A Brief History of the Spy

by Paul Simpson

  Even before the spy ring was arrested, preparations were in hand for a spy swap with the Russians. When the approach was made by the CIA, and the requisite faux protestations and denials had been made by the FSB, the details were quickly arranged. Chapman and the other Russians were exchanged for: Igor Sutyagin, convicted of passing details on submarines systems to the CIA; Sergei Skripal, a GRU colonel who had been working for MI6; SVR Colonel Alexander Zaporozhsky, sentenced to eighteen years for spying for the Americans in 2003; and Gennady Vasilenko, a former KGB officer who was, incorrectly, believed to be a double agent for the Americans, thanks to information supplied by Robert Hanssen. No evidence had been found against him, but he had been imprisoned on other charges. He was the only one who hadn’t committed treason against the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation. According to some reports, he was included in the swap after a personal request from his former counterpart, CIA officer Jack Platt.

  The returning spies were eventually hailed as heroes (once they’d been debriefed, and the SVR could be sure that they hadn’t been turned as double agents). Chapman now hosts a TV show and has made appearances in the Russian version of Maxim magazine, as well as on the catwalk. This might make it seem as if what she did isn’t to be taken seriously, but, as former MI5 Director General Sir Stephen Lander pointed out, ‘The fact that they’re nondescript or don’t look serious is part of the charm of the business. That’s why the Russians are so successful at some of this stuff. They’re able to put people in those positions over time to build up their cover to be useful. They are part of a machine… And the machine is a very professional and serious one.’

  * * *

  The Chapman affair had a knock-on effect in Britain when MI5 believed that they had found another honey trap agent shortly after Chapman and her colleagues had been repatriated. Twenty-six-year-old Russian student Ekaterina Zatuliveter was arrested and told she would be deported as a risk to national security. This followed an investigation into her relationship with Portsmouth MP Mike Hancock, during which she had potential access to secret documents.

  The evidence against her seemed strong. Either Zatuliveter had a penchant for men in positions of power, or there was something sinister in her choice of partners. Before her affair with Hancock, she had been involved with a Dutch diplomat. Then when she and Hancock went their separate ways, she dated both a NATO official (asking him about a meeting he’d attended with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright), and a senior UN official.

  Zatuliveter met Hancock when he visited St Petersburg University in 2006 and she eventually travelled to Britain to become his unpaid researcher at the House of Commons. MI5 suspected that she had been instructed by the SVR to seduce Hancock — who had a reputation for extra-marital affairs — to gain a pass to the building and knowledge of his work on various defence committees.

  During a series of interviews with both MI5 and MI6, standard for any foreign national working in such a restricted area, Zatuliveter vehemently denied that she was in any way involved with the Russian secret service. When she was served with the deportation order, she determined to fight it, and appealed to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission.

  The case was heard in October 2011. It didn’t help that she had actually met with a known Russian agent during her affair with Hancock, although she claimed that she had no idea he really was a spy. She had also joked in an email that her affair with the NATO official had meant that half of NATO was disabled, and that the Kremlin were calling her with congratulations. However, although the Commission agreed that the Security Service had ‘ample grounds for suspicion’, they did not believe that they had proved their case, and in November 2011 Zatuliveter was allowed to stay in the UK. Nonetheless, she returned to Russia the following month.

  * * *

  It may not officially be called the Cold War any more, but it’s clear that the ‘Great Game’ between East and West is still very much alive. Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Paul Delisle was arrested in Canada for passing documents to the Russians from the Canadian navy intelligence centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia in January 2012. A sixty-year-old German was arrested in Holland in May 2012, accused of passing 450 secret files to one of Anna Chapman’s former contacts. Former FSB colonel Valery Mikhailov was sentenced to eighteen years in prison on 6 June 2012 after passing papers to CIA officers in Moscow.

  According to MI5’s website: ‘The threat of espionage (spying) did not end with the collapse of Soviet communism in the early 1990s. Espionage against UK interests continues and is widespread, insidious and potentially very damaging… The ultimate aim of our work is to make it as difficult as possible for foreign spies to operate against the UK.’

  In February 2012, outgoing Russian President Dimitri Medvedev told the FSB that Russian counterintelligence exposed 199 foreign spies in 2011, proving that ‘activity of [foreign] intelligence services is not decreasing’.

  The FBI agree:

  Spies haven’t gone the way of the Cold War. Far from it. They’re more prolific than ever — and targeting our nation’s most valuable secrets. As the lead agency for exposing, preventing, and investigating intelligence activities on US soil, the FBI works to keep weapons of mass destruction and other embargoed technologies from falling into wrong hands, to protect critical national secrets and assets, and to strengthen the global threat picture by proactively gathering information and intelligence.

  Will we ever reach a stage where spies aren’t needed? As MI5 Director-General Jonathan Evans said in a speech in the City of London on 25 June 2012:

  Those of us who are paid to think about the future from a security perspective tend to conclude that future threats are getting more complex, unpredictable and alarming. After a long career in the Security Service, I have concluded that this is rarely in fact the case. The truth is that the future always looks unpredictable and complex because it hasn’t happened yet. We don’t feel the force of the uncertainties felt by our predecessors. And the process of natural selection has left us, as a species, with a highly developed capacity to identify threats but a less developed one to see opportunity. This helps explain the old saying that when intelligence folk smell roses they look for the funeral.

  Spies have been around for as long as there have been opposing groups of mankind. Sun Tzu was counselling, ‘Be subtle! be subtle! and use your spies for every kind of business,’ in The Art of War 2,500 years ago. The threats may change but the need for information about them will never go away. And while that remains the situation, spies will continue to thrive.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My thanks to everyone who has assisted with the preparation of this book, including a couple of sources who need to remain anonymous, and especially to:

  Brian J. Robb for many things, especially the introductions and the wise words on the text. It’s my turn to buy the DVDs!

  Duncan Proudfoot and Clive Hebard, my editors at Constable & Robinson, for their help in shaping this manuscript and for their patience when real life intervened; and my copy-editor Gabriella Nemeth, for helping me avoid some pitfalls of my own making.

  Robert J. Sawyer for the recommendation of the Writers Blocks software which was a great help in plotting out the best way to frame the narrative.

  Michael, our Cold War tour guide in Berlin at Easter 2012, for some very interesting insights and tales of the CIA in its early days.

  Lee Harris, Amanda Rutter, Lizzie Bennett, Scott Pearson, Jenny Miller, Caitlin Fultz, Patricia Hyde and Adina Mihaela Roman for coming to the rescue when things were looking difficult.

  As always, the staff at the Hassocks branch of the West Sussex public library, who provide a ready reminder why the library service needs to be maintained.

  My partner Barbara and my daughter Sophie for their love and support; and our terriers, Rani and Rodo, who have finally realized that when I’m sitting at my desk, it doesn’t mean that I’m doing nothing and therefore it’s time to start playing with them!

  SELECTED
BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Aid, Matthew M.: Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror (Bloomsbury Press, 2012)

  Aid, Matthew M.: The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency (Paperback edition Bloomsbury Press, 2011)

  Andrew, Christopher and Oleg Gordievsky: KGB: The Inside Story (HarperCollins, 1990)

  Andrew, Christopher and Vasili Mitrokhin: The Sword and the Shield (Paperback edition: Perseus Books, 2001)

  Andrew, Christopher: The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (Updated edition, Penguin, 2011)

  Bearden, Milt and Risen, James: The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB (Random House, 2003)

  Bergen, Peter: Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Osama bin Laden (The Bodley Head, 2012)

  Bischof, Günter; Stefan Karner and Peter Ruggenthaler: The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (Lexington, 2011)

  Boer, Peter: Canadian Security Intelligence Service (Folklore Publishing, 2010)

  Butler, Rupert: Stalin’s Instruments of Terror (Spellmount, 2006)

  Cherkashin, Victor with Gregory Fiefer: Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer (Perseus Books, 2005)

  Drogin, Bob: Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War (Ebury Press, 2008)

  Gehlen, Reinhard: The Service: The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen (Popular Library, 1973)

  Gordievsky, Oleg: Next Stop Execution (Macmillan, 1995)

  Hathaway, Robert M. and Smith, Russell Jack: Richard Helms as Director of Central Intelligence (CIA internal, declassified version available via the CIA website, 1993)

  Howe, Sir Geoffrey: Conflict of Loyalty (Pan Books, 2005)

  Ingram, Martin & Greg Harkin: Stakeknife: Britain’s Secret Agents in Ireland (The O’Brien Press, 2004)

  Jeffrey, Keith: MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service (Paperback edition: Bloomsbury Press, 2011)

  Kalugin, Oleg with Fen Montaign: SpyMaster: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West (St Martin’s Press, 1994)

  MacRakis, Kirstie: Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World (Cambridge, 2008)

  North, Oliver with William Novak: Under Fire: An American Story (HarperCollins, 1991)

  Philby, Kim: My Silent War (Modern Library edition: 2002)

  Rimington, Stella: Open Secret (Arrow Books, 2002)

  Soufan, Ali H. with Daniel Freedman: The Black Banners: Inside the Hunt for Al-Qaeda (W.W. Norton & Co., 2011)

  Tenet, George with Harlow, Bill: At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (HarperPress, 2007)

  Thomas, Gordon: Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad 5th Edition (St Martin’s Press, 2009)

  Trahair, Richard C.S. and Robert L. Miller: Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies and Secret Operations (third edition), Enigma Books, 2012)

  Wallace, Robert and H. Keith Melton with Henry Robert Schlesinger: Spycraft (Dutton, 2008)

  Wise, David: Nightmover (HarperCollins, 1996)

  Wise, David: Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI’s Robert Hanssen Betrayed America (Paperback edition, Random House, 2003)

  Wright, Peter with Greengrass, Paul: Spycatcher (Heinemann, 1987)

  The CIA website at www.cia.gov is an invaluable source of declassified documents and articles, giving the American perspective on events after the Second World War. Similarly, the FBI’s site at www.fbi.gov provides much inside information on the counterespionage activities of the Bureau.

  The British Security Service can be found at www.mi5.gov.uk with MI6 represented online at www.sis.gov.uk These are considerably less open than their American counterparts but do reveal some choice nuggets.

  The New York Times and Time magazine online archives are the primary sources for contemporary reports of trials and investigations.

  Although we have attempted to trace and contact copyright holders before publication, this may not have been possible in all cases. If notified, the publisher will be pleased to correct any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity.

  GLOSSARY OF TERMS AND ACRONYMS

  Agency, The: see CIA.

  ASIO: Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. Counterespionage.

  ASIS: Australian Secret Intelligence Service.

  AVH: The State Protection Authority. The Hungarian secret police under the Communists.

  BfV: Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. (West) German counterintelligence.

  BND: Bundesnachrichtendienst. The German secret service; prior to unification, it served that function for West Germany.

  Bureau, The: common nickname for the FBI.

  Cheka: see KGB history.

  CIA: Central Intelligence Agency. America’s intelligence agency, based in Langley, Virginia.

  cover: the identity assumed by a spy.

  cryptology: the study (and breaking) of codes.

  CSIS: Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The Canadian intelligence and counter-intelligence agency. Prior to its creation, such work was carried out by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

  CSS: see DS.

  CTC: the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.

  DCI: Director of Central Intelligence. The head of the CIA, and, until 2005, the head of the American intelligence community. Replaced by the D/CIA.

  D/CIA: Director, Central Intelligence Agency. The head of the CIA since 2005, who reports to the DNI.

  dead drop: a procedure for passing documents between an agent and his handler. The agent will leave the items at a pre-arranged location (e.g. under a rock, beneath a bridge), and at a suitable time the handler will collect it.

  DGSE: General Directorate for External Security. The French intelligence agency since 1982.

  DNI: Director of National Intelligence. The head of the American intelligence community following reforms brought in after 9/11. Much of the work of the DNI was formerly carried out by the DCI of the CIA.

  DPRK: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. North Korea, under a Communist regime.

  DS: Duzhavna Sigurnost (State Security). The popular name for the Bulgarian Committee for State Security under the Communist regime.

  ELINT: Electronic INTelligence. Data received from electronic sources, such as listening devices or satellites.

  FAPSI: Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information. The Russian equivalent of America’s NSA, concentrating on SIGINT.

  FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation. The American counterintelligence agency which also has responsibility as a criminal investigative body.

  FSB: The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. Russia’s counter-espionage agency since the fall of Communism.

  G-2: the intelligence gathering section of the US Army. It is also the title of the Irish intelligence agency.

  GCHQ: Government Communication Headquarters. The SIGINT wing of British intelligence. Its main base is at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

  GPU: see KGB history.

  GRU: Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. Soviet, now Russian, Army intelligence.

  GUGB: see KGB history.

  HUMINT: HUMan INTelligence. Information derived from human sources (i.e. spies on the ground)

  HVA: Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung. The foreign intelligence arm of the East German Stasi.

  IJS: Irish Joint Section. A group of MI5 and MI6 officers working together regarding problems in Northern Ireland between 1972 and 1984. MI5 took over responsibility towards the end, leading to its phasing out.

  IRA: The Irish Republican Army. Group opposed to the presence of the British in Northern Ireland, which waged a campaign during the twentieth century. Offshoots include The Continuity IRA and the Real IRA. Its political wing is Sinn Fein.

  JIC: Joint Intelligence Committee: A group reporting to the British Cabinet, which oversees the work of the various British intelligence agencies.

  KGB: The Committee for State Security. Although only officially
existing between 1954 and 1991, the title is often used for Russian foreign intelligence throughout the twentieth century.

  KGB history: The Soviet State Security organization would go through many name changes in the period leading up to the Cold War. The Cheka (The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage) operated from December 1917 to February 1922, when it was incorporated into the NKVD (the People’s Commissariat of State Security) as the GPU (the State Political Directorate). From July 1923 to July 1934 it was known as the OGPU (the Unified State Political Directorate) before reincorporating into the NKVD, this time as the GUGB (Main Administration of Soviet Security). For five months in 1941 it was referred to as the NKGB (the People’s Commissariat of State Security) before returning to the NKVD. It became the MGB (Ministry for State Security) in 1946, before Beria merged that with the MVD (the Ministry of the Interior) in 1953 following Stalin’s death. After Beria’s fall, State Security was separated from the Ministry, and became the KGB. The KGB was disbanded in 1991 to be replaced by the SVR.

  Langley: term often used to describe CIA Headquarters, or the senior officials of the CIA.

  MGB: See KGB history.

  MI5: The British Security Service. Officially, this was only its title between September 1916 and 1929 but the abbreviation is used even within the service.

  MI6: term commonly used for the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). Properly, it only refers to a period during the Second World War when it was used as a counterpart to MI5, but the phrase has entered common usage. Officially the title SIS was given in 1920, and enshrined in law in 1994. The service itself uses SIS rather than MI6 as an abbreviation.