The KGB’s success identifying CIA agents in the field | Hacker News Reader

The KGB’s success identifying CIA agents in the field

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199 pointscpete55 comments

The most important of which was how officers in the field under diplomatic and deep cover stationed across the globe were readily identified by the KGB.

A dirty little secret within the world of clandestine operations is that the majority of official-status officers (diplomatic or military cover) are known by the host country intelligence services. This is largely because you generally only take so much risk with ongoing collection efforts, for example going through customs and attending official diplomatic functions (dinners etc...) under status is typical and gives the locals a record. What they do in their "off time" is the real collection work, but even then their chance of gaining access to well placed contacts that have very specialized intelligence is low. The majority of officers know this, and it ends up being a political dance, where if someone gets too risky with their collection they get tagged and persona-non-grata'd.

The real question here is why the Soviets decided at that time to burn the officers that it knew about - because that turns into a tit-for-tat across waters that eats up resources and really strains diplomatic relations. I think the answer is very clear in that it was the last gasp of a dying system, so they were doing what they could to purge and wrest power.

Nothing particularly shocking or complicated here if you know how the system works.

> A dirty little secret within the world of clandestine operations is that the majority of official-status officers (diplomatic or military cover) are known by the host country intelligence services.

Do you have a citation that would support this?

Nope, that's why it's a "dirty little secret."

... so how do you know, and why should I believe you?

The most valuable information never comes with a citation. Thus the derogatory term "book smart."

Upvoted this. Not all cases require a rush for citations to support what you're saying.

It's easy to say your information is true when you say I can't look at the information and see if it's true. Not a tenable position, sir.

I didn't say "the most accurate information."

Try Google.

This is pretty widely known phenomena, as in anyone who has read anything about cold war espionage is aware of it. This article confirms it through a source from the former KGB.

Here's a 1985 NY Times article detailing Soviet use of this ruse in Mexico: http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/23/world/mexico-city-depicted...

Here's a 1983 NY Times article "Soviet Orders US Vice Consul Expelled as Spy": http://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/13/world/soviet-orders-us-vic...

Key quotes from the 1983 article:

>"The Soviet action against Mr. Augustenborg followed a pattern set twice earlier this year. In March, when Richard Osborne, a first secretary in the embassy's economic section, was expelled, and again in June, when Louis Thomas, an embassy attache, was ousted on spying charges, the Soviet announcements were issued promptly and said the men had been caught in the act on Moscow streets. Previously, such announcements had often been delayed or not made public at all."

>"...no American diplomat had been publicly expelled since 1977, and in that case, involving Martha Peterson, a vice consul at the embassy, there was no Soviet statement until 11 months later, after the United States had announced the arrest of two Soviet employees of the United Nations caught picking up documents on antisubmarine warfare."

>"The recent Soviet actions against Americans come at a time when Western counterintelligence services have stepped up their actions against Soviet agents. Nearly 100 Russians have been expelled for intelligence activities around the world ... Also in April, the United States expelled three members of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, including a military attache, Lieut. Col. Yevgeny N. Barmyantsev, who was reportedly caught retrieving what he thought were stolen American military secrets from beneath a tree in rural Maryland."

Unless I missed something, those articles just give specific examples of agents being uncovered. Nothing is given to indicate how many remained uncovered. Its a pretty long jump from examples of such to the general statement that "the majority of official-status officers" being known by their host countries.

From the 1985 article:

>"United States counterintelligence specialists estimate that at least 150 K.G.B. officers are working out of the embassy under cover as diplomats, clerks, chauffeurs, journalists and in other jobs."

Just as a point of reference, the US Embassy in Iran during the 1979 revolution and subsequent hostage crisis had something on the order of 75-100 people working there.

Again, Google around, there is a ton of material out there on these topics. If you read Russian, I'm sure there are similar stories talking about US spies. (Although the reliability of Soviet media is questionable at best) I was really interested in this stuff when I was a kid, and recalled these events vaguely from those days, there's plenty more to find.

You still haven't provided the evidence needed though to support the conclusion of a majority given some or even many.

Also, we are talking about an endeavour in which deception is the norm, so even evidence like this is more than a little bit questionable.

What evidence would you like? Embassy payroll documents annotated with "spy" and "not a spy"?

Given the privileged status of the embassy and the protections offered by diplomatic status (eg the diplomatic pouch) you'd be crazy not to staff your embassy with spies, at least in any country worth spying on. You'll probably get a few actual diplomats to do the actual diplomacy too, and the occasional low-level passport stamper, but the default assumption should be that they're pretty much all spies.

My point is that this is the kind of evidence you would need to support the original claim. If the top-level comment I was pursuing had, instead of making the claim that the majority of the spies posing as diplomats were known as spies to the host nation, had rather claimed that many of them were known, I wouldn't have pursued it.

Edit: fixed language

What are you talking about? Look it up if you're not going to believe anyone here.

> What are you talking about?

I think you need to read this comment thread starting at the top: my point is that the original claim I was asking for a citation in is essentially unsupportable, so no citations exist.

Almost all of the official covers (covert) are known. Hence they have a safety net of simply being persona-non-grata'd. It's the non-offical clandestine covers who really get screwed.

One submission on HN a few months ago, IIRC, was a history of how the USA dealt with a subtle bugging of all the typewriters in the US embassy. Given penetrations like that, it's not much of a surprise if the USSR had known most/all of the US's spies...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Murray makes an interesting claim https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/06/five-reasons... :

> 3) MI6 officers work under diplomatic cover 99% of the time. Their alias is as members of the British Embassy, or other diplomatic status mission. A portion are declared to the host country. The truth is that Embassies of different powers very quickly identify who are the spies in other missions. MI6 have huge dossiers on the members of the Russian security services – I have seen and handled them. The Russians have the same. In past mass expulsions, the British government has expelled 20 or 30 spies from the Russian Embassy in London. The Russians retaliated by expelling the same number of British diplomats from Moscow, all of whom were not spies! As a third of our “diplomats” in Russia are spies, this was not coincidence. This was deliberate to send the message that they knew precisely who the spies were, and they did not fear them.

(I quickly tried to look it up, but there are so many mutual expulsions it would've taken too long.)

There is a strong implication in the article that the Soviets were much better than the Americans at this game.

The implication was that the Americans were "embarrassed" by how easily their agents were identified (or conformed to a formula of sorts). I don't believe it mentioned if the Soviets were in fact "better" at either spying, or identifying spies.

Mostly because the Soviets did everything under a veil of secrecy -- likely as much to shield their own people from what was going on as the West. This extended to most parts of the government, not just the military/intelligence apparatus.

The definition of "better" in this game is dependent on what your goals are.

There are three primary things you can do with a foreign IO on your soil in increasing order of difficulty: 1. PNG them 2. Collect on them 3. Flip them. Add in #4 of killing them if you are a certain type of country - very, very rare though and headline worthy.

In fact in some cases it's worth more to let an IO keep stealing secrets, and know what they are, than it is to get rid of them - so these things aren't binary.

edit: I note this distinction because in the case of this article it is discussing specifically officers that the Agency knew were burned - which serves the same goal as kicking them out of your country as they are no longer operationally effective.

Exactly. But, those are official covers, most of these are covert but not necessarily clandestine. There are people with Non-official covers (the real clandestine people)who don't get the grace of diplomatic immunity and persona-non-grata if they are caught.

The problem today is that with LinkedIn and Facebook, some CIA personnel are stupid enough to actually mention their status with the Agency, or are friends/connections with known CIA Analysts etc. who do mention their status.

NSA Contractors sometimes mention classified codenames in their LinkedIn page. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130617/13482623512/disco...

Are they actually NSA contractors, or is this a honeytrap?

That seems like something that competent counterintelligence people should be monitoring and shutting down.

Hell, they probably should have unit in their new employee orientation covering this: "Do not list your occupation as 'Spy'" on LinkedIn.

I kinda wanna put spy on my linkedin page now

Honestly, the CIA should want you to too. The more randos listing fake intelligence activities that can't be easily discounted, the more time russian counterintelligence has to spend chasing down false leads.

> time russian counterintelligence has to spend chasing down false leads.

But don't do it if you ever plan on actually traveling to Russia or China. IIRC, they've held innocent Westerners in the past on suspicions of espionage.

I once read an NSA employee manual which talked about how you should talk about your work. It said you should be truthful without making it sound exciting or mysterious.

If asked "where do you work" you say "the department of defense". If asked what branch you say "the NSA". If asked what you do, you say "research". And that's it, apparently.

No doubt there are other manuals for other types of employee, but they're not available on the Internet.

We used to just mess with crappy computers all day while doing the equivalent of memorizing phonebooks. suuuuper boring stuff.

Some people work for the CIA as analysts or even basic jobs like accounting. It's not all one big super secret thing. If it were you wouldn't have the top spots like the head of recruitment or the director known. There's one professor at my alma mater who is openly known as a in-resident CIA officer and helps people with their tradecraft, it's all on his university site profile page.

I interviewed with the CIA out of college. The first thing they do during interviews is disabuse the applicant of any notion he's applying to be James Bond. The clandestine people are only a tiny, tiny portion of the organization.

Mostly what people do in Langley is move paper from one side of the (electronic) desk to the other, and I don't think foreign powers have any trouble photographing and identifying them as they arrive at the office.

Very few people who work for the spy agencies are "under cover." The ones who are under cover use fake names for their service.

Living in DC you'll run into lot of people who work as analysts for CIA/NSA/FBI/State etc. Some of them have business cards with CIA on it.

The CIA has a starbucks inside.

The first part matters a lot less now that the enemy has a copy of all the data the office of personel had collected (everything on everybody with a security clearence who were not CIA). If somebody has access to classified material as part of his/her work and is not on that list that person is CIA.

> Any Soviet citizen had an intimate acquaintance with how bureaucracies function

This makes me wonder whether there is any literature out of the Soviet Union on topics like this, kind of like how the U.S. produced works like Dale Carnegie's How to make friends and influence people.

I'm trying to decipher the implication. Is it that Americans have a unique understanding of friendship and influence?

It's that 'Winning Friends and Influencing People' was a gateway to success, and an activity the vast majority of the population was trying to be successful at. Whereas a soviet book on navigating bureaucracy would serve the same role.

Thanks yes, that is pretty much what I meant.

"How to make friends and influence people" was actually written more from a sales perspective. The topics usually boil down to efficiently establishing trust with lots of people. While I'm not sure this is really what's being asked, it does actually make a little sense in a capitalist vs communist sort of way.

Russian bureaucracy goes back centuries. I don't think that the way things were handled was fundamentally different in 1970 from what it was in 1870. For literature on the topic look for the classics: Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Ilf and Petrov are good ones. The rules are simple: you give bribes, in a form of money, goods, or favors. If you're on the receiving end of a bribe, make sure you share with relevant people. Other than that, the methods described in Dale Carnegie books work just as well in Russia as in America.

If you find out how to very successfully navigate and game the type of bureaucracy in the soviet system, it's probably not in your best interest to either shout the fact from the rooftops, or to share your secrets with too many people.

The Soviets weren't unique in terms of sprawling bureaucracy. Anyone attending a large public university is getting a similar experience, albeit with better food.

Anyone attending or teaching in a large university, public or private, is getting a similar experience, albeit with worse poetry and a weaker space program.

I think that Ilya Zemtsov's Encyclopedia of Soviet Life could be entertaining reading for you.

Excerpts here: https://books.google.fi/books?id=XFje-RiHeisC&pg=PA302&dq=en...

That does look interesting, thanks.

I wonder if this pattern could still be applied.

For a NOC they'll setup a shell corporation called "Southern Electronics Corporation, LLC" or some other discrete sounding name and have a real website, office address and phone number actually manned, but surely they register the corporations, domains, phone numbers at the same place, staff the phones with the same voices...

Makes me wonder if they fixed the problem or if it's just hidden one level deeper.

There are a lot of services which will act as the Registered Agent for an LLC or corporation. Those can have hundreds of corporations listed at their mailing address with the same phone number. It wouldn't be too difficult to put a few NOC shell corps into the buckets already existing legit businesses.

It is absolutely applicable. In fact this is pretty much how the whole "extraordinary renditions" program was (fairly easily) unravelled by journalists.

Dummy ("brass-plaque") corporations, recycled aircraft registrations, special landing permits at military airports... just a matter of connecting the dots, basically.

Old school investigative journalism, in other words.

Some civilians and journalists uncovered FBI spy planes by correlating generic, formulaic fake company names and shared addresses: https://storify.com/jjwiseman/tracking-fbi-aerial-surveillan...

two thoughts

1. In the 70's and the 80's our Soviet counter-intel was fairly compromised. Aldrich Ames and Robert Hassan are just the biggest examples. That probably does a better job explaining a Soviet CI advantage than 'we looked at the things agents did and looked for correlations.' I mean, every agency has been doing that forever.

2. There are a number of different types of cover, like the article points out. Diplomatic cover is the 'laziest' and for some (usually very low lever or very high level) people it's not really meant to fool anyone. There's private sector cover, with dummy corps and rented office buildings, and genuine P&L sheets. Private sector cover can be extremely clandestine, and extremely sophisticated. As AndrewKemendo points out, the things that this article points out are maybe not very impressive at all.

Hanssen was posting stories to Usenet's alt.sex.stories in the late 1990s, stories of voyeurism about his wife ( https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.sex.stories/3e1fHGTW_Pc/... ). He can't be said to have been keeping the lowest of profiles.

The pattern isn't described until the second to last paragraph. I'll just c&p:

>Thus one productive line of inquiry quickly yielded evidence: the differences in the way agency officers undercover as diplomats were treated from genuine foreign service officers (FSOs). The pay scale at entry was much higher for a CIA officer; after three to four years abroad a genuine FSO could return home, whereas an agency employee could not; real FSOs had to be recruited between the ages of 21 and 31, whereas this did not apply to an agency officer; only real FSOs had to attend the Institute of Foreign Service for three months before entering the service; naturalized Americans could not become FSOs for at least nine years but they could become agency employees; when agency officers returned home, they did not normally appear in State Department listings; should they appear they were classified as research and planning, research and intelligence, consular or chancery for security affairs; unlike FSOs, agency officers could change their place of work for no apparent reason; their published biographies contained obvious gaps; agency officers could be relocated within the country to which they were posted, FSOs were not; agency officers usually had more than one working foreign language; their cover was usually as a “political” or “consular” official (often vice-consul); internal embassy reorganizations usually left agency personnel untouched, whether their rank, their office space or their telephones; their offices were located in restricted zones within the embassy; they would appear on the streets during the working day using public telephone boxes; they would arrange meetings for the evening, out of town, usually around 7.30 p.m. or 8.00 p.m.; and whereas FSOs had to observe strict rules about attending dinner, agency officers could come and go as they pleased.

This proves American Intelligence is an oxymoron.

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