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How to explain the KGB's success identifying CIA agents in the field (2015)

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Re: How to explain the KGB's success identifying CIA agents in the field (2015)

#41

Post by _kbh_ »

actionfromafar wrote: post #36
nindalf wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that American intelligence has been on point about Russia for the past year. They alerted everyone else that the Russian army's "manoeuvres" in February were an actual invasion. Even the Ukrainians didn't believe them initially, but were finally convinced. This was critical in allowing them time to get their defence in order before the Russian tanks started rolling. So no, it seems like the FSB is doing…

The FSB didn't know about the invasion, because the top brass didn't tell them.

> The FSB didn't know about the invasion, because the top brass didn't tell them.

Should have been painfully obvious to anyone in the FSB Ukraine division, given they reportedly surged in size in the months leading up to the war.

>> The files show that the FSB unit responsible for Ukraine surged in size in the months leading up to the war and was counting on support from a vast network of paid agents in Ukraine’s security apparatus. Some complied and sabotaged Ukraine’s defenses, officials said, while others appear to have pocketed their FSB payments but balked at doing the Kremlin’s bidding when the fighting started.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/russia...

Re: How to explain the KGB's success identifying CIA agents in the field (2015)

#42

Post by egorfine »

danielodievich wrote: post #4

For someone wanting a bit more of this with great anecdotes, I direct you to the Mitrokhin Archive ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrokhin_Archive ) sourced pair of tomes (The Sword and the Shield (1999) and The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (2005)). An incredible source covering more than a century of operations, predating the revolution, and spanning all continents. The first…

I second that.

Buyers beware: Mitrokhin books are not an easy reading, so be prepared to chew.

Re: How to explain the KGB's success identifying CIA agents in the field (2015)

#44

Post by selfhoster11 »

riversflow wrote: post #35
mhoad wrote: post #16

For anyone is into this kind of thing I would suggest checking out The Team House on YouTube which has a lot of very in-depth interviews with some very recently retired CIA folks talking about their experiences in the field. Given a lot of the crazy shit I hear come up in the comments here every time the CIA tends to get mentioned in almost any context this might actually be a good resource for a lot of folks here to…

Why would I trust these interviews with clandestine operatives as being factual?

You gotta trust someone, at some point.

Re: How to explain the KGB's success identifying CIA agents in the field (2015)

#45

Post by wrp »

mhoad wrote: post #20
wrp wrote: post #15

Throughout the Cold War, it was accepted common knowledge around American intelligence circles that our side had never successfully inserted agents into the USSR because their counterintelligence was so effective. I always wondered whether this was really true or whether it was just a cover story spread by our side to give the Soviets a false sense of security. There were known cases of insider espionage, but they we…

Just as a heads up you seem to be referring to a VERY specific thing here and might not be meaning to. “Inserting” someone into a hostile intelligence agency is known as a seeding operation and if you told me that they never were able to pull one off, I believe you. However, they still had eyes and ears on the inside through a combination of recruiting existing officers already on the inside and via defectors. Quite…

I was carefully specific in saying that "our side had never successfully inserted agents into the USSR." I meant people from outside, during the Soviet period, and into the whole country, not just intelligence agencies.

In the current war, there is no doubt that NATO enjoys significant signals and imagery capability. It is the claim that they have extensively compromised Russian intelligence internals that I suspect is more propaganda than reality.

Re: How to explain the KGB's success identifying CIA agents in the field (2015)

#46

Post by bearmode »

atoav wrote: post #24
monero-xmr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A strong argument in favor of rooting out ideologically unaligned thinking. Would you want a communist working in the US government? Clearly they would be far more likely to sympathize with the Soviet Union than a capitalist would.

Most anglosphere communists I know have a term for such people: tankies. And they hate them: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tankie

Maybe if you're talking about anglosphere 'communists' who follow people like Vaush online. Nothing communist about them.

Re: How to explain the KGB's success identifying CIA agents in the field (2015)

#47

Post by inglor_cz »

ggm wrote: post #38
pjc50 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people? Claire Fox and the LM crowd? They're professional contrarians. Very good at picking the side most guaranteed to make people angry, which is how they went seamlessly from far left to far right.

Yes, those people, what they learned was political praxis: How to succeed and win an argument. How to be effective, in a minority, how to dominate a room. I was a member of a less rigid, less orthodox, (markedly less effective!) socialist student movement in the UK at a similar time as them in the late 70s and I know some, a little, of how they operate. An older generation in the SDS learned similar lessons during th…

The USSR was built on a weird combination of Marxist-Leninist ideology (which should, in principle, be anti-imperialist) and ye olde Russian imperialism, and Putin seems to have absorbed most of the latter.

Re: How to explain the KGB's success identifying CIA agents in the field (2015)

#48

Post by denton-scratch »

petesergeant wrote: post #19
ahartmetz wrote: post #5

So... I like spy novels and such and I've always wondered how the hell one would keep it a secret which 50% of an embassy are secret service. So many possible patterns! Turns out, one doesn't, unless extremely careful. I also seem to remember that "who is secret service at the embassy" was never an important line of defense against counterespionage, something the article doesn't mention.

If you ask someone who can't tell you what they do, what they do, they'll give you a quick and really dull answer. Anyone implying that they "can't really talk about that" is most likely a service-desk technician.

We had a family friend that everyone knew was a spook. If you asked him his job, he'd say he was "attached to the Foreign Office".

Re: How to explain the KGB's success identifying CIA agents in the field (2015)

#49

Post by ggm »

inglor_cz wrote: post #47
ggm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, those people, what they learned was political praxis: How to succeed and win an argument. How to be effective, in a minority, how to dominate a room. I was a member of a less rigid, less orthodox, (markedly less effective!) socialist student movement in the UK at a similar time as them in the late 70s and I know some, a little, of how they operate. An older generation in the SDS learned similar lessons during th…

The USSR was built on a weird combination of Marxist-Leninist ideology (which should, in principle, be anti-imperialist) and ye olde Russian imperialism, and Putin seems to have absorbed most of the latter.

I don't mean literally Claire and Vladimir are "the same" but they certainly learned similar lessons about polemic, argument and behaviour to an outcome. The revolutionary left in Britain from my personal perspective was a very odd power trip between the groups, as well as against the state. The RCP was an offshoot of the WRP which Vanessa and Corin Redgrave were in and probably loathed the SWP and the other 4th international splitting groups.

I have a diagram remarkably like the UNIX family tree about the complex splits and mergers since the 1940s. Winding up in the Tory party.. unexpected but once you see it, sort of .. "yeah"

Re: How to explain the KGB's success identifying CIA agents in the field (2015)

#50

Post by t-3 »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #44
riversflow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I trust these interviews with clandestine operatives as being factual?

You gotta trust someone, at some point.

So you start with the least trustworthy? Do you ask Elon Musk whether or not it's a good day to buy TSLA?
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