Cyber War: Weapon of Mass Disruption

Posted on September 30, 2009 by SpyBlog

SPY staff member, Abbie,explores the new cyber warfare gallery

SPY staff member, Abbie,explores the new cyber warfare gallery

Dr. Thomas Boghardt, Historian

 

Computer experts have repeatedly warned about our nation’s vulnerabilities to cyber attacks. These concerns are certainly not unwarranted, given the rising number of cyber incidents registered by U.S. networks, ranging from destructive viruses to spyware. More interesting to me is our government’s offensive capabilities.  

By all accounts, our cyber capabilities are enormous, and the U.S. military has fully embraced this new type of warfare. The Pentagon graduates 80 students per year from its cyberwar school, and the 57th Information Aggressor Squadron of the Air Force and the Network Warfare Battalion of the Army are diligently war-gaming cyber attacks. Much of the military’s training and strategizing is done in collaboration with the nation’s premier cryptanalytic organization, the National Security Agency.

The United States has already wielded this virtual weapon on several occasions. In the late 1990s, Washington launched cyber attacks on Serbian government and communications systems. Similar assaults were carried out against Iraq in 2003. The Pentagon and the intelligence community even planned to electronically freeze billions of dollars in Saddam Hussein’s bank account and cripple his government’s financial system, but the operation was eventually shelved for fear that its execution would wreak havoc across the Middle East and beyond (much of Saddam’s money was tied up abroad).

 As one of the most internet-dependent nations of the world, the United States is well-advised to ponder the unintended consequences of a cyber strike as well as the havoc caused by possible counter-strikes. It will be interesting to see how cyber planners will deal with this issue. But you may rest assured that they are working on a solution as you read this blog.

 

Nothing is What It Seems.

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The Spy Who Got Away

Posted on September 18, 2009 by SpyBlog

Dr. Thomas Boghardt, Historian

In the Pantheon of spies, George Blake deserves a special place. An SIS (British intelligence) officer recruited by the KGB in 1955, he provided Moscow with prodigious amounts of classified information at the height of the Cold War. He betrayed not only a joint CIA-SIS tunnel project, designed to tap into Soviet and East German communication lines underneath East Berlin, but also the identities of hundreds of British agents, many of whom were consequently executed. “I don’t know what I handed over because it was so much,” he later commented.

Why did he do it? Blake claims his witnessing of U.S. bomber attacks on “completely defenseless Korean villages” in the Korean War converted him to communism. Perhaps, but I suspect an additional, more personal motivation. After World War II, Blake reportedly fell madly in love with an SIS secretary whose father forbade her to marry him because of Blake’s Jewish background. Whether the story is true or not, Blake certainly was keenly aware of, and deeply resented his outsider status in the rigidly class-structured British society.  Decades later, he tellingly said: “To betray, you first have to belong. I never belonged.” Was espionage his way of getting back at a society that had never fully accepted him?

Blake’s post-espionage career is no less remarkable than his spying. Betrayed to the West by a Polish defector in 1960, Blake was sentenced to 42 years in prison, after the judge proclaimed his case “one of the worst that can be envisaged in times of peace.” In 1966, sympathizers sprang him from Wormwood Scrubs prison, possibly with KGB assistance, and Blake fled to Moscow. Unlike many Western defectors, who quickly descended into alcoholism and depression behind the Iron Curtain, Blake thrived. He married a Russian woman and was made a KGB colonel—an unusual honor for a Western defector. In 2007, President Vladimir Putin paid tribute to Blake as one of Russia’s greatest spies by conferring the Order of Friendship on him. Today, Blake still lives quietly in a government-owned apartment by Moscow. In his own words, he has led a “very full and, in the end, happy life.”

Nothing is What it Seems

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Q&A with a Real SPY: Debrief on the Walter and Gwendolyn Myers Cuba SPY Case

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Peter Earnest

With over 30 years in the CIA, SpyGuy answers frequently asked questions on current issues in the SPY world.

Q.  What’s the story on this retired State Department officer and his wife who were arrested for spying in June, Walter and Gwendolyn Myers?  According the New York Times 19 June 2009 http://bit.ly/VdlpA, the FBI warned the State Department about a suspected mole there in 2006.  And yet the Myers weren’t arrested until three years later.  It seems there’s always a long delay before the FBI makes an arrest in so many of these spy cases.

Reply:  First, we don’t know the basis for the FBI’s suspicion if indeed it did warn State about a suspected mole.  It might have been a leak from the Cuban Intelligence Service (CuIS), information from a Cuban defector, or even information derived from intercepts of the CuIS transmissions to the Myers.  And we certainly don’t know if the FBI had identified the Myers in 2006.  Even if the bureau had reason to suspect the Myers, it has to develop solid evidence to back up its suspicion to enable the Justice Department to bring a case to trial.

Q.  Don’t you agree that the CuIS didn’t place much value on the Myers as agents since they used such low tech methods to communicate with them, short wave radio transmissions and exchanging shopping carts in the Safeway with their CuIS handlers?

Reply:  I wouldn’t disparage their use of low tech communications; it worked for almost 20 years.  The CuIS has routinely used similar low tech methods for communicating with some of its most valued agents in the United States including Anna Montes, the senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst.  Motivated by her strong feelings for Cuba, she spied for the CuIS for some time before she was arrested in 2001.  She also received direction from the CuIS by shortwave radio.  Many intelligence services including our own still use low tech means for covert communication when it is considered appropriate.   Intelligence services work hard to match the right communications method to a particular agent.

Q.  Was passing information from 200 reports to Cuban Intelligence the only damage they did?

Reply:  Remember that was in just 2007-08.  Having an agent in the State Department’s Intelligence office, INR, would be solid gold to the CuIS.   The public has a pretty shaky grip on what real spies do – and how much damage they can do.  Pop culture in books, TV, and especially Hollywood perpetuate the James Bond myth:  spying is all squealing tires and shots in the night.  No wonder we are shocked – shocked! – when we read about yet another spy in the government.  Walter Myers had the access to provide their CuIS handlers with information about sensitive and classified U.S. foreign policy issues; information and gossip about colleagues: their political leanings and personal weaknesses: and a whole range of information gleaned from his being an insider.  The CuIS regards intelligence about the U.S. as a commodity worth selling and bartering with other intelligence services.  Walter Myers was in an ideal position to deliver valuable product.

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Who Killed Georgi Markov?

Posted on September 9, 2009 by SpyBlog

 Dr. Thomas Boghardt, Historian

 This week marks the 31st anniversary of the murder of Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident killed in 1978 in London. And even though Markov died over thirty years ago, questions about the circumstances of his death continue to linger.

An outspoken critic of the Bulgarian regime, Markov regularly produced anti-Communist programs broadcast by the BBC and Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe (RL/RFE) into Bulgaria. In retaliation for his propaganda work, Markov was assassinated by Bulgarian intelligence at the direct order of the country’s hard-line ruler, Todor Zhivkov. But who did it, and how?

Numerous media reports have suggested that a Bulgarian agent codenamed PICCADILLY executed Markov. According to these accounts, PICCADILLY used an umbrella that KGB technicians had transformed into a weapon capable of injecting a tiny pellet containing the lethal toxin ricin into the victim’s leg.

 But sifting through newly released Bulgarian documents, a few researchers have recently cast doubt on the established story line. Richard Cummings, a former RL/RFE security director, and Hristo Hristov, a Bulgarian journalist, argue that PICCADILLY with his umbrella may have merely served as a diversion. The actual murder would have been committed by another agent with a small pneumatic weapon, a device much easier to handle than the unwieldy umbrella. 

Whatever the truth, the assassin is likely to get off scotch free. Even though Bulgaria’s 30year statute of limitations for murder was extended for another five years in 2008, the trail seems to have gone cold. There now appears little chance of catching the perpetrator and Markov’s murder is likely to remain one of the great mysteries of the Cold War.

Nothing is What it Seems

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The Spy Who Started a War

Posted on September 2, 2009 by SpyBlog

Dr. Thomas Boghardt, Historian

Seventy years ago, World War II began. Or, more precisely, a German spy created the pretext for Hitler’s premeditated invasion of Poland. To me, this story epitomizes not only the amorality of Nazi Germany; it also serves as a cautionary tale about intelligence abuse for political ends.

Alfred Naujocks was a Sturmbannführer (major) in the Sicherheitsdienst (security service or SD), the intelligence unit of the SS.  In early August 1939, Naujock’s boss, SD Chief Reinhard Heydrich, instructed him personally to simulate an attack by Polish subversives on a German radio station near Gleiwitz, at the Polish border. “Actual proof of these attacks of the Poles is needed for the foreign press, as well as for German propaganda purposes,” Heydrich explained.

Naujocks delivered the goods, literally. The SD had earmarked a dozen convicts to be dressed in Polish uniforms, killed, and left on the spot as “evidence” of Polish aggression. The SD cynically referred to these men as Konserven (“canned goods”). After Naujocks had “captured” the radio station with a small band of German operatives dressed in Polish uniforms, a Polish-speaking German broadcast a brief anti-German message. A political prisoner of the Nazis was dressed as a saboteur, received a lethal injection from an SD doctor, was shot several times, and left dead at the scene.

The Gleiwitz incident was part of a series of similarly staged attacks along the German-Polish border. Even though few people outside Germany bought into the Nazi bluff, it provided Hitler with an opportunity to cast the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, as a defensive measure. That was all he needed. Just a few days earlier, he had told his generals: “I shall give a propaganda reason for starting the war; whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth.”

 

Nothing is What It Seems.

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A Strange Death in Washington

Posted on August 26, 2009 by SpyBlog

Dr. Thomas Boghardt, Historian

                Espionage can be a dangerous business. Just consider the case of Soviet intelligence defector Walter Krivitsky. Born Samuel Ginsberg in Austria-Hungary in 1899, Krivitsky adopted his nom de guerre when he joined Soviet military intelligence in 1917. His assumed name loosely translates as “crooked” or “twisted”—an irony Krivitksy must have been aware of. After running a number of successful espionage operations in Germany, Austria, and Italy, in 1937 he was posted to The Hague where he managed Soviet espionage operations throughout Western Europe.

                Initially an ardent communist, Krivitsky gradually became disenchanted with Joseph Stalin’s violent and erratic purges. When Stalin’s henchmen killed his friend, Soviet intelligence defector Ignace Porevsky, in Switzerland, Krivitsky himself defected in Paris. With World War II looming, he came to the United States in 1938.

                Even though he dreaded Soviet reprisals, Krivitsky hardly missed a beat before publicly denouncing the machinations of Moscow’s secret service. When a Soviet agent murdered Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940, Krivitsky feared he would be next. “If I am ever found apparently a suicide, you will know that the N.K.V.D. [Soviet intelligence] has caught up with me,” he told a group of friends. But largely ignored and unable to fully integrate in his host country, Krivitsky became increasingly despondent.

                About a year later, on 2 February 1941, Krivitsky was found dead in The Bellevue, a seedy Washington hotel (today known as the posh Hotel George), with three suicide notes by his bed. While the police eventually ruled his death a suicide, others claimed he had committed a “Kremlin suicide”—forced by one of Stalin’s henchman to write suicide notes and then kill himself, in return for a promise that his family would be left unharmed.

Whatever happened at The Bellevue, Krivitsky was a haunted man long before his death. A CIA officer once noted that “every defector has just committed emotional suicide.” And whether Krivitsky killed himself or was forced to do so, he was caught in a maelstrom beyond his control and paid the ultimate price for being in the spy business.

 

Nothing is what it seems.

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The Mata Hari Myth

Posted on August 20, 2009 by SpyBlog

Dr. Thomas Boghardt, Historian

The world of intelligence is populated by intriguing, amazing, and occasionally outright bizarre characters. One of my favorites remains Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, aka Mata Hari. She fascinates me not so much because of her espionage career, but because her image has so powerfully shaped our perception of women in espionage.

Born in 1876 in the Netherlands, Margaretha Zelle spent several years in Dutch Indonesia as the wife of a Dutch colonial officer. After falling out with her husband, she returned to Europe, adopted the stage name “Mata Hari,” and launched a sensational career as an exotic dancer. Promiscuous, flirtatious, and openly flaunting her body, she captivated her audience (mostly men) virtually overnight.

During World War I, Mata Hari apparently got involved with German intelligence, using her female wiles to worm secrets out of high ranking Allied military officers. While the details of her brief espionage career remain murky, in 1917 French counter-intelligence intercepted an enemy telegram implicating her as a German spy. The French arrested, court-martialed, and executed her by firing squad in 1917.

Mata Hari had long been a master of deception. For example, she successfully spread the notion that she was a Javanese princess, performing an ancient sacred dance of her homeland. In reality, she was plain Dutch, but her claim conferred an aura of authenticity on her autodidactic dance performances. As the war ended, the myth created by herself exploded. Rumors purported that she had refused to be blindfolded and blown a kiss to her executioners. More fiction than fact, the 1931 movie Mata Hari, starring Greta Garbo, fully turned her into an icon.

Today, female spies are often referred to as “Mata Haris.” In reality, such allusions usually miss the point—the real Mata Hari was not much of a spy, and of course not every female (or male) spy uses seduction to gather intelligence. But I can’t help suspect that Mata Hari herself would be delighted to have become the symbol of the female spy as seductress. Despite her premature death, she may have the final laugh after all. 

Nothing is what it seems

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Q&A with a Real SPY

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Peter Earnest

With over 30 years in the CIA, SpyGuy answers some frequently asked questions about current issues in the SPY world.

SpyGuy’s Q & A

Q. You were an Intelligence operative for over 30 years; don’t you think Obama is throwing in the towel on the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)?  In March this year, the Pentagon even stopped using the words, “the GWOT” but instead began referring to an “Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO).”   We hear the same from DHS Secretary Napolitano, State Secretary Clinton, and other Administration mouthpieces. 

Reply:  Words make a difference.  Look at the wrangling over our goal in Afghanistan.  Are we trying to “win” or “succeed?”  They’re not the same.  Using one instead of the other is critical to rallying the government and the country around a common goal.  Too, the “GWOT” raised Osama’s band of murderous fanatics to world stature instead of labeling them more precisely as a small gang of extremists operating on the fringe of one of the world’s great religions.  

Q.  Will ratcheting down our goals then enable Obama to change course away from the previous vigorous campaign against al-Qaeda?

 Reply:  It sure doesn’t sound like it. His advisor on terrorism John Brennan spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on 6 August, saying that the President wants to focus on the real adversaries, al-Qaeda and its allies, and not just on “terror” which is simply a term describing a tactic, not an adversary. 

Q.  Okay, but do you really think this Administration is going to go after Al Qaeda as vigorously as Bush did?   Obama seems to be just running around talking to everyone with no action.

Reply:  Brennan was emphatic:  “Obama will not tolerate Afghanistan or any other country being a base for terrorists determined to kill Americans.”  Al Qaeda, Brennan said, is the most serious threat we face as a nation and Obama has….a clear policy – “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and its allies.”  He said Obama has approved operations against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and encouraged his counterterrorism forces to be more aggressive, more proactive and more innovative….to seek out new ways and new opportunities to take down the terrorists.   Now, that’s more than just running around.  Those words would leave no doubt in my mind as an Intelligence professional about the President’s mandate. 

Q.  Why are you people in Intelligence so hung up on wordsmithing and definitions?  Can’t you just go out and do your jobs?

Reply:  Because knowing what the Chief Executive wants is our job.  We’ve learned the hard way that Intelligence gathering and covert action are nearly worthless unless they’re in response to policymakers’ needs and in sync with the country’s foreign policy.

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Heroes and Villains

Posted on August 12, 2009 by SpyBlog

 Thomas Boghardt, SPY Historian

It is tempting to label historical figures either as heroes or villains. But when you are dealing with intelligence history, you’ll find a lot more shades of gray than charcoal black and ivory white.

A good example for the moral ambiguity spies and intelligence agencies operate in, is the British double-cross system in World War II. Whenever British counter-intelligence caught a Nazi spy, they would try and turn, rather than arrest and execute them. In this endeavor, the Brits virtually always succeeded. And you can’t really blame the spies for turning coat—after all, who would want an Iron Cross if the price was a British bullet? Thus, the British gradually extended control over the entire German spy system in the United Kingdom. Throughout the war, they used it masterly to feed disinformation to the Abwehr (German intelligence) who were convinced their agents in Britain were doing a sterling job.

But where lay the true loyalties of these double agents? Some were evidently beacons of moral rectitude. Juan Pujol (codename GARBO) was a genuine anti-fascist who joined the Abwehr with the sole intention of subsequently spying for British intelligence—a hero, if you like. When it comes to other double agents, though, I am not so sure. Take, for instance, Eddie Chapman, a small-time British crook and notorious skirt chaser, jailed for theft in Jersey when the Germans overran the tiny Channel island in 1940. Recruited as a spy by the Abwehr and sent on a clandestine mission to Britain, Chapman quickly revealed himself to British authorities, becoming a classic double-agent. Perhaps tellingly, the British codenamed him ZIGZAG. 

I’ve never been quite able to figure out where Chapman’s true loyalties were. Officially, his heart had always been with the British, and he was feted as one their ace agents after the war. Yet he developed a genuine friendship with his German handler and even visited him after the war, presumably to talk about the good old times.  The Germans awarded him an Iron Cross. Is it conceivable that the Nazis would have proclaimed Chapman one of THEIR ace agents, had they won the war? And would that make him a hero or a villain?

NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS

 

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Phoenix and the Birds of Prey

Posted on August 6, 2009 by SpyBlog

Doc Know’s first post. As you can imagine, he has a lot to say.

Not many people will remember the date, but 45 years ago, on August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. This measure authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to use military force in Southeast Asia (read: Vietnam), notably without a formal declaration of war by Congress. If you think about it, this procedure was very similar to the one adopted through the Iraq War Resolution, which in 2002 authorized the administration to invade Iraq. It almost seems to me that, whenever we try to relegate the Vietnam War to the back pages of our history books, the conflict comes back to teach us another lesson.  

Vietnam as well as Iraq and Afghanistan have forced the U.S. military to engage in asymmetrical warfare—regular troops, using the latest military equipment, fighting primitively armed but highly motivated guerrilla forces. In the 1970s as well as today, U.S. commanders have drawn on the intelligence services, especially the CIA, to wage this kind of counter-insurgency. In Vietnam, the CIA developed and led the so-called Phoenix program: small teams of South Vietnamese paramilitary troops and American “advisers” would systematically seek out known or suspected Vietcong cadres and “neutralize”—i.e., arrest, interrogate, or kill—them; by 1972, over 80,000 Vietcong had been neutralized, of which over 25,000 were killed.

At the time, Phoenix incurred much criticism. Small wonder—taking the war to the villages, Phoenix teams often “neutralized” Vietcong cadres and innocent civilians alike. But if you talk to experts on Phoenix today, they will mostly tell you that the program was effective and dealt severe blows to the Vietcong infrastructure in South Vietnam.

As an avid student of intelligence history, I am keen to learn if and how the lessons of Vietnam can or should be applied in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I am asking myself: Is it legitimate to hunt down and selectively “neutralize” our enemies, even at the risk of killing innocent civilians? Or should we refrain from adopting Phoenix-style operations, both for moral considerations as well as concerns over possible backlashes in public opinion abroad?

 

Nothing is what it seems.

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