Post by beatlies on Jan 28, 2006 15:50:29 GMT -5
MOSCOW, January 26 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's domestic security service said Thursday that the data transmission device disguised as a rock at the center of an espionage scandal with the United Kingdom represented the most modern technology of British intelligence.
Sergei Ignatchenko, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service (FSB), told the state television channel that broke the story on Sunday that the "rock" was a highly durable piece of equipment that could survive being thrown from the ninth floor of a residential building and could be submerged in water for a long time.
"It has several levels of protection," he said. "According to analyses by our experts, this item is worth tens of millions of pounds sterling. Such wonder-technology can only be created in laboratory conditions."
According to Ignatchenko, the "rock" currently in the FSB's possession is the second transmission device that was discovered in a winter counter-espionage operation. The first was taken from the communications site by a British agent, and the second was monitored before a decision was taken to seize it.
The spy scandal erupted after state-owned channel Rossiya broke the news in a program featuring video footage and interviews with people who said they were representatives of the FSB.
They said British agents had planted the fake rock on a Moscow street, allowing agents to upload classified computer data that could then be downloaded by British Embassy employees.
The FSB said it had identified four British agents operating in Moscow under diplomatic cover.
The security service also alleged that Marc Doe, a first secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, had been authorizing regular payments to Russian non-governmental organizations. Several documents signed by him were shown as evidence of cash payments to NGOs operating in Moscow, including 23,000 pounds (about $40,000) to the Moscow Helsinki Group, and 5,719 pounds ($9,700) to the Eurasia Foundation. The former has denied any wrongdoing.
en.rian.ru/russia/20060126/43202336.html
Her Majesty's Cobble Stone
FIRST there was laughter, then came indignation, and finally a sense of Cold War style-triumphalism.
The discovery of a fake rock allegedly containing a listening device in a Moscow street this week plunged Britain and Russia into a major espionage row, after Russia's secret service confirmed on Monday that it suspected four British diplomats of spying. It also accused one of the four of using British government money to covertly fund prominent Russian human-rights groups.
Allegations that the diplomats have been spying on Russia have generated huge interest in a country steeped in and fascinated by intrigue, plotting and spy stories. Russians love a good conspiracy theory and TV programs and films about the feared Soviet KGB, its modern counterpart the FSB, and indeed foreign intelligence services are enormously popular.
The fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a former spook (he worked as an agent in the then east Germany before going on to head the FSB) merely served to increase the "us against them" factor and the scandal's piquancy.
There are few Russians who haven't heard of James Bond or seen one of the movies and in the Communist era the authorities encouraged the view that the Soviet Union was encircled by foreign spies. Indeed many Russians are genuinely convinced that their country is surrounded by hostile forces hell bent on ensuring that Russia does not rise from the ashes of the Soviet Union.
News that British spies have apparently been communicating with local agents through a James Bond style transmitter fake rock in Moscow appeared, therefore, to confirm what they knew the whole time: that the West is out to get them. That the same "spies" have been putting money into human rights organisations was also confirmation, as Mr Putin put it, of "foreign meddling in Russia's domestic political life".
At the same time many [?] people found it hard to take the whole rock business seriously, laughing aloud as they watched grainy footage of the purported [sic --proven] spies picking up the thing and furtively making off with it. "This can't be serious. This must be some kind of joke," was a stock reaction [anonymous, fabricated quote from the anti-Russian, editorializing author of this propaganda article].
The broadcast media, which is overwhelmingly [sic]state-controlled, dutifully regurgitated ["regurgitated'!]the salient points without humour. It was state TV that broke the story in the first place, exposing the four diplomats live on air. The printed media was a good deal more sceptical, however, with famously liberal [i.e. right wing, CIA/MI6-controlled] Novaya Gazeta running a report doubting the "stupid" scandal's authenticity under the headline "Her Majesty's Cobble Stone" [That the British author of this article dutifully used as the title of this article!].
Like much of the other liberal [sic --right wing, CIA/MI6-bankrolled] media, it suggested the scandal had been dreamt up by the Kremlin as a way of rebuffing Western criticism of a restrictive new law clamping down on foreign and domestic human rights groups.
Putin was suitably outraged though even he couldn't hold back a thin [sic] smile or a sarcastic joke at the Brits' expense when talking about it. "If we send these spies out maybe smarter ones will come in and we'll tie ourselves up in knots trying to catch them," he quipped
Some of the more fringe [sic] nationalist elements in the Russian parliament demanded that Britain be sent a bill for $US100 million ($A133 million) and that the KGB be resurrected. The FSB counter-intelligence agents caught the "spies", and it was naturally keen to play up the sophistication of its old Cold War adversary to make itself look good. This seemed to mainly involve praising the quality of the transmitter rock that it had seized. "It's a miracle of technology," an FSB spokesman marvelled. "It's a piece of space-age technology, a machine that can withstand a fall from nine floors up and prolonged submersion in water."
Rather unconvincingly he went on to claim that it probably cost "tens of millions".
When asked where the British had tripped up he gave a one word answer: "Arrogance."
[Faul anyone?]
The human rights groups [in reality anti-human rights CIA/MI6 fronts] accused of taking Her Majesty's shilling were less cheery; they claimed that the row was fabricated to smear them as a prelude to closing them down.
It may not happen overnight but bets are on that the famous rock may now join other wacky exhibits at the KGB's extraordinary museum in the basement of its central Moscow headquarters. It wouldn't look out of place. Other real-life exhibits include glasses with suicide poison hidden in the frames; a copy of National Geographic with coded messages hidden in the print and a radio receiver disguised as a tree trunk, planted near a Moscow airport, designed to pick up air traffic control transmissions.
.
Sergei Ignatchenko, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service (FSB), told the state television channel that broke the story on Sunday that the "rock" was a highly durable piece of equipment that could survive being thrown from the ninth floor of a residential building and could be submerged in water for a long time.
"It has several levels of protection," he said. "According to analyses by our experts, this item is worth tens of millions of pounds sterling. Such wonder-technology can only be created in laboratory conditions."
According to Ignatchenko, the "rock" currently in the FSB's possession is the second transmission device that was discovered in a winter counter-espionage operation. The first was taken from the communications site by a British agent, and the second was monitored before a decision was taken to seize it.
The spy scandal erupted after state-owned channel Rossiya broke the news in a program featuring video footage and interviews with people who said they were representatives of the FSB.
They said British agents had planted the fake rock on a Moscow street, allowing agents to upload classified computer data that could then be downloaded by British Embassy employees.
The FSB said it had identified four British agents operating in Moscow under diplomatic cover.
The security service also alleged that Marc Doe, a first secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, had been authorizing regular payments to Russian non-governmental organizations. Several documents signed by him were shown as evidence of cash payments to NGOs operating in Moscow, including 23,000 pounds (about $40,000) to the Moscow Helsinki Group, and 5,719 pounds ($9,700) to the Eurasia Foundation. The former has denied any wrongdoing.
en.rian.ru/russia/20060126/43202336.html
Her Majesty's Cobble Stone
FIRST there was laughter, then came indignation, and finally a sense of Cold War style-triumphalism.
The discovery of a fake rock allegedly containing a listening device in a Moscow street this week plunged Britain and Russia into a major espionage row, after Russia's secret service confirmed on Monday that it suspected four British diplomats of spying. It also accused one of the four of using British government money to covertly fund prominent Russian human-rights groups.
Allegations that the diplomats have been spying on Russia have generated huge interest in a country steeped in and fascinated by intrigue, plotting and spy stories. Russians love a good conspiracy theory and TV programs and films about the feared Soviet KGB, its modern counterpart the FSB, and indeed foreign intelligence services are enormously popular.
The fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a former spook (he worked as an agent in the then east Germany before going on to head the FSB) merely served to increase the "us against them" factor and the scandal's piquancy.
There are few Russians who haven't heard of James Bond or seen one of the movies and in the Communist era the authorities encouraged the view that the Soviet Union was encircled by foreign spies. Indeed many Russians are genuinely convinced that their country is surrounded by hostile forces hell bent on ensuring that Russia does not rise from the ashes of the Soviet Union.
News that British spies have apparently been communicating with local agents through a James Bond style transmitter fake rock in Moscow appeared, therefore, to confirm what they knew the whole time: that the West is out to get them. That the same "spies" have been putting money into human rights organisations was also confirmation, as Mr Putin put it, of "foreign meddling in Russia's domestic political life".
At the same time many [?] people found it hard to take the whole rock business seriously, laughing aloud as they watched grainy footage of the purported [sic --proven] spies picking up the thing and furtively making off with it. "This can't be serious. This must be some kind of joke," was a stock reaction [anonymous, fabricated quote from the anti-Russian, editorializing author of this propaganda article].
The broadcast media, which is overwhelmingly [sic]state-controlled, dutifully regurgitated ["regurgitated'!]the salient points without humour. It was state TV that broke the story in the first place, exposing the four diplomats live on air. The printed media was a good deal more sceptical, however, with famously liberal [i.e. right wing, CIA/MI6-controlled] Novaya Gazeta running a report doubting the "stupid" scandal's authenticity under the headline "Her Majesty's Cobble Stone" [That the British author of this article dutifully used as the title of this article!].
Like much of the other liberal [sic --right wing, CIA/MI6-bankrolled] media, it suggested the scandal had been dreamt up by the Kremlin as a way of rebuffing Western criticism of a restrictive new law clamping down on foreign and domestic human rights groups.
Putin was suitably outraged though even he couldn't hold back a thin [sic] smile or a sarcastic joke at the Brits' expense when talking about it. "If we send these spies out maybe smarter ones will come in and we'll tie ourselves up in knots trying to catch them," he quipped
Some of the more fringe [sic] nationalist elements in the Russian parliament demanded that Britain be sent a bill for $US100 million ($A133 million) and that the KGB be resurrected. The FSB counter-intelligence agents caught the "spies", and it was naturally keen to play up the sophistication of its old Cold War adversary to make itself look good. This seemed to mainly involve praising the quality of the transmitter rock that it had seized. "It's a miracle of technology," an FSB spokesman marvelled. "It's a piece of space-age technology, a machine that can withstand a fall from nine floors up and prolonged submersion in water."
Rather unconvincingly he went on to claim that it probably cost "tens of millions".
When asked where the British had tripped up he gave a one word answer: "Arrogance."
[Faul anyone?]
The human rights groups [in reality anti-human rights CIA/MI6 fronts] accused of taking Her Majesty's shilling were less cheery; they claimed that the row was fabricated to smear them as a prelude to closing them down.
It may not happen overnight but bets are on that the famous rock may now join other wacky exhibits at the KGB's extraordinary museum in the basement of its central Moscow headquarters. It wouldn't look out of place. Other real-life exhibits include glasses with suicide poison hidden in the frames; a copy of National Geographic with coded messages hidden in the print and a radio receiver disguised as a tree trunk, planted near a Moscow airport, designed to pick up air traffic control transmissions.
.