Day 227: Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy

Some basic features of the political culture emerging out of anonymity are neither new nor difficult to grasp. Consider the anonymous leak that revealed COINTELPRO, a systematic and illegal spying program leveled against the American population. One Pennsylvanian night in 1971, a group calling itself the “Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI” forced its way into an FBI field office with a crowbar. As millions of Americans tuned into their radios to listen to Muhammad Ali square off with Joe Frazier in an epic fifteen-round boxing match, the activists emptied file cabinets of more than one thousand documents. Those on the subject of political surveillance were leaked to the media and published in the March 1972 issue of WIN Magazine, a journal of the War Resisters League, and COINTELPRO was revealed to the public for the first time. The program was initiated in 1956 by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and operated successfully until 1971.

COINTELPRO’s mandate was initially narrow: to disrupt the internal operations of the Communist Party USA, which Hoover believed to be under the direct influence of Russian infiltrators. Very quickly, its scope expanded to include the disruption of home-grown political activism of all varieties, including radical, conservative, and even moderate liberal efforts. One stated goal was to

prevent the rise of a “messiah” who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement. Malcolm X might have been such a “messiah”; he is the martyr of the movement today. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, and Elijah Muhammed all aspire to this position … King could be a very real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed “obedience” to “white, liberal doctrines” (nonviolence) and embrace black nationalism.

And, indeed, the documents provide clear evidence of the elaborate steps the FBI took to monitor King in particular. The illegal surveillance lasted for years, starting in the late ’50s when the program was first authorized by Hoover. When King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, William Cornelius Sullivan, associate director of the FBI, wrote to Hoover, “We must mark [King] now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of Communism, the Negro and national security.” King was considered “an unprincipled man” who had a “weakness in his character.” Sullivan wrote, “We will at the proper time when it can be done without embarrassment to the Bureau, expose King as an immoral opportunist who is not a sincere person but is exploiting the racial situation for personal gain.” Soon after King was named “Man of the Year” by Time magazine, the FBI was illegally authorized to bug his hotel room; “trespass is involved,” they wrote. The resulting transcripts were presented to Hoover, who responded, “They will destroy the burrhead.” The bugs captured evidence of King’s marital infidelity, which excited Sullivan and Hoover, since the recordings could be used to destroy the “animal.” An excerpt from the FBI letter sent to blackmail King evinces the ugly historical truth that the US government terrorized one of the nation’s most revered and peaceful civil rights crusaders:

King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.
...
Let’s fast forward to February 5, 2011, when Anonymous uncovered a corporate plot devised by Washington, DC–based security firm HBGary Federal to spy on and disrupt WikiLeaks. Given the digital nature of contemporary documents, there is no longer a need to leave the comfort of one’s home, much less break into some office space, to access secret documents. Working together on IRC, Anonymous hackers penetrated the HBGary computer system and downloaded seventy thousand company emails, along with other files that included a PowerPoint presentation entitled “The WikiLeaks Threat.” The tactics suggested therein are strikingly similar to those practiced and perfected during COINTELPRO. The presentation outlines a set of strategies the firm claimed could be “deployed tomorrow”...

~~Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces Of Anonymous -by- Gabriella Coleman

Day 206: Deception: The Untold Story of East West Espionage

Harder evidence comes from an operation involving the Estonian Voldemar Kiik, one of the most successful British agents of the post-war era. His story is almost entirely unknown outside Estonia, where he was buried with military honours in the national cemetery, next to Rebane, after his death in 2002. His mission was to reconnoitre the airfield at Tartu, Estonia’s second city. Details of his mission remain classified to this day, but it would have been of huge interest to British and American intelligence to know about any hardened hangars, the quality and quantity of air defences, and signs of nuclear weapons storage and transport. Kiik was a medical student in London when Rebane approached him, probably in 1950. He was the ideal recruit – brainy, determined and a cut above the other Estonian young men in London, whose patriotism often outweighed their other talents (they, in turn, found his successful womanising tiresome). He was already battle-hardened. Mobilised by the Red Army in 1940, he jumped off a troop train and hid in a forest before being conscripted by the Germans. Wounded in the head in the battle of Velikaya Luka near Leningrad, he was left for dead during a German retreat, only to be rescued during a counterattack. He detested both occupying powers equally. Rather than exchange the mandatory ‘Heil Hitler!’ greeting, he and the other Estonians in his unit would shout ‘Ei Ütle!’ (Don’t Say!). The pronunciation was close enough to fool the Germans, and gave a pleasant tingle of resistance.

As well as the usual tradecraft, he was schooled intensively in Russian (which he did not speak) and in Pelmanism – the knack of remembering large quantities of data. But in a notable difference from the carelessness that surrounded Operation Jungle, he does not seem to have been trained with the other Estonians. With a cyanide pill sewn into his lip he parachuted into Estonia in the summer of 1952. Though tempted to visit his mother – it would have been his only chance to see her before she died – he concentrated on his mission, perhaps using the remnants of a pre-war British network for support. His route back involved a perilous crossing of the Norwegian–Soviet frontier where disaster nearly struck. Another British agent making the same crossing shortly beforehand had come across some border guards asleep at their post and had shot them, perhaps unaware that he was complicating things for anyone else. The result was a frenzy of border-guard activity. Starving, sodden and fearing capture, Kiik waited in a swamp for two weeks, living off berries. He then took a Benzedrine pill he had been saving for emergencies and crossed the border where his reception party was still waiting, as this previously unpublished picture depicts (Kiik is on the right).bh His name did not appear on a list of Estonians wanted by the KGB, and his family was not harassed, showing that the Soviet authorities never got wind of his mission (they believed he had emigrated to Canada). Prematurely grey after his ordeal, he then worked for the British government as an instructor in covert operations (among his pupils, he once said, was the future King of Norway).

Kiik’s successful mission, the mysterious agent who crossed the border before him, Captain Nelberg’s letter and some other evidence of separate, successful missions all support the theory that SIS, perhaps as early as 1950 and certainly by 1952, had reason to continue Operation Jungle as a bluff. If so, the human calculations are chilling. Were the agents still inside the Soviet Union counted as good as dead? What of the men being sent to join them? The verdict of sheer incompetence might be moderated by the steel nerves and stunning cynicism that such decisions would involve.

Meanwhile a conflict between intelligence and political objectives was plaguing the other side too. The Soviet authorities wanted to lure a senior Estonian émigré figure – ideally Rebane – across the border for a humiliating show trial. The KGB was more interested in further penetration of SIS and the CIA. But with Rebane belatedly aware of the deception, the hunters had become the hunted. It is unclear how far Rebane and SIS were at cross-purposes in the final years of the operation. The wily Estonian claimed later that even after the closure of the Latvian and Lithuanian operations, he fought to maintain the radio games with the KGB-controlled partisans, in the hope of getting his own agents back. He succeeded in at least one instance, but his career with SIS was over. The once-dashing officer ended up working as a night watchman before moving to Germany and a job in that country’s intelligence service. Having dodged repeated attempts by the KGB to entrap him, he died in 1976, having burned his papers; his devoted secretary Liis Dillie Lindre lived to see her country regain independence in 1991, yet continued to sleep with a loaded revolver by her bed (in a suburb of Brussels) even after the Soviet Union collapsed. Rebane’s Latvian and Lithuanian colleagues moved to the United States. Carr was shunted first sideways and then out of the service; until his death in 1988 he blamed Philby, not his own incompetence, for the fiasco. Viktor van Jung, a cerebral and charismatic Estonian émigré who had trained two CIA agents who went on a doomed mission in 1954, went on to a high-flying career in the agency. Strong indications are that he was the CIA officer who ran Ryszard Kukilński, a senior Polish officer who passed on invaluable Warsaw Pact secrets to NATO.

According to Rositzke, none of the CIA operatives returned from their missions. But a sprinkling of former agents who survived inside the Soviet Union did crop up after 1991, with embarrassing consequences for their spymasters. One of the most conspicuous cases involved Sweden, a country that had maintained a stony silence over its espionage efforts in the Baltics, which seem to have been every bit as disastrous as those of SIS and the CIA. The activities of the C-byrån (C-Agency), renamed in 1946 as T-kontoret (T-Office), began during the war and were stepped up in 1948 when a Soviet attack on Sweden seemed all too likely. Using Baltic émigrés and run in close cooperation with SIS, they finished in 1957, after the humiliating public exposure of a Swedish spy ring and a formal Soviet diplomatic protest.

~~Deception: The Untold Story of East West Espionage Today -by- Edward Lucas

Day 191: Ace of Spies

If Reilly did marry bigamously after the Russo-Japanese War, the question arises as to how he managed to conceal his second wife’s existence for so long. The most likely explanation is that she was found secreted away in ‘backwater’ locations where he had contacts and connections who would ensure she was well taken care of. Odessa and Port Arthur are two such possibilities. After Russia’s defeat in the war of 1904/05, the Liaotung peninsula became a Japanese possession, eventually becoming part of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Whatever the reality of Reilly’s connections with the Japanese during the war, it is evident that he had, and continued to have, very close business connections with a number of businesses in Japan and her occupied territories. As someone known to the Japanese authorities, Reilly would have had no trouble in accommodating his new spouse in Port Arthur, which after the war was rebuilt and restored by the Japanese. His representative and principal agent in Japan was William Gill, in Narunouchi, Tokyo. Again, Gill would have been well placed to act as conduit and to ensure that Reilly’s wife was well provided for.

Likewise, Alexandre Weinstein became a trusted lieutenant of Reilly’s before the Russo-Japanese War, and remained such for over a quarter of a century. If Reilly did take a second wife, then Weinstein above all would not only have been aware of her, but would more than likely have played a pivotal role in liaising between ‘husband and wife’. When a decade later Reilly joined the Royal Flying Corps, he named his next of kin as his wife, ‘Mrs A. Reilly’, who in the event of his death could be contacted at 120 Broadway, New York City, a business address being run on his behalf at the time by Alexandre Weinstein. Further evidence concerning a possible second marriage is examined in later chapters.

In contrast to the comings and goings of wives, ex-wives and mistresses, one female relationship that survived the test of time was that with his first cousin Felitsia. Born in the Grodno gubernia of Russian Poland, she later moved to Vienna during the closing years of the 1890s. The city’s large Jewish population lived principally in the old quarter, and it was here that Reilly visited Felitsia whenever he could. She was the only member of his immediate family that he kept in touch with after leaving Odessa in 1893, and her existence was kept a closely guarded secret from all who knew him. It was through these visits to Vienna that he made the brief acquaintance of an influential businessman whose precise role in Reilly’s story has since become a source of some controversy.

Josef Mendrochowitz, an Austrian Jew, was born in 1863 and came to St Petersburg in 1904. In partnership with Count Thaddaeus Lubiensky he founded a firm of brokers, Mendrochowitz and Lubiensky, who successfully secured the right to represent Blohm & Voss shortly thereafter. Under the representation contract, Blohm & Voss undertook to pay Mendrochowitz and Lubiensky a commission of 5% on each successful business deal. In Ace of Spies, Robin Bruce Lockhart argues that ‘Mendrochovitch and Lubensky’ were awarded the rights of representation in relation to Blohm & Voss in 1911, as a result of Reilly’s chicanery with the Russian Admiralty. Blohm & Voss archives and Mendrochowitz and Lubiensky’s own business records demonstrate quite clearly that this was not the case. At the time the contract was awarded, Reilly was not even in Russia. According to the St Petersburg Police Department, Reilly first arrived in the city en route from Brussels on 28 January 1905, where he seems to have stayed for a comparatively short period of time before moving on to Vienna. By the summer of 1905 he was back in St Petersburg, this time with the intention of staying on a more or less permanent basis.

Thanks to a chance meeting with George Walford, a British born lawyer, whom he accompanied to St Petersburg’s Warsaw Railway Station on 10 September 1905, an account of his activities at this time have found their way into Ochrana records. Walford was under Ochrana surveillance, and Reilly was watched and followed from 11–29 September as a result of his being seen with him. Why Walford was under surveillance is unclear, although it was routine practice for the Ochrana to keep a watchful eye on foreign citizens, a task they took even more seriously in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War. The surveillance on Reilly yielded nothing of value for the Ochrana, although it is most helpful to us in confirming that on arrival in St Petersburg, Reilly made contact with Mendrochowitz and Lubiensky, and actually lived in their apartment building at 2 Kazanskaya. According to the surveillance report, Reilly also visited the offices of the China Eastern Railway and introduced himself as a telephone supplier. Whether or not he succeeded in making a sale is unknown. Bearing in mind that Ochrana ‘tailers’ often gave their targets nicknames in written reports, Reilly was appropriately referred to as ‘The Broker’.

If Reilly had nothing to do with Mendrochowitz and Lubiensky securing the right to represent Blohm & Voss, did he have any connection or dealings at all with the firm? Details of the firm’s dealings are contained in six volumes of files containing over 1,000 pages of correspondence and records now held by the Hamburg State Archive. In addition to the two partners, there appear to have been four other employees, including deputy manager Jachimowitz, who ran the office in the absence of the partners and was particularly well connected with influential Russian politicians. Reilly’s name is not among those employed by the firm, but is mentioned in letters and invoices concerning his work on behalf of Blohm & Voss, as a freelance broker during the winter of 1908 and the spring of 1909. During this time he was working with Mendrochowitz and Lubiensky, assisting them in marketing a new Blohm & Voss boiler system. Company records show that agents or brokers like Reilly were often used to ‘influence’ people in favour of the company.

~~Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly -by- Andrew Cook