Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Germany turns blind eye as Russian spy quietly slips away...

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Germany turns blind eye as Russian spy quietly slips away...

    Germany turns a blind eye as Russian spy slips quietly away
    By Tony Paterson in Berlin
    (Filed: 24/04/2005)

    In the grand old days of espionage, Soviet agents caught on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall would be interrogated, imprisoned and, very occasionally, handed back to their KGB masters in a tense exchange of spies at Checkpoint Charlie.

    How times have changed. A Russian spy who was caught red-handed buying German military secrets has escaped prosecution after a deal was struck to prevent the breakdown of burgeoning relations between Berlin and the Kremlin.

    One of the most blatant acts of Russian espionage in Germany since the Cold War has come to light two weeks after Chancellor Gerhard Schrцder and Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, signed a historic multi-billion dollar trade deal.

    Alexander Kuzmin, 45, was ostensibly a consul who oversaw the issue of travel visas at the Russian consulate in Hamburg. In reality, he was a member of the Kremlin's 12,000-strong GRU military intelligence branch.

    German counter-espionage agents established that on at least 20 occasions, Kuzmin travelled to remote bars around Heidelberg to meet a German army official who offered to sell military information in exchange for payments totalling Ђ10,000 (Ј6,827). After a few meetings, however, his informant contacted German intelligence.

    From then, it insists, most of the information passed on was anodyne material designed to mislead Kuzmin's paymasters. The Russian was finally arrested in November after he failed to recognise that the man he had come to meet was a mole reporting back to Berlin.

    The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BVS), the Germany equivalent of MI5, failed to persuade him to work as a double agent even after it threatened to reveal to his wife that he was having an affair. Kuzmin was withdrawn on Mr Putin's orders after he was arrested.

    He is believed to have escaped prosecution thanks to direct intervention by Mr Schrцder, although the Chancellor, on first-name terms with Mr Putin - himself a KGB officer in Germany during the Cold War - has refused to comment.

    The matter was discreetly closed in December when Hans Fromm, the head of the BVS, flew to Moscow for talks. Two days later, Kuzmin was on an aircraft home. The fate of the German mole is not known.

    German intelligence believe that up to 130 of their Russian counterparts still operate in Germany. "Things have hardly altered since the fall of the Berlin Wall," said Wolbert Smidt, a former German counter intelligence officer.

    It has been a busy month for Germany's spy catchers. In a separate scandal, a former employee of a German arms company was arrested on charges of attempting to sell military secrets to the Chinese.

    Mr Schrцder recently described Germany's relations with Russia as having "never been so good". The new trade deal is designed to further bilateral research, innovation and trade, including building a Russian gas pipeline under the Baltic.


    http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...24/wgerm24.xml
    "They want to test our feelings.They want to know whether Muslims are extremists or not. Death to them and their newspapers."

    Protester

  • #2
    Spies should be executed...
    No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
    I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
    even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
    He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Confed999
      Spies should be executed...





      Gerhard doesn't want to offend his friend Vladimir..........
      "They want to test our feelings.They want to know whether Muslims are extremists or not. Death to them and their newspapers."

      Protester

      Comment


      • #4
        Eh, Tony Paterson from city of Berlin you go on!
        Just do not stop!
        Show true face of Russians and Vladimir the Red-KGB Devil.
        Next articles by T. Paterson – “Putin and his war campaign against Zulu anteaters” and ,of course, “Russian spy captured in Alyska when he tried to melt down all snow”.
        Truth and honor!

        Russian spy caught , Russian spy released.
        So?
        Not the first time, not the last time.
        Last edited by Prosto ILya; 24 Apr 05,, 21:00.

        Comment

        Working...
        X