People might find this interesting. The FSB is the new name for the KGB, in case you don't know. (I got drunk once with an FSB agent. He was very amusing, kojing about how he was going to have to interrogate me.)
BTW, here's a good way to get rid of Jehovah's Witnesses. When a coworker of mine was a teenager in New Zealand in the 80s, she would study Russian by going on board the Soviet ships that would dock there and talk to the crew (she would get hasselled a lot by the cops, who assumed that she was either a communist agent or having sex with the sailors [a friend of hers actually was having sex with the sailors, but that's another matter). When some Jehovah's Witnesses came on board one of the ships to try to convert the heathen, they introduced them to the crew KGB official...
Chris Doss The Russia Journal ------------------ Russian FSB Counterintelligence Department Chief Interviewed
Rossiyskaya Gazeta 7 May 2002 [translation for personal use only] Interview with Colonel General Oleg Syromolotov, deputy director of the Russian Federal Security Service, by Timofey Borisov on 6 May; place not given: "Counterintelligence Service Changes Along With Spies" -- first paragraph is introduction
Yesterday [6 May] was the 80th anniversary of the establishment of counterintelligence agencies. Our special correspondent met with Colonel General Oleg Syromolotov, deputy director of the Russian FSB [Federal Security Service].
[Borisov] First of all let us congratulate you and all FSB counterintelligence officers on your anniversary. Why is this date marked in May, surely the intelligence officers' traditional holiday falls on 20 December?
[Syromolotov] Thank you for your good wishes. Taking advantage of the opportunity, allow me too from the bottom of my heart to wish serving and veteran counterintelligence officers a happy anniversary from the pages of Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Eighty years ago, on 6 May, a special subunit to counter foreign espionage -- the GPU [State Political Directorate] Counterintelligence Department and its apparatus in the provinces -- was set up within the structure of the central apparatus of the country's security agencies.
[Borisov] In the chief counterintelligence officer's opinion, what place does your service now occupy in the Russian FSB structure and how is it organized?
[Syromolotov] I must clarify that the country's main counterintelligence officer is Russian FSB Director Nikolay Patrushev, whereas I am in charge of the Counterintelligence Department, which has now become a central element of the FSB counterintelligence structure.
Besides combating espionage, the Counterintelligence Department's activity is carried out in the sphere of ensuring the security of Russian institutions and citizens abroad, regulations and procedures concerning foreign citizens' entry and exit and visits to the Russian Federation, combating illegal migration, operational protection of the state border, and operational investigation. In addition, the department carries out, jointly with interested FSB subunits, measures aimed at ensuring the security of foreign states' missions on Russian Federation territory.
[Borisov] That is, you carry out the same work as in Soviet times?
[Syromolotov] It is not fundamentally important to us what the central element of counterintelligence is called -- the KGB Second Main Directorate or the FSB Department. What is important is that counterintelligence will always exist and will not depend on any political conditions at all. Or, at any rate, until people stop playing "spy games."
[Borisov] Nevertheless, have any changes occurred since the time of the USSR KGB?
[Syromolotov] Twenty years ago, when we were talking about our main enemy we were primarily referring to the United States, NATO countries, and China.
The world's entire intelligence community has now undergone great changes. The range of special services operating on our territory has become substantially wider. Furthermore, the actual substance of their intelligence activity has changed.
[Borisov] Have the methods of your reaction also changed?
[Syromolotov] We endeavor not to make a fuss over detained foreign intelligence officers. Generally we try to ensure that their activity does not go beyond the framework of what is permitted. Official terms such as "counteraction" and "constraint" have come into use by counterintelligence officers. The concept of the "main enemy" is a thing of the past. That does not mean that the Russian counterintelligence service must adopt a passive, defensive position. We act offensively, in the light of the constantly changing political and operational situation.
Lately confidential contacts between special services, including Russian and foreign ones, have been noticeably expanded and their level of trust has increased in connection with the pooling of many countries' efforts in the fight against international terrorism.
[Borisov] Yet I think that we can talk about trust among special services only with a certain degree of relativity. What is the counterintelligence service's most pressing task at the moment?
[Syromolotov] Countering foreign special services' intelligence activity traditionally remains the most important task. The world's leading counterintelligence services have considerably reinforced the personnel of the stations operating under cover of embassies and other official missions in Moscow, other Russian cities, and the near abroad. The number of "deep-cover" intelligence officers has increased.
[Borisov] Can this be regarded as a new spiral of "spy mania?"
[Syromolotov] In this context we are not inclined to go to extremes and to regard this factor as an intensification of a particular state's "hostility." But materials obtained now make it possible to say with complete certainty that Russia is a priority target for most foreign states' special services. The hallmark of their activity is acquiring on the one hand a more aggressive, and on the other a more secretive and sophisticated, nature.
[Borisov] Probably it has become easier for them to operate since the USSR's disintegration?
[Syromolotov] In the past two years, as a result of long-term and carefully planned operations 14 foreign citizens, 10 of whom were career special services officers, were caught red-handed while carrying out intelligence acts. A total of around 260 career foreign special services officers were detected and investigated, and in addition espionage and other subversive activity by over 40 of them was thwarted. In total it was possible to thwart the unlawful activity of around 100 agents of foreign states' special services, including six Russian citizens. In particular, the special services of Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and certain other states were deprived of their valuable informants.
Here are just a few examples. Last August former Russian Foreign Ministry senior official Moiseyev was again convicted of high treason and sentenced to four and a half years' imprisonment in a strict-regime colony. Foreign intelligence agencies' career officers were arrested and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment (one to 20 years, another to 10 years) and later pardoned by the Russian Federation president and expelled from our country. Russian counterintelligence discovered and terminated the unlawful activity of the manager of a firm from a Near East country, who was collecting and illegally taking out of Russia our scientific and technical documents, models, and materials, which had been produced using advanced Russian dual-purpose technologies.
[Borisov] Is espionage activity itself changing in the new conditions?
[Syromolotov] Our work has increased in respect of so-called voluntary espionage, whereby people themselves make contact with foreign intelligence services. It is mainly citizens dissatisfied with their financial or social position who pass secret information to foreign special services on their own initiative. Currently "volunteers" are trying to establish criminal contacts with members of the special services of such countries as the United States, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, the DPRK, the PRC, and Israel more often than in previous years. It is noteworthy that officials of bodies of state power and administration and of security departments have started to be found among them more often. In the past two years the FSB has discovered 11 such "volunteers."
[Borisov] What new things have appeared in this sphere in the most recent years?
[Syromolotov] Today foreign special services try to make maximum use of the latest scientific and technical achievements for their own purposes. As is known, telecommunications systems and global information networks, primarily the Internet, which are being widely introduced in Russia, have become an additional channel for the receipt of information.
Moreover, Russian FSB analysts believe that in the near future there will be an increased threat of the launching of a so-called information war and of the use of information weapons by special services and foreign states' organizations against information, information and telecommunications, and electronic control systems and against databases and data banks of strategic importance on Russian territory.
[Borisov] Is it to be expected that the problem of ensuring the country's information security will become one of your main priorities in the future?
[Syromolotov] Yes. In 2001 an increase in the number of offenses in the sphere of computer information and of damaging communications lines and facilities was noted. The problem of the proliferation of computer viruses which pose a threat to state and regional information resources has become particularly acute. Over the past year FSB bodies have instituted over 40 criminal cases in respect of crimes in the sphere of computer information. In 2001 offenses were detected and prevented during the processing of secret information by computer technology and during the hacking into open telecommunications systems in Russian Federation components' bodies of state authority.
[Borisov] Is the FSB counterintelligence service taking part in the counterterrorist operation in Chechnya?
[Syromolotov] Of course it is. We have discovered facts indicating that separatist and extremist organizations in the Russian Federation, including in Chechnya, have links with and are being supported by the special services of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, and Pakistan. It is also known that detachments of gunmen are to a considerable extent made up of foreign mercenaries. A certain proportion of this contingent has missions which have been set by the special services of states interested in destabilizing the situation in Russia. The activity of the British special services in the North Caucasus, which was carried out under cover of the Halo Trust international organization, was compromised by counterintelligence officers and antiterrorist subunits. Using humanitarian activity as a cover, it organized explosives training for Chechen separatists. Joint efforts resulted in the termination of the activity of the Saudi Arabian al-Haramein organization, which was funding gunmen and organizing arms supplies to and the recruitment of foreign mercenaries to fight in Chechnya on the pretext of giving charitable aid.
[Borisov] How do you picture the counterintelligence service of the future?
[Syromolotov] That is a difficult question and it requires a separate conversation. The strength of any special service undoubtedly lies above all in its personnel. As before, devotion to the Fatherland, dedication to duty, professionalism, human decency, and discipline are still especially highly valued.