."

Privately, a number of activists expressed dismay that Doe, if he was indeed a spy, would have used his work with the groups as public cover, particularly given the current climate in which grass-roots organizations believe they are under attack from the state.

Putin this month signed into law a controversial bill regulating nongovernmental groups. Some of its authors argued that it was necessary to prevent foreign money from corrupting Russia's political process. On Wednesday, Putin again defended the law.

"It is aimed at preventing the intrusion of foreign states into Russia's interior political life and to create favorable and transparent conditions for the financing of nongovernmental organizations," he said.

Putin went on to say that he was still supportive of the work of the groups. "Society needs activity of this kind so that close control over the state's activity is put in place," he said.

Putin said it was up to the Russian Foreign Ministry, in conjunction with the FSB, to decide whether to expel the four diplomats. It is unclear if they're still in Moscow.

"My opinion is that if these intelligence agents are expelled, they will send new ones," Putin said. "These people may prove to be smart. In this case, we will have to go to a lot of trouble spotting them. Think about it."


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Moscow Times- 01.26.2006

Civil Society Will Emerge, Spies or Not

Editorial

Moscow and London have lived through many spy scandals. The one that erupted this week could seem trivial compared with those of the Cold War, when, for example, London could declare 105 Soviet diplomats persona non grata at a single go.

Yet the current tumult is different in both scale and consequences. Reciprocal expulsions are one thing; the future of civil society in Russia is quite another. When Rossia television linked the Moscow Helsinki Group and the New Eurasia Foundation to a spy operation, civil society in this country was immediately endangered.

Control of civic organizations, the nation was informed on the air, "should be exercised by incorruptible people who care about the interests of their homeland and not an alien country." The Federal Security Service then reiterated the allegations and expanded the list of spy-related groups to 12.

On Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin himself drove the point home, claiming the incident proved that passing a law restricting and regulating NGOs had been correct. He also made it clear where NGOs should now seek funding, vowing that state authorities would continue to support them. This is hardly reassuring given the president's assertion last year that NGO's "cannot bite the hand that feeds them."

The NGOs have denied any knowledge of espionage, noting also (as have various Moscow newspapers) that their grants came from Britain's Foreign Office, not from individuals or secret agencies. But many ordinary citizens will now likely think, after a loud and prolonged chorus of charges over the nation's airwaves, that NGOs are what the state says they are.

If a British intelligence service actually thought that a job making routine grant awards to NGOs was both appropriate and sufficient cover for one of its operatives, then there is little to say beyond the obvious: that it was a stupid and counterproductive idea.

But the main point lies elsewhere: The Kremlin wants Russia's civil society as docile and closed as are its so-called verticals of power in the executive, legislative and judicial branches, where only privileged patriots are be allowed to interact with the outer world.

The scandal was just another signal of this, and renewing the probe into the British Council in St. Petersburg is the first evidence that the signal has been received. These signals will continue as the Kremlin implements its new -- and sadly shortsighted -- vision for Russian society.

This vision is shortsighted because dissent over growing restrictions on basic rights and freedoms will surely persist -- then expand, go underground and eventually boil over.

When that happens the manipulators in the Kremlin will be caught by surprise; in the absence of an independent NGO movement they will have had no way of keeping in touch with the real undercurrents in society.


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Reuters- 01.25.2006

Russian parliament slams spy support for NGOs

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's parliament on Wednesday said it was unacceptable for foreign spies to finance pressure groups after the security service accused British agents of a James Bond-style spying operation in Moscow.

A resolution expressing concern about such funding was passed 401-6 in the 450-seat lower house of parliament, or State Duma, which is packed with members loyal to President Vladimir Putin.

Deputies said that financing of Non-Governmental Organisations by spies, including British embassy employees in Moscow, could undermine confidence in such groups.

"The Duma expresses concern about facts of financing NGOs by people carrying out intelligence operations on Russian territory including several employees of the British Embassy," according to a copy of the resolution obtained by Reuters.

"Such actions undermine confidence in NGOs as an important institute of civil society," the resolution said.

Russia's FSB security service accused Britain earlier this week of using a fake rock to gather secret data and said it had caught British spies funding pressure groups, whose activities were curbed by a law Putin signed this month.

The British Foreign Office expressed surprise over the allegations of spying and said Britain was open in its support of projects by Russian NGOs "in the field of human rights and civil society".

The FSB, which is responsible for domestic security, did not explain what was wrong with foreign funding of NGOs. A spokesman for the British Embassy in Moscow declined to comment.

Putin, who served the Soviet Union as a KGB spy, has accused the West of using NGOs as political instruments, hinting they are being used to foment unrest similar to that which brought down the pro-Moscow establishment in Ukraine in December 2004.

The Duma, which is controlled by the pro-Putin United Russia party, rarely makes announcements on international affairs without the consent of the Kremlin, analysts said.

The Duma held no debate on the motion as United Russia decided none was needed. 


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New York Times - 01.23.2006

Echoes of Cold War: Russia Accuses Britain of Spying

By Steven Lee Myers

MOSCOW - An espionage scandal redolent of the cold war unfolded here today after Russia accused four British diplomats of spying and linked some of their activities to financing of prominent private organizations, including the Eurasia Foundation and the Moscow Helsinki Group.

A grainy, black-and-white video - broadcast on state television on Sunday night and shown repeatedly again today - purported to show a British diplomat picking up a rock that was said to conceal a communications device used to download and transmit classified information through hand-held computers.

The rock, the size of a watermelon and able to transmit and receive data at distances of more than 60 feet, was seized near Moscow, prompting a search across the city for similar devices, Sergei N. Ignatchenko, the chief spokesman for Russia's intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, told Russian reporters, according to the Interfax news agency.

A second device was found, but "the British intelligence service managed to retrieve one of the gadgets," he said.

A Russian citizen has been arrested for complicity, but another spokesman, Nikolai N. Zakharov, declined to say when he had been taken into custody and whether he had been formally charged. Mr. Zakharov would say only that the spy ring had been discovered and broken up at the beginning of winter.

The fate of the British diplomats - identified as middle-ranking secretaries in the embassy - remained unclear. Mr. Ignatchenko said their potential expulsion would be determined "at the political level."

The scandal, one of the most serious in years, threatened to raise diplomatic tensions, even as Russia assumed the presidency of the G-8 group of industrialized nations, which includes Britain. Mr. Ignatchenko accused Britain of violating an agreement in 1994 to end espionage in Russia. "In fact," he said, "we have been deceived."

Prime Minister Tony Blair, answering questions at a news conference in London, declined to comment. "I'm afraid you are going to get the old stock-in-trade: 'We never comment on security matters' - except when we want to, obviously," Mr. Blair replied.

"I think the less said about that, the better," he added.

The nature of the espionage was shrouded in secrecy, but the link to private organizations came amid a politically charged campaign against charities and advocacy groups here, many of them financed by the United States and European countries to promote such things as democracy and independent media.

Earlier this month President Vladimir V. Putin signed into law new legal restrictions on such groups that critics have said could be used to exert new pressure on those critical of Russian policies.

But the relation between the espionage charges and the organizations appeared tangential.

Mr. Zakharov said in a telephone interview that one of the diplomats, identified as Marc Doe, a political secretary, approved grants distributed by the British government to Russian and international organizations, even as he was involved in covert activities.

"He gave money to them," Mr. Zakharov said, referring to the organizations. "That is all documented."

A spokesman for the British Embassy in Moscow declined to comment on the affair but cited a statement by the Foreign Office that said, "We are surprised and concerned by this allegation."

"We reject any allegations of any improper conduct in our dealings with Russian" private organizations, the statement went on. "All of our assistance is given openly and aims to support the development of a healthy civil society in Russia."

One of the groups supported by Britain and cited by officials was the Eurasia Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Washington that provides an array of grants across the former Soviet Union.

Irina V. Akishina, director of the Moscow office, said in a telephone interview that the organization had received a grant worth about $105,000 in 2004 to promote independent newspapers in provincial Russian cities.

She expressed bewilderment at the accusations, saying the television report, which appeared on the state's Rossiya channel with the cooperation of the Federal Security Service, was the first she heard of any questions surrounding her organization.

She said the accusations reflected the government's growing hostility toward private organizations that operate independently of the Kremlin.

"We certainly do feel there is some danger," she said, referring to the new law on organizations like hers. "We do not understand at all why we were mentioned in this program. We are not involved in any illegal activities."

The Moscow Helsinki Group, also linked to the case, is one of the country's most prominent human-rights organizations and is often critical of the Kremlin.

Russia's intelligence chiefs have publicly warned about the threat of espionage from the West. The warnings have underscored a growing wariness in Russian intelligence and diplomatic circles about what is widely seen as foreign interference in domestic affairs, especially following American and European support for democratic movements in Ukraine, Georgia and other former Soviet republics.

"Reconnaissance is not only waning," Nikolai P. Patrushev, the director of the Federal Security Service, said in an interview in the official state newspaper, Rossiskaya Gazeta, in November. "It is strengthening."

Last year counterintelligence agents had exposed 20 agents working for foreign governments and 65 foreigners working for secret services, he said in the interview. Earlier last year Mr. Patrushev singled out several non-governmental organizations, including the Peace Corps and the British charity Merlin, as fronts for foreign espionage.

"Under the cover of implementing humanitarian and educational programs in Russia regions, they lobby for the interests of certain countries and gather classified information on a wide range of issues," he said of representatives of the private organizations.

Mr. Patrushev's remarks, sharply criticized at the time by the American and British governments, nevertheless became a basis of the new law putting such organizations under greater scrutiny.

The latest scandal involved espionage of a more traditional sort, though with a high-tech twist. The fake rock was used as a dead drop, an agreed place for exchanging classified information or otherwise communicating with agents. Where exactly it was remained unclear, though the television report showed it on a sidewalk near what was identified as a park on the edge of Moscow.

The hidden communication device allowed a Russian agent to transmit information in bursts lasting no more than a second or two, the officials said. The British operatives could then download the information with their own hand-held computers, the officials said, declining to discuss the nature of the information that the Russian provided to the British agents, or its significance.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London for this article.


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