REVIEW TOPICS:
Hungary's KGB-trained National Security Office Chief resigns in wake of spying scandal
Romania’s CNSAS: ex-international soccer player did not collaborate with the Communist secret police
High-ranking Ukraine’s Security Service officer died after suicide attempt
Russian security services allowed to check mail, other postal items of citizens
Member of illegal armed formation liquidated in Russia’s Ingushetia
Russian FSB accusing Perm human rights activist Igor Averkiev of extremism
Former Israel’s policemen suspected of sale of classified information to Russian oligarches
US News & World Report reviews book on documents which revealed KGB spies in United States
Hungary's KGB-trained National Security Office Chief resigns in wake of spying scandal
Sandor Laborc resigned yesterday as the Director General of the National Security Office (NBH), the Prime Minister's Office told news agency MTI in a statement. Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai on Monday accepted the resignation, MTI adds. Laborc would step down from his post on September 1, the official statement added.
Laborc was a controversial figure due to his Communist-era past as a graduate of a top KGB academy in the Soviet Union.
Laborc spent six years at the KGB's Dzerzhinsky Academy in Moscow in the 1980s, and his appointment in December 2007 by Hungary's socialist government was strongly criticized by the opposition.
Explaining his decision, Laborc referred to "anomalies in the examination of the UD Zrt affair by the investigating authorities". He referred to the scandal over a private security firm that was suspected of spying on politicians and hacking into state computers. The
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| Sandor Laborc |
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UD Zrt affair dates back to September 2008 when investigation was launched into UD, whose staff consisted mainly of former police and national security officers, for alleged spying against politicians. In addition, spyware was found on the computers of NBH and police suspected of installing the spyware in order to discover if security services were monitoring its activities.
The National Bureau of Investigation launched an investigation against unidentified perpetrators on suspicion of unauthorised access to private information, breach of state secrets and breaking into state computer systems. During the investigation the NBI discovered evidence supporting the suspicion of abuse of military products and services, abuse of office and personal data among other charges. In June this year, the investigation was terminated.
Prime Minister Bajnai said Laborc had "modernized" Hungary's secret service operations during his time in the job and will remain at his post until September 1, according to DPA.
From 1978 till 2000 he worked at the Ministry of Interior, in the fields of analysis and operations. Between 2001 and 2004 he was the deputy director for Information of the Directorate for criminal investigations for the Hungarian Taxation Authority (APEH). From May 2004 till February 2007 he was head of department at National Security Office. He was also the deputy director general for general operations of the National Security Office in February 2007 and Acting Director General of the NBH between June 1 and December 17, 2007.
Laborc will be replaced by Laszlo Balajti, currently director of the National Security Services.
High-ranking Ukraine’s Security Service officer died after suicide attempt
It has become known about the death of the 52-years-old deputy head of department on protection of national statehood and struggle against terrorism of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Major-General Yaroslav Savchin.
It is known that Savchin personally supervised questions of inter-church relations and also the struggle against xenofobia and anti-Semitism, activity of nationalist and separatist movements. One of the main questions in which the late Major-General was engaged, was the problem of Ukraine’s Rusyns.
The people who knew Savchin personally recollect that recently the Major-General had health problems, in particular, mental frustration. In this connection he even passed a course of treatment, the paper notes. "According to available information, the Major-General committed suicide, Oleg Yeltsov, a Kiev criminality expert says. - Here again there is a question, how the people in such mental condition can supervise security services. The expert marks that it is an occasion for internal investigation at the SBU.
The Security Service of Ukraine do not confirm the information on the General’s suicide. "Yaroslav Savchin have had health problems for longer time, he was in a clinic and he died at the same place,” the SBU press service says.
The daily Gazeta Po-Kievski refers to the doctors, noting that Savchin was brought to the
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Yaroslav Savchin |
hospital on July 13. He reportedly had drunk a greater doze of somnolent but medics had managed to rescue him. Then the General tried to jump out from a chamber window and damaged a cervical artery that resulted in his death. Why the Major-General was put in a metal clinic instead of the SBU hospital is not clear, marks the paper.
The report on the SBU Major-General’s suicide appeared in the Kiev daily Segodnya only on July 20.
His colleagues will remember Savchin as a person who "never supposed gossips, careerism, superfluous emotions, he used alcohol moderately and never lost his head thus". The colleagues of the late General have written only good about him on the Internet site Ord-ua.com. He was considered in the SNU as a fair and incorruptible professional. When under President Leonid Kuchma he collided with the oligarchs of sugar industry in Ternopol, he was displaced from the post of the SBU regional directorate. Later he was transferred to the central apparatus of the SBU.
Russian FSB accusing Perm human rights activist Igor Averkiev of extremism
Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) have been accusing human rights defender Igor Averkiev from the city of Perm of extremism, news agency Novy Region reports.
Averkiev’s appeal for an open discussion on the Caucasus in his article ‘We’ll become more free and stronger when leave from Caucasus’ has served as the reason to accusation, according to news agency.
The Office of Public Prosecutor has found in it “public appeal to realization of extremist activity”, Novy Region marks.
Igor Averkiev told radio Ekho Moskvy that it was not the first case of attention to him from the security services. He also expressed doubt in relevance of linguistic examination of his text as, as he said, it is necessary to evaluate the possibility of its influence on political
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| Igor Averkiev |
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processes, not the text itself. Political scientists are necessary for that instead of linguists for this purpose, Averkiev pointed out.
The first judicial session on Igor Averkiev's case is scheduled to September 17, Novy Region notes. The FSB has already directed to Lenin regional court of Perm the corresponding claim with the request «to recognize Averkiev’s article an extremist material» and to include it in « the federal list of extremist materials».
On February 18, 2008, Perm directorate of Russian Culture Protection Agency addressed to the Office of Public Prosecutor of the area with the requirement to bring to trial the newspaper Za Cheloveka and the author of an article ‘Putin – our good Hitler’ Igor Averkiev. In opinion of the regional department, the material had "an extremist orientation," online paper NEWSru adds.
Russian security services allowed to check mail, other postal items of citizens
From now on according to the order of Minister of Communications of Russia, the security services will be allowed to check letters, parcels sent by post and other items of mail of citizens, radio Ekho Moskvy reports. Earlier this document has caused a lot of noise, but the Ministry of Communications and Information of the Russian Federation emphasized that the order had been issued in full conformity with the federal law. Yekaterina Larina, the spokeswoman of the Ministry of Communications and Information of Russian, told about the order to the listeners of Ekho Moskvy.
The Ministry of Communications and Information of Russia is convinced that the order on the admission of law enforcement bodies to correspondence of citizens completely corresponds to the Russian Constitution, radio notes.
US News & World Report reviews book on documents which revealed KGB spies in United States
This time it is the US News & World Report which reviews the Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, written by a former KGB officer and journalist, Alexander Vassiliev and a pair of American Cold War scholars, John Haynes and Harvey Klehr.
AIA has already expanded earlier that since Vassiliev wasn't able to take the originals outside the archive, he filled more than 1,100 notebook pages with the text and marginal notes of thousands of KGB files. Years later, he smuggled the notes out of Russia.
The weekly magazine marks that one of the most compelling pieces of Vassiliev's notes is a 1948 memo from Anatoly Gorsky, the chief Soviet spy handler in Washington until 1945. It lists the code names and true identities of members of a spy ring run by Elizabeth Bentley. A private citizen who was a member of the Communist Party of the United States, Bentley triggered one of the most public spy trials in history when she began naming names of all those who had helped her spy for the Soviets in the years before the war. The Vassiliev notes show that the Bentley ring was one of the most successful that the Soviets ever orchestrated, according to US Reports & World News.
Soviet spy handlers, meanwhile, were also under tremendous pressure to produce results and justify, among other things, their expense accounts. They'd sometimes listen to commercial radio news reports or read newspapers, summarize them, and send the results back to Moscow as if they'd gathered top-secret information through their spy networks. The FBI was largely unable to thwart Soviet spies, was prone to abuses in its hunt for enemies, and often overstated its successes, says Athan Theoharis, a professor at Marquette University and an expert on FBI counterintelligence.
If anything, scholars at a recent Smithsonian conference on Vassiliev's notebooks suggested, KGB reports to Stalin probably reassured the paranoid Soviet leader of the true intent of US foreign policy, US News & World Report says. Much as mutually assured destruction with nuclear arsenals perversely calmed Cold War nuclear tensions, mutual spying may have reassured policymakers that they truly understood the other side.
Former Israel’s policemen suspected of sale of classified information to Russian oligarches
Two retired officers from the ‘Russian’ division of the Israeli police were detained on suspicion in transfer of confidential informations to criminal structures, Moscow-based daily Izvestia reports. There are data that the ‘moles’ started to look for new earnings, still being on service, the paper marks.
Former police officers Eduard (Eddy) Gutman and Sergei (Saggy) Mingdal worked with the police department of struggle against the international criminality (YAHBAL).
YAHBAL was founded in the 1990s in order not to let the organized crime from the former USSR infiltrate into Israel. They were working on the natives of the former USSR and specialized on gathering of information and listening to phone conversations. That meand that they had access to the most ‘delicious’ data, as Izvestia puts it, the stenograms of phone conversations, reports of intelligence services and other confidential materials. The police believe that a few months prior to their dismissal, the two officers copied a plenty of the investigatory information. The investigation says they have taken this information with themselves and have exposed it on sale.
After dismissal the former policemen did not remain without work. According to the daily Maariv, Mingdal, an expert on gathering information who has retired in 2005, was employed by Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky living in London. However, the newspaper Yediot Achronot considers that the ex-officer worked for ‘the aluminium magnate’, the Russian businessman and a citizen of Israel Mikhail Cherny. It is also reported that Gutman who left his work several months ago, had begun to cooperate with Russian businessmen living in Europe. According to investigation, Mingdal was searching information in the police database which was not connected with the criminal cases he was investigating.
This is not a unique case when members of Israel’s security forces, in particular, employees of YAHBAL, have been changing their work in the security forces for cooperation with money-bags, Izvestia points out. It directly does not contradict the law, however, according to Israel’s mass media, the police were dissatisfied with similar ‘deserters’and have been closely tracing their activity.
On July 19, the two suspected ex-policemen were arrested, and at searches at their places numerous classified documents have found. Police officials are afraid that as a result of activity of the ‘moles’, the fruits of many years of work can be ruined, Izvestia notes. Moreover, confidential informers and the people who cooperated with police might appear under threat of life, the paper adds.
Romania’s CNSAS: ex-international soccer player did not collaborate with the Communist secret police
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| Gica Popescu |
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The National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS) announced that Gica Popescu, Romania's once international soccer player (PSV Eindhoven, Tottenham Hotspur, FC Barcelona, Galatasaray, US Lecce and Hannover 96), did not collaborate with the former Securitate, Romanian TV channel Antena 3 reports.
AIA also wrote several weeks ago that there were rumours in the Romanian press accusing Popescu of collaborating with the communist secret police.
According to the information on his collaboration, Gica Popecu's conspiracy name was Petrescu and was meant to bring data from the matches his team from Craiova had, especially abroad. Popescu's house was allegedly used for secret meetings of Securitate officers, HotNews notes.
CNSAS took the accusations apart one by one and the final verdict is that Popescu was not collaborator of the ex-Securitate. "Gica Popescu only wrote positive notices. He never wrote against anyone. He even defended some people. He notes do not come against human rights", CNSAS member Cazimir Ionescu is cited by HotNews.
On July 3, Gica Popescu came to CNSAS to see his Securitate dossier. "I believe that back then, since they did not have anything from me, Securitate officers wrote those notes in my name. There are too many notes in that dossier for me to remember having written them," Popescu defended himself after the scandal started.
Two other ex-sportsmen on the Securitate collaborators' list are Ladislau Boloni and Rodion Camataru. The both firmly denied the accusations, HotNews adds.
Member of illegal armed formation liquidated in Russia’s Ingushetia
The employees of the republican directorate of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia in Ingushetia, servicemen of the Sever battalion of the Ministry of Interior of Russia, policemen of Sunzhi and Leninsk district departments of interior were fired at today 3 km to the south of settlement Arshty in Ingushetia, news agency Interfax reports.
A militant, resident of the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya, born 1983, was killed by reciprocal fire, the member of the Russian State Duma Adam Delimkhanov told news agency Interfax.
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