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+--- Thread: Real-life Espionage Incidents Discussion (/thread-971.html)
RE: Real-life Espionage Incidents Discussion - praxis - 04-09-2010 12:56 PM
Only a year in chokey for selling MI6 secrets! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7979967/MI6-agent-jailed-for-trying-to-sell-secrets.html
RE: Real-life Espionage Incidents Discussion - Tea Lady - 17-09-2010 04:29 PM
What with the Pope visit, the terrorist plot on the Pope that was foiled earlier today, and the murder last night of a high profile exiled Pakistan leader in London, one can be sure our friends at Thames House won't be having much of a rest this weekend !!
Plenty of ideas there for S10 of Spooks.
RE: Real-life Espionage Incidents Discussion - tom quinn - 20-11-2010 07:59 PM
regarding the russian sleeper business, normally moscow is quite adapt at the spy game. ("it appears the russians have had their own version of sugar horse only bigger and better" harry peace) so for them to get it so wrong surprises me, it would appear that there is another angle to the story we have not considered. especially if you consider how much info was released to the media.
wouldnt surprise me if they were an operation that was ment to fail for some reason, i mean if it was as was claimed to influence policy of government and companies then the russians allready have the power to do that through other means
regarding the british mi6 spy found dead in his flat from what i know it was a professional job and not a robbery gone wrong as to gain entry to his flat appartment i think it was secure access, i mean an mi6 spy is not going to live in a flee bitten bedsit with wide open security lol. and there was no signs of forced entry, add to the fact the company that owns his building he lived in was russian(apparently)you start to get into kgb..i mean fsb territory. suddenly things start to make sense. to some in russia the cold war never ended.
RE: Real-life Espionage Incidents Discussion - lwhite53 - 20-11-2010 11:51 PM
(20-11-2010 07:59 PM)tom quinn Wrote: regarding the russian sleeper business, normally moscow is quite adapt at the spy game. ("it appears the russians have had their own version of sugar horse only bigger and better" harry peace) so for them to get it so wrong surprises me, it would appear that there is another angle to the story we have not considered. especially if you consider how much info was released to the media.
wouldnt surprise me if they were an operation that was ment to fail for some reason, i mean if it was as was claimed to influence policy of government and companies then the russians allready have the power to do that through other means.
An interesting follow-up to the "Russian sleeper" story. It appears, according to the Washington Post, that this op was shipped to US authorities by a high-ranking Russian spy who has disappeared from Russia and is believed to be living in hiding somewhere in the West.
RE: Real-life Espionage Incidents Discussion - tom quinn - 21-11-2010 02:19 PM
Quote:An interesting follow-up to the "Russian sleeper" story. It appears, according to the Washington Post, that this op was shipped to US authorities by a high-ranking Russian spy who has disappeared from Russia and is believed to be living in hiding somewhere in the West.
if true that would go someway to backing up what i thought, a defection of some sorts is still not off the cards. though one thing that is puzzling is, if true then where did the wp get their facts from? or are they offering conjecture? a high ranking russian spy defecting would not be mainstream news and nobody privy to that kind of info would talk as there would be very few people privy to it in the first place.
RE: Real-life Espionage Incidents Discussion - lwhite53 - 21-11-2010 05:08 PM
(21-11-2010 02:19 PM)tom quinn Wrote:Quote:An interesting follow-up to the "Russian sleeper" story. It appears, according to the Washington Post, that this op was shipped to US authorities by a high-ranking Russian spy who has disappeared from Russia and is believed to be living in hiding somewhere in the West.
if true that would go someway to backing up what i thought, a defection of some sorts is still not off the cards. though one thing that is puzzling is, if true then where did the wp get their facts from? or are they offering conjecture? a high ranking russian spy defecting would not be mainstream news and nobody privy to that kind of info would talk as there would be very few people privy to it in the first place.
It wouldn't be mainstream news except in Washington, DC where all the US security services (CIA, FBI, NSA, Pentagon intelligence, etc) have their main headquarters. And the Washington Post has reliable contacts in all of them. Leaks are rife in DC and the Post is always on the receiving end!
WikiLeaks - FATBOY - 01-12-2010 04:38 PM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/128567
So does the US have (or has had) a source in North Korea, Iran, China or is it all SIGINT?
RE: Real-life Espionage Incidents Discussion - DogSoSmall - 02-12-2010 09:46 AM
I didn't know if anyone would be interested in this discusssion on Woman's Hour about women in MI5
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search?q=spooks
It starts at 10:38
I was interested because my daughter went to an MI5 career open day when she was at uni. I say "open". Even to just go along to find out a bit more about the job she had to be invited, fill out some sort of application, and then be accepted for the day. She was told the date, but it was in a location "to be advised". She was given the location just beforehand, and was not allowed to divulge it to anyone (that did make me smile a bit - do you think that little touch was just to make it a bit more exciting for potential candidates?). She was very well behaved and I still don't know where she went or what was said, apart from one thing: apparently the people talking to them insisted that they had "not lost a man since the second world war". Bearing in mind the recent story in London as well as the one in South America I find this quite hard to believe and I rather read it as "we haven't lost a man that we couldn't pass off as an unfortunate accident unrelated to work".
Anyway, the impression that she came away with was that working for MI5 really was a job for young men. Not because of the danger, but because of the general ethos of the profession. The woman in this interview seems to rather confirm that, even though she is clearly treading very carefully with what she says!
RE: Real-life Espionage Incidents Discussion - A Cousin - 02-12-2010 02:51 PM
(02-12-2010 09:46 AM)DogSoSmall Wrote: I didn't know if anyone would be interested in this discusssion on Woman's Hour about women in MI5
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search?q=spooks
It starts at 10:38
I saw this the other day and meant to listen to it. Thanks for reminding me!
You may know this already, but the woman in this interview is Annie Machon who has a very interesting history with MI5. She fell in love with her Section Head, David Shayler, who told her about several illegal activities he witnessed at MI5. She wound up resigning so he could go public with his claims. After they blew the whistle, they went on the run for quite some time. Just search her online and you will find her. It's all out there. Helluva story, actually. The point is, she is a very vocal activist re: the unethical practices of MI5 that put the UK at risk.
RE: Real-life Espionage Incidents Discussion - Byatil - 02-12-2010 11:05 PM
Did anyone see this story? It was in the news again recently, and it totally reminded me of Spooks: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/9179684.stm
The BBC Wrote:In an exclusive interview with BBC Newsnight, Lieutenant-Colonel Oleg Silchenko, a senior Russian policeman accused of involvement in the mysterious death in jail of prominent Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, has spoken about the claims for the first time.
Lt Col Silchenko denied inflicting suffering amounting to torture on the jailed lawyer, who was being held on tax evasion charges when he died in unexplained circumstances in Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina detention centre one year ago, and hit back at his accusers.
"What happened was a big misfortune for Magnitsky's relatives, but the job of the investigation was to investigate, not to put pressure on him. We had enough proof of his guilt," Lt Col Silchenko, one of Russia's most elite investigators, told Newsnight.
"The attempt to accuse law enforcement agencies of involvement in this crime is absurd," he added.