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Russia could overrun Eastern Europe in THREE DAYS because NATO has been caught napping by Putin and would be hopelessly outgunned, according to US military predictions

• Think tank of army and civilian officials fear US and allies would be overrun
• Research suggests NATO has been caught napping by a resurgent Russia
• Russia could take the Baltic States in just 36-60 hours by launching two-pronged attack on Latvia then Estonia, according to series of war games
• NATO would have to rush to protect Riga and Tallinn, the capitals, but they do not have enough heavy armor in their ground forces to rival Putin's fleet
• All 27 of Russia's battalions have battle tanks; NATO's 12 have none

By Mia De Graaf For Dailymail.com and Julian Robinson for MailOnline

Published: 11:35 EST, 3 February 2016 | Updated: 17:43 EST, 3 February 2016

Russia could overrun Eastern Europe in just three days because NATO has not been bolstering its fleet since Vladimir Putin took Crimea, according to US military predictions.

Testing every possible scenario in a series of war games, a US military think tank has concluded it would take a resurgent Russia between 36 and 60 hours to push its 27 heavily-armored battalions past NATO's lightweight 12 to occupy the Baltic States.

Most likely, the study found, Russia would start by launching a two-pronged attack across the Latvian border, sending heavily-armed battalions in from the north and the south. 

These battalions would push past the light-weight Latvian and NATO battalions before uniting to take the capital of Riga.

Once secured, the remaining part of Russia's 27 maneuver battalions would cross the Narva reservoir into Estonia to take the ethnic Russian north-east before heading to Tallinn, the capital.

NATO's only hope would be to concentrate its forces in Tallinn and Riga while stationing some delays along the main routes. But eventually, the West 'would have to launched a belated nuclear attack'. 

'The outcome was, bluntly, a disaster for NATO,' the report concludes. 

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The study by a think tank made up of US military officials warns that Russia has never appeared more likely to stage an attack on Eastern Europe and NATO forces since bolstering its fleet after taking Crimea

RUSSIA'S FLEET 

27 maneuver battalions

Heavily-armored battle tanks in every battalion

Light-armored vehicles in 8 airborne fleets 

Troops stationed in Kalingrad Oblast, surrounding the Baltic States

NATO'S FLEET 

12 battalions - 7 of which are the domestic fleets of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia

No main battle tanks

Only one, a single Stryker battalion, has heavy armor

The report warns, NATO's ground forces are no match for Russia's. They do not have any battle tanks; all of Russia's do. And NATO would have little room for maneuver, annexed in by Russian forces in Kalingrad Oblast.

In the scenario given by the study, NATO would have one week's notice to defend Eastern Europe.

The study, carried out between 2014 and 2015, suggested even a combination of US and Baltic troops combined with US airstrikes would not be able to prevent Russia advancing.

Seven of NATO's 12 battalions in Eastern Europe are domestic fleets of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They only have one heavy armored fleet, a single Stryker battalion, and no main battle tanks, the report explains. 

Though NATO's air power could put up a strong defense, it would be futile as its lightweight ground forces would be plowed down by Russia's. 

'The games' findings are unambiguous: As currently postured, NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members,' the report said.

'Such a rapid defeat would leave NATO with a limited number of options, all bad.'

The study claims that 'avoiding such a swift and catastrophic failure does not appear to require a Herculean effort' - but it would be expensive.

Airpower and artillery backed up with around seven brigades - three of them heavily armored - in the Baltic area would be enough to 'prevent the rapid overrun of the Baltic states'.

But this would cost around $2.7 billion a year. 

'Crafting this deterrent posture would not be inexpensive in absolute terms, with annual costs perhaps running on the order of $2.7 billion,' the authors write. 

'That is not a small number, but seen in the context of an Alliance with an aggregate gross domestic product in excess of $35 trillion and combined yearly defense spending of more than $1 trillion, it hardly appears unaffordable.'

The report emerged a day after the Obama administration said it will propose quadrupling what it spends on its troops and training in Europe, as part of the U.S. military's accelerating effort to deter Russia.

President Barack Obama, in his final budget request to Congress, will ask for $3.4billion — up from $789million for the current budget year — for what the Pentagon calls its European Reassurance Initiative, which was announced in 2014 in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea and incursion into eastern Ukraine.  

Defense Secretary Ash Carter, giving an overview of the administration's proposed 2017 defense budget of $582.7billion, described Russia as a growing challenge for the United States. He said the U.S. was taking a 'strong and balanced approach' to deterring its former Cold War foe.

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Obama, in his final budget request to Congress, will ask

 for $3.4billion - up from $789million for the current budget

 year - for the Pentagon's 'European Reassurance Initiative' 

to face a 'resurgent' Vladimir Putin

We haven't had to worry about this for 25 years, and while I wish it were otherwise, now we do,' Carter said in a speech to the Economic Club of Washington.

Obama, warning that Russia had taken an 'aggressive posture' near NATO countries, called it a 'challenging and important time' for the alliance, whose members in Europe are increasingly concerned about Russia's intentions after its incursions in Ukraine. 

He said the U.S. had taken decisive steps to bolster NATO since the start of Russia's actions in Ukraine, but that it hadn't been enough.

'It is clear that the United States and our allies must do more to advance our common defense in support of a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace,' Obama said.

NATO's top civilian official, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, issued a statement applauding Carter's proposed increase in spending in Europe.

'This is a clear sign of the enduring commitment by the United States to European security,' he said. 'It will be a timely and significant contribution to NATO's deterrence, and collective defense.'

Michal Baranowski, head of the Warsaw office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank, said the increased spending was a positive development and would be a 'key ingredient' for success at a NATO summit to be attended by allied heads of government in July in the Polish capital.

'I think it's great news for Poland, the region and NATO as a whole — the extra investment will make NATO's flank safer by more effectively deterring Russia. It's also an important sign of U.S. leadership that is badly needed at NATO,' Baranowski said in an interview.  

Read more:

• Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO's Eastern Flank: Wargaming the Defense of the Baltics | RAND
• If Russia Started a War in the Baltics, NATO Would Lose — Quickly - Yahoo News
• www.rand.org/con...

http://www.businessinsider.com/

A Chinese defector revealed some of the innermost secrets of the Chinese military

• Bill Gertz, The Washington Free Beacon

 

AP Photo/Andy WongLing Jihua.

A defector from China has revealed some of the innermost secrets of the Chinese government and military, including details of its nuclear command and control system, according to American intelligence officials.
Businessman Ling Wancheng disappeared from public view in California last year shortly after his brother, Ling Jihua, a former high-ranking official in the Communist Party, was arrested in China on corruption charges.
Ling Wancheng, the defector, has been undergoing a debrief by FBI, CIA, and other intelligence officials since last fall at a secret location in the United States, said officials familiar with details of the defection who spoke on condition of anonymity. The defector is said to be a target of covert Chinese agents seeking to capture or kill him.
Among the information disclosed by Ling are details about the procedures used by Chinese leaders on the use of nuclear weapons, such as the steps taken in preparing nuclear forces for attack and release codes for nuclear arms.
Other secrets revealed included details about the Chinese leadership and its facilities, including the compound in Beijing known as Zhongnanhai. That information is said to be valuable for US electronic spies, specifically for cyber intelligence operations targeting the secretive Chinese leadership.
Spokesmen for the White House, FBI, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the case.
Other officials said Ling defected sometime in the summer of 2015 after his brother, once the senior administrative aide to former Chinese leader Hu Jintao, came under suspicion for leaking state secrets.

 
Former Chinese President Hu Jintao with US President Barack Obama.

Intelligence officials said Ling, if confirmed as a legitimate defector in debriefings over the next several months, would have the most privileged information of any defector from China to the United States in more than 30 years.
“This is an intelligence windfall,” said one senior official.
The events surrounding Ling’s defection and his brother’s arrest appear to be part of a complex internal power struggle in China led by current leader Xi Jinping targeting hundreds of Party leaders and officials. Under the guise of a nationwide anticorruption drive within the Chinese leadership, Xi is said to be systematically removing rivals from previous administrations.
Officials said Ling Wancheng is being kept under tight security after US intelligence agencies detected the activity of covert Chinese agents tasked with tracking down Chinese nationals sought by the government.
The defection was triggered by the arrest of Ling’s brother, Ling Jihua, a former presidential aide who secretly obtained some 2,700 internal documents from a special Communist Party unit he headed until 2012. The unit was in charge of storing and archiving classified documents.
 
ChinaFotoPress/Getty ImagesElder party members arrive to 
commemorate the 121st anniversary of Chairman Mao's
birthday on December 25, 2014.

Ling Jihua then gave the documents to his brother, who owns a $2.5 million residence in Loomis, California, near Sacramento. The classified documents were transferred between the brothers as a safety measure: They were intended to be used as leverage to dissuade Chinese authorities from taking action against Ling Jihua.
According to the officials, Ling Wancheng, the defector, kept the documents for safekeeping and was directed to release them to US authorities in the event Ling Jihua were arrested.
China announced in July that it was prosecuting Ling Jihua for disclosing secrets, taking bribes, conducting illicit sexual affairs, and using his position to benefit relatives. The former official is currently undergoing harsh interrogation in China.
Ling Jihua reportedly has been a main source for corruption investigations that helped bring down China’s security czar, Zhou Yongkang, as well as two senior military officials.
Ling Jihua held the post of chief of the secretariat of the Party’s Political Bureau under Hu Jintao until 2012. The position is equivalent to that of the White House chief of staff, with broad access to the most sensitive details available exclusively to senior Chinese leaders.
In August, after the New York Times reported that the Chinese government had asked the Obama administration to return Ling Wancheng, State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters Ling was not suspected of criminal activity.

 
Thomson ReutersChinese President Xi Jinping.

“I’m not aware that he’s suspected of breaking any US laws, but that’s a matter for the FBI or for other domestic law enforcement agencies,” Toner said Aug. 3.
Last month, Liu Jianchao, the Chinese official in charge of Beijing’s anti-corruption campaign, told Reuters that Ling was in the United States.
“As for the case of Ling Wancheng, the Chinese side is handling it and is communicating with the United States,” Liu said Jan. 14.
Secretary of State John Kerry met in Beijing with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi last week and discussed “law-enforcement, pursuit of fugitives and their illicit money,” according to state-run media reports.
A State Department official said the Ling case was not discussed during Kerry’s meetings in Beijing.
The Chinese have looked at the case as a criminal case while the US government is treating the defection as an intelligence matter, making Ling’s repatriation to China unlikely.
Michael Pillsbury, a China specialist with the Hudson Institute, said Chinese defectors with access to secrets are rare and usually need careful protection.
 
Amazon.com

Pillsbury’s 2015 book The 100-Year Marathon draws on data provided by five Chinese defectors.
“Over the last three decades, Chinese defectors have been a vital source of insights about the secrets Beijing wants to keep from Washington,” said Pillsbury.
“Very few defectors wrote about it or gave interviews,” he added.
One important defector was Yu Qiansheng, an official with the Ministry of State Security, who defected in 1985 and revealed that CIA analyst Larry Wu-Tai Chin was a spy for China. Yu is the brother of current Chinese Politburo Standing Committee member Yu Zhengsheng, currently one of the most powerful leaders in China.
More recently, China’s leading dissident, the astrophysics professor Fang Lizhi, revealed details about secret internal debates in a book.
“Let’s hope more defectors come out to reveal Beijing’s secret debates,” Pillsbury said.
Former State Department China hand John J. Tkacik said Ling likely can provide new details of Chinese power struggles, such as the cases of ousted security chief Zhou Yongkang and imprisoned regional Party chief Bo Xilai.
“But the most important intel he could provide would be on the inner workings of China’s global financial strategies, the extent to which the Chinese have infiltrated both global financial markets, both with human assets and network penetrations, and have used these tools to fuel their incredible accumulation on wealth,” Tkacik said.
Ling also could reveal details of China’s agricultural, industrial, and media purchases in the United States and how they fit within Beijing’s broader strategy to co-opt the US economy, Tkacik said.
“How much useful intelligence the Bureau can get from Ling will be a measure of how seriously the US government takes China’s financial threat to the US economy,” he added.
The first details of the Ling case were disclosed in two dissident Chinese magazines in Hong Kong, Qianshao and Chenming, in November. The London Sunday Times first reported the magazines’ disclosures, some of which were confirmed by US officials.
According to the Chenming, China’s senior internal security chief Meng Jianzhu disclosed details of what he called one of China’s most damaging betrayals at a closed-door meeting of Party officials in southern China.

 
AP Photo/Andy WongLing, Premier Wen Jiabao, and Hu attend
a plenary session of the National People's Congress at the Great
Hall of the People in Beijing on December 22, 2014.

Ling Jihua was accused of carrying out the document theft some time between June 2012 and his arrest on July 20, 2015.
After the arrest, a special task force of Chinese security and intelligence agencies was formed to assess the damage. The task force finished its work in September.
As a result, 72 senior officials out of a total 85 officials in 19 offices under Ling Jihua were replaced and at least 55 people were under investigation by last fall.
The Chenming report said that as a result of the compromises, Chinese Politburo offices came under cyber attack for several months. Additionally, telephone and computer equipment was replaced over security concerns.
Ling Wancheng was said to have had unrestricted access to Ling Jihua’s office and is therefore suspected of making off with the classified documents, the magazine said.
According to Qianshao, the second magazine, Meng said at the meeting that Ling, as a gatekeeper of the Communist Party’s most important secrets, “stole a great many top-secret documents from the archives concerning the Party and the state, kept [them] in his personal possession, [and] ultimately got them to America.”
The documents were taken during a month-long transition after Ling Jihua was replaced in July 2012. The office he headed was in charge of protecting government and military secrets.
During an investigation of Ling’s residence, Chinese authorities discovered that 2,700 secret documents had been photocopied. Most of the photocopies had been produced after September 2012, when Ling Jihua was transferred to another government ministry.
The secrets included security pass codes and communications codes used at Zhongnanhai, blueprints, and command and control information used by Communist leaders and the State Council, the cabinet, and the Central Military Commission.
 
PENG, Yanan via Wikimedia CommonsXinhuamen, the "Gate 
of New China" built by Yuan Shikai, is the formal entrance to
 the Zhongnanhai compound.

Launch procedures for firing nuclear missiles used by Party leaders and People’s Liberation Army leaders also were leaked.
China’s nuclear arsenal and the conditions for its use are among Beijing’s most closely guarded secrets. Very little information is held by US intelligence agencies on how China would use nuclear weapons and when it would conduct nuclear attacks.
Analysts say the magazines’ publication of details on the Ling case appears linked to two current senior Chinese officials who reportedly have voiced concerns about Ling Jihua’s loyalty to senior Party leaders.
Wang Huning, one of the closest national security aides to current leader Xi Jinping, and Wang Qishan, the anti-corruption campaign leader, were said to have warned Hu Jintao that Ling Jihua was unreliable. The officials’ claims to have warned about Ling suggest one of the officials may have leaked the information.

 
Associated PressThere had been rumblings that Ling Jihua
wasn't loyal to the Communist Party.

According to Chengming, Hu Jintao suffered a stroke during a meeting on the Ling affair and was hospitalized. Hu was last seen in public in early May 2015.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Ling Wancheng, who lived in California under the names Wang Cheng and Jason Wang, was an avid golfer and executive of a golf management and financial firm called Asian Pacific Group, which owns golf courses in California and Nevada. He had lived in the Loomis mansion since 2013.
Efforts to contact an Asian Pacific Group executive, Li Shuhai, were unsuccessful.
The newspaper reported that two agents from the Department of Homeland Security questioned neighbors about Ling in the spring or summer of 2015.
Ling Wancheng was a former journalist for two state-run Chinese news outlets and later became a wealthy financial investor with a Beijing firm called Huijin Lifang Investment Management Center.
Real estate records indicate Ling was married to Li Ping.
Efforts to contact Ling Wancheng were unsuccessful.

Read the original article on The Washington Free Beacon. Copyright 2016. Follow The Washington Free Beacon on Twitter.

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How the Soviet Union and China Almost Started World War III

After weeks of clashes, war between the two nuclear powers
seemed right around the corner.

Robert Farley

February 9, 2016

inShare17

Americans tend to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis as the most dangerous moment in Cold War brinksmanship. Despite some tense moments, Washington and Moscow resolved that crisis with only the death of U.S. Air Force pilot Maj. Rudolph Anderson Jr.
Seven years later, in March 1969, a contingent of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers raided a Soviet border outpost on Zhenbao Island, killing dozens and injuring scores. The incident brought Russia and China to the brink of war, a conflict that might have led to the use of nuclear weapons. But after two weeks of clashes, the conflict trailed off.
What if the brief 1969 conflict between China and the Soviet Union had escalated?

History
The incident on Zhenbao Island, where the initial ambush and the bulk of the fighting occurred, represented the nadir of Soviet-Chinese relations. Just ten years earlier, Beijing and Moscow had stood hand in hand as bulwarks of the Communist world. Struggles over ideology, leadership and resources, however, resulted in a sharp split between the allies that had global repercussions. The split exacerbated territorial disputes that had existed since Tsarist and Imperial times. The long, poorly demarcated border left numerous gray zones in which China and the USSR both claimed sovereignty.
After a few minor incidents, the Zhenbao Island incident drove tensions through the roof. A Soviet counterattack incurred serious casualties, as did a similar incident in Xinjiang in August. A consensus has emerged on both sides that the Chinese leadership prepared for and orchestrated the clash. Why would the Chinese provoke their much more powerful neighbor? And what if the Soviets had responded more aggressively to the Chinese provocation?

Avenues of Escalation
In the immediate wake of the conflict, both the USSR and China prepared for war, with the Red Army redeploying to the Far East and the PLA going into full mobilization. The Soviets enjoyed an overwhelming technological advantage over China in 1969. However, Beijing had constructed the largest army in the world, much of which mustered within reach of the Sino-Soviet border. The Red Army, by contrast, concentrated its strength in Eastern Europe, where it could prepare for a conflict with NATO. Consequently, at the moment of the clash, the Chinese could plausibly claim conventional superiority along much of the border.
However, China’s manpower advantage didn’t mean that the PLA could sustain an offensive into the USSR. The Chinese lacked the logistics and airpower necessary to seize substantial amounts of Soviet territory. Moreover, the extremely long Sino-Soviet border gave the Soviets ample opportunity for response. With a NATO attack unlikely, the Soviets could have transferred substantial forces from Europe, attacking into Xinjiang and points west.
The most critical avenue of potential advance lay in Manchuria, where the Red Army had launched a devastating, lightning quick offensive in the waning days of World War II. Despite its size, the PLA of 1969 had no better hope of stopping such an offensive than the Kwantung Army had in 1945, and the loss of Manchuria would have proven devastating to China’s economic power and political legitimacy. In any case, Soviet airpower would have made short work of the Chinese air force, subjecting Chinese cities, communication centers and military bases to severe air attack.
After conquering Manchuria in 1945, the Soviets looted Japanese industry and left. A similar scenario might have ensued in 1969, but only if the Chinese leadership could bring itself to face reality. With the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution in the very recent rear-view mirror, and competing factions still trying to ideologically out-radicalize one another, Moscow might have struggled to find a productive partner for peace negotiations. Continued Soviet advances might have resembled the Japanese main advance of 1937, albeit without the naval dominance that the Imperial Japanese Navy enjoyed. Expecting such attacks, the PLA might have withdrawn to the interior, conducting a scorched earth campaign along the way.

Nuclear?
China tested its first nuclear device in 1964, theoretically giving Beijing an independent deterrent capability. However, their delivery systems left much to be desired—liquid-fueled missiles of uncertain reliability that required hours to prepare, and that could only remain on the launch pad for a limited amount of time. Moreover, Chinese missiles of the era lacked the range to strike vital Soviet targets in European Russia. China’s bomber force—consisting of an extremely limited number of Tu-4 (a Soviet copy of the U.S. B-29) and H-6 (a copy of the Soviet Tu-16 Badger)—would have fared very poorly against the USSR’s sophisticated air defense network.
The Soviets, on the other hand, were on the verge of achieving nuclear parity with the United States. The USSR had a modern, sophisticated arsenal of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, easily capable of destroying China’s nuclear deterrent, its core military formations and its major cities. Sensitive to international opinion, the Soviet leadership would have resisted launching a full scale nuclear assault against China (U.S. and Chinese propaganda would have had a field day), but a limited strike against Chinese nuclear facilities, as well as tactical attacks on deployed Chinese forces might have seemed more reasonable. Much would have depended on how the Chinese reacted to defeats on the battlefield. If the Chinese leadership decided that they needed to “use or lose” their nuclear forces in anticipation of decisive Soviet victory, they could easily have incurred a preemptive Soviet attack. Given that Moscow viewed Beijing as abjectly insane, Moscow could very well have decided to eliminate the Chinese nuclear force before it became a problem.

U.S. Reaction
The United States reacted to the clashes with caution. While the border conflict reassured Washington that the Sino-Soviet split remained in effect, officials disagreed over the likelihood and consequences of broader conflict. Through various official and non-official channels, the Soviets probed U.S. attitudes towards China. Reputedly, the United States reacted negatively to Soviet overtures in 1969 about a joint attack on Chinese nuclear facilities. However, even if Washington did not want to see China burn, it would not likely have engaged in any serious, affirmative effort to protect Beijing from Moscow’s wrath.

What Comes Next?
A decade before, Dwight Eisenhower had outlined the Soviet Union’s biggest obstacle in a war with China: what to do after you win. The Soviets had neither the capacity, nor the interest, in governing another continent-sized territory, especially one that would likely have included masses of disaffected resisters. And the United States, husbanding a “legitimate” government on Formosa, would eagerly have supported a variety of resistance elements against a Soviet occupation. Indeed, if a rump Beijing had survived the war, the United States might still have considered “unleashing Chiang,” in an effort to restore parts of China to the Western column.
The most likely outcome of war would have been short Chinese success, followed by a sharp, destructive Soviet rebuke. Such an outcome would have served to drive Beijing even more fully into the arms of the United States, which is likely one reason that the Soviets decided not to risk it.
Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and the Diplomat.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/ U.S. Government

How a ‘billion dollar spy’ stole Soviet secrets and helped the U.S. Air Force

http://www.washingtonpost.com

By David E. Hoffman July 6 at 9:35 AM

 

Adolf Tolkachev is shown here on vacation near the Baltic Sea 

in the early 1970s. (From the book ‘The Billion Dollar Spy

’/Courtesy of a family friend)

 

In early 1977, the new president, Jimmy Carter, and his CIA director, Adm. Stansfield Turner, were both fascinated by spy satellites, especially the revolutionary KH-11 that transmitted electronic images directly to the ground, rather than using the cumbersome previous method, in which film canisters were ejected from a satellite and captured by airplanes on descent.
The KH-11 images could be seen in real time instead of days or weeks later. “It was a marvelous system,” Turner later recalled, “much like a TV in space that sent back pictures almost instantly.”
[Book excerpt: How the CIA ran a ‘billion dollar spy’ in Moscow]
But satellites had their limitations in collecting intelligence. They could count missile silos and track military equipment. But they could not see inside a file cabinet, or inside the mind of a Politburo member. George J. Tenet, who was CIA director in the Clinton years, recalled: “From the mid-1960s on to the Soviet collapse, we knew roughly how many combat aircraft or warheads the Soviets had, and where. But why did they need that many or that kind? What did they plan to do with them? To this day, intelligence is always much better at counting heads than divining what is going on inside them.”
This is why Adolf Tolkachev was so valuable as an agent for the United States, a radar engineer working deep inside the Soviet military-industrial complex. His story is told in my new book, “The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal.”
In the secret documents which he copied with a simple Pentax 35mm camera clamped to the back of a chair, Tolkachev opened a window on Soviet research and development plans a decade into the future. He provided the kind of intelligence that no satellite could ever hope to capture.
Espionage can be split into “operational intelligence” – carrying out the spying – and “positive intelligence,” the secrets that are stolen.
Tolkachev’s “positive intelligence” was a goldmine, particularly for the U.S. Air Force.
On June 17, 1980, Tolkachev met his CIA case officer, John Guilsher, in Moscow. He gave Guilsher 179 rolls of 35mm film containing documents about Soviet airborne radars and weapons control systems. According to a CIA memo, Tolkachev’s delivery included the first documentation about a new Soviet Airborne Warning and Control system, or AWACS, and extensive information about a new modification of the MiG‑25 high-altitude interceptor. And, the memo said, Tolkachev had documented “several new models of airborne missile systems and technical characteristics of other Soviet fighter and fighter/bomber aircraft to be deployed between now and 1990.”
Tolkachev was providing a road map to the United States for compromising and defeating two critical Soviet systems: the radars on the ground that defended the country from attack, and the radars on warplanes that gave it capacity to attack others. His espionage put the United States in position to dominate the skies in aerial combat and confirmed the vulnerability of Soviet air defenses—that in the event of any war, American cruise missiles and bombers could fly under the radar.
The evaluations of Tolkachev’s material from the U.S. military were glowing. They said he had provided the “first information” and “only information” about certain Soviet weapons systems; that “time saved on research and development of U.S. countermeasures to these systems has been reduced by [a] minimum of 18 months, for one system as much as five years,” and his material had led to a 180-degree turnabout in a $70 million radar. In addition to blueprints, documents and schematics, Tolkachev twice turned over to the CIA actual circuit boards from Soviet radar design projects.
At one point, the CIA asked the Air Force to estimate what Tolkachev’s intelligence was worth, in a broad way. Could they put a dollar amount on how much they had saved in research and development costs? The answer came back: “somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 billion.”
That was before they even looked at the 179 rolls of film delivered to Guilsher in the briefcase.

Secrets Of War, Espionage 03 Breaking The Japanese Code

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Ed Snowden, Russian TV star, hands Putin a propaganda coup

By Howard Kurtz

Published April 18, 2014

FoxNews.com

 

What are the odds?
I mean, Vladimir Putin does a call-in show and one guy who happens to get through—to ask a question in English—is Ed Snowden?
That is one amazing coincidence—almost as amazing as those soldiers who mysteriously materialized in Crimea turning out to be Russian.
In a few moments, Snowden became part of a Soviet-style propaganda machine, even though he clearly views himself as a public-spirited crusader.
After Snowden leaked all those NSA documents to the Guardian and the Washington Post, which shared a Pulitzer Prize this week, he fled to Hong Kong and then to Moscow, which was more than happy to tweak President Obama by harboring him.
But Snowden is clearly drawn to the spotlight, and he played a starring role in Putin’s political theater on Thursday.
He gave the Russian leader a chance to beat his chest about how moral he is, compared to the bad old USA.
Keep in mind that Snowden is not just some zealous activist. Some people think he’s a traitor, others think he’s a hero sparking a global debate. But there is no dispute that he is a fugitive from justice.
Nor did he just ask a question. He gave a little speech, saying that White House and other reviews of the NSA surveillance program had concluded “that these programs are ineffective in stopping terrorism. They also found that they unreasonably intrude into the private lives of ordinary citizens.”
Having delivered his anti-NSA spin, Snowden serves up the pitch for Putin to hit: “Does Russia intercept, store, or analyze in any way the communications of millions of individuals? And do you believe that simply increasing the effectiveness of intelligence or law enforcement investigations can justify placing societies, rather than subjects, under surveillance?”
What a coup for Putin. And he did not miss the opportunity.
First, the former KGB officer engaged in a little espionage talk:
“Mr. Snowden, you are a former agent, a spy, I used to be working for an intelligence service; we are going to talk one professional language,” Putin said, according to a translator. “Our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law. So our special forces can use special equipment as they intercept phone calls or follow someone online. You have to get court permission to stalk a particular person. We don’t have mass system of such interception. And according to our law it cannot exist…
“We don’t have as much money as they have in the States, we don’t have these technical devices that they have in the States. Our special services, thank God, are strictly controlled by the society and the law, and are regulated by the law.”
In other words, we can’t afford what the Americans do, and wouldn’t do it if we could.
First, Putin is probably not leveling about his intelligence capabilities. Some analysts say Russia has few if any checks on its spying apparatus. Remember all the surveillance at Sochi?
Second, the U.S. surveillance is also in accordance with the law—although the public uproar sparked by Snowden has prompted Obama to move toward slapping restrictions on the NSA. Whether it’s a good anti-terror tool is another question.
But most important, this guy is lecturing us about respect for the law? The man who at this very moment is threatening eastern Ukraine? The man who flouted international law by seizing Crimea, even as he denied that Russian troops had marched into the peninsula?
This is the guy who Snowden wants to prop up?
I don’t think, as I said earlier this week, that Snowden’s involvement taints the Pulitzer-worthy work of the Guardian and Washington Post. But his star turn yesterday sure muddies Snowden’s reputation even further.
Update: In a piece this morning for the Guardian, Snowden says he was trying to hold Putin accountable:
"I was surprised that people who witnessed me risk my life to expose the surveillance practices of my own country could not believe that I might also criticise the surveillance policies of Russia, a country to which I have sworn no allegiance, without ulterior motive. I regret that my question could be misinterpreted, and that it enabled many to ignore the substance of the question - and Putin's evasive response - in order to speculate, wildly and incorrectly, about my motives for asking it...
"So why all the criticism? I expected that some would object to my participation in an annual forum that is largely comprised of softball questions to a leader unaccustomed to being challenged. But to me, the rare opportunity to lift a taboo on discussion of state surveillance before an audience that primarily views state media outweighed that risk. Moreover, I hoped that Putin's answer - whatever it was - would provide opportunities for serious journalists and civil society to push the discussion further."

White House Cyber Chief Says Snowden Damage Will Be Felt for Decades

Obama opposes foreign government control of Internet, Michael Daniel says

Edward Snowden

BY: Bill Gertz
March 28, 2014 5:10 pm
 http://freebeacon.com/
Damage to U.S. national security caused by NSA contractor Edward Snowden will take decades to repair, the White House official in charge of cyber security said Friday.
“Make no mistake: We are going to be dealing with the fallout from that for all of your careers, and the impact that that has had on our national security will reverberate for decades,” Michael Daniel, special assistant to the president for cyber security, told Naval Academy midshipmen.
Daniel, in a speech to the academy’s Center for Cyber Security Studies, also said the Obama administration has adopted a passive approach to offensive and retaliatory cyber attacks against nation states and criminal hackers caught attacking U.S. networks. Cyber attacks are a tool of last resort after diplomacy and law enforcement means are tried, he said.
“We are going to prioritize network defense and law enforcement” before conducting offensive cyber attacks, Daniel said in a wide-ranging speech.
The presidential cyber security official also said the administration opposes placing control of the Internet under foreign governments, despite a recent announcement that the federal government will give up authority over the Internet name server group.
Instead, the administration favors what Daniel called a multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance involving both governments and the private sector that would protect free speech and dissidents.
Snowden, currently under the protection of the Russian government, stole an estimated 1.7 million classified NSA documents using his access as a computer administrator and by fooling several NSA employees into providing their passwords.
Snowden compromised sensitive “accesses” used by the National Security Agency to conduct electronic spying, along with “techniques and tools that are no longer available to us,” Daniel said, without elaborating.
Daniel said he has spent a huge amount of time over the past year “trying to figure out how to plug the holes that Mr. Snowden revealed that we have in the security of our classified networks.”
Other classified NSA systems are being rebuilt and the Snowden affair also has undermined efforts to focus on other pressing cyber security and national security issues, he said.
The comments on Snowden came in response to a question about whether the U.S. government should offer amnesty to the renegade NSA network administrator to recover the lost secrets, many of which have not been disclosed.
Rick Leggett, head of a special NSA task force in charge of the Snowden leaks, told CBS in December that offering some type of legal deal to Snowden in exchange for the return of classified NSA documents pilfered by Snowden is “worth having a conversation about.”
Daniel said he too would like to find out from Snowden the full extent of the stolen classified documents, a portion of which were disclosed to a few news organizations.
“I think it would be very valuable for us to actually understand in much greater detail everything that was taken,” Daniel said.
Outgoing NSA Director Army Gen. Keith Alexander has said he opposes any amnesty for Snowden. “This is analogous to a hostage-taker taking 50 people hostage, shooting 10 and then say, ‘If you give me full amnesty, I’ll let the other 40 go.’ What do you do?” Alexander said, also on CBS. “I think people have to be held accountable for their actions.”
Snowden is facing espionage charges and U.S. intelligence officials believe the documents he has with him were accessed by Russian and possibly Chinese intelligence.
The most recent Snowden disclosures included classified documents that revealed NSA cyber attacks against China’s Huawei Technologies, a global Internet equipment manufacturer accused by the U.S. government of serving as a covert arm of the Chinese intelligence and security apparatus.
China has been linked by the U.S. government to large-scale theft of U.S. government and private sector data through cyber espionage operations.
On offensive cyber operations, Daniel said he has taken part in “long and torturous debates” in the White House Situation Room on the use of cyber attack capabilities, noting that “these are very, very difficult problems” that will continue to be debated.
Regarding cyber retaliation against the growing threat of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks, Daniel said deterrence and attributing the source of attacks remains very difficult, and there are complicated polices for retaliatory cyber attacks.
“It’s still very difficult to do really good attribution in cyber space,” Daniel said.
Hackers and foreign nation states do not use computer and network servers labeled “bad guy servers,” he said, noting that they often hijack other people’s networks when conducting attacks.
“So when we consider what we’re doing to actually strike back at some of these things, we have to be very careful,” he said, adding that a counter cyber attack might damage the network that provides electrical power to a hospital or a university.
Still, the administration is working on policy tools that will include cyber attacks in response, although the response will “not always be in cyberspace.”
“The right response might be through diplomatic channels—‘Hey, we know who you are. Knock it off’—and maybe through law enforcement channels,” Daniel said.
Counter attacks against hackers could include digital strikes against “botnets”—networks that have been taken over by cyber attackers and used for malicious activities, he said. For such actions, international cooperation will be needed.
International cyber strikes together with other nations simultaneously will increase the effect of the counterattacks, he said.
“This is hard. We’ve worked at it for several years; we’ve gotten better, but we need to do a lot more in that space.”
Deterring foreign cyber attacks will remain murky and for military cyber warriors will involve an electronic “fog of war” that is similar to its counterpart on conventional battlefields, Daniel said.
On Internet governance, Daniel said the administration is opposing proposals by non-democratic states such as China, Russia, and Iran to place control of the Internet under an international organization.
“It is not enough for us to assume that the status quo that we’ve enjoyed for the last 15 or 20 years that has enabled the Internet to thrive as an open platform are simply going to endure,” Daniel said.
“We face a real risk that the multi-stakeholder approach, this approach that has enabled the platform that is the Internet to bring civilians greater transparency, dissidents a protected voice, and economies increased growth will soon change and not for the better,” he added.
Some governments, which he did not name, favor an intergovernmental approach to Internet governance that would fragment the Internet, slow the pace of innovation, and hamper international economic growth.
The administration instead is favoring a joint government-private sector framework that would protect Internet freedom, he said.
Daniel did not address the administration’s controversial announcement March 14 that the Commerce Department will give up control over nonprofit group Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) next year.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich denounced the move as the removal of U.S. control over a vital resource.
“What is the global Internet community that Obama wants to turn the Internet over to? This risks foreign dictatorships defining the Internet,” he stated in a tweet.
Michele Van Cleave, former national counterintelligence executive, said the potential damage caused by Snowden is staggering.
Van Cleave said one likely impact is that future sources and methods of intelligence collection will be curtailed.
“Snowden’s treachery is especially grave because he exposed how all the parts fit together—the blueprints for how America’s most significant intelligence enterprise actually works—which is also the blueprint for how to defeat it,” she said.
“So what does this mean in real terms? It means that the president may not have the intelligence he needs to have for crucial decisions. Nor will the Congress. We may not see threats we should have seen, never mind opportunities. It means that there may be future attacks that we do not see coming, which otherwise might have been prevented,” Van Cleav said in an email.

 

Harry Hopkins Hosted Soviet Spy Cell

http://www.dcdave.com

Harry Hopkins was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s closest aide and confidante.  Formally, his two top positions were first as director of the Works Progress Administration and later as head of the Lend-Lease Program.  With his heavy involvement in key areas of both domestic and foreign policy and his close association with the president and especially with the very influential first lady, Eleanor, he was actually as near to being an assistant president as anyone in the United States has ever been.  The evidence is accumulating that he was also an agent of the Soviet Union.

The leading evidence that Hopkins was a spy for Joseph Stalin is presented by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel in their 2000 book, The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitor.  I have summarized their argument elsewhere as follows:

Their evidence is, first, that Soviet KGB defector, Oleg Gordievsky, said that Hopkins was in regular communication with top Soviet covert operative, Iskhak Akhmerov, in New York City. This was more than just a "back channel" for communication between Roosevelt and Stalin because Hopkins had existing back channels at the Soviet embassy that he used, and Akhmerov's identity as an operative was not supposed to be known to the U.S. government. Second, the Venona project decrypts of Soviet communications with its spies, which came to light only in the 1990s, reveal a report on a Washington discussion between Roosevelt and Winston Churchill by an "agent 19." Only Harry Hopkins among suspected Soviet agents would have been privy to that conversation. Third, former Communist Whittaker Chambers testified to Congress in 1948 about the formation of Communist "study groups" within the U.S. government from which espionage agents were recruited. One of those groups, led by Lee Pressman, was established within the Department of Agriculture in late 1933, and Hopkins was a member of that group. Fourth, his policies were strongly pro-Soviet, particularly in his work as head of the Lend-Lease program. 

The degree to which he far exceeded any strategic necessity in aiding the Soviet Union in that latter capacity is well described in the 1952 book by Major George Racey Jordan entitled From Major Jordan’s Diaries.  A summary, with key excerpts, are in the previously referenced article, “How We Gave the Russians the Bomb.”

Now, corroborating and entirely independent evidence of Hopkins’ likely treason has come to light in the pages of an obscure book by Emanuel M. Josephson.  The title is The Strange Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and while it does have a very intriguing chapter on FDR’s demise, the main subject of the book is better captured by the subtitle, A History of the Roosevelt-Delano Dynasty, America’s Royal Family.  The following passage is on pp. 145-146:

In later years, Murray Garsson, the munitions manufacturer who was convicted for bribery and irregularities in connection with war contracts, reported that Harry Hopkins had been very helpful to him in securing and handling those contracts.  In return for his help, Hopkins had demanded and received liberal payment for his influence.  Garsson regularly paid Hopkins’s numerous losses on bets on the horse races.  But one form of payment demanded by Hopkins stood out as most odd, Garsson said.

Garsson maintained quarters at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington in connection with his war contracts.  But he spent his weekends in New York with his family.   Harry Hopkins demanded of Garsson that he permit him and his friends to use the quarters during the weekends, and that he defray the cost of refreshments and entertainment.  Garsson permitted Hopkins and his guests to charge their expenses to his account.

In looking over his bills, Garsson noted the names of the persons who had signed the tabs charged to him.  Among Harry Hopkins’s associates who had signed tabs were Carl Aldo Marzani and the whole array of the members of what was later proved to be the Hal Ware (Communist) cell that operated in the Government.  Garsson stated that he did not become aware of the fact that he was acting as involuntary host to Hopkins’s Communist cell until after Marzani had been convicted and sent to jail for perjury in swearing in his State Department application that he was not, and never had been, a member of the Communist Party.

Josephson, who was hardly an admirer of Roosevelt and his New Deal, lacks references for his allegations, but many factors militate in favor of their basic accuracy.  The strongest of these is that they dovetail perfectly with the other Soviet-agent charges against Hopkins and, coming much earlier, they could not have been influenced by them.  In combination, the charges are much stronger than any one of them is alone.  Hopkins was also known to have a number of personal weaknesses; he was a heavy drinker and gambler.  His first wife had divorced him, charging him with infidelity, and he was left with large alimony and child support expenses.  Combined with his taste for luxury and the cost of his vices, those expenses are likely to have outstripped his meager government income.  A common acronym for the main four reasons that people get involved in espionage is “MICE,” Money, Ideology, Compromised, and Ego.  Often it only takes one of them, but Hopkins would appear to have been vulnerable on all four points.

Whatever one’s character or vulnerability, a primary reason not to be a spy against one’s own country is obvious enough.  It is typically very risky.  The penalty can be quite severe, as we know from the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case.  But the official relationship with the Soviet Union and Communism had changed radically by the time the Rosenbergs were executed.  Under Franklin Roosevelt, the attitude toward espionage by the Soviet Communists was permissive in the extreme, and Harry Hopkins had to know it.  As we document in detail in “FDR Winked at Soviet Espionage,” Communist defector Whittaker Chambers had told Roosevelt’s security adviser, Adolf Berle, all about Harold Ware’s spy nest, which included the infamous Alger Hiss, in 1939.  Berle had relayed the information to Roosevelt, and Roosevelt had blown him off.  Spying for the Reds under Roosevelt was essentially risk free.  The results are well summed up by historian Thomas Fleming on page 319 of his 2001 book, The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War within World War II:  

There was scarcely a branch of the American government, including the War, Navy, and Justice Departments, that did not have Soviet moles in high places, feeding Moscow information.  Wild Bill Donovan's Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, had so many informers in its ranks, it was almost an arm of the NKVD.  Donovan's personal assistant, Duncan Chaplin Lee, was a spy.

The spy ring also reached into the White House in the person of economic adviser, Lauchlin Currie, according to Chambers.  As with the evidence against Hopkins that came initially from Garsson and from Major Jordan, the evidence against Currie was later reinforced by the same Venona intercepts that Romerstein and Breindel used to conclude that Hopkins was also a spy.

David Martin

February 11, 2011

Addendum 1

With a search of the Internet using the terms “Harry Hopkins” and “David Niles” we have turned up some additional evidence connecting Hopkins to Communist subversion:

In l936 James Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins invited David Niles to Washington from Boston.  In l94l or l942 he became a resident assistant to the President at the White House.  He retired in 1951 after serving Presidents Roosevelt and Truman.  He was bitterly attacked by anti-Israel factions as reported in New York Times story May 5, l948.  Active member of Ford Hall Forum in Boston, Never attended college.

Niles, then, can be seen as something of a protégé of FDR’s son and of Harry Hopkins.  Niles, apparently, had his own connections to Communist subversion.  This passage is from page 181 of the aforementioned Romerstein-Breindel book, which we quote in “Who Killed James Forrestal?”

Whittaker Chambers reported to the FBI an odd story about Niles that he had heard from a fellow Soviet agent named John Hermann in 1934 or 1935. A Soviet agent named Silverman (not George Silverman) was living in the next building from Alger Hiss. This Silverman apparently had an obviously homosexual affair with David Niles. Silverman had told Niles of the work of the underground apparatus in Washington, and Niles later threatened to expose the activities of the Communist group unless Silverman left his wife. To solve the problem, J. Peters, the head of the American Communist underground, ordered Hermann and Harold Ware to get Silverman to leave Washington, D. C. immediately.

As for Niles’s other patron, we learn from Wikipedia that, “[James] Roosevelt was one of the first politicians to denounce the tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy. He was also the only Representative to vote against appropriating funds for the House Un-American Activities Committee.” One must wonder now if that might have been because he feared what they might expose.

David Martin

February 15, 2011

Addendum 2

More evidence of Hopkins’ work on behalf of the Soviets  turns up in the case of defector, Victor Kravchenko.  In this instance he was in league with FDR’s extremely pro-Soviet ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies.  The following passage is from page 275 of The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia by Tim Tzouliadis (2008):

Victor Kravchenko had been a Soviet Lend-Lease official who defected in 1944, while stationed in New York.  At the time, the Soviet embassy had tried hard to force Kravchenko’s extradition as a war-time “deserter,” and had engaged the willing intervention of Ambassador Joseph Davies to its cause.  What followed was the farce of the FBI having to call up Kravchenko anonymously to tip him off that “the heat was on” from the State Department, and warn him that he should “carefully hide himself.”  But Kravchenko’s English was not yet up to such head-spinning machinations, and the FBI agent had to repeat the whole conversation to a friend, who took the appropriate evasive action on Kravchenko’s behalf.  Joseph Davies, meanwhile, appealed directly to the president and secretary of state to have Kravchenko sent back to Russia.  The moral issue of Kravenchenko’s inevitable execution was elegantly sidestepped by Harry Hopkins, who argued that if he was returned, no one would know what happened to him.  Only President Roosevelt had sensed a fast-approaching political calamity; “Will you tell Joe that I cannot do this?” he instructed his secretary, and the defector’s life was spared.  (emphasis added)

Kravchenko’s very revealing book, I Chose Freedom, was published in April of 1946, and even the formerly pro-Soviet New York Times, reviewed it favorably.

Hopkins apparently served his Soviet masters almost to the end of his days.  The following passage is from pp. 118-119 of Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein (2012):

Hopkins’s pro-Soviet leanings would be on further display in the Yalta records, where his handwritten comments are available for viewing.  Though seriously ill at the time of the meeting, he continued to ply his influence with FDR, who himself was mortally sick and susceptible to suggestion in ways that we can only guess at.  After FDR had made innumerable concessions to Stalin, there occurred a deadlock on the issue of “reparations.”  At this point, Hopkins passed a note to Roosevelt that summed up the American attitude at Yalta.  “Mr. President,” this said, “the Russians have given in so much at this conference I don’t think we should let them down.  Let the British disagree if they want—and continue their disagreement at Moscow [in subsequent diplomatic meetings]” (Emphasis added by Evans and Romerstein).

One may search the Yalta records at length and have trouble finding an issue of substance on which the Soviets had “given in” to FDR—the entire thrust of the conference, as Roosevelt loyalist [Robert] Sherwood acknowledged, being in the reverse direction.

David Martin

March 19, 2013

Addendum 3

New doubt has arisen over the best evidence that Hopkins was actually a Soviet agent.  See my article “Harry Hopkins and FDR’s Commissars.”

David Martin

January 24, 2014