2017 Saw the Dramatic Rise of Western Spy and Psych Warfare Special Ops Against Russia
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Among other attributes of the Cold War, cloaks and daggers are becoming a trend again.
On the 100th anniversary of the Cheka, there were so many reports from the invisible front that one can't help but think that they live on the very front line.
inosmi.ru: "The arrest of an elderly Norwegian Frode Berg has become a major controversy. He's being charged with espionage. One of the toughest cases in recent years has jeopardized Russian-Norwegian relations. These charges could have grave consequences".
There are no details due to the classified status, but the case possibly refers to naval espionage in the northern borderlands of Russia.
That's our side of things. And now the other side of the story.
hs.fi: "This Sunday, the police searched the house of a Helsingin Sanomat investigative journalist — Laura Halminen. Her cell phone, laptop, and hard drives were confiscated. According to Halminen, she had to smash her laptop with a hammer to destroy the stored information".
The security forces came to the house of Laura Halminen, mother of two, after she published her investigation on a secret electronic intelligence-gathering program that Finnish intelligence agencies are conducting in the town of Jyväskylä. Their goal was to monitor the Russian troops in the northwest region. The Finnish authorities reacted nervously, accusing journalists of divulging state secrets. Now, the Finnish cloaks and daggers are searching for the leak with the help of a broken laptop.
niezalezna.pl: "Contacts with a Russian resident, working for foreign interests forgery for the benefit of Russian intelligence services. These are the charges brought against the former chiefs of Polish counterintelligence: Piotr Pytel, Janusz Nosek, and Krzysztof Dusza. If the information published by Gazeta Polska proves to be true, each of them can face up to 10 years in prison".
That's one heck of a story! Three former chiefs of Polish counterintelligence agencies are the secret agents of a potential enemy.
Antoni Macierewicz, Polish Minister of Defense: "All three are facing very serious charges. They were willingly and illegally cooperating with Russian intelligence. That's the worst kind of treason a Pole can perpetrate".
What's the best kind then? Well, these photos kind of give us a hint.
Still, right now, the charges against the Polish military mostly concern drinking alcoholic beverages together with Russians not far from the border of Kaliningrad. The persons in custody claim they were fulfilling their professional duty.
Film frame: "Drinking, huh? Drinking, and drinking, and drinking again. You've drunk everything away. You think Russia's done, huh? Never!"
In this context, the news from Kiev corresponds to a common trend of growing madness.
svpressa.ru: "Yet another major victory for Ukraine. A Russian spy was arrested in the early hours of December 20. And not just a journalist or a blogger, but the assistant secretary of Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.
Together with the Ukrainian security services, we managed to discover an official who's been working for the benefit of a foreign state among our secretaries. Today, he was arrested.
As always, the officers of the USS were professional and vigilant".
One might assume that the level of professionalism and vigilance of the Ukrainian Pinkertons is logically connected to the decision of their elder international partners to begin supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine.
tsn.ua: "In Rovenshchina, a recruiter of informants from the ranks of UAF officers was convicted of treason and sentenced to 14 years in prison. The traitor was also stripped of his ranks. According to the Prosecutor-General’s Office the man faced charges because he was supervising recruitment conducted by the Russian General Staff during the period of March-October 2016.
Right now, the USS has reported that another Russian spy had been arrested among top-ranking officials. They have revealed his rank — lieutenant colonel".
So many spies around, huh? Too many loaded guns are hanging on the wall. Too long have they been waiting their turn.
One could try to deceive the circumstances, mock them in another talk show, or just ignore them. Such a strategy is also possible.
Cartoon frame: "It seems like it's going to rain. It seems like it's going to rain. It seems like it's going to rain".
This detailed article is supposed to become the climax of the spy euphoria. It has been recently published in Foreign Policy. It tells us about the frightening scale of Russian espionage on the American continent and the real reasons behind the closing of the consulate in San Francisco. The details are classified though. That's why the author had to resort to the language of Aesop or Hitchcock.
foreignpolicy.com: "Why San Francisco? Why not close one of Russia’s other three consulates, in New York, Seattle, or Houston? And why now? The answer, I discovered, appears to revolve around an intensive, sustained and mystifying pattern of espionage emanating from there".
The mystical story revolves around Russian spies, more specifically, around Russian spies trying to steal the secrets of Silicon Valley. With the help of their unknown, invisible technologies, the agents were exchanging messages, but what's more important — they were allegedly sending data to the Pacific and the sky.
foreignpolicy.com: "U.S. intelligence officials began to notice a disturbing pattern. Suspected Russian operatives were appearing in places that were part of Russian flyovers, which were acting within the framework of the joint Open Skies program. They were right under the airplanes at the precise moment of a flyover. We suspect that the Russian operatives might have been transferring data to the airplanes. US intelligence assumes that they could have used the altitude of the consulate to send signals to submarines, trawlers, and other cell towers in international waters far away from the Californian coast".
It's still rather unclear, how even the most professional spies can position themselves right under a plane flying at an altitude of several of km. But from the perspective of a spy novel or a movie script, the scenario seems plausible enough.
But still, what signals did the spies supposedly send out to the sea and into the air. It appears, those were the locations of strategic communication nodes and channels, without which the US military would go blind, deaf, and mute at a critical time.
foreignpolicy.com: "Russian operatives were trying to penetrate the lines of communication, especially where undersea cables came ashore on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. But what was really unnerving was the Russians’ focus on communication nodes near military bases. According to multiple sources, U.S. officials eventually concluded that Moscow’s ultimate goal was to have the capacity to sever communications, paralyzing the U.S. military’s command and control systems. 'If they can shut down our grid, 'noted a former intelligence official 'we would go blind and they would be closer to leveling the playing field'”.
This over-the-top spy fever is, of course, a consequence and not the cause. It symbolizes the growing disagreement between the largest nuclear states. The disagreement that make the invisible front too small for two states like us.
Donald Trump, US President: "Russia and China are our two main 'rival powers' that seek to challenge American influence, values, and wealth. We will attempt to build a great partnership with those countries but the main thing we must rely on is our strength. Our strategy is based on keeping peace through strength."
The historian Arthur Herman published an article in the Wall Street Journal, accurately summing up Trump's speech as well as the essence of the new international military doctrine of the US.
Arthur Herman, historian: "We're observing the fundamental shift back to the world before 1917: an anarchic international arena in which every sovereign state, large or small has to rely only on its own strength for its security. In this new era, might inevitably makes right. Ideology no longer matters, but power does and the big powers inevitably dominate the small. This is the world of Otto von Bismarck who said in 1862: "The great questions of the time are not decided by speeches and votes of the majority but by iron and blood."
This has been Agitation and Propaganda. See you soon. Peace to your home.