Tony Blair didn't deny
Russian charges that British spies have used high-tech rocks as electronic mail drops in a spy scandal that threatens to envelope Western-supported NGOs--through British funding and contacts, some of whom have been named as accused spies. Here's RIA Novosti's version:
The program also alleged that Marc Doe, a first secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, had been authorizing regular payments to Russian non-governmental organizations. Several documents signed by him were shown as evidence of cash payments to NGOs operating in Moscow, including 23,000 pounds (about $40,000) to the Moscow Helsinki Group, and 5,719 pounds ($9,700) to the Eurasia Foundation.
Another document signed by Doe, a 27-year-old graduate of Durham University, contained information on cash payments for an obscure project for establishing schools of public inspectors in remote areas of Siberia and Russia's Far East.
FSB spokesperson Diana Shemyakina said earlier that thousands of NGOs were working in Russia, although only 92 were officially registered by the Justice Ministry. Most of them were founded and provided with funds by the U.S. government and public organizations, and by its NATO allies, she said.
Non-governmental organizations with financing from other countries are thought to have played a major role in the "revolutions" that have swept former Soviet states in recent years, prompting some Russian politicians to raise concerns that similar activities were being carried out in Russia. Parliament passed a bill restricting the operation of NGOs at the end of last year.
Apart from Doe, the Rossiya program said embassy employees Christopher Pirt, 30, and Paul Cronton, were also involved in espionage, as was 32-year-old researcher Andre Fleming.
On the other hand, this
Guardian story from Britain is more amusing, sort of "Get Smart" meets "Austin Powers."
An x-ray of the box, shown on Russian state television, showed four big batteries and a radio transmitter-receiver tightly packed together - a device of such crude simplicity it would have made Q, James Bond's technical wizard, shudder.
"First the Russian asset would walk past the stone," Nikolai Zakharov, deputy spokesman for the Federal Security Service (FSB), as the KGB is now known, told the Guardian. "He would send information to the stone from his palmtop, and later the embassy employee would pass by and collect it from another palmtop."
He said the device, a 21st century version of the "dead letter drop", had a range of up to 20m and could send and receive coded signals to or from small palmtop computers, almost identical to those available on Britain's high streets. It enabled British diplomats to communicate indirectly with their alleged Russian agents: it meant they never had to be in the same room as them. Four members of the British embassy staff were identified by the Russians and accused of being part of a spy ring. The four were all still at their posts last night.
Interfax, the Russian news agency, reported that the FSB had fanned out across Moscow to check other potentially suspicious rocks. Sergei Ignatchenko, chief spokesman for the FSB, told the agency that a second device had been spotted but was retrieved by British agents.
The echoes of Ian Fleming and John le Carré will raise a smile in Britain and elsewhere. But there is serious side to this, and not only for the alleged Russian agent being held in Moscow accused of handling state secrets. Though old cold war enemies - such as Britain and Russia - have set up procedures to cooperate quite closely on counter-terrorism, they still indulge in a mutual spying game. The second oldest profession is as alive and as well as the oldest.
But on another level it is troubling. For if the British are guilty, they have threatened the work of NGOs, by crossing the line between democracy-building and espionage. And that may mean big trouble for democracy-builders everywhere...
