Russian intelligence is changing its tactics

Russian president had obliged the intelligence to change their tactics in order to fight with the "world terrorism". During Thursday's meeting with Igor Sergun, the director of GRU, the largest and most important Russian intelligence agency, Dymitriy Medvedev had claimed that the agency should open itself on the cooperation with foreign institutions and cooperate with them to fight terrorism.

“Changes in the world situation have required adjustments to be made to intelligence mechanisms and their implementation" - said Segun on Thursday,

During the meeting Sergun presented a report informing about the recent state of GRU. He stated that the organisation has a unique type of intelligence activity, because only GRU is being focused on all existing types and directions of spying.

According to Medvedev another important task of GRU is "“uncover in a timely way any imminent attack or development of a situation that could pose a threat to the country’s security,"

The international terrorism is still the largest modern global threat - he added. 

“We must reveal terrorists’ weapon and finance supply chains and, pursuing a preemptive tactic, foil their plans.” - said Medvedev

You should notice that Medvedev didn't precise what kind of terrorism Russia is going to fight with. We should consider, what kind of threat he had in mind? Was is islamic terrorism? In Russia, where many soldiers are muslims it is hard to say anything about the threat from this side. It is of course still important case of the Chechen conflict, but Moscow considers it as its "internal problem" so we can doubt if this conflict can be connected with international terrorism. We can talk about the modern cyberterrorism, but would such it be 

source: RT

So, what is left?

German intelligence agency destroyed personal files of their former Nazi employees

Germany's major intelligence agency has claimed to destroy personal files of its former Nazi employees.

Some of former NSDAP, Gestapo, SS and SD officials were recruited after the World War II by West-German Federal Intelligence Agency (BND). According to data from the agency it is estimated that they were about ten per cent of the people employed there during the post-war period. 

BND seal

The scandal was revealed after former BND director, Ernst Uhrlau had invited an independent group of historians to study how much West-German intelligence agencies were depending on former Nazis. 

The speaker of the group Dr Klaus-Dietmar Henke has revealed recently in media, that in 2007 the agency had destroyed about 250 personal files of the BND employees who used to be connected with the Nazi movement. 

Der Spiegel which has published an interview with Henke described whole incident "the true historical scandal". It also notes that, for several decades after the end of WWII in BND existed a policy of recruiting new staff from among the family members. As a result many people working in BND are direct descendants of those former Nazi officials and were interested in hiding these facts. 

The agency has claimed that the documents were destroyed, but as they added, these files were only 2% of the total size of the agency’s archive available to historians. In their opinion the documents "were not deemed to be worth keeping". 

Reinhard Gehlen

West-German intelligence had employed hundreds of former Nazi officials in the period between 1956-1971. First BND director Reinhard Gehlen was general in Wehrmacht and since 1945 he worked as a CIA agent. According to the leaks published by Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung in 2009, he as well as his American employers were aware of the Nazi past of many West-German intelligence agents. 

This information reveals an interesting plot in the newest German History, it is worth to think about how much we Poles actually know about our Western neighbour.

IntelligenceNews1/IntelligenceNews2

Google makes intelligence work much harder

Sir David Pepper - former director of GCHQ, the royal agency for electronic communication has claimed that because of the Google the work of the intelligence had become much harder. 

He called this “the Google effect”, because as he stated the existence of popular search engine had simplyfied the research of information in the web. So much information being available in the web had  raised the “threshold for producing intelligence” for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. 

“Intelligence producers have had to become very sensitive to this phenomenon and very careful not to put effort into producing intelligence that purports to be secret which is in fact not secret at all.” - he said during the Annual Lecture in the Institution of Engineering and Technology. 

After “the Google effect” hi-rank officials who use the intelligence started to excpect the information much faster than before. “If the intelligence readers are used to getting information online very fast they’re going to expect the intelligence agencies to be able to do much the same thing,” he added. 

Source: The Telegraph

What is hiding Lech Walesa?

Everyone of us during his studies had to interpretate works of a great amount of different poets and writers. What the poet meant writing this or that? Today, this skill can be a great advantage used as a key to understand what is happening around us. Especially when the words come from the Pope or are being said by the former President.  ".... - nobody would last the truth about these events" - says former Polish president Lech Walesa in the interview with Piotr Najsztub for the "Wprost" weekly. He claims that the Smolensk catastrophy will divide Poles until the moment, when the conversation between Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski will be revealed. As he says, the brothers were talking a dozen or so minutes before the catastrophy. I am not a fan o the case of Smolensk catastrophy, but I will ask: What did the former President mean when he said this? Does he know something we don't? Does he say so because he simply can't stand this knowledge? The fact that he knows more than an average person we can be almost sure. Who had told him what was the conversation about? American intelligence? Maybe Russian? If so, why Walesa doesn't  finish in declaring his thoughts and all the intelligence officers pretend that they do not know anything? At the preent day, no one doubts that everybody is eavesdropping one another. Is the fact, that oficially nobody wants to convince means that there is something more to hide?

I will remind one famous story which was later described in "The Hunt for Red October"- the debut book of Tom Clany from 1984. Let's get back to the roots. In original story The Red October was not a submarine, but a frigate "Storozhevoy". What hapenned in 1975 had collapsed the Red Army and the whole world. One of the crew members was Valery Mikhailovich Sablin, he was from a family with rich marine traditions. Sablin was a real son of the October Revolution. He couldn't lie and he hated duplicity. He was well educated and well-read. "Storozevoy" entered the port in Riga at the November 7th 1975 to honor the 58th anniversary of the October Revolution. Commander leutenant Sablin had decided to ude this symbolic date. Next day together with few helpers he took control over the frigate. He inprisoned ship's captain and then he had iniciated a referrendum between gathered officers and warrant officers .They have decided to move through Irbe Strait, the way out of the Gulf of Riga. Sablin refused to stop the ship. The chase was complicated and took a long time. It is said that Sablin wanted to get to Lenningrad, because he wanted to have a patriotical speech. The ship was moving next to the islands of Hiuma and Sarema which meant that it was very close to Sweden. Scandinavians who were eavesdropping during this dramatical chase were hiding whole situation. At last, on the international waters "Storozevoy" was bombed by the chasing ships and it was taken over only 50 nautical miles from Gotland Island. Whole crew was arrested and KGB had forced everybody who took part in the chase to remain silent. The authorities terrified by the perspective of growing revolutionary atmosphere, have released a statement saying that the rebels wanted to escape to the West. Commander leutenant Valery Sablin received a death sentence. He was shot on August 3rd 1976. The most active crew members received for few years sentence in prison. The rest of the crew was divided and moved into the Northern Sea and Pacific Ocean fleets. The captain was expelled from the communist party and  forced to leave the navy .This is just the short version of the story. 

If the intelligence agencies have got the resources and the instruments to check everything and everyone so they know what Walesa is talking about. Do they similary as in 1970's, cannot say what do they know? And if they don't say, there comes another question: who do they support and why? Let's ask one more question: Why  you don't say what you know, Mr. President?