REVIEW TOPICS:
Former Finnish Prime Minister recollects how Soviet KGB agents tried to recruit him
Book on co-existence of KGB and Finnish Security Police in Helsinki published thanks to SUPO
Scandal in Latvia: newspaper revealed that counterinteligence officers use vehicles with false numberplates
President of Lithuania suggests finishing lustration as soon as possible
Charges brought against former Poland’s Communist security service officer who persecuted Father Popieluszko
Life of seducer agent of Polish Central Investigation Bureau may be in danger after exposure
Large-scale exercises of Russian security services to take place in Gatchina near St.Petersburg
National Security Service of Uzbekistan destroyed armed drug smugglers from Afghanistan
Former Finnish Prime Minister recollects how Soviet KGB agents tried to recruit him
The former Prime Minister of Finland Paavo Lipponen has described in the just published memoirs about attempts of the Soviet KGB agents to recruit him. These attempts failed, accordong to the version of the politician, Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat reports today.
According to the first part of the memoirs, Memoirs I, there have been at least two attempts of recruitment. Lipponen writes that in the spring of 1966, the deputy head of the Soviet news agency APN in Finland Leonid Vasiliev invited him to a dinner. Lipponen then was a young
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Paavo Lipponen |
student-politician who cooperated with the Finnish TV and radio company YLE.
Vasiliev ordered Lipponen some articles on the topic of disarmament and students' movement and even paid the fee. But when the APN employee asked Lipponen to describe activity and situation in the Social-Democratic Party of Finland, the young politician has understood what was the purpose of the Russian journnalist. According to Lipponen he did not meet any more with Vasiliev, news agency Interfax reports.
The second time it was the KGB agent Valery Silov who invited him to supper at his home in the beginning of the 1970s, Lipponen recollects. After snack and drinks Silov suggested the young politician to inform him on activity of the Social Democrats of Finland. However, the Russian agent failed to reach his aim, according to Lipponen.
In the first part of the memoirs the author has describes events till the period when he entered into number of leading politicians of the country, by 1979.
Paavo Lipponen is 68 now. He headed the government of Finland between 1995 and 2003 (reelected in 1999).
Book on co-existence of KGB and Finnish Security Police in Helsinki published thanks to SUPO
A new book, titled Ratakatu 12, has been published in Finland. Ratakatu 12 is the address in Helsinki of the headquarters of the Finnish Security Police (Suojelupoliisi, SUPO). The author of the book is the known Finnish historian Kimmo Rentola.
It was from the USSR embassy in Helsinki where the KGB officer Anatoly Golitsyn who has given out set of secrets of the Kremlin to the Western intelligence services escaped to the United States.
Together with facts of common knowledge Rentola names some absolutely new information gathered from the SUPO archive. It has been the SUPO which ordered and financed publishing of this book, having paid very decent fee to the author. According to Moscow daily Komsomolskaya pravda, the purpose of this book is an attempt to dispell the myth about the so-called Finlandisation. Rentola denies rumours on close ties between the KGB and the legendary Finish President Urho Kaleva Kekkonen.
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| Urho Kaleva Kekkonen |
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Rentola reminds that employees of the Soviet diplomatic and consular establishments were regularly expelled from Finland for the activity not compatible to their diplomatic status. A huge number of Soviet spies has always worked in Helsinki. It was caused by the fact that with a view of conspiracy it was Helsinki where the Soviet intelligence agents from different countries arrived for secret meetings with the KGB supervisers.
Unlike the Western countries, Finland expelled the Soviet spies from the country descretly, without noise, most frequently without any publicity. President Kekkonen really had confidential relations with all residents of the KGB placed in Helsinki. If the President of Finland needed to silently settle the next incident he used to invite the KGB resident to his residence and in informal atmosphere told him which Soviet «diplomat» he did not wish to see anymore in Helsinki. All the KGB residents implicitly carried out Kekonen’s wishes, quickly sending home the "diplomats" objectionable to Finns, Rentola alleges.
Specific enough mutual relations were established between the SUPO and Soviet KGB. On the one hand, these two secret services were at enmity with each other and quite often did clash, but on the other hand, the SUPO sometimes carried out intermediary missions, settling delicate questions or the problems arisen between the KGB and secret services of other Western countries, Komsomolskaya pravda marks.
Rentola describes how since 1949 when the Finnish Communists were thrown out from the government and up to the end of the 1980s the SUPO indefatigably watched activity of the Communist party of Finland which was invariably presented in the Finnish parliament.
The author also writes that in the early 1990, the then head of the Estonian government Edgar Savisaar approached to himself a certain man who was prohibited entrance to Finland because of his espionage activity in favour of the USSR. Rentola also mentions that the former high-ranking employee of the Estonian Defence Ministry Herman Simm, sentenced this year for espionage in favour of Russia, sometimes was meeting in Helsinki with the Russian GRU officers.
Scandal in Latvia: newspaper revealed that counterinteligence officers use vehicles with false numberplates
The Riga-based daily newspaper Neatkariga reported today on using by the Latvian counterintelligence officers of vehicles with false numberplates.
One of these days a Mitsubishi Outlander car with a special permission of the Ministry of Interior, costing on parking for disabled at Riga hotel Ridzene, was photographed by a reporter. It was found out later that the car belonged to a certain "invalid" from the Constitutuion Protection Bureau (SAB). In an unskillful attempt to justify himself an employee of the counterintelligence service told the reporter that it had been „masking”.
Neatkariga pointed out that the only numberplate attached on the car was destroyed oficially 6 years ago. The paper concluded that the SAB employee had been going around in a vehicle with false number of unknown origin.
The journalists were told by the SAB that according to the law on operative activity the SAB had the right to use all the methods specified in the law, including manufacturing and use of documents and other means of masking to hide the identity of its employees.
The director of the SAB Janis Kazocins declared that about 80 officially destroyed numberplates were at the disposal of the service.
It became known today that the SAB employee who had parked his vehicle at parking for disabled, had been punished disciplinary. The amount equal to the sum of the penalty for a similar administrative offence has been substracted from him, too, according to daily Telegraf.
President of Lithuania suggests finishing lustration as soon as possible
President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite has been suggesting finishing as soon as possible of lustration and promulgation of names of the persons who had collaborated with Soviet secret services, online paper Penki kontinentai reported.
«I am for the prompt end of lustration process as we have people who are in a kind of «suspended» condition, they were recruited or they somehow differently were compelled to collaborate, and those who have not confessed, that is, they had not passed the lustration process when there was time. I think they [the names] should be promulgated», online paper cites President Grybauskaite speaking at a press conference.
The President considers that it would be also the help to these people, as part of them can be manipulated in interests of some countries. Grybauskaite emphasized that the lustration process in Lithuania should be completed with observance of principles of transparency, publicity and openness.
«More quickly we finish it, more openly we make it, it will be more safe both for those people, and for the state», marked President Grybauskaite.
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Jerzy Popieluszko |
Charges brought against former Poland’s Communist security service officer who persecuted Father Popieluszko
According to the Polish Radio, prosecutors at the Polish Institute of Remembrance (IPN) have brought charges against a former functionary of the Communist security service who harassed the late Father Jerzy Popieluszko, by faking evidence to accuse him of crimes. The suspect carried out activities meant to eliminate Popieluszko from his work as chaplain of the Solidarity freedom movement by planting evidence incriminating the priest in his apartment, to prompt an arrest for the possession of weapons.
“The activities of this functionary allow for charges to be brought against him. This is a communist crime, for which he can face 5 years of prison,” Andrzej Arseniuk, spokesman for the Institute of National Remembrance, told the radio.
Pawel Wypych, of the presidential chancellery, is of the opinion that the persecution and murder of Jerzy Popieluszko needs to be further explained, in order to shed more light not only on direct culprits, but those who commissioned the crimes against the priest and got away with it, Polish Radio notes.
Father Popieluszko was murdered by the Communist secret police on October 19, 1984.
Life of seducer agent of Polish Central Investigation Bureau may be in danger after exposure
More details on the mysterious anti-corruption agent who uses seduction as part of his method of entrapment have emerged recently, Polish Radio reports.
In September, Weronika Marczuk-Pazura, star of the Polish version of the popular You Can Dance TV show, was caught by an agent from the anti-corruption bureau (CBA) allegedly taking a bribe from the chairman of a publishing house, in a deal which she was acting as a middle woman. The agent reportedly tried to seduce her.
Press reports say the same agent, known as Tomek, seduced Civic Platform politician Beata Sawicka last year while investigating her for being involved in a corrupt land deal. In Sawicka’s opinion, the CBA, by exhorting her to commit a crime, overstepped its powers.
Tomek was also involved in a failed operation to entrap Jolanta Kwasniewska and her husband, former President Aleksander Kwasniewski, while under suspicion of receiving illegal income.
Tomasz, or Tomasz K., 33, sometimes acts under the name of Tomasz Piotrowski or Tomasz Malecki, according to Rzeczpospolita, Dziennik and other newspapers.
He started his career as a policeman but was quickly promoted to the Central Investigation Bureau in 2006. Because of his supposed acting talent, Tomek was involved in covert operations, aimed at detaining international drug dealers, Polish radio notes.
“[Agent Tomek] is a highly professional and experienced officer who has been conducted special operations aimed at combating organized crime and drug trafficking,” says Mariusz Kaminski, his former boss at the CBA. The former head of the CBA added that now when the identity of the agent had been revealed and his cover blown, his life was in serious danger.
Large-scale exercises of Russian security services to take place in Gatchina near St.Petersburg
On October 22, exercises Atom-2009 will take place in the territory of the Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics named after B.P.Konstantinov in the city of Gatchina of Russia’s Leningrad region, online paper 47News reports, referring to press service of the Leningrad region main directorate of Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia.
The purpose of the exercises is training of interaction of divisions of security forces on suppression of possible terrorist attacks and liquidation of consequences of acts of terrorism at nuclear and radioctive objects.
According to the press service, the following actions will be carried out during the exercises: elements of emergency evacuation of population; dosimetric and medical control of the evacuated population; elements of dust suppression in the zone of extreme situation; rendering pre-medical and first medical assistance to the victims; carrying out of special processing the population, equipment and personnel.
The St.Petersburg and Leningrad region Directorate of the Federal Security Service of Russia, the Main Directorate of Interior of St.Petersburg and Leningrad region, Northwest Regional Command of the Interior Troops of the Ministry of Interior of Russia, the Northwest Regional Centre of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia, Emergency Centre #346 of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia, the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia in Leningrad region and others are taking part in the exercises, 47News adds.
National Security Service of Uzbekistan destroyed armed drug smugglers from Afghanistan
The officers of security services of Uzbekistan have been compelled to use their weapons at suppression of attempt of armed Afghani drug smugglers of transfer to Uzbekistan of a large lot of opium-raw in gross weight of 35 kilograms, news agency Regnum reports, referring to the press centre of the National Security Service of Uzbekistan.
According to the source of the news agency, at night from October 12 to October 13, three citizens of Afghanistan tried to transfer a large lot of narcotics through the Afghanistan-Uzbekistan border to the territory of Uzbekistan. "At detention of infringers of the border they have rendered fierce armed resistance. As a result of exchange of fire all three drug smugglers were destroyed. A 35 kg bag with opium-raw was found out at the site of incident,” the news agency cites the spokesperson of the National Security Service of Uzbekistan press centre. Investigation has been conducted on the given fact and a criminal case has been brough on the inicdent, Regnum adds.
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