American officials have come up with another way to spend tax-payers' money. Now they offer the White House an "efficient way to struggle against Russian spies." To achieve that, they suggest reviving a special body to "monitor Russian agents."
The initiative in the spirit of the Cold War has taken form of a bill authorizing intelligence activities for 2017. The authors of the bill want to restore a work group appointed by the US president. According to the document, the group will work to unmask Russian spies and Russian-sponsored assassinations, investigate 'front' groups, media manipulation, covert broadcasting, and secret funding." Traditionally, the committee will also combat Russia's influence in the media.
Pravda.Ru asked an expert opinion from a historian of special services, retired FSB Major-General, Valery Malevanny.
"Intelligence is categorized into legal and illegal intelligence. The US National Council of Intelligence, which is headed by CIA Director General Brennan, actually gives specific commands to track Russia's illegal intelligence agents, who operate not only in the United States, but throughout Latin America," the official said.
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According to the expert, the world has seen many scandals associated with the exposure of illegal intelligence agents. In 2010, for example, Colonel Poteev of the Foreign Intelligence Service escaped to the CIA and threw 12 Russian illegal intelligence agents under the bus. One may also recall such names as Anna Chapman, General Petukhov, and many more people who lived and worked under false biographies and passports in countries of not only North, but also South America for 25-30 years.
At the same time, there are legal Russian intelligence agents working in the United States of America. There are about 400 of them there, as US President Barack Obama officially announced last year speaking in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. When senators directly asked him why the CIA and the FBI took no measures in return, Obama said that US intelligence services work similarly in the Russian Federation.
"Legal Intelligence stands for the people who work under diplomatic passports. It is up to counterintelligence services to decide whether to remove them or not. Of course, they may make mistakes too. It is extremely important for the Americans today that Russian intelligence services work to obtain information about US missile defenses. The Americans want to know where the Russian spies operate, because US army and naval bases are deployed all over the world - there are 17 of US bases in Europe alone," the expert told Pravda.Ru.
According to Valery Malevanny, the world is living in the era of the nanotechnological arms race. New types of weapons appear on a regular basis, such as ultrasonic, electromagnetic guns and railguns. Now is the time for cyber troops and computers of new generation that will be able to conquer the whole world.
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"That's why it has become so urgent now to fight against illegal Russian intelligence. After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, professional security services, including Mossad and the MI-6, call it one of the most active and most professional intelligence services in the world," the expert told Pravda.Ru.
Nowadays, US and Russian intelligence services fight to obtain highly valuable information on nanotechnologies. This is where Russia's illegal intelligence service can help the industry develop. As an example of such work, Malevanny resorted to the scandal from 2012, when the FBI allegedly uncovered a Russian spy ring that included eleven Russian businessmen, who owned firms registered in the US and in Cyprus.
These entrepreneurs would purchase analog-to-digital converters, static operating memory chips, microcontrollers and microprocessors that would then be transported via European companies to Russia. The list contained 2,000 items in the amount of $50 million. According to the FBI, the key figure in the ring was a native of Russia, Alexander Fishenko, the head of the American company Arc Electronics and the Moscow-registered Apex Systems. These companies, according to US intelligence services, were used as a cover to deliver microelectronics to Russia under the guise of ordinary goods. All of the delivered chips, according to the FBI, were top secret equipment used in high-tech industries in the field of US missile defense.
"The story was big, there were closed Senate hearings held, and our compatriots (illegal intelligence agents) were sentenced to many years in prison," Valery Malevanny told Pravda.Ru.
US senators believe that US intelligence agencies should keep an eye on Russian diplomats. For this purposes, the senators considered it appropriate to keep tabs on those Russian diplomats, who want to travel for than 50 miles (80 kilometers) away from places of their work. The FBI would have to analyze such activities to either authorize or prohibit the trips.
"There are no such requirements in any other country. Employees of diplomatic missions can travel freely within the country of there residence. They can not visit restricted areas (military bases, for example), but a requirement to apply for a trip to an open area in the USA comes as a vestige of the cold war," the expert told PravdaRu.
Alla Pustova
Pravda.Ru
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