SALT
RESEARCH
RUSSIAN INTELIGENCE AGENCIES
1. Federal Security Service
http://maps.pomocnik.com/federal-security-service-headquarters-moscow-russia/
The FSB (Federal Security Service) is a domestic state security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor of the Soviet Cheka, NKVD, and KGB. Its headquarters are in Lubyanka Square, Moscow.
FSB is engaged mostly in domestic affairs, while the espionage duties were taken over by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (former First Chief Directorate of the KGB). However FSB also includes the FAPSI agency, which is involved in electronic surveillance abroad. In addition, FSB operates freely at the territories of the former Soviet republics, and it can conduct anti-terrorist military operations anywhere in the World if ordered by the President, according to the recently adopted terrorism law. All law enforcement and intelligence agencies in Russia work under guidance of FSB if needed. For example, GRU, spetsnaz and Internal Troops detachments of Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs work together with FSB in Chechnya.
FSB is responsible for internal security of the Russian state, counterespionage, and the fight against organized crime, terrorism, and drug smuggling.
FSB is a very large organization that combines functions and powers like those exercised by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Federal Protective Service, the Secret Service, the National Security Agency (NSA), U.S. Customs and Border Protection, United States Coast Guard, and Drug Enforcement Administration. FSB also commands a contingent of Internal Troops, spetsnaz, and an extensive network of civilian informants . The number of FSB personnel and the budget remain state secret, although the budget was reported to jump nearly 40% in 2006. The number of Chekists in Russia in 1992 was estimated as approximately 500,000 .
Some observers note that FSB is more powerful than KGB was, because it does not operate under the control of the Communist Party as KGB did in the past. Moreover, the FSB leadership and their partners own most important economic assets in the country and control Russian government and State Duma. According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, "In the Soviet Union, the KGB was a state within a state. Now former KGB officers are running the state. They have custody of the country’s 6,000 nuclear weapons, entrusted to the KGB in the 1950s, and they now also manage the strategic oil industry renationalized by Putin. The KGB successor, rechristened FSB, still has the right to electronically monitor the population, control political groups, search homes and businesses, infiltrate the federal government, create its own front enterprises, investigate cases, and run its own prison system. The Soviet Union had one KGB officer for every 428 citizens. Putin’s Russia has one FSB-ist for every 297 citizens."
2. Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR)
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/russia/svr/index.html
Yasenevo 11 Kolpachny
Moscow, 0101000
Moscow phone Number = 095 923 62 13
The Soviet Union's Committee for State Security dissolved along with the USSR in late 1991. However, most of its assets and activities have continued through several separate organizations. The Foreign Intelligence Service [SVR] was the first element of the KGB to establish a separate identity [as the Central Intelligence Service - Centralnaya Sluzhbza Razvedkyin [CSR] in October 1991, incorporating most of the foreign operations, intelligence-gathering and intelligence analysis activities of the KGB First Chief Directorate.
In September 1991, Gorbachev named Yevgeni Primakov to the post of first deputy chairman of the USSR Committee of State Security (KGB) and chief of the KGB's First Directorate. Primakov was confirmed by Russian president Boris Yeltsin as the head of the SVR, which replaced the CSR in December 1991. With the emergence from the KGB of the SVR as an independent agency, Primakov reported directly to President Boris Yeltsin.
In February 1996 Andrei Kozyrev was replaced as Russia's minister of foreign affairs by Primakov. The appointment came followed the December parliamentary elections in which the Communists garnered the largest number of votes and prepared to dominate the Duma in tandem with the nationalists. Col. Gen. Vyacheslav Trubnikov assumed the post of SVR director. Trubnikov graduated from the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Affairs (MGIMO) with a specialization in Asian countries. He spent his entire career in the KGB, living for 15 years in South Asia, working under the cover of journalist. In January 1992 he was appointed Deputy Director of the SVR, and now serves as the 23rd Director of foreign intelligence since its establishment in 1920.
The SVR was established as an independent entity by Presidential Edict No. 293 dated 18 December 1991. Its specific aims were to provide the Russian Federation president, Federal Assembly, and Government with the intelligence information that they need to adopt decisions in the political, economic, defense, scientific-technical, and ecological spheres. The agency was tasked with promoting Russian Federation policy in the security sphere, to promoting the country's economic development and scientific and technical progress, and providing military-technical support for Russia's security.
On 10 January 1996 President Yeltsin signed the law on foreign intelligence that was passed by the old Duma in December 1995. The law, which identifies the four Russian agencies including the SVR with external intelligence functions, determines the structure, main principles and government control over the SVR. The committees on Security and International Affairs of the Russian Duma have both created subcommittee to deal with intelligence matters.
SVR Operations
Speaking at a 21 December 1995 Moscow celebration of the 75th anniversary of the formation of the VChK-KGB-SVR, Primakov declared that NATO expansion would create a "security threat" for Russia. Primakov said that trying to understand the "true motives" of those who advocate NATO enlargement is a key task of the SVR, and added his agency would seek to block the alliance's expansion while trying to establish good relations with former Cold War adversaries. Primakov said Russian policy should seek to prevent the emergence of a "global hegemony" by the United States. Primakov also stressed the importance of combating the threats of ethno-national conflicts and terrorism to Russian territorial integrity and national security.
Important areas of SVR intelligence activity include possible scientific breakthroughs which might radically change the Russian security situation, as well as determining those areas in which the actions of foreign states' special services and organizations might damage Russian interests.
The SVR contacts with various intelligence and counterintelligence services of foreign states is one of the agency's fastest growing areas of activity. The Foreign Intelligence Service maintains working contacts and collaborates with several dozen special services in other countries. This includes work on nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and combating terrorism, the drugs trade, organized crime and money laundering, illicit arms trade, and the search for and release of hostages as well as citizens of Russia and CIS countries who are reported missing. Collaboration includes the exchange of intelligence information, assistance in training of personnel and material and technical assistance. The SVR also has reportedly concluded formal cooperation agreements with the intelligence services of several former Soviet republics, including Azerbaijan and Belarus, which cover gathering and sharing intelligence.
An agreement on intelligence cooperation between Russia and China was signed in Beijing at the end of the summer of 1992. It envisaged the restoration of the cooperation in the area of intelligence which had been cut off in 1959. This secret treaty covered the activities of Russian Military Strategic Intelligence (GRU) and the Foreign Intelligence Service, which are cooperating with the Chinese People's Liberation Army's Military Intelligence Directorate.
Although the SVR [along with other agencies] is involved in industrial espionage, there are signes that the data being collected by Russian intelligence agencies are not being used effectively. In a 7 February 1996 Security Council meeting [which included FSB Director Mikhail Barsukov and SVR Director Vyacheslav Trubnikov] President Yeltsin ordered top state officials to close the technology gap with the West by more efficiently using industrial intelligence. Yeltsin complained that less than 25 percent of the information collected by Russian spies abroad was used in Russia, even though he claimed information was derived directly from foreign blueprints and manuals.
SVR economic intelligence activities includes the identification of both threats to Russian interests [attempts to pressure Russia in world markets for arms or space technology) as well as emerging opportunities such as advantageous market trends for particular types of commodities and raw materials. Priority is attached to ensuring balanced development of relations with foreign countries in such spheres as currency and finance, export and import transactions for strategic raw materials, and in the high technology sphere. The SVR is frequently commissioned to ascertain the business reputation and real potential of foreign firms and individual dealers who intend to establish business relations with Russian state organizations. It also seeks to identify foreign firms attempting to persuade certain Russian partners to conclude illegal export deals, and to track of Russian capital going abroad.
In addition to the economic, scientific, and technical focus of collections efforts noted above, human intelligence (HUMINT) collection against American intelligence agencies also has been ongoing, as exemplified by the 1996 arrests of a Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agent (Earl Edwin Pitts) and CIA operations officer (Harold James Nicholson). The end of 1996 was also marked by the the case of former SVR Colonel Vladimir Galkin, provoking a noisy scandal that added tension to Russian-American relations and relations between the SVR and the CIA.
SVR Organization
The present head of the SVR is Lt. Gen. Sergei Lebedev.
Headquartered in Moscow, the SVR has offices in Russian embassies, consulates and trade establishments throughout the world. As with its predecessor, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, it is likely that the SVR continues to be composed of three separate Directorates, and three Services:
Directorate S, which is responsible for illegal agents (those under deep cover) throughout the world;
Directorate T, responsible for the collection of scientific and technological intelligence; and
Directorate K, which carries out infiltration of foreign intelligence and security services and exercises surveillance over Russian citizens abroad.
Service I, which analyzes and distributes intelligence collected by SVR foreign intelligence officers and agents, publishes a daily current events summaries for the Politburo, and make assessments of future world developments;
Service A, which is responsible for planning and implementing active measures; and
Service R, which evaluates SVR operations abroad.
The Foreign Intelliegence Academy is the main training establishment for the SVR .
The operational core of the SVR is eleven geographical departments, which supervises SVR employees assigned to residencies abroad. These officers, or rezidenty, operate under legal cover, engaging in intelligence collection, espionage, and active measures. Although SVR personnel frequently use diplomatic cover when assigned abroad, the SVR frequently uses journalists for cadre work, and many SVR intelligence officers consider it one of the best covers.
The Spetsnaz unit Vympel ("Banner") is a counter terrorist unit of the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service). Originally developed in 1981 as an infiltration unit to conduct infiltration, sabotage, and intelligence missions in enemy territory, Vympel subsequently evolved into a Counter Terrorist (CT) unit, and by 1987 the unit had expanded to a staff of over 500. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 the unit was transferred to the Main Administration for the Protection of the Russian Federation (GUO), along with Spetsgruppa "A", and in 1993 the unit was again transferred to MVD control to MVD. After many original members left, Vympel was disbanded and a new unit, Vega, was created, and subsquently the SVR reinstated the name Vympel.
The SVR is represented on the Security Council and the Defense Council, it participates in the work of various interagency groups and commissions. The coordination of operations by various Russian intelligence services is also carried out on the basis of bilateral agreements and existing working contacts. However effective interagency cooperation is still frustrated by Soviet-style compartmentalization of classified information and limited lateral and vertical information sharing. It remains the case that important initiatives go directly to the president from a ministry without being coordinated with other ministries or the SVR.
The Russian Federation Comptroller's Office has the right to audit the intelligence expenditure estimate. In addition parliament exercises control over the SVR's work. The State Duma and Federation Council conduct parliamentary hearings and investigations, and both chambers' deputies have the right to put deputies' questions to SVR leaders.
3. SVR Official Website
4. KGB – First Chief Directorate
http://fas.org/irp/world/russia/kgb/su0521.htm
The KGB played an important role in furthering Soviet foreign policy objectives abroad. In addition to straightforward intelligence collection and counterintelligence, the KGB participated in the Kremlin's program of active measures. KGB officials also contributed to foreign policy decision making.
Organization
The First Chief Directorate of the KGB was responsible for KGB operations abroad. The longtime head of the First Chief Directorate, Vladimir Kriuchkov, who had served under Andropov and his successors, was named head of the KGB in 1988.
The Second Chief Directorate also played a role in foreign intelligence in 1989. It recruited agents for intelligence purposes from among foreigners stationed in the Soviet Union, and it engaged in counterintelligence by uncovering attempts of foreign intelligence services to recruit Soviet citizens.
First Chief Directorate
The First Chief Directorate was responsible for all international Soviet clandestine activities, apart from military intelligence collection by the GRU and political initiatives of the Communist Party itself.
Illegals Directorate (Directorate S)
Directorate S recruited, trained, and managed KGB officers assigned to foreign countries under false identities. Most of the staff of the Directorate have either served as illegals, or have served abroad under diplomatic cover.
Scientific and Technical Directorate ( Directorate T )
Directorate T was created from the former Department 10 in 1963 to intensify the acquisition of Western strategic, military and industrial technology. By 1972 Directorate T had a headquarters staff of several hundred officers subdivided into four Departments in addition to specialists stationed at major Soviet embassies around the world. The Directorate's operations were coordinated with the scientific and technical collection activities of other KGB elements, and with the the State Scientific and Technical Committee ( GNTK ).
Planning and Analysis Directorate (Directorate I)
Directorate I was established in 1969 to review past operations as a guide to improving future initiatives, although in practice it was said to function more as a dumping-ground for aging or inept officers.
Information Service (Special Service I)
Special Service I was responsible for the correlation and dissemination of routine intelligence collected by the First Chief Directorate, apart from technical intelligence collected and processed by Directorate T. Other related responsibilities included publication of a weekly intelligence summary for Party leaders, briefing officers prior to foreign assignment, conducting special studies at Central Committee direction. The products of the Information Service did not consist of finished estimative intelligence, but rather of raw reports that were provided to senior leaders who drew their own conclusions.
Counterintelligence Service ( Special Service II)
Special Service II was tasked countering foreign intelligence agencies, including penetrating foreign security, intelligence and counter-intelligence services to undermine their effectiveness in countering the activities of the KGB. Special Service II was also responsible for the security officers tasked with monitoring Soviet civilians stationed abroad, including Soviet nationals working as correspondents, trade representatives, Aeroflot clerks, or any other capacity.
Disinformation Department (Department A)
Department A was responsible for clandestine initiatives and campaigns to influence foreign governments and publics, as well to shape perceptions of individuals and groups hostile to Soviet interests. The majority of the Departments activities were implemented by other KGB elements, or other Soviet organizations.
Executive Action Department (Department V)
Department V was responsible for "wet affairs" (mokrie dela) -- murders, kidnappings, and sabotage -- which involve bloodshed. Previously known as the Thirteenth Department or Line F, the Department was enlarged and redesignated in 1969, and tasked with sabotaging critical infrastructure so as to immobilize Western countries during future crises. The Department employed officers stationed in Soviet embassies, illegals stationed abroad, and the services of professional.
Geographic Departments
The operational core of the First Chief Directorate lay in its geographical departments [numbering ten in the early 1970s and growing to eleven by the late 1980s]. The geographic Departments were responsible for the majority of the KGB enterprises abroad. The duties of this department included the staff of KGB "legal" Residencies [rezidenty] in Soviet embassies, operating under legal cover while engaged in intelligence collection, espionage, and active measures, as well as KGB illegals [apart from those operating under assignment from the Executive Action and Disinformation Departments]. They also managed operations initiated through international communist-front organizations, as well as other agent of influence operations.
1st Department
United States and Canada 2nd Department
Latin America 3rd Department
United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia 4th Department
Federal Republic of Germany, Austria 5th Department
France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Ireland 6th Department
China, North Vietnam, North Korea 7th Department
Japan, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the rest of Asia 8th Department
Arab nations, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Greece, Iran, Afghanistan, and Albania 9th Department
English-speaking nations of Africa 10th Department
French-speaking nations of Africa
Other Departments
11th Department
The 11th Department, formerly known as the Advisers Department, conducted liaison with counterpart services in
12th Department
The 12th [Cover Organs] Department provided KGB personnel with cover jobs in other Soviet institutions, as diplomats, journalists, tourists, or delegates to conferences.
13th Department
The 13th Department provided secure communications with Residencies, officers, and agents in the field.
14th Department
The 14th Department supplied forged passports and other documents, invisible writing materials, incapacitating chemicals, and other technical devices required in Foreign Directorate operations. Specialists in Soviet embassies monitored local communications and provided technical assistance to the Residency.
15th Department
15th Department maintained the operational files and archives of the First Chief Directorate.
16th Department
The 16th Department performed routine personnel functions and recruits prospective staff officers for the First Chief Directorate. Many officer candidates were recruited from the Institutes of International Affairs and Eastern Languages in Moscow.
5. Cold Warriors No More, Russian Spies Languish in Irrelevance, Salon
http://www.salon.com/news/news2970120.html
By JEFF STEIN
WASHINGTON —
Earl Pitts, a 13-year FBI veteran who attained the rank of supervisory agent, was charged last month with selling secrets to the Russians and faces an April 21 trial. That trial starts one week before that of Harold Nicholson, a 16-year former CIA station chief accused of spying for Moscow for 29 months.
From the slew of recent arrests of high-ranking FBI and CIA officers on espionage charges, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Cold War never ended. Are the Russians spying on the U.S. as fervently as ever?
No, says Yuri Shvets, a major in the 1st Directorate of the KGB, who was stationed in the Soviet embassy in Washington until he quit in 1990. Shvets was responsible for "the American target" — the recruitment of moles. Today Shvets lives anonymously near Washington, D.C., but follows the U.S.-Russian "mole war" closely. In an interview with Salon, he dismisses the alarm raised by some that the Russians are aggressively recruiting spies here. Instead, he makes an equally provocative allegation: that the CIA has a mole at the "highest level" of the Russian government.
When U.S. officials announced the arrests of an FBI agent and a CIA officer on charges of spying for Moscow, they claimed that Russian intelligence is as aggressive here now as it was during the Cold War. Do you agree?
No. It's absolutely false. If anything, Russian intelligence is in worse shape than the CIA. The morale is extremely low. The people who can leave and find a better job in business are doing it. They don't give a damn. The mid-level people are just waiting for their retirement. The people who are left behind are just the people who can't find a job anywhere else. The salary for a colonel in the SRV (Russian Intelligence Service) is the equivalent of three cups of coffee in a Moscow restaurant. In Moscow headquarters, they spend their days drinking in the office and recently dozens of people were fired for it.
How about the Washington office of the SRV?
The head of the office doesn't even speak English. He's not an expert on the United States, he never worked on the United States. His domain was Asia. His deputy is a guy who worked in China for many years, although he was here before. I worked with him. He hasn't recruited even a fly in his life. It was a kind of joke.
Why would Moscow send guys like that?
In Russia, when you want to sabotage a job, you put a guy like that in it. They want a guy without any initiative, to make sure the Washington station doesn't recruit anybody without authorization.
Are you saying Russia doesn't want to spy on the U.S. anymore?
No, they don't. Not really.
Why not?
It's a political decision. The top level in Moscow understands that Russia depends tremendously on the United States, for financial aid and so on. They don't want to provoke the United States. To take money with one hand and to recruit turncoat agents in Washington with the other is, is ... bad manners.
But wouldn't Moscow want to know some things — say, about secret U.S. military plans?
Let me tell you a true story. A couple months ago the United States fired a few missiles at Iraq. Three days before, they privately informed the Russian foreign ministry. Afterward, the Russian press found out about it. They demanded to know what the foreign minister did about it, and he was very good at not answering the question. Why? Because what was Russia going to do about it? What can Russia do about anything the United States does?
But they don't even feel the need to know?
I'm not sure Russia needs any agents or foreign intelligence these days. They have problems enough with the economy, of unpaid wages. For instance, let's say the SRV has a top ranking agent inside the White House, and today he brings back information that tomorrow the United States is going to make a missile attack against Russia. So what? What's Russia going to do about it?
So Russian intelligence officers here just sit around waiting for a CIA or FBI agent to walk in and offer to sell documents?
Right.
And the idea that they're out there aggressively recruiting moles in the CIA and FBI is nonsense?
Yes, right. In fact, in this country, these days, if an American walked in and volunteered to spy, the Russians would just kick him out. They might welcome him in Delhi, in Latin America, in Japan, or Singapore, but not in the United States.
So what do Russian intelligence officers do here?
The number one priority for any Russian official sent to America or the West is to find a permanent job, with a joint venture in Russia, or with a branch of an American company in Russia. So they can retire from the SRV.
It's hard to believe, given the history of U.S.-Russian espionage, that there are no dedicated Russian spies here at all.
These days no one knows what the Russian "national security interest" is. Even the president of Russia has a hard time saying what it is. Meanwhile the people can see how the top-ranking bureaucrats use their positions to make money. People don't believe in anything. Believe me, no one in the SRV headquarters in Russia or here ever expresses any nationalism — maybe in a (Communist) Party meeting they do. No one else believes in it anymore.
Given that, it would seem that the CIA and FBI would have great success recruiting moles in Russian intelligence.
Yes, doubtless. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the collapse of the KGB, American intelligence got a gift. They got lots of information about prior KGB operations, and about the operations that were ongoing in the foreign intelligence service.
Did the information come from defectors in Russian intelligence?
It was delivered by top-ranking people. I think it was a political decision in Moscow. I know that this exposure of American intelligence officers was a result of this political decision, which was made shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the fall of 1991.
What "political decision"?
You may remember it was reported that George Bush saved Yeltsin during the coup attempt against him? Bush gave Yeltsin transcripts of electronic intercepts that your National Security Agency got, of the plotters talking on cell phones with each other. That saved Yeltsin. In return, he gave Bush a list of all the bugs in the American embassy.
But what about Ames and other spies who got caught?
I believe that one of Yeltsin's men gave the CIA a list of Americans working for Moscow. A list of moles.
That jibes with recent, vague suggestions in the American media that the CIA today has a high-level mole of its own in Moscow — a high-ranking Russian official.
I strongly believe that they do — that American intelligence has a top-level source in Moscow — which has allowed the United States government to expose all these agents, starting with Ames and ending with the last case, Pitts.
What makes you believe that?
I continue to have friends in Russian intelligence, and they have told me things that persuade me this is true. I have a strong impression that the revelation of all these cases, including this last case of Pitts, came from the highest levels of the Russian government.
Do you know who?
I believe I do.
Who is it?
I cannot say at this time. It is too dangerous. He is one of the most powerful men in Russian today.
So it would be dangerous these days for a CIA or FBI agent to walk in and volunteer to sell secrets to Russia.
Exactly, it's suicidal, just suicidal! I mean, how can it work? If this agent volunteers to sell his services to a foreign intelligence service, he must be sure that they can handle his case safely for the rest of his life. But today how can he be sure when the Russian intelligence services, like the whole country, doesn't care?
Do you think that Americans are still walking into Russian intelligence offices and volunteering to spy?
They are, they are. There were reports last year that somebody made several attempts to reach the residency (Russian intelligence office) in New York by phone, but they were immediately exposed. (laughs)
In the cases of Aldrich Ames, Earl Pitts, the FBI agent, or the CIA officer Harold Nicholson — if the charges are true — how could they have not realized how vulnerable they would become?
They all volunteered their services in the 1980s, while the Soviet Union still existed. It was a gross miscalculation. They did not know if the collapse of the Soviet Union was imminent.
Does Russian intelligence still use TASS (the official news agency) as cover here?
Yes, they still do that. They were kicked out of (the newspaper) Izvestia. But they still use TASS. And the foreign ministry, and the foreign trade office.
During the Cold War the KGB operated a large station out of the Soviet consulate in San Francisco. Is that still active?
The KGB operation there was one of the most ineffective. That's where the FBI taught its agents surveillance techniques, and they had round-the-clock surveillance, so the KGB guys there used it as an excuse not to try to do anything. They'd tell Moscow the FBI was all over them and they couldn't do anything. I remember that in the '70s and '80s they didn't have a single meaningful operation there.
Today are any Russian agents volunteering to work for the FBI or CIA?
I don't think so. It's too dangerous. And it doesn't bring very good money. All intelligence services around the world are notorious for being cheap. And remember, two employees in the Washington station who were betrayed by Ames got shot when they got back. It was said one of them worked for the FBI for $10,000. Is it worth being shot for that?
What about quitting the SRV and then going to work for the FBI or CIA?
It would be crazy. A smart operative can always get a much better job with a private business.
We read here that the Russian mafia pervades all aspects of the Russian economy and government. What's the relationship between the SRV and the mafia?
Very close, very close. These days everything in the Russian government is controlled by big money, and big money belongs to the mafia. For example, one of the biggest commercial enterprises in Moscow involving both the mafia and the SRV controls the export of arms.
Wouldn't a mafia-penetrated SRV want to collect industrial secrets here?
No, with Russian technology collapsing, they can't absorb the industrial secrets they collected in the 1970s and '80s. A lot of it is still locked in KGB vaults. The big money in Russia today is made in selling raw materials — oil, gas, timber and so on — not making technologically advanced things.
Jeff Stein writes regularly for Salon on national security and espionage affairs.
