FSB: 4 British Spies Uncovered
Author: Simon Saradzhyan. Staff Writers
The Federal Security Service said Monday that it had uncovered four British spies working under diplomatic cover in Moscow and that one had authorized grants for Russian nongovernmental organizations.
The four - all staff members at the British Embassy - downloaded information from transmitters concealed inside rocks, Sergei Ignatchenko, the chief spokesman for the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said at a news conference for select Russian journalists.
A Russian national recruited by British intelligence left the information, Ignatchenko said.
He hinted that the four would be expelled because "their activities were incompatible with their diplomatic status" - a standard euphemism used by government agencies to accuse foreigners of <espionage>.
"The situation will be resolved at the political level," Ignatchenko said.
He said the Russian national had been arrested and admitted to spying for British intelligence.
The British Embassy declined to comment, and none of the four staff members responded to questions sent to their e-mail accounts at the British Embassy. It was unclear whether they were still in Moscow.
The Foreign Office in London said it was "concerned and surprised" at the FSB allegations.
"We reject any allegation of improper conduct in our dealings with Russian NGOs," the Foreign Office said in a statement.
"It is well known that the U.K. government has financially supported projects implemented by Russian NGOs in the field of human rights and civil society," it said. "All our assistance is given openly and aims to support the development of a healthy civil society in <Russia>."
A Foreign Office spokesman declined to comment further, saying it was Foreign Office policy not to discuss intelligence matters.
Prime Minster Tony Blair also declined to comment at a London news conference, saying he had only heard about the claims from media reports.
Rossia, the state television channel, first reported the allegations on its investigative show "Special Correspondent" on Sunday night. The channel showed footage of four men as they walked by what it said was a transmitter hidden in a hollow rock on a Moscow street. One man was shown purportedly trying to establish a connection with the transmitter using a hand-held computer.
Rossia identified the four as Marc Doe, Chris Peart, Andrew Fleming and Paul Crompton. Crompton was referred to as the assistant to the embassy's intelligence service representative, Doe as second secretary of the political section, and Pear and Fleming as archivists.
Rossia said the FSB cracked the <espionage> operation at the end of last year. It appeared that the videotape was filmed in early fall.
Rossia showed one rock that it said Doe had used for <espionage>. Ignatchenko said the FSB was aware of two rocks and had seized one.
Rossia also said Doe had authorized transfers of grants from the Foreign Office's Global Opportunities Fund to Russian NGOs, including the Moscow Helsinki Group and the New Eurasia Foundation.
The FSB has repeatedly accused foreign intelligence services of using NGOs as cover for <espionage>, and the latest allegations served as another warning to Russian recipients of foreign funds.
A Rossia journalist concluded Sunday's report by saying that oversight over civil society "should be exercised by incorruptible people who care about the interests of their homeland and not an alien country."
Ignatchenko said a total of 12 Russian NGOs had received payments authorized by Doe. He said they included the Committee Against Torture, the Center for Development of Democracy and Protection of Human Rights and International Criminal Reform, in addition to the Helsinki group and Eurasia.
Representatives of the NGO community reacted with anger.
"It is a horrible TV program," said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a veteran human rights campaigner and head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, who had read a transcript of the Sunday night show.
"It's a special campaign against NGOs that has been going on for a long time," Alexeyeva said.
Citing recent controversial cases against scientists accused of spying, she said FSB officials had proved themselves inept in capturing alleged spies before and she was not convinced of the veracity of the charges this time, either.
"It sounds very ridiculous," said Dmitry Surnin, the head of the media development department at the New Eurasia Foundation, which received funding to develop small-town newspapers from the Global Opportunities Fund.
"It's clearly a provocation, another PR activity to support current attempts to tighten the grip on NGOs or eliminate them altogether," he said. "It also seems a way to answer pressure from the West."
"I think that the 'patriots' who say human rights activists are not patriots now have a new way to make their argument," said Igor Kalyarpin, the head of the Committee Against Torture, a Nizhny Novgorod-based NGO. "We don't have an easy time, and this is like a knife to the back."
The FSB might have planned the leak to Rossia as a way of preparing a defense for the new law that will place NGOs under stricter state control, said Ivan Safranchuk, head of the Moscow branch of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information. He said the leak might have been planned as early as November, when the State Duma first started considering the legislation and criticism was mounting among Russian NGOs and in the West.
President Vladimir Putin signed the NGO law this month, and it goes into force in April.
Intelligence officers are often told not to assume certain cover identities. Safranchuk noted that the KGB was told not to send spies under the cover of the Pravda newspaper to avoid discrediting the main Soviet propaganda vehicle in case they were caught.
General Nikolai Leonov, former deputy head of the KGB's foreign intelligence department, said Monday that the Rossia report had dented his opinion of British intelligence.
"What I saw really disappointed me," said Leonov, a Duma deputy from the nationalist Rodina party. He derided the stone as not quite "super technology."
If <Russia> does expel the four, Britain will almost certainly be forced to respond tit-for-tat by expelling diplomats from the Russian Embassy in London.
Moscow and London have a history of expelling scores of alleged spies. The record was set in 1971, when Britain declared 105 Soviet diplomats personae non grata.
In 1994, Britain expelled a Russian diplomat in response to the expulsion of a man whom Russian counter-intelligence described as the chief British spy in <Russia>.
Two years later, <Russia> arrested Platon Obukhov on charges of passing secrets to British agents while working at the Russian Foreign Ministry. That year, <Russia also expelled nine British diplomats for allegedly running a spy ring. Britain responded by ordering four Russians to leave.
In 2000, the FSB announced that it had arrested a Russian on charges of working as a spy for Britain. Former intelligence officer Valery Ojamae was convicted of high treason by a Moscow court in 2001.
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