ERINGER: THE ART OF THE RUSE Translate

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Wednesday, September 10, 2014

45. CLOAK & CORKSCREW

Undercover with FBI Counterintelligence

November 1999

I set off again, cloaked in a black raincoat and carrying a LaGuiole corkscrew in my pocket (as a weapon, more versatile

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than a dagger, but more important, it can uncork a bottle of Chateau Lafitte).   

My driver slyly cut around Thanksgiving Sunday traffic at Dulles International Airport and detouring through the long-term car-park, dropping me at Arrivals, not Departures.  This had the added benefit of complicating any possible surveillance.  Not that I thought anyone would be watching this early.  But surveillance would likely kick in sooner or later, based on the scope of my operations, some of which are not revealed in this serial.

I found the Swissair desk and checked in for their nightly trans-Atlantic flight to Zurich.  If one needs to make a connection in Europe, there is no better hub than Zurich, where devoted Swiss timekeepers ensure strict adherence to schedules.  The airport is uncomplicated compared to, say, London Heathrow or Paris CDG, where one must jog three miles for a connection after landing thirty minutes late due to dense air traffic. 

I settled into Swissair's club lounge.  True to national character, their Christmas tree was decked in gold. 

I boarded the Airbus 330 and I took my first-class sleeper-seat, replete with eiderdown quilt.  If you're going to spend just a few quality days in Europe, you need real REM, not a light snooze; otherwise, your psyche arrives as crumpled as your clothes.  And with fewer people around, you lessen the chance of catching cold or flu germs that recirculate through the cabin. 

I hadn't planned to eat, just sleep, but the food and service was so good, I tucked into caviar and smoked salmon washed down with Chateau Smith Haut-Lafitte, a full-bodied Bordeaux. 

Muscles relaxed, brain tranquilized, I slid into a solid four-hour slumber before the jet glided into Zurich at 8:35 a.m.  

Not twenty minutes later, I belted myself into a second aircraft destined for Geneva, an earlier flight than posted on my ticket.  (It is always a pleasure to alter flight arrangements at the last minute whilst on spy missions.) 

Ahead of schedule, I hopped the Swiss Alps, listening to the High Llamas Cold and Bouncy, my personal rallying cry for sub rosa tasks.  

Geneva was as gloomy and austere as its Calvinist founders; the kind of cold that seeps into your bone marrow and chills your soul from within. 

In contrast, the elegant Hotel Beau Rivage welcomed me with warmth and a fifty-foot Christmas tree decked in red and gold ornaments in its atrium lobby, and offering gracious hospitality coupled with soft, comfortable furnishings. 

This message awaited me at check-in:  "Welcome!  I shall be glad to see you and plan to come to the BR reception at 12:30.  Edward." 

I unpacked in room 223, showered, and ventured into Geneva's clammy shades of gray.  First, to Fina, for a fistful of Cuban Monte Cristo No. 5 cigars.  Then onto Chocolaterie des Bergues, for a mug of the world's creamiest hot cocoa. 

This set me up for Edward Lee Howard who, as always, arrived on the minute, the one characteristic he shared with John H.   

Howard had lost about 35 pounds.  He said he felt good, but I thought he looked like a corpse.  His face was gaunt and drawn, with a pasty complexion and dull eyes.  You need bulk for a life in Russia.  Not just as insulation from the cold, but

because you never know where your next meal is coming from. 

In Howard's case, this was a reality:  He'd lost most of his money in Russia’s stock market collapse, so his mood reflected his appearance.  As a result of the weight loss (and no money to spare for a new wardrobe), Howard's clothes (blue jeans, brown sweater, trench coat) were two sizes too big on him.   

Surveillance cut in, Swiss or Russian, as we set off along Quai du Mont-Blanc; a pair of young men of military disposition in plainclothes.  I made them; Howard was oblivious, or more likely, could care less.

We crossed the Port des Bergues pedestrian bridge over Lake Lemann, entered a Movenpick restaurant.  For me, filet de perch, a Geneva specialty, and crispy shoestring fries; Howard chose vegetarian lasagna and chained Salem cigarettes throughout. 

"How is George Blake?" I asked. 

"He can't chew," said Howard. 

"Can't chew?" 

"His mouth is a mess," said Howard.  "Not because of rotted teeth, but because of rotted gums.  He's not socializing much.  He didn't even join me for Thanksgiving." 

I asked after Mila.  I’d learned from the Bureau (not Ed) that Howard had married her. 

"We had a fight two weeks ago," said Howard.  "I have a calendar, and whenever we have an argument I write MF in the square.  Of course, a lot of squares are filled with MF.  Mila found the calendar one day, and she asked me, 'What does MF

mean?' and I told her it stands for mindfuck.  And, of course, that was grounds for a whole new argument."  

Howard told me he preferred Lena Orlova for company, but continued to juggle both. 

"Mila's father is retired KGB," said Howard.  "And her mother works for the FSB" (internal security).  “I once arrived home and found Mila on the phone with her father's SVR contact and I got annoyed.  I think she might be reporting on me." 

Howard briefed me on the latest intelligence from his KGB friends on how a former KGB agent named Vladimir Putin had managed to succeed Boris Yeltsin as President of Russia:  Putin had escaped a scandal as top aide to the mayor of St. Petersburg, decamped to Moscow and cultivated a close relationship with Yeltsin through Anatoly Chubais, a financial whiz who bilked the World Bank out of a couple billion dollars.  Yeltsin's family grew to like and trust Putin; they promoted the notion of a Putin presidency as an insurance policy for the ailing Yeltsin.  Their primary concern was who would best protect their fortune and safety, post-presidency.  Putin gave the right assurances and a deal was struck.

I asked Howard for news on Igor Batamirov, the former counterintelligence chief who had been so keen to write about the psychology of betrayal. 

"It's the current [Putin] climate," said Howard.  "Batamirov sees shadows behind shadows.  He's very cautious." 

Howard told me Batamirov would not visit Washington "at this time" (on the heels of NATO's invasion of Serbia) because of how such a trip might be perceived by his former employer. 

"He'll meet you again," said Howard.  "But only in Moscow." 

And Prelin?  Any new book projects? 

"I asked him before coming here," said Howard.  "He said, 'What about Kryuchkov's book?'" 

"It's coprolite," I said. 

"What?" "Petrified shit."   

Howard chuckled. 

"The KGB is back with a vengeance under Putin.  Prelin's gotten busy, a job with the Duma." 

We moved on to the Cubans. Howard was surprised and disappointed that I had not received material from Juan Hernandez in Havana.  On a trip to Cuba two months earlier, Howard had connected with Senor Deema of the DGI about my project. 

"Deema will be outraged to hear you're still waiting," said Howard. 

Aside from a ten-day trip to Mexico City and Cancun in May, Howard said he wasn't traveling much.  More and more, he liked to spend time at his dacha; he had converted one room into a gym.  Plus Howard's ruined finances and declining business had turned him reclusive. 

"I'm going to give it three months," he said.  "If I can't salvage my business, I'll dissolve it.  And I may take you up on your offer to do another book:  a grand tour of the United States." 

"How's that?"  My ear stiffened. 

"We'll meet at a pre-arranged hotel in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico," said Howard.  "About ten o'clock on a Saturday night we'll cross the border into El Paso, Texas.  That part's easy." 

Once inside the United States, we'd take a cross-country jaunt, write it up as a humorous travel book:  Wanted Spy Fools FBI! 

Howard said there was no other place he'd like to visit but the USA... "for one final look at my old haunts, and to see the Grand Canyon." 

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Tuesday, September 9, 2014

44. THE DINNER PARTY

Undercover with FBI Counterintelligence

October 1999

So far as the Edward Lee Howard case was concerned, things looked bad. 

Not for Howard, but for the United States of America:  FBI Special Agent John H opted for early retirement, effective the first week of September 1999. 

He would not have folded ahead of schedule had he not been signaled by Headquarters that the "related conflict" holding up a Howard rendition would never be lifted by the Justice Department; it had been John H’s intention to remain at his desk until the Howard case was resolved. 

(A couple years earlier, John H’s boss, Jim S, who had provided enthusiastic support for capturing Howard, left Albuquerque for a U.S. embassy legat position in Athens, Greece.  Not long after that, Jim S retired from the Bureau.  Bob G, the gung-ho assistant U.S. Attorney, had also left public service and gone into private practice.) 

Once retired, John H would be out of the loop, exempt from learning anything more about the Howard case, which would be absorbed by another Albuquerque-based Special Agent for whom Howard would be a nuisance, not a priority. 

Although I did not realize it yet, I had become the de facto advocate for keeping the Big Cheese Family aware that a) the Howard case still existed and b) the Howard case was important. 

The day I could no longer phone John H with new developments evolving from the Howard case was terribly sad for me.  We had been a good team; he, an extraordinary Special Agent. 

I did not appreciate till I started working with others just how skilled John H was with what he called Bu biz.  In his low-key manner, John H knew how to work the system with finesse; how to walk the labyrinth of headquarters, take the knocks, and get back up for a return bout with never a sour word about

anyone.  He was one of very few who knew how to operate within a bureaucracy that had become ridiculously disconnected.  Everyone I worked with thereafter paled in comparison to the soft-spoken but very savvy John H.  

But life goes on, and so did my Cuban operation, still administrated by FBI Albuquerque, if managed by Washington Field Office. 

At the request of Luis Fernandez, I organized a dinner party on October 1st to introduce him to new media people:  A British journalist of Indian descent, a producer from NBC News (both unwitting to my FBI role), and Rick K, whom I'd taken to Moscow and now signed on as an asset in my Cuban conversion. 

The venue, as usual, Saigon Gourmet, as stipulated by Fernandez, very much a creature of habit. 

Luis Abierno had left Washington and returned to Havana.  So in his place Fernandez brought along Reuben de Wong Corchou, who had arrived one week earlier from Cuba. 

Couchou was better dressed than Fernandez, who wore a paisley tie with striped shirt and, to quote the NBC producer, looked like he just got off a boat from Bangladesh."  

A black tweed sport-coat made Couchou look more like a mortician than a diplomat.  His pockmarked, funereal face glistened with grease, and came adorned with thick, Soviet-era spectacles.  He wore his dark hair slick-backed with natural perspiration.  I almost asked if I could hire him out for Halloween to scare the kids.

Even worse than his countenance, Couchou possessed a grim and dour personality, totally devoid of humor.  He did not smile, could not laugh.  Within two minutes it became clear

this guy was the dinner guest from hell.  Getting him to talk was harder than pulling teeth; more like root canal. 

Under pressure from me to loosen his tongue, Couchou divulged that he had studied English and Cuban History at Havana University, then taught these subjects for ten years at the same institution before joining the foreign ministry and working there through the 1990s.  As for foreign travel, Couchou had taken a grand tour of the Soviet Union in 1981, and spent much of 1998 in Tokyo, during which he visited China.  This tour in Washington was his first time in the United States. Although he professed himself to be a staunch Marxist ideologue, Couchou wore a Rolex Submariner wristwatch, though I reckoned this extravagance was a counterfeit bought on the cheap in Asia. 

I asked Couchou, and Fernandez, to speculate what Cuba would be like five years from now. 

Both men seemed at a loss to respond. 

The British journalist asked Fernandez what he thought of Castro. 

Fernandez choked up, composed himself, and said, "He is my father." 

("Does this mean we should add Luis's name to the list of Fidel's illegitimate children?" -- I tacked this onto my FBI report.) 

I sensed that Fernandez was showing off for Couchou, as if he thought the new guy was in town to audit his behavior. 

The British journalist, a loquacious chap, asked both Cubans, "So what's your problem with the USA?"

Fernandez straightened himself and said:  "Two words."

This should be good, I thought, as Fernandez poised himself.  What two words could possibly sum it all up?

But, alas, Fernandez had mistaken this expression for meaning something else, because what actually spewed from his mouth was a two-thousand word diatribe on how Cuban people are deprived of food and medicine because of U.S. policies. 

"Why don't you do what China does and hire Henry Kissinger to lobby in Washington?" asked the British journalist. 

Fernandez did not understand the question. 

The Brit re-phrased it. 

Fernandez still didn't get it. 

I re-jigged the question myself. 

"Ah," said Fernandez.  "We have no money for this.  We are effective in our own way." 

The British journalist asked about Che Guevara's standing in contemporary Cuba. 

Couchou, the historian, fielded this question by reciting Che's birthday:  “June 14th, 1928.”  (For a moment, I thought he might stand and sing Commandante Che Guevara, but, mercifully, this did not happen.) 

I asked Fernandez if my package from Juan Hernandez had arrived.  (Earlier, Hernandez confirmed by e-mail from Havana that he had finally sent material by diplomatic pouch, as promised seven months earlier.)

Yes, he had phoned Hernandez, said Fernandez.  The material, he was told, had been sent to someone in the United States named Pedro. 

"Who's Pedro?" I said. 

Fernandez shook his head.  He did not know.  It remained unclear whether Pedro was supposed to contact me or what. 

When the bill came, Fernandez did not remember that this dinner party had been his idea.  Nor that it was his turn.   

I next met Fernandez, whom I codenamed Flakester, four weeks later, on October 30th, in the Pavilion, Chevy Chase, a coffee morning at Starbucks. 

He trudged in bleary-eyed, wearing a Nike windbreaker, black polo shirt freshly trimmed crew-cut and launched into another harangue about how a small minority of anti-Castro Cubans in Miami and three Congressmen can manipulate U.S. policy toward Cuba.  Again, he implied that they were funded by a mysterious source.

My earlier request for leads, said Fernandez, had been sent to Havana. 

Their reply:  Instruct Eringer to get started, show us results, we'll help fill the holes. 

"You go to Cuba," he said.  "We give you facilities."

Fernandez added that he had to be careful because the Cuban Interests Section was not supposed to assist writers. 

As we parted, I said, "Happy Halloween.  Go spook a few people."  (And take Reuben de Wong Corchou with you.)  

Almost six weeks later, I still hadn't heard from Pedro.  I phoned Fernandez, sick with flu. 

"Who's Pedro?" he asked, preempting me. 

"Exactly," I said.  "What have you heard?" 

"Nothing, man.  Who was that guy who was supposed to do this?"  Fernandez was flakier than a dandruff attack in a blizzard. 

"Juan Hernandez." 

"Right, Hernandez," said Ferndandez. 

"I will phone Hernandez." 

"Excellent," I said.  "Phone Hernandez.  Find out who the hell Pedro is." 

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Monday, September 8, 2014

43. CUBAN COVERSION 2

Undercover with FBI Counteerintelligence

Spring 1999

The Luis duo (Fernandez and Abierno) were sitting beneath an artificial palm tree in Saigon Gourmet when I arrived to curry them. 

Abierno drilled his eyes into mine.  "So what have you been doing lately?" 

"London and Monaco," I said.  "It's sort of my beat."

"What were you doing there?" asked Abierno.

"Books." 

"What kind of books?" 

"Intrigue and lunacy." 

"Current events?" said Abierno. 

"You have to be careful with current events," I said. "There's so much news these days, people overdose on what's going on from TV, newspapers, news magazines, so who needs to read a book about it?  You've got to find offbeat subjects, the hidden truth, to make a book.  And it's all about forecasting.  You have to predict what will interest readers two or three years down the line, because that's how long it takes to write and publish a book.  Speaking of which," I added. "What happened to the spy ring book and the Castro biography your colleague Juan Hernandez promised me?" 

Thus ensued a rehash of my book project meetings in Havana. But just as my brief from WFO had been diverted to focus on them, their brief from Havana was to focus on me, and how I might be of use to the Cuban DGI. 

"But you can investigate the Cuban spy ring story in America, no?" said Abierno. 

Implication:  I dig up information from the U.S. side, and give it to them. 

"Sure, that part's easy," I said.  "But there's no point doing it until I'm assured access to the right material from Cuba." 

"Okay, we see," said Abierno. 

A waiter took our order for three chicken curries.

Fernandez launched himself into a tedious spiel about how books like this might only enflame tensions between our countries, and this contradicted Cuba's policy to promote normalization, not enflame tension.

"It doesn't matter," I said.  "There won't be normalization till Castro's gone." 

Fernandez gasped.  "But nothing will change after Castro," he said with a vehemence I did not know he possessed.  "Raul will take over.  Everything will be the same." 

My misconception, he insisted, was a result of propaganda disseminated by Cuban émigrés in Miami.

"So what's the message you guys want to get out?" I posed.  "Write it down, maybe we can carve a book out of it." 

"It's not so simple," said Fernandez. 

"Then you're not doing your job right," I said.  "You’re in America.  You've got to simplify the issues to get your message understood.  Aren’t you familiar with sound-bytes?” 

A waiter served three chicken curries. 

Abierno attempted to follow my example and eat with chopsticks.  Big mistake.  He quickly tossed them aside.

"Tell me your objectives," I pressed. 

The problem, said Fernandez, was three Congressmen who have put a lock on normalizing U.S.-Cuba relations.Wouldn't it be grand, said Fernandez, if somebody investigated them and exposed their back-door financial contributions? 

I nodded. 

"Could you help us do this?" asked Abierno. 

I plucked a notebook from my back pocket, tore out a page.  "Write down their names." 

Fernandez scribbled:   

Ross (FL), Menendez (FL), Balart (FL). 

The Cuban DGI was asking me, an American, to investigate three U.S. Congressmen. 

"I need starting points," I said. 

Fernandez and Abierno exchanged glances.

"Presumably, your country has already investigated these Congressmen," I said.  "Give me some leads."

"You can go to Cuba."  Fernandez nodded knowingly.  "They tell you few things." 

"Okay," I said.  "But before I go running off anywhere, show me what you've got so I know it's worth doing."

The Luis duo shared another glance. 

"We talk about this," said Abierno.  "We see what we can do.  And remember, you owe me a chapter." 

"A chapter?" I said. 

"From the Ed Howard book." 

"Luis, you have a good memory!"  I looked at Fernandez, my thumb pointed at Abierno.  "He's going to be famous one day."  I returned to Abierno.  "That chapter is a funny story." 

Abierno was all ears. 

"We hired a ghost writer to help Howard write his book," I said.  "After the CIA ordered the classified stuff cut out, our ghost was so spooked, he burned his copy."

"And your copy?" said Abierno. 

"Yeah, it's still around somewhere," I said.  "I don't spook easy."  

"What's in the chapter?" 

"CIA operations in Russia." 

"And Howard did not care to lose this chapter?" asked Abierno. 

"Ed was happy just to get his book published." 

The check arrived.  I nailed it.  Both Luises objected, but I insisted, and they said next meal would be theirs.

Fernandez handed me a copy of something called Cuban Baking and Financial System. 

"You will find this interesting," he said.  (Wrong, again.)  "You have friends in the media?"  Fernandez wanted to expand his contact list. 

"Plenty." 

"You can introduce me?" 

"Of course," I said.  "We'll have a dinner party at a restaurant, your treat."  

My next meeting, two months later, was one-on-one with Luis Abierno at Biddy Mulligan's, a bar inside the Doyle Washington Hotel on Dupont Circle.  He'd had marching orders and would depart Washington presently, return to Havana. 

I told Abierno I wanted to know about Felipe Perez Roque, who had just become Cuba's foreign minister.  Roque was the flavor of the season to succeed Castro one day. 

Abierno confided that he had attended technical college with Roque; that Roque had scored five, the highest rating, in every subject, every term; that they'd worked together in youth groups, knew each other socially as well as professionally. 

Abierno questioned the notion of a Roque succession, not because the foreign minister lacked intelligence, but because he lacked charisma. 

"Roque knows how to put all the right words together," said Abierno.  "But he cannot deliver them effectively."

Is there a book in Roque? I asked. 

Abierno said it would be difficult to ask Roque to participate in anything that highlighted himself.  Self-promotion, he confided, was the kiss of death in Castro's Cuba.    

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Sunday, September 7, 2014

42. CUBAN COVERSION

Undercover with FBI Counterintelligence

March-April 1999

As usual, John H was already in Washington, awaiting my return. 

On this occasion, he brought the FBI's Cuba contingent from Washington Field Office (WFO) into our dealings, by necessity, as this was their turf.  And while Special Agent Anna M was intrigued by my doings in Havana, she was much more interested in Luis Fernandez of the Cuban Interests Section. 

It was Anna M's primary responsibility to know as much about Fernandez as possible.  And thus far, she knew precious little, except this:  He was an over-worked intelligence officer who arrived in Washington, D.C. as a temp, became permanent, and was now expected to remain under diplomatic cover for a five-year tour.

Hence, my new mission:  Befriend Fernandez.  Find out what he's working on, with whom he has contact, and assess recruitment possibilities.  

What about penetrating Cuba's embargo-busting stratagem?  After all, I had just been invited to participate in illegal commodity trading by the Cuban DGI.

No, not WFO's concern.  The CIA would have been interested.  But later, when I pitched the agency on a sting-penetration of Cuban Intelligence embargo-busting, their interest dried up after the FBI put up a fuss.  They did not want CIA encroaching upon my activities.

I telephoned Fernandez at the Cuban Interests Section to say I had a wonderful time in his country.

"Really?"  This puzzled him.

"Yeah," I said.  "And I met somebody you know:  Juan Hernandez."

"Oh, yeah, I know Juan!"

"You worked together in Venezuela, right?"

"That's right!"

"Juan and I had some meetings," I said.  "The up-shot is, he's supposed to send something to you by diplomatic pouch for

delivery to me.  I don't think we want to get into this over the phone.  Maybe we should discuss it over lunch?"

"Sure we do."

Two weeks later, on April Fool's Day, I sat down to break bread with Luis Fernandez at Saigon Gourmet, his choice, on Connecticut Avenue near Washington Zoo.

We both ordered chicken curry and Kirin beer.

I gifted Fernandez with a copy of Edward Howard's book, Safe House.

"Wow!" he said.  Fernandez was even more impressed when I told him I'd just met Howard in Havana. 

It worked like a can opener; Fernandez began to spill the beans. 

I've always felt that one never learns much when one does the talking.  On top of that, most people love a good listener.  So I listened while Fernandez blabbered his life story:

He studied international relations at Havana University (a class of fifteen); served in British Guyana, Venezuela (four years), and Mexico (five years); had never been to Europe or Russia; was surprised to be given a post in Washington, "a high honor for anyone," but for him especially, because he had no North American experience.  Fernandez wasn't boastful, but bewildered, a characteristic innate to him.

He told me he'd been in town one year and six months and had no clue how long his tour would last. 

"I went to my ambassador last week to ask about this," said Fernandez, "but I did not get an answer."

Fernandez confided that he would much prefer to be back in Cuba, "with family, my neighbors, and my sea wall." 

In addition to the stress of long hours, he worried a lot about saying the wrong thing and landing himself in trouble with Havana.

Fernandez told that his dual role in Washington was 1) to track everything that appeared in the U.S. media about Cuba, and 2) to promote positive media coverage of Cuba.  Regarding the latter, he gave me a manila envelope stuffed with good news about Cuba. 

When I told him I enjoyed the food at La Bodeguita in Old Havana, Fernandez invited me to his home "for a Cuban meal cooked by my wife." 

He seemed starved for a social life and appeared in no hurry to break from our lunch as we enjoyed hot tea and snifters of complimentary hazelnut liqueur. 

I finally signaled for a check and paid the tab, courtesy of the FBI.

A dinner invitation duly arrived by fax and, three weeks after our lunch, I appeared at the Fernandez home, an apartment at Kenwood Condominiums on River Road in Bethesda, a bunch of flowers in one hand for Mrs. Fernandez, and a fine bottle of Ridge Geyserville zinfandel, in the other, for my host.

But my host was missing, delayed at the office.  And Mrs. Fernandez spoke no English.  So she ushered to the other on-time guest, a former CIA officer who had recently led a delegation of political cartoonists to Cuba.

Fernandez bumbled in about twenty minutes late and, suddenly, his shoe-boxy, sparsely furnished apartment came alive with Cubans.  One of them latched onto me within thirty seconds. 

Luis Abierno was of medium height, slender, dark hair, balding, trim mustache, and very affable.  He told me he was attached to the Foreign Relations Ministry, had just been separated from his wife and young child for a six-month tour in DC.  In contrast to the flaky Fernandez, Abierno seemed like fast-track material.

Abierno took an armchair next to mine, said he knew about my trip to Havana to meet Edward Howard; that he should have met me there, but this posting, his first time outside of Cuba, had come up. 

"We've talked about you," said Abierno.

"You mean I'm famous in some circles?" I said.

Abierno nodded, smiling.  "Yes, your name is around."  

He probed the publishing process of Howard's book. 

"National Press had to remove a whole chapter," I said.

"Why?"

"The CIA insisted."

"Do you still have this chapter?" asked Abierno, too young to appreciate subtlety.

I shrugged.  "Probably.  Somewhere."

"Maybe you will give it to us."  A smarmy smile crossed Abierno’s face.  "Maybe if we help you with a few things, you will let me see it."

"Maybe," I said.

Abierno asked what book projects I desired from Cuba.

"Robert Vesco," I said.

"But Robert Vesco is in prison," said Abierno.

"Yeah, I heard that from Juan Hernandez.  You sure it's true?"

Abernio nodded and winked.  "Jail in his house.  But it is real prison.  Very strict."  He asked why Vesco's book should be of interest.

"Books have been written about him," I said.  "But he's never told his own story."

Abierno doubted it would be good for U.S.-Cuba relations to bring attention to Vesco, whose presence in Cuba was a sore point between the two countries.

"Here's how we solve that sucker," I said.  "Get Vesco to write his book for me.  Then hand him back to the U.S. just before it's published.  Good for U.S.-Cuba relations.  Great publicity for the book.  We sell a million copies and everybody's happy, except Vesco, but who gives a f--- about him, right?"

Abierno studied me, amused.

"If we can't do a Vesco book," I said, "what about Fidel Castro's memoirs?"

"Many writers want to do this," said Abierno.

"Of course," I said.  "But how many can pull it off?  Your biggest problem is finding somebody you can trust."  I patted my chest.  "And now that's solved."

Abierno said the timing was tough due to tense relations between his country and mine.

"You want to talk tension?" I said.  "Working with former KGB chairman Kryuchkov in Moscow while Yeltsin's trying to look up his ass for any new reason to lock him away again.  In any case, I'm in no hurry, take your time with Castro."

Abierno had two ideas of his own for me to chew on:

1)  "Maybe you could help us edit books written by Cuban writers."

2)  "Maybe you can investigate things in America?"

Point two snagged my attention. 

"What things?" I asked.

"Black holes of information," said Abierno.

"My specialty," I said.  "But right now I need to fill the black hole in my stomach."

Abierno followed me to the buffet and we filled our plates with Cuban delicacies. 

I spoke with Luis Fernandez only briefly, the last ten minutes of my visit to his home.  He told me how very much he would like to visit Moscow, if only to see Lenin's mausoleum in Red Square before the reformers snatched Vlad's embalmed corpse and hanged it from the Kremlin clock tower.

            FBI: Cuban Intelligence Aggressively Recruiting Leftist

American Academics as Spies, Influence Agents | Washington Free Beacon

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Saturday, September 6, 2014

41. HANGING IN HAVANA 4

Undercover with FBI Counterintelligence

March 1999

We returned to Hotel Nacional. 

I looked around for Al Lewis.  No luck. 

Up in my room, the B.O. of communism had dissipated.  No, it had not gone away; it had seized me, now I was part of it.  Once you are within its grip, it takes a half-dozen hot showers and four bars of Irish Spring to scrape away. 

I'd barely washed my hands when Howard called.

"We're going back to see Hernandez," he said.  "He's got news." 

I grabbed a bottle of Macallan scotch whiskey, one of three I'd brought along to gift helpful Cubans. 

I gave one to Hernandez. 

"Why you give me?" he asked. 

"Because you're such a nice guy." 

Hernandez laughed.  He leaned forward.  "I have something interesting.  A friend of mine has written a biography of Fidel Castro." 

We thrashed this around.  Apparently, Castro had cooperated with the project.  The manuscript, in Spanish, had not been published anywhere. 

"When can I see it?" I asked.

It would be sent, said Hernandez, by diplomatic pouch to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington. 

"Get it to Luis Fernandez," I said. 

"You know Luis?"  Hernandez smiled. I returned his smile, like, do I know Luis.   

"Luis and I worked together in Venezuela," said Hernandez. 

As we walked back to the Nacional, Howard told me that the scotch whiskey I'd given to Hernandez represented a month's salary.  

At seven p.m. I planted myself at the Salon de la Histoirie bar and sipped a mojito while Cuban mariachis strolled and strummed and sang, with a power and passion unique to this people.  You just knew that the 50-something band leader was a heart surgeon by day who moonlighted in tourism to put food on the table; and could only feed his family (if there was any food to buy) because, in the absence of their Russian Big Brother, Cuba now catered to tourists by commercializing Che Guevara on tee shirts and key chains made in Spain.

But the music, ah, the music.  Aye, Cuba.  Yeah, right.  It's all they had left. 

Howard, Orlova and I taxied to La Bodeguita del Medio, Hemingway's haunt in Old Havana.  A fifteen-minute ride for $4.40. (You pay in dollars, of course, because nobody in their right mind wanted Cuban pesos, except dumb tourists who bought Cuban banknotes with Che's likeness.) 

I handed him a fiveski.  "Keep it." 

"Sixty cents is a whole day's salary to a Cuban doctor," admonished Howard, who did not want the natives spoiled. 

A crowd of people gathered in front of La Bodeguita.

"Damn, a line," I said. But the maitre d', recognizing Americanos, hauled us into the bar. 

"What about them?" I said, motioning at the throng behind me. 

"Them's Cuban," he replied. 

"So what?"

"These tables are reserved for foreigners," he said.  "We have only few tables for Cubans." 

If Mr. Cuban Restaurateur thought this state of affairs ironic, he did not let on.  Hell, at least he was making a little brazhort. 

In Bodeguita's small, graffiti-bedecked bar, I asked Howard what his DGI buddies had to say about who would succeed The Bearded One. 

Would it be his brother Raul? 

Howard whispered that Raul got caught in a drug-trafficking scheme a few years earlier.  A few generals took the rap; Raul's role was hushed up.  But his chances to succeed Fidel had been trashed. 

Howard and Orlova were not getting along.  She wanted a gin-and-tonic and he made a face and snidely said they don't do that kind of thing in Cuba (i.e. it was too expensive for this tightwad). 

Orlova stormed out; Howard went after her. 

I sipped a mojito and studied photographs of Hemingway, this dive's claim to fame. 

Howard and Orlova returned and, behind them, Rolando Salup and his "former" DGI pal Salvador Perez. 

A maitre’d escorted us to a corner table upstairs, handed us menus, all prices in U.S. dollars. 

"For someone who hates the United States," I commented, "Fidel sure likes their monetary system."

"He not dislike United States people," said Salup.  "He dislike U.S. government.  You like nice traditional Cuban meal?" 

I deferred to Salup's judgment on this.  He ordered pork, rice, black beans, fried bananas, and a cucumber salad.

I'd heard the official line on foreign investment from Elvira Castro.  Now the 33 year-old Perez would tell me the unofficial truth:  Don't waste your time or money investing in Poland-on-the-Caribbean.  You want to make money?  Trade.  As in embargo-busting.  With private entrepreneurs (read:  DGI) like Perez. 

"We need things all the time," said Perez in good English.  "One day it might be rice, the next day paint, the day after something else.  If we're there to meet the market, to fill the gap, we make money.  I call you, tell you what's needed, you find it, and we make the deal."

Perez told me that one reason foreign investment stinks is because foreign investors are not allowed to hire their own labor force; labor is provided by the state and paid state-controlled wages. 

A Cuban labor force is a waste of time, said Perez, because it has no incentive to be productive. 

Salup, of all people, nodded in agreement. 

"Are you saying..." I cupped my hand over my mouth and leaned forward, "that socialism doesn't work?" 

"No, no, no!"  Both men shook their heads, mortified, eyes popping from their heads. 

"So how do we commence doing business?" I said. 

The embargo-buster laid it out thus:   

First step, establish a business entity, a trading company, in Panama or Mexico.  Cost?  A few hundred dollars. 

Second step, register the entity in Cuba.  Perez could handle that.  Cost?   A few hundred dollars. 

Third step, open a bank account in Cuba.  Cost?  Nothing. 

Then start trading. 

I asked why Che Guevara's likeness is everywhere, on statues, murals, tee-shirts, key chains, but The Bearded One’s face is nowhere to be seen? 

"Ah," said Salup.  "Fidel is against cult of personality.  That is why no statues.  For Che it is okay.  He's dead."  

I had another theory, but kept it to myself:  Castro long ago decided that the best way to instill fear among Cubans, and to stay alive, was to remain mysterious and elusive, address unknown. 

I gave Salup a bottle of Macallan, and Perez a Morgan silver dollar, a "good luck" coin.  They gave me their calling cards.   

Next morning, Howard and I strolled Old Havana for a final

chat. 

Occasionally, we passed a dog in the street, and I was struck by how awful and peculiar the canines looked in this town:  diseased, or sick with worry.

"The FBI will know you were here," warned Howard.  "You may get a knock at your door wanting to know what you were doing in Cuba." 

"What should I do if that happens?" I asked. 

"Just tell them you can't afford to talk because it would cause complications with the Cubans on future trips.  They can't do anything to you.  They fooled Mary that way." 

I bought a red star revolutionary beret from a market stall. 

"I'll wear this when the G-men come a-knocking," I said.

Howard laughed.  Then he unveiled his new book idea:  "How not to do business in Russia."  All the kinds of swindles the Russians pull and are good at.  Howard had learned the hard way. 

"My KGB friends won't like it," he added.  "But I don't give a damn." 

I encouraged Howard to get cracking, screw the Russians.  

Back at the Nacional, I settled my account with Howard.  He was on my payroll, an FBI asset.   

I handed him my last bottle of Macallan.  "Give it to your

concierge at Veradado," I said.  (Howard and Orlova had planned a week’s vacation on Cuba's best beach.)  

"No, I'll give it to Edouard Prensa," he said.  "The Cuban DGI chief in Moscow." 

"Perfect." 

Howard gifted me with jar of caviar he'd brought from Russia.  After he departed, I opened it for lunch, as I sure as hell wasn't eating another Cuban Sandwich.  Howard's caviar was over-salted and too tightly compressed.  I ate some for nourishment and dumped the rest.  Knowing Howard, it was the cheapest black-market jar he could find. 

After settling my tab with Hotel Nacional, I killed an hour on a wicker chair in their garden, sipping one last mojito. 

A lone peacock strutted the grounds, occasionally piercing the serene setting with a horrible shriek. 

"Yeah, I feel the same way," I muttered under my breath, one eye peeled for Al Lewis.  

Leaving Cuba was as easy as arriving, if a greater pleasure. No traffic leaving the city (few cars), no line at first-class check-in.  The only hurdle, a rip-off "exit Cuba fee" of twenty bucks (worth a thousand times that to Cubans who risk their lives to flee, sometimes in a rubber tire). 

And finally some decent shops.    I bought a bottle of Havana Club rum, a Che Guevara Swatch watch for Clair George to wear at his next dinner party.  

And finally I found something with Fidel Castro's image on it:  Not any old something, but a half-ounce commemorative gold coin.  It was over-priced at $375, but I sprang for it, a gold medal self-rewarded for a job well done. 

Waiting for my jet to board, I plucked the proof coin from its protective case and mixed it with the other coins in my pocket.  I wanted Fidel to get beat up by Jefferson, Lincoln and Washington.  I wanted to tell people, tongue-in-cheek, that I had The Bearded One in my pocket.  

Wright Valentine, Bartender, was right where I'd left him in the first-class lounge of Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay.  He poured me another belt of Appleton's V/X rum and ginger. 

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Monaco Intelligence

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

PUTIN CYBER-SABOTAGE

The new Russia doesn’t just deal in the petty disinformation, forgeries, lies, leaks, and cyber-sabotage

usually associated with information warfare. 

It reinvents reality, creating mass hallucinations that then translate into political action. 

Take Novorossiya, the name Vladimir Putin has given to the huge wedge of southeastern Ukraine he might, or

might not, consider annexing.

Putin Is Revolutionizing Information Warfare - Business Insider

Russian Intelligence sabotage extends to Wikipedia, which they are strategically co-opting.

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Labels: Putin

THE PRINCE'S SPY: 93

Albert: "I need an antidote for Thierry Lacoste"

On Retainer to Prince Albert of Monaco

September 2006

Back in M-Base, I was beset by new intrigue. 

Months earlier, Proust and Biancheri had tried to pitch JLA on commissioning Kroll, the private investigation consultants, to produce a study on how to remove Monaco from OECD’s tax haven blacklist. 

JLA had shot it down on the basis that such a ploy would make Monaco look bad.  He thought he’d killed it, but Proust and Biancheri went forward anyway, behind JLA’s back. 

Months later, someone began a campaign of phoning JLA’s former employers to enquire about him. 

Who authorized this? 

Was it somehow connected to Kroll?

LIDDY had the answer, even though I asked him about it as an aside after plowing through a number of items on both our dockets.  It wasn’t an answer he wanted to provide, but I went

at it a number of ways, prepared not to let him leave M-Base until I knew.  LIDDY finally responded, couching it with whimsy in hypothetical terms, but the answer was clear:  Thierry Lacoste was trying to dig whatever dirt he could on JLA with a view to having him replaced.  

LIDDY had not thought to mention this on his own because he had not perceived it as a danger to our mission.  I corrected him:  any threat to JLA was a threat to the good work we were doing in service to the Prince.

After LIDDY departed, I zapped an email to JLA saying I had an answer to the mystery we’d discussed.  JLA phoned me immediately and was utterly astonished by my news, having met for breakfast with Lacoste the morning before in Paris, and even confiding in him.  

“You warned me when I arrived in November about Lacoste’s kitchen cabinet,” JLA said to me.  “You were right.”

JLA instantly phoned the Prince to convey this information, and called me back.  “The Prince wants to hear all the details from you.” 

And next morning, indeed, the Prince phoned.  “Doctor Eringer?” 

“Yes, my patient.”

“I need an antidote for Thierry Lacoste.”

“I’m working on a cocktail.” 

“That might ease the pain.”  

We agreed to meet early evening.

After a long day of meetings with the interior minister, POLO, MARTHA, and others, I welcomed the Prince to M-Base.  He seemed relaxed in a striped shirt and khaki trousers and freshly shaven head.  He had just met with the Venezuelan education minister.  (“Did he educate you on Hugo Chavez?” I asked.) 

Over martinis, I related the Kroll/Lacoste story, trying to put everything into proper perspective—and deescalate the situation. 

“Everybody around you will constantly try to undercut everybody else around you in a never-ending war for greater access and influence,” I said.  “Everybody especially wants to cut away at JLA, who now stands in the way of everyone who expected to reap much influence and power during your reign by merit of their friendship with you.  Thierry Lacoste’s behavior was to be expected.  My only surprise is that anyone is surprised.”  

I reminded the Prince that Lacoste tried to do me in as well; that Lacoste had complained to him about me when I’d supposedly interfered in the Rotolo affair, after he’d asked me to assist, when his own incompetence had become obvious. 

“The best thing,” I said, “is to avoid confrontation.  As Walter Bagehot wrote in The English Constitution, royalty must rise above the fray to retain its mystique.”  I added, “You’re good at this anyway.”  

It was true.  In addition to a pathological fear of commitment, the Prince suffered a pathological fear of confrontation.

I took the opportunity to provide the Prince our Narmino intelligence:  We had identified the two banks in San Marino that received alleged kickbacks and we possessed documentation that a charity called Mission Innocence had allegedly been used by Narmino and two Monegasque accountants to launder money.

I returned to Monaco on October 12th. 

Incredibly, nothing had yet been done about reorganizing SIGER.  The Prince must have known that he always had the power to make things happen, fast, simply by picking up the phone and demanding it be done.  But instead, he permitted petty people to play politics over everything and impede his stated wishes.  

Much later, when Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president of France, he immediately took control and demonstrated leadership, yet as an elected president of a republic he actually possessed less power than an absolute monarch.  

When Sarkozy decided that France’s two internal security services, the DST and the RG, should merge into one agency, both institutions resisted with multiple reasons why this was not possible.  Sarkozy did not waffle and allow his plans to be stalled by bureaucrats.  He said, I don’t care, that’s what I want, do it, NOW.  And it was done.  And everyone knew not to mess with Sarkozy thereafter.

Even after our last meeting at M-Base, where I’d provided the latest documentation on Narmino and the Prince resolved to take action and remove Narmino from his job as chief of Monaco’s judicial system, he had done nothing.  And now we had word that Narmino, understanding we were on his trail, was trying to start his own intelligence service with the deputy interior minister, a favored police officer, Negre of SIGER, and a man named Gamberini, who had been retired from Monaco’s police force for refusing to allow private security guards to unlock the bathroom door behind which banker Edmund Safra was choking to death from smoke inhalation.  

Gamberini had just been rehired (by Narmino) to run the judiciary police.  

Meantime, Minister of State Proust had been back in the Prince’s office to take another bash at me, bolstered by his finance minister, Gilles Tonelli. 

According to JLA, who’d heard about it from Masseron, Proust had “cast negativity” on my mission and questioned the wisdom of my contact with “international organizations.” 

The Prince apparently replied, “I hear you.”

I tried to reach the Prince but could find only his personal secretary, Madame Viale.  “How’s everything going?” I asked.

“I’m trying,” she said.

Discerning exasperation in her voice, I knew precisely what she meant.

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Tuesday, September 9, 2014

FRANCE: COZY WITH THE KREMLIN

Efforts by Russian intelligence to purchase (or at least rent) friends in Western and Central Europe are not new, but in recent months they have increased markedly due to the Russo-Ukrainian War. 

As the crisis between Moscow and Kyiv has worsened, the Kremlin has redoubled its secret work to acquire helpers, what they term agents of influence, in NATO and European Union countries.

While Moscow has friends on the Left lingering from the last Cold War, much of the Kremlin’s recent covert outreach has been to the Right, especially to Europe’s rising far Right.

 Hungary is a particular hotbed of activity by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and Military Intelligence (GRU), where Kremlin ties to the far Right (indeed quasi-fascist) Jobbik party are important and barely concealed.

France is a source of particular concern, however, given that country’s size and prestige, as well as its nuclear weapons.

 The rise of the National Front is the major political story in Paris nowadays, and a certain overt Putinophilia is detectable in that party’s ranks and leadership too.

Party boss Marine Le Pen blames the EU, not Russia, for the war in Ukraine, and admits to possessing a soft spot for Vladimir Putin: “I have a certain admiration for the man. He proposes a patriotic economic model, radically different than what the Americans are imposing on us,” she recently explained.

French counterintelligence is concerned that the National Front may be getting a bit too cozy with the Kremlin, as elaborated in an article in the Paris weekend paper Le Journal du Dimanche that looks into the Putin lobby in Paris.

There are concerns about TV Libertés, a network established by a former National Front cadre that adheres to a decidedly pro-Moscow editorial line and features a suspicious number of Kremlin-linked guests, including Sergey Naryshkin, the Duma chairman who is banned from coming to France due to sanctions against him.

Despite these sanctions, Naryshkin somehow came to Paris to meet with French politicians, mostly right-wing, as well as businesspeople involved in trade with Russia.

Putin’s Secret Friends in Paris | The XX Committee

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THE PRINCE'S SPY: 92

Thierry Lacoste: Legal career & livelihood dependent on the Prince

On Retainer to Prince Albert of Monaco

July-August 2006

On July 26th, I received crucial intelligence from Slovenia’s Iztok P in our email data dump:  A confirmation/validation of the Bosna Bank money trail, identifying six wire transfers of

thirty thousand euros each over the past six months:  The funds came into Sarajevo from the Middle East via Germany, went to Zagreb, back to Sarajevo, and onto San Marino.  Thirty thousand euros per month in a San Marino account appeared to be Philippe Narmino’s kickback.

On August 3rd, JLA called me from the Spanish island of Ibiza, on vacation with his family.  A new police chief had been decided upon:  Andre Muhlberger, from the Alsace region, with experience in Marseilles and Toulouse.  Muhlberger would commence his duties on September 1st, and JLA would introduce us during his first week and include him in our circle.  

Stephane Valeri, JLA told me, was in “a bad mood” about the Palace’s restoration of its constitutional power, punctuated in a speech just delivered by the Prince to the Conseil Nationale.  Indeed, Valeri expected to replace Biancheri as finance minister (as a stepping stone in his mind to succeed Proust as first Monegasque minister of state), even announcing to his staff he would soon leave to join the government—and now he believed JLA was to blame.  

So Valeri had unsheathed his knife and was known to be keeping company with those—including Thierry Lacoste—whose knives were already sharpened.  

On July 9th, I already knew, Valeri and Lacoste had ambushed the Prince over dinner at Valeri’s weekend home in the mountains with accusations that JLA was supposedly undercutting the boss.  In fact, JLA had done nothing more than execute the Prince’s agenda, or decisions the Prince pretended to enjoin, hurriedly, in between frequent travels and girlfriends.  

It was JLA’s role as gatekeeper—traditional for a chief of staff—that Lacoste found most objectionable because clients of his with frivolous projects did not meet JLA’s threshold for what was deserving of face time with the Prince.  

Unfortunately for Lacoste, his legal career and livelihood was largely dependent upon his Palace connection.  

Within days of dinner at Valeri’s home, the Prince appointed Lacoste to the board of SBM, a move badly received by Monegasques, who suspected cronyism, and who already perceived the Prince as being physically and psychologically absent from Monaco.

I recruited a new agent:  a Russian born female, very bright with stunning looks, and good Russian contacts around the principality.  More importantly, she worked at Sotrama, the Monaco-based company, linked to President Putin, we suspected of money laundering.  I code-named her MARTHA,

after Martha Mitchell.  (We already had LIDDY and HUNT and I rather enjoyed a Watergate theme.)

MARTHA revealed that Sotrama declared only 100,000 euros per month to Monaco’s fiscal authorities, just the amount needed for salaries and operations and a small profit.  But in actual fact, this oil distribution and trading company was laundering “millions and millions” of euros per month for its parent company Horizon Oil Terminal in St. Petersburg.  MARTHA attended a party in Cap Ferrat, at which Sotrama’s chief executive proposed a toast to the Russian president, saying, “Without Putin none of this would be possible.”

At 12:30 a.m. on August 22nd, the Prince came to M-Base and we talked for almost two hours in the quiet of night—the first and only time the Prince was not interrupted by cell phones.  We discussed a variety of topics, starting with his recent travels in the USA, where he’d visited Mount Rushmore, and my experience infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1970s.  It was a good warm up for the topics that followed.

I briefed the Prince on the SICCFIN/Liechtenstein fracas over Andorra and confirmed that the first formal meeting of our informal association would convene in Luxembourg on October 24th.  The Prince was enthused—excited, even, about this.

The Prince was also pleased to learn Paul Masseron had been to M-Base and that soon-to-be police chief Andre Muhlberger would follow.

Narmino:  The proof was in.  I presented our new documentation to the Prince, explaining that Slovenia’s intelligence chief played back to me the precise routing of the funds without me ever telling him that element of our investigation.  The Prince nodded grimly and told me he would take action.  The Prince asked me, should he offer Narmino an explanation for sacking him? 

“No, just dismiss him,” I said.  “He should come to you for explanation.  When he does, just show him the documents.”

And finally, funding:  I made my case, again, that our whole team was working overtime. We’d built a solid little service from scratch on a shoestring, an investment in the Prince’s future.  With my name out there now, I probably needed a bodyguard, but I couldn’t justify the cost in view of other needs.  The Prince appreciated how well we performed:  he increased our budget by 25 percent.

Despite so positive a meeting, I think I understood the Prince’s psyche by now.  For only one day later, I jotted in my journal: A2 does not really care, [he’s] just going through the motions.

Even with increased funding, I wrote myself a note to terminate my service to the Prince on June 30th 2007, five years after it began, giving myself ten months to establish the Micro-Europe intelligence association and the restructuring of SIGER.  

And just two weeks later, after bouncing through London to Washington, D.C. to California and back again to London, then a delayed EasyJet flight from Luton to Nice, I scribbled:  My heart no longer in this.

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Monday, September 8, 2014

PUTIN & HITLER: THE SIMILARITIES

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THE PRINCE'S SPY: 91

Painting: Thomas Van Stein

On Retainer to Prince Albert of Monaco

July 2006

Next morning, I met with JLA and briefed him.  I think I was the only person he trusted to make appointments with the Prince directly and then tell him honestly about our discussion and its outcome. 

“Proust knows you’re out there,” JLA told me.  “He still thinks you’re a CIA guy and that I brought you in.”

On July 13th, I set out to Andorra—a road trip in a Volkswagen GTI I’d bought three months earlier, and drove all day, seven-and-a-half hours, reaching the Andorra Park Hotel by 3:30.

I found Andorra an odd little place, more of a shopping center than a country—a consumer paradise staffed by dark, ugly, misshapen natives.  

Even the hotel—said to be Andorra’s finest—was creepy and surreal, its service scarce and unfriendly.  But I needed to see these microstates up close and personal.

At ten o’clock the next morning, as appointed by Rene B of Liechtenstein, who opened this door to the Andorrans, I appeared at a small office in Prat de la Creu, Unit # 402.  

Jordi Pons Lluelles, their one-man Financial Intelligence Unit, greeted me.  He spoke no English; his secretary, Ellie, translated.  I made my pitch.  

Lluelles seemed to grasp my position—chief of the unofficial Monaco intelligence service, responsible to the Prince—and seemed to grasp the concept—Micro-European states band together to fight money laundering as a united group.  I used

Andorra’s own motto—Through unity comes strength—to clarify and justify what we were attempting to achieve.

Andorra’s banking business, Lluelles explained, derived from Spain and South America—the safe haven in Europe where Spanish speakers (read:  drug cartels from Colombia) launder and/or park their revenues.  Russians, said Lluelles, had not yet discovered Andorra.  

He smiled a lot and pronounced this a good idea, agreeing to attend our kick-off meeting in Luxembourg come October.

On the way out of Andorra, crossing into Spain, the fiercest Customs officers I’ve ever encountered rifled through the trunks of cars, including my own, on the lookout for persons exceeding the limit for booze and tobacco purchased tax-free in Andorra.

On July 17th, after a detour through seductive Girona and bouncy Figueras (Salvador Dali’s hometown) I returned to Monaco—for a meeting with Interior Minister Paul Masseron, who understood we should rendezvous in M-Base rather than have me noticed at his ministry.  

“Many people know who you are by name, that you exist,” Masseron told me.  “But they don’t know a face or a body.”  

Masseron walked a tightrope between JLA and Proust, but managed to find his balance. 

He intended, he said, to declare Oleg Kim persona non grata in Monaco and to expel his daughter Olga and her ex-husband from the principality. 

I felt gratified:  Finally, some action.

I flew back to California, but my vacation was soon disrupted by Rene B of Liechtenstein to report a hiccup.

Soon after I’d left Andorra, Jordi Pons Lluelles telephoned Ariane Picco-Margossian, SICCFIN’s chief in Monaco, to report my visit and invitation to join our Micro-Europe association. 

SICCFIN’s chief, unaware of my existence, told Lluelles it could not possibly be true, then phoned Rene in Liechtenstein to demand an explanation.  Rene assured her that nobody was stepping on her toes:  Prince Albert’s unofficial intelligence service desired to establish channels that had nothing to do with SICCFIN.   

Picco-Margossian, a former prosecutor who suffered depression, went straight to her boss, the new finance minister, Gilles Tonelli (a poor choice as Tonelli was far out of his depth), who took it to the Minister of State.  

And Proust, aghast, brought it to the Prince, who told him:  “I know about this—he is doing this for me.”

Caught off guard (and hoping I had misrepresented myself in Andorra), Proust bit his lip and retreated.

ERINGER: SURREAL BOUNCE...: THE ODYSSEY 41: AND/ORism

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WESTERN LEADERSHIP LACKING

In Putin's mind...

"The Putin goal is federalization in some way creating an autonomous region inside Ukraine that would influence the whole of

Ukraine, in a political way, military way, economic way, binding it with Russia and preventing the whole of Ukraine from going very rapidly to the West without consulting with the Kremlin and with

Putin,” Alexander Baunov, a Russian writer and political commentator, told The New York Times.

Putin's Plan For Ukraine, In One Sentence - Business Insider

Federalization is just another word for Soviet Union.

"What will Washington think," Prelin said to me, "when the Soviet Union re-emerges?" 

"Is this something you expect to achieve militarily?" I asked. 

"No," Kryuchkov answered.  "It's what the people want."

"So you're going to re-unite through public referendum?" I said. 

"Yes," Prelin and Kryuchkov replied in unison.

"Everyone seems to be in favor of big nation-states," I said, "like a unified Europe.  But just the same, I don't think I'd use the word Soviet if I were you.  Nor Union for that matter."  My tongue was planted firmly in cheek.  "Maybe you should call yourselves the Democratic States of Eurasia?" 

ERINGER: THE ART OF THE RUSE: 32. DOING MOSCOW WITH ED AND THE BOYS 3

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Sunday, September 7, 2014

IN PUTIN'S DREAMS: THE BERLIN WALL REBUILT

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama criticised Russia's President Vladimir Putin as "self-centred" in a German newspaper interview on Sunday, saying Putin seems to want to "rebuild the

Berlin Wall."

Self-centred Vladimir Putin wants to rebuild Berlin Wall: Dalai Lama | Zee News

If he could get away with it, that's what Putin would do.

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KIEV: PRIORITIZING THE ISSUE WITH A TISSUE

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DALAI LAMA On PUTIN: "HIS ATTITUDE IS I, I, I."

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama criticized Russia's President Vladimir Putin as "self-centred" in a German newspaper interview on Sunday, saying Putin

seems to want to "rebuild the Berlin Wall". 

"His attitude is: 'I, I, I'," the Dalai Lama said, pointing out that Putin had served as Russian president, then prime

minister and then president again. 

"That's a bit too much," he told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. "This is very self-centred." 

Putin is 'self-centred', Dalai Lama says - The Times of India

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THE PRINCE'S SPY: 90

Painting: Thomas Van Stein

On Retainer to Prince Albert of Monaco

July 2006

The Prince and I finally met in private on July 12th, a 75 minute meeting in his office.  Although my agenda was huge, I’d decided not to come on strong.   

“I’m forever bouncing in here with facts and figures and findings,” I said.  “What would you like to talk about today?” 

The Prince shrugged and smiled.  He didn’t know what to say.

So I consulted my agenda.

Jean-Leonard de Massy:  He had found his niche with me, would make a good asset and spy for our service.  De Massy had imbedded himself with Jean-Paul Carteron and would travel with Carteron to Slovenia, then Switzerland. 

Carteron and Samy Maroun and others were trying to use him as access to the Prince; we would reap good intelligence on their activities and contacts.  We knew, for instance, Carteron

brokered consulships from Balkan countries, including one for Jan Kerwat, a Libyan-born Italian national who now represented Croatia in Monaco.

“Would you like the Bulgarians to revoke Carteron’s own honorary consulship and teach him a lesson?” I asked.  

Yes, the Prince replied, he’d like that very much.

Chalva Tchigirisnky:  I conveyed that this Russian linked to organized crime figures in Russia including one of the Red Mafia’s biggest names, Simeon Mogilevich.

Sergey Pugachev:  The Prince had heard about Pugachev’s interest in contracting SBM to manage his new Moscow hotel.  He concurred that I should run traces on him, hence this new assignment.

Micro-Europe intelligence association:  The Prince expressed great pleasure with our progress.  I told him about my visit to the Vatican, where I’d discovered they were actually a macro-state—and I informed the Prince I would visit Andorra that week and try to enlist that “duty free” principality, tucked into the Pyrenees between France and Spain, into our club.

SIGER:  As we had discussed seven months earlier, I suggested the Prince remove Negre as chief as he had been talking to others about the Prince’s “impeachment.”  Again, I

stressed the need for restructuring, which the Prince had actually ordered through JLA to no avail.  I reemphasized that we had been held up in our investigations of Biancheri and Narmino because SIGER, unlike police intelligence units in most parts of the world, could not even access phone records.

Operation Hound Dog:  I recounted FLOATER’s experience with Roger-Louis Bianchini and conveyed that reporter’s perspective on Monaco and the Prince.

Franck Biancheri:  In the Prince’s mind, Biancheri’s impressive new titles were just a means to evict him from the finance ministry.  He seemed oblivious to the public’s perception that Biancheri had been promoted, as spun by Proust. 

“Where did you hear that?” the Prince demanded.  

Answer:  From just about everyone, except Biancheri himself, who understood what truly transpired.

(Biancheri had been moved to a small office and lost his parking space.  Seething, he had apparently uttered, “I will sit by the river and wait for the corpses of my enemies to float by.”)

Philippe Narmino:  I provided LIDDY’s new documentation, adding that Slovenia’s intelligence chief had offered to assist

with this enquiry, and to provide the additional validation we needed—the very essence of why liaison partnerships are important.  I walked the Prince through the money trail, and provided names of those who greased the action on Narmino’s behalf:  Miodrag Maksimovic in Bosnia and Davor Holjevac in Croatia.

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Saturday, September 6, 2014

FLIGHT 370: THE CARLYLE CONNECTION?

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THE PRINCE'S SPY: 89

On Retainer to Prince Albert of Monaco

July 2006

Despite a late night, next morning started early for me—a private meeting with Iztok P, whom Marco M called “The key to the Balkans.” 

That was the key I needed to turn.  We created an email data dump and I provided Iztok with the information I hoped he would verify and validate.  He was game; another liaison partnership established.

I hurried back to M-Base for a ten o’clock meeting with our peace institute committee; we refined our mission statement.  (The cynic in me is convinced the only way to achieve world peace is to Prozactivate the globe i.e. lace the world’s drinking water with Prozac.  But since that is unlikely to happen, our institute would be the next best thing—a worthwhile endeavor for the Prince.)

Next:  the Micro-Europe intelligence association and our first ad hoc meeting of core founding members—Monaco, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein—lunch in the open air at Quai des Artistes.

Over a bottle of cold Pouilly Fume this fine afternoon, we agreed some basic club rules:

• No ties.

• Excellent food and fine wine.

• At earliest opportunity, purchase a yacht as association headquarters, preferably with funds confiscated from arms-dealing money launderers.  (When threatened by fire bombers, we pull anchor and cruise away.)

Jocularity aside, we had good reason to band together.  

First, mutual cooperation and a united shield against shady characters wanting to park dirty money in our neighborhoods.  As a collective, we could alert one another, so that when a dirty client got turned away from Monaco and aimed himself toward Luxembourg or Liechtenstein, they’d be watching for him.  

Luxembourg offered to host our first formal meeting, to which we would invite Malta’s intelligence service.

Marco, as its host, would follow up on my contact with the Vatican, Domenico Giani, and invite him, too.  And I would drive to Andorra presently and determine the disposition of that microstate’s representatives for attending an October confab.  Iceland and Cyprus would be kept in abeyance for when we were better organized.  SISMI (the Italians) had already offered to help with San Marino.  I’d wait to see how that played out.

Following lunch, we boarded the boat belonging to my deputy and cruised Villefranche and Cap-Ferrat. 

Clair George, the former spymaster, phoned me at 5:15, checking to see if I was still alive.  

“You need more sleep,” he counseled.  

That evening, I introduced my two friends from Luxembourg to SIGER’s Yves Subraud on the Miramar terrace bar and set them loose to speak French for ninety minutes.  Subraud confirmed what I had already conveyed to them:  so far as Monaco intelligence was concerned, I was the only game in town.

Jean-Leonard de Massy reported to me that Samy Maroun wanted to give him ten thousand euros “for bringing me luck.”  (Word had apparently filtered through de Massy’s circles that he was involved in sensitive work for his blood relative, which made him more of a lightning rod than usual.  Offer declined.)

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Friday, September 5, 2014

OBAMA RHETORIC NO MATCH FOR PUTIN PUGNACIOUSNESS

Obama gave speech in Tallinn. 

It was the typical Obama speech: long on treacly rhetoric and short on substantive actions. 

In it he specifically told Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania that NATO would stand by them under Article 5, the article covering collective self defense, of the North Atlantic Treaty. 

That was Wednesday. 

Today Vladimir Putin sent his answer. 

An Estonian counter intelligence official has been abducted by gunpoint and taken to Russia.

Estonian intelligence said the incident occurred at the Luhamaa border checkpoint at around 9am this morning. 

The unnamed official was understood to have been investigating a case of cross border crime.

It’s been claimed smoke grenades and jamming of communication equipment was used in the altercation.

The gaunlet has been tossed. Obama can either man-up and take up the challenge and show his words mean something. 

Or he can become even more irrelevant.

Putin takes a slap at Obama in Estonia | RedState

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FEAR & LOATHING IN THE KREMLIN

REVERED, even feared, to the point where no one will contradict him; aloof, isolated, a digital hermit who is never out of touch; broadly supported, but very narrowly advised by an ever-tighter group of

confidantes.

This is the picture of Vladimir Putin and his leadership style painted by a number of people with knowledge of the inner workings of the Kremlin, at a time when such things matter more than at any time since the collapse of communism.

One anecdote about Putin’s Kremlin reveals a tantalising glimpse of what it is to be a presidential adviser. Putin

himself receives briefing information on printed sheets inside red folders; he very rarely uses the internet.

According to one source, requirements for his briefing notes have changed significantly in recent months. The

president now demands notes on any topic to be no more than three pages long and written in type no smaller than

18 point.

 Public dissent is a no-go area. A deputy economic development minister who referred to a government policy

as “shameful” earlier this month was immediately fired; the more freethinking members of the government have

long been purged.

One of the few sources of information about how Putin’s presidential administration works in recent months has

been a blog published by a mysterious group called Shaltai-Boltai, the Russian name for Humpty Dumpty.

The blog, which is now banned, has posted leaked Kremlin documents and emails, most recently claiming to have

hacked the smartphone of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, displaying some of his personal messages

online and briefly hacking his Twitter account.

This being Russia, many have assumed that the leaks are organised by one Kremlin grouping keen to discredit

another, though Shaltai-Boltai claim they are “idealists” who want to “change reality”.

I met one of the group recently, who identified himself only as Shaltai. On the appointed date, a man wearing a floral shirt appeared at the meeting place he had set, a river landing jetty on the outskirts of a European city, and

agreed to speak only when the small boat he had provided was sailing and loud music was blaring to prevent anyone

listening in.

He said the group was made up of hackers and, perhaps disgruntled officials, and had an entire archive of unused

material that it may choose to release in the future.

He claimed the group had access to everything from the records of every meal Putin has eaten for the last few

years to thousands of emails sent by top Kremlin officials. As evidence he plucked a laptop from a bag and opened what appeared to be the full archive of an email account

belonging to a leading Kremlin functionary.

Reading the emails and internal documents of the Kremlin has given the group an insight into the way Russia is run,

said Shaltai, who described Putin as a man “without human emotions”, who is nevertheless a genuine patriot with a

belief that his rule is the best thing for Russia.

“I think he has been in power too long. He has grown detached. He really is like a tsar. Below him people are fighting among themselves but they are too scared to

disagree with him. He does not have friends in the normal sense. There may be people he likes but he is extremely

paranoid,” Shaltai said.

There are old school acquaintances and old judo partners who are part of the president’s inner circle and gather for frequent games of ice hockey but they do not generally

play a role in matters of state.

Conversations with others familiar with the corridors of power suggest that recent key decisions have been taken in top secret and within a very small circle, coming as a

surprise to almost all mid-level officials.

Previously, the presidential administration would have roundtable talks with experts on important issues, says

Minchenko, the analyst.

On Ukraine, these meetings have dried up since the new year, with decisions such as the annexation of Crimea and

the current military intervention in east Ukraine being taken by a small coterie of advisers, most of whom have

backgrounds in the security services.

“There were no discussions about it, no briefing notes, no focus groups,” says Shaltai. “Two days before the decision to annex Crimea was made by Putin, almost nobody in the

presidential administration knew anything about it.”

Likewise, few people have a real idea of just how far Russia’s armed intervention in Ukraine will go. That, at

least, is partly because Putin himself may not know.

Putin, say Kremlin watchers, has not been acting according to a long-gestating atavistic plan to bring the Soviet Union

back to life in recent months.

Instead, he has felt forced into corners, and decisions like the annexation of Crimea were taken at the last minute,

even if plans for the eventuality were already on the shelf.

“Putin is a conservative,” says a former Kremlin official who knows him personally. “Making dramatic decisions is

not his style. He is good with speaking aggressively, and is not ‘politically correct’ in the Western sense. But with his

actions, he has never been a fan of dramatic moves.

This is why the last few months have been so surprising.”

The international anger over the downing of MH17 over eastern Ukraine only compounded this sense of injustice.

In the period after the crash, with the world suspecting a Russian missile was involved in downing the plane, Putin

spent days fielding angry phone calls from Western leaders.

Four days after the crash, he recorded a video address in the early hours of the morning, after an evening spent on the phone with various leaders. Putin was alone, standing

by a desk, shifting his body weight from one leg to the other, and his face shiny with reflected light.

“No one has the right to use this tragedy to pursue their own political goals,” said Putin, his voice quiet but imbued

with barely concealed fury. Even though the Russian president presumably understood it was the Russia-backed rebels who shot down MH17, he believes that events put in

train by the US in Kiev are responsible for the chaos in eastern Ukraine, in which Russia was forced to intervene.

That sense of despair at a supposed dark Western anti-Russian conspiracy is not new, but it is stronger than ever.

Fear and loathing inside Russian president Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin | dailytelegraph.com.au

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