July 2008

June 2008

New light on an old murder - Markov

When Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré broadcaster, was murdered in London in 1978, few could have suspected that Communist rule in his country would collapse a decade or so later. But Bulgaria’s democratic rulers proved unable to help solve one of Britain’s most spectacular political murders. Key files were inexplicably destroyed; two senior officials died mysteriously. Though the cause of death—a pellet laden with a fatal poison, ricin, supposedly poked in with an umbrella—had long been known, the trail to those who ordered the killing seemed to have gone cold…The Bulgarian authorities could obstruct the Markov investigation until after September 11th, the 30th anniversary of the murder, when the statute of limitations kicks in. But racing against time to find clues in heavily weeded archives in Sofia is unnecessary if the whole story is available elsewhere. Whether or not the Soviet KGB ordered Markov’s murder, their close Bulgarian allies would certainly have shared details of such a risky operation. Bulgaria asked Russia to declassify its Markov files in 1991 but did not pursue it……(Economist, 27 Jun 08)

Hitler's 'Irish escape plan'

British Intelligence claimed Adolf Hitler and his top aides planned to hide in Ireland at the end of World War Two.

That was one of the more outrageous hoaxes cooked up by British Intelligence, according to a new book.

It lifts the lid on British "black propaganda" efforts to undermine neutral Ireland during World War Two. "It was to be a 'blood libel' on Ireland," said Eunan O'Halpin, Bank of Ireland Professor of Contemporary Irish History at Trinity College Dublin. "A Northern Ireland general attached to the Special Operations Executive was quite attached to the idea but it was shot down at the highest political level."……(Herald, 25 Jun 08)

Rosenberg Case Materials Are Closer to Publication

The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, that touchstone of atomic espionage, is a case that launched a thousand doctorates and enough historical texts to make a library groan. Now, however, the 50-year-old record may grow even more complex: on Monday, the federal government, in an unusual move, consented to release most of the secret grand jury testimony taken in the case. In papers filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, prosecutors said that they would not oppose the release of testimony from 35 of the 45 witnesses who appeared before the grand jury in New York in 1950 and 1951… The Rosenberg case began in 1945 when a Soviet cipher clerk named Igor Gouzenko defected to the West and stunned intelligence officials by revealing that the Russians were engaged in extensive espionage on their former wartime allies. A spy ring was exposed, and the Rosenbergs were accused of being members. On June 19, 1953, after the appeals of their convictions were denied, they were put to death in the electric chair at Sing Sing. This February, the National Security Archives, a nonprofit group at George Washington University, led a group of petitioners asking that the grand jury minutes in the case, sealed for more than 50 years, finally be released. Grand jury testimony is prized by historians for its scope and candor and is particularly revealing because the questions are broad and open-ended, and the answers are often unrehearsed and not subject to the cautions of a lawyer……(New York Times, 25 Jun 08)

Today in History

19 June, 1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted on espionage charges for giving atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, are executed in New York.

Powers works to keep Cold War memories alive

Intrigue and espionage were the order of the day at the Lyceum when Gary Powers, Jr., came to speak about his famous father and his plans to preserve Cold War history with a museum in the DC area. Powers, son of the famed aviator shot down over the former Soviet Union in the 1960 U2 incident, spoke to a crowd of about 60 people May 28, dispelling myths surrounding the incident and seeking backing for the project he has been working on for over a decade: establishing a Cold War museum……(Alex Times, 13 Jun 08)

Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart Scottish master spy to be honored in his home town

A Scots secret agent who cheated death at the hands of Russian Bolsheviks has been honored by his home town.  Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, was working for the British Foreign Service during World War I when he was implicated in a plot to kill Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.  The real-life James Bond was tried, found guilty of espionage and sabotage and condemned to death. But the British arranged for Lockhart to be exchanged for a captive Russian diplomat…..(Daily Record, 9 Jun 08)

Top spy boss refuses to release all documents in spy controversy

The country's top spy boss is still refusing to release "all" the documents in a long running spy controversy.

Bill Sutch, a top public servant, was arrested and charged with spying in the mid 1970s and then acquitted on all charges. Newly released SIS files exonerate him, but the country's spymasters say they're still holding back some information…….(TV3,  6 Jun 08)

Files offer insight into suspected spy's mind

A declassified Security Intelligence Service file containing correspondence on spy accused Bill Sutch has provided an insight into the former senior civil servant. Dr Sutch, who was born in 1907, died in 1975 soon after being cleared in court on espionage charges relating to alleged dealings in Wellington with a Russian KGB agent. He held various high profile posts during his career, including being industry and commerce secretary and a United Nations representative, and had traveled widely in Russia and eastern Europe. As well as detailing illegal tactics used by the SIS to gain entrance to Dr Sutch's office and tap his phone, the report, released publicly today, shows the SIS held deep suspicions about his extreme left wing political views from an early stage in his public career……(Stuff, 6 Jun 08)

NZ civil servant cleared of spying

In the 1970s, Bill Sutch was a high-ranking official in the New Zealand Government. He was charged with being a spy after he met with a Russian diplomat. He was acquitted in 1975 but he died seven months later from liver cancer. Family spokesman John Edwards says the trial destroyed him. "Bill Sutch never made any secret of his left-leaning tendencies and there was never any evidence that he was disloyal to New Zealand, that he was an agent," he said……(ABC, 6 Jun 08)

Haverhill woman only recently aware of late husband’s CIA spy duty

An Alabama pilot who died on a mission 40 years ago has been honored in a ceremony at Battleship Memorial Park following disclosure last year that he flew CIA spy missions. Details of Jack Weeks’ flights became known when a CIA report was declassified. It said he flew a high-speed A-12 Blackbird spy aircraft on missions that included one over North Korea in 1968 that located the seized ship USS Pueblo…Weeks was killed 40 years ago while flying an A-12 out of Okinawa, Japan…..(AP, 6 Jun 08)

3 Czech Friends, Cast as Heroes and as Murderers

…The journey that they thought would take five days took four weeks, and they braved starvation, frostbite and bullet wounds. Three of the men eventually reached West Berlin, where they were debriefed by the Central Intelligence Agency. Then they joined the United States Army in hopes of liberating communist Czechoslovakia. The other two — Mr. Janata and Mr. Sveda — were captured by the East German police and executed. The current Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, a liberal, decided in March to honor the three survivors as heroes, no doubt expecting some controversy in a nation still grappling with its Communist past. But the government was not prepared for a searing debate that encapsulated all the ambivalence associated with the country’s recent history…..(New York Times, 2 Jun 08)

May 2008

National Archives reveal spy chiefs thought Brits a crafty bunch

The British people are natural deceivers, using guile by instinct, according to intelligence chiefs in the 1970s at a meeting of the newly formed Defence Deception Advisory Group, a declassified file has revealed. After a visit to the United States to discuss American deception capabilities, the advisory group, which had been set up in 1969, reported: “There is a considerable difference in national characteristics between the US and UK. It's suggested that it's almost a way of life for a UK citizen to use guile in almost all dealings with fellow human beings, whether friend or foe.” The report went on: “Therefore, in military circles even a junior commander will invariably, as part of his nature, attempt to fox his adversary as to his real operational intentions.”…..(Times Online, 30 May 08)

Britain looked to Israel when studying military deception

When British military leaders set up a special task force in 1969 to study how best to use deception to achieve their battlefield aims, they turned their attention to the tactics used by the Israelis _ not the Americans. Formerly classified documents released Friday by the National Archives show that many officers felt the Americans didn't have a knack for deceiving the enemy. Americans were judged to be so open and friendly that they lacked cunning.  The so-called Defense Deception Advisory Group studied in detail the way Israel's military and political leaders used a complex series of intertwined deceptions to fool their Arab enemies about the Jewish state's intentions and its military capabilities……(AP, 30 May 08)

History expert to discuss Revolutionary War spy master

The Society of the Founders of Norwich will add a special program about George Washington’s “spy master” as part of its annual meeting Wednesday, June 4 at the Rose City Senior Center, 8 Mahan Drive. The meeting is free and open to the public.  The business meeting and election of officers will be at 7 p.m. At 7:30, the Rev. Canon Robert G. Carroon will present a meeting with Washington’s spy master in the American Revolution, titled “Alias John Bolton.”……(Norwich Bulletin, 30 May 08)

The affairs of state TheStar.com - Canada - The affairs of state

…Wiseman says Bernier's relationship with Couillard should not be viewed in the same light as other men's historic affairs with femme fatales. The case here is that Bernier's indiscretions may have caused a security breach, he says. Bernier isn't the first Canadian politician whose romantic liaisons have posed a risk to national security…..(Star, 28 May 08)

Spy reports released 30 years on

Previously secret reports into Australia's spy services will be among thousands of documents released today under the National Archives of Australia's 30-year rule. The documents hark back to the findings of the Hope Royal Commission, although what will finally be made public, and what will remain secret, remains to be seen. In 1974 Justice Robert Marsden Hope was appointed by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam to look into the "intelligence community" - the government espionage and intelligence agencies…..(Australian, 27 May 08)

Bringing Cold War Out of Deep Freeze
May 5, 1960, was a very bad public relations day for the United States and President Dwight D. Eisenhower… Four days earlier, on May 1, the Russian Communist Party had celebrated the establishment of the Soviet state with parades and an annual show of might in Red Square. They also had received a windfall from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. One of the most advanced spy planes, a U2, had fallen from the sky after an encounter with a Soviet SAM Missile.  Both the pilot, Francis Gary Powers Sr., and vital parts of his aircraft had survived the descent from 75,000 feet. But, Khrushchev and the KGB, Russia's intelligence agency, said nothing. They waited for the White House and CIA to play their hand. In Washington, the Eisenhower Administration, aware that the plane had crashed on Soviet soil and hearing nothing from the usually flamboyant and outspoken Khrushchev, assumed the plane had disintegrated and that Powers was either dead or had escaped. So they put out an official story that "a weather plane" had been lost over the Soviet Union……(Laurel Hill Connection, 22 May 08)

The Wallenberg file

…Raoul Wallenberg was a minor official of a neutral country, with an unimposing appearance and gentle manner. Recruited and financed by the U.S., he was sent into Hungary to save Jews. He bullied, bluffed and bribed powerful Nazis to prevent the deportation of 20,000 Hungarian Jews to concentration camps, and averted the massacre of 70,000 more people in Budapest’s ghetto by threatening to have the Nazi commander hanged as a war criminal. Then, on Jan. 17, 1945, days after the Soviets moved into Budapest, the 32-year-old Wallenberg and his Hungarian driver, Vilmos Langfelder, drove off under a Russian security escort, and vanished forever… Why was Wallenberg arrested, and did he really die in Soviet custody in 1947?…fresh documents are to become public which might cast light on another puzzle: Whether Wallenberg was connected, directly or indirectly, to a super-secret wartime U.S. intelligence agency known as “the Pond,” operating as World War II was drawing to a close and the Soviets were growing increasingly suspicious of Western intentions in eastern Europe. Speculation that Wallenberg was engaged in espionage has been rife since the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged in the 1990s that he had been recruited for his rescue mission by an agent of the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, which later became the CIA……(St. Petersburgh Times, 22 May 08)

Raoul Gustav Wallenberg Web Page

Today in History - May 22, 2007:  British prosecutors accused former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi of murder in the radioactive poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. (Russia, however, has refused to extradite Lugovoi.)

New evidence suggests Soviets may have sunk the sub Scorpion 40 years ago

…With its network of hydrophones up and down both coasts, the U.S. undeniably had a defensive edge. Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Anthony Walker Jr. rendered much of that advantage irrelevant. Walker had clearance to handle top-secret materials. He started off selling the Russians key codes and technical manuals to an American encryption device…In exchange for the information, Walker asked the Soviet Union to pay him up to $1,000 a week. By the mid-1980s, John Walker had become one of the Soviet Union’s most valuable spies… Months after his arrest, Walker pleaded guilty to three charges of espionage and was sentenced to multiple life terms, with no parole. Eight years later, in 1993, the Navy declassified some of its files on the Scorpion in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. At about the same time, following the break-up of the Soviet Union, information began to flow out of Russia. Thanks to those new sources of information, authors Ed Offley and Kenneth Sewell now believe they know what sank the Scorpion: a Russian torpedo. …….(Virginian-Pilot, 18 May 08)

AP IMPACT: Thousands killed in 1950 by US's Korean ally

Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950. With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed. Many victims never faced charges or trial. The mass executions _ intended to keep possible southern leftists from reinforcing the northerners _ were carried out over mere weeks and were largely hidden from history for a half-century……(AP, 19 May 08)

Russian FSB Rewriting Russian History

In yet another horrifying attempt to rewrite and sanitize Russian history, the KGB is now seeking a do-over on the Hitler-Stalin pact that stabbed the West in the back. Soon, for Russians, no such thing will ever have occurred. Paul Goble reports: The Federal Security Service (FSB) is working with Russian historians trained in Soviet times to rehabilitate the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, not only by selectively releasing hitherto classified documents but also by directly appealing to the Duma to overturn the denunciation of that pact by the Soviet Congress of Peoples’ Deputies in 1989……(Russophobe, 16 May 08)

Today in History - May 16

In 1960, a Big Four summit conference in Paris collapsed on its opening day as the Soviet Union leveled spy charges against the U.S. in the wake of the U-2 incident.

Still Guilty After All These Years: Sirhan B. Sirhan

….conspiracism about RFK’s political murder has never gripped Americans’ collective psyche to quite the same degree as has the assassination of his brother. The pantry has no grassy knoll, and “Ambassador Hotel” never connoted the same instant chill as the words “Dealey Plaza.” The Los Angeles County DA and LAPD chief never became household names overnight. The city of Los Angeles never bore the kind of burden visited upon Dallas.   Perhaps that is because Robert Kennedy was not president when he was assassinated, and the shock of the sequel was more like a numbing after-shock than a political earthquake. There is also the fatigue factor: just how many conspiracies must a citizen keep track of? Finally, one would like to think that the due process accorded Sirhan has something to do with the relative deficit of interest in conspiracy theories about RFK’s assassination. But this much is true: the public’s lack of interest has not stemmed from conspiracy theorists’ lack of effort……(Washington Decoded, 11 May 08)

Recalling the era of Cold War and ‘Commies’

Fascination with espionage, international spies and the Cold War attracted a large group to a special presentation April 30 at the ITOW Veterans Museum. “The Cold War really was a ‘world war,’” said Francis Gary Powers Jr., the son of one of America’s best-known “spies.” Francis Gary Powers Sr., piloting a U-2 spy plane, was shot down May 1, 1960, 1,200 miles inside the Soviet Union--setting off an international incident at the height of the Cold War. His son, for more than ten years, has lead the campaign to create a national Cold War museum. Gary Junior spoke about his father’s experiences as a pilot, and also explained the goals of the national museum……(Perham Enterprise Bulletin, 8 May 08)

Truth unwritten on socialite spy - Moura Budberg

TV Review: My Secret Agent Auntie, BBC4

…Moura Budberg was a glamorous socialite, a Russian baroness who, after two husbands, became a lover of Maxim Gorky… she was under surveillance by MI5 who thought she wasn't quite the thing, chaps, especially when her friend Guy Burgess turned out to be a spy. Nothing stuck, but after her death stories came out that suggested everything from knowing, well in advance, that Anthony Blunt was also a spy to having been involved in a plot to overthrow the Bolshevik government in 1917. Perhaps with accordions……(Scotsman, 8 May 08)

Marcus Klingberg

Marcus Abraham Klingberg was born in 1918, in Poland, to an ultra-Orthodox family. In 1935 he began medical school and when World War II broke out, he fled to the Soviet Union. His family stayed in Poland and perished in the Holocaust.  Klingberg joined the Red Army during the war and spent most of his service in various medical units, where he gained substantial expertise in contagious diseases. He returned to Poland after the war and was soon married. Shortly after, the Klingbergs immigrated to Sweden. It is believed that his contacts with Soviet intelligence began around that time.  In 1949, the Klingbergs immigrated to Israel. Klingberg enlisted in the Medical Corps, where he climbed the ranks to lieutenant-colonel and was named head of the preventive medicine bureau. Around that time, he renewed his contacts with Soviet intelligence and began providing his handlers with sensitive information……(YNet, 5 May 08)

April 2008

Panel Addresses Academic Ties with Nazis

A panel organized by the Organization of American Historians recently convened in Manhattan to discuss ties between Nazi Germany and leading US universities. Several renowned academics and researchers participated in a most revealing and highly informative event on Sunday, March 30th, entitled, "Columbia and the Nazis: New Research, New Concerns." The event, designated as a special session of the Organization of American Historians annual conference, was held at The Center for Jewish History in Manhattan and was sponsored by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies……(Intellectual Conservative, 30 Apr 08)

Eisenhower Advisers Discussed Using Nuclear Weapons in China

Senior Air Force officers proposed using 10-to-15-kiloton nuclear bombs against targets in Communist China in 1958, in the event that Beijing blockaded the Taiwan Strait, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower ruled out that option, according to a newly declassified Pentagon document…A similar discussion is underway today as the Pentagon, under direction from Congress, examines U.S. nuclear strategy as part of the debate over whether to develop a new generation of weapons in the Reliable Replacement Warhead program……(Washington Post, 30 Apr 08)

Aldrich Ames Sentenced for Role as Soviet Spy in the CIA

On April 28, 1994, CIA counterintelligence analyst Aldrich Ames was sentenced to life in prison for providing the KGB with confidential information. During his trial, Ames admitted to the court that he sold confidential information to the Soviet Union and later Russia from April 1985 until his arrest in February 1994.
Ames was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole….(Finding Dulcinea, 28 Apr 08)

Scholars run down more clues to a Holocaust mystery

Budapest, November 1944: Another German train has loaded its cargo of Jews bound for Auschwitz. A young Swedish diplomat pushes past the SS guard and scrambles onto the roof of a cattle car. Ignoring shots fired over his head, he reaches through the open door to outstretched hands, passing out dozens of bogus ''passports'' that extended Sweden's protection to the bearers. He orders everyone with a document off the train and into his caravan of vehicles. The guards look on, dumbfounded. Raoul Wallenberg was a minor official of a neutral country, with an unimposing appearance and gentle manner. Recruited and financed by the U.S., he was sent into Hungary to save Jews……(AP, 28 Apr 08)

Voices of Air America 33 years later, pilots can finally reflect on covert CIA operation in Southeast Asia

It was an airline covertly owned and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency. As such, its structure was deliberately confusing, according to Felix Smith, former Air America pilot and author of "China Pilot," (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.) "It was made so by CIA lawyers, so when news-people would try and figure it out, they'd give up." The Freedom of Information Act has given former Air America employees more latitude in speaking about the lives they led from 1950 to 1975…..(Chicago Tribune, 22 Apr 08)

The Real Joe McCarthy

Fifty-four years ago today, Sen. Joseph McCarthy started his televised hearings on alleged Soviet spies and communists in the Army. The spectacle grabbed the country's attention for the next two months…Robert J. Lamphere, who participated in all the FBI's major spy cases during the McCarthy period, was one. Lamphere also was the FBI liaison to the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service's Venona program, which was intercepting secret Soviet communications…Lamphere (who died in 2002), told me in an interview that agents who worked counterintelligence were appalled that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover initially supported McCarthy. True enough, the Venona intercepts revealed that hundreds more Soviet spies had operated in the government than was believed at the time. "The problem was that McCarthy lied about his information and figures," Lamphere said. "He made charges against people that weren't true…..(Wall Street Journal, 22 Apr 08)

A Soviet Spy Caper: 25 Years Later

Dr. Paul Kengor: Marc, this is a pleasure. When we typically do our “V&V Q&A,” we interview a well-known expert on some major historical event that everyone remembers. No disrespect intended, but most people who have read this far into this interview are wondering, who is Marc Zimmerman, and what in the world did he do 25 years ago?... Zimmerman: Mikheyev was a Russian who served as a tour guide to my college buddy, Bob McGee, from New York, who had gone on a “Can’t-We-All-Just-Get-Along” excursion to the Soviet Union. Later in the year, Alex Mikheyev came to visit the United States by way of the United Nations and Bob asked me to show Mikheyev around D.C. when he visited…..(FrontPage, 22 Apr 08)

For sale: House of spies

The house at 6312 Riviera Dr. in Coral Gables is grand by almost any measure. It has a 33-foot long living room with dragons carved into its marble fireplace, vases that once belonged to Umberto I, King of Italy, a dance patio, mini-Olympic pool, an elevator, a tidewater pond, more than a dozen bathrooms, two roomy boathouses and a pedigreed architect… Given its extreme curb appeal, it seems incredible that the CIA used the house for secret operations at the height of its covert war against Fidel Castro in the 1960s. Then again, this is Miami -- no stranger to the high jinks of history. CIA operatives would stride across the lush lawn in broad daylight, past the pink cupola and into the boathouse where they would board a souped-up boat, part of an armada that then amounted to the Caribbean's third largest naval fleet. Once armed, and sometimes hooded, they would motor down the Coral Gables Waterway to launch one of hundreds of missions carried out against Cuba's Communist government…..(Miami Herald, 20 Apr 08)

Beirut, 25 Year Ago – Little Did We Know

Twenty-five years ago on this day, April 18, I was driving back from the U.S. Marine compound near Beirut International Airport where a press conference was held for the big news item of the day: a Marine guarding the perimeter was shot at. The Marine was unhurt, but the bullet went through his baggy trousers. That was the top news item of the day … until … until 1:03 p.m. That was the exact time when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden van into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. The blast was heard and felt several miles away…..(Middle East Times, 18 Apr 08)

Ian Fleming's war spying helped inspire James Bond

He may not have cheated death, seduced women at will and killed countless baddies, but James Bond creator Ian Fleming's experience of the shadowy world of wartime espionage helped inspire his bestselling novels. "For Your Eyes Only" is the first major exhibition devoted to the British author and coincides with the centenary of his birth. It opens at London's Imperial War Museum on Thursday and runs until March 1, 2009…..(Reuters, 16 Apr 08)

Former British spy's WWII exploits revealed

…Britain's National Archives opened its records on Pearl Cornioley, who parachuted into France posing as a cosmetics saleswoman to deliver coded messages to Resistance members. The release follows her death on Feb. 24. The records shed light on a woman who quickly adapted to life as an agent but never forgot about her family back home, requesting in handwritten notes that officials in London send her mother and sisters birthday and Christmas presents…..(AP, 10 Apr 08)

Britsh WW2 spy who posed as saleswoman

The secrets of a female spy who posed as a cosmetics saleswoman during World War II and helped lead the resistance inside Nazi-occupied France have been unsealed. Pearl Cornioley outfoxed the Nazis by, among other tricks, concealing secret messages in the hem of her skirt and helping airmen escape to safety, according to records unsealed at Britain’s National Archives last week. The release follows Cornioley’s death on February 24.

The records shed light on a woman who quickly adapted to life as an agent, but never forgot about her family in Britain, requesting in handwritten notes that officials in London send her mother and sisters timely birthday and Christmas presents…..(Dispatch, 9 Apr 08)

Spy buster, aged 100, keeps her secrets

Russia’s oldest counter-intelligence officer is 100 years young. And although she's long retired, Maria Lyovina is still barred from revealing sensitive details about her work in the past. She may not look like your archetypal secret agent but Maria Lyovina was catching spies long before the world had ever heard of James Bond… She joined SMERSH, a counter intelligence group dedicated to catching traitors and undercover Germans. Its name literally meant ‘death to spies’……(Russia Today, 7 Apr 08)

Video: Spy buster, aged 100, keeps her secrets

Bulgaria confirms Cold War border shootings of Germans

…Border police officers were rewarded for catching or shooting at people trying to flee the country, according to another committee member Valeri Katsunov. "Patrols were granted a 20-day leave for every person caught on the border and an engraved wristwatch for a so-called 'display of heroism' or firing at a trespasser," he said, citing former border police officers. It's the first official information about suspected communist-era shootings to come from Bulgaria…It Darzhavna Sigurnost secret service agency was implicated in some of the Communist era's landmark spy plots, like the 1978 poisoned-umbrella murder of dissident Georgi Markov and the 1981 attempt on the late Pope John Paul II…..(The Local, 4 Apr 08)

Today in History - April 3, 1998

Douglas Fred Groat, a disgruntled spy fired by the CIA, was charged with espionage and extortion. (Groat later pleaded guilty to trying to extort $1 million from the agency, and was sentenced to five years in prison.)

Sharpshooter, paratrooper, hero: the woman who set France ablaze

Sitting in the Air Ministry in London in 1943, Pearl Witherington longed to do something more for her beloved and broken France than simply pushing paper. Strong-willed, cool-headed and ferociously practical, the 29-year-old volunteered for the Special Operations Executive. After seven weeks of training she was parachuted into France to spend a year of danger and deprivation, becoming one of the second world war's most successful Special Operations Executive organizers of the armed resistance, with a million franc reward on her head… Pearl Cornioley, as she became, died in February and her obituaries told extraordinary tales of wartime courage: she commanded troops who killed 1,000 German soldiers, saw to the surrender of 18,000 more and organized and armed the resistance……(Guardian, 1 Apr 08)

Wartime files reveal slur on top woman agent

An outstanding female wartime agent who ended up in charge of 3,000 Resistance fighters in France was assessed as "not the personality to act as a leader" before being parachuted into the country, it was revealed yesterday. Pearl Cornioley, later commended for her "colossal bravery" and "outstanding powers of leadership", was described in one British training report before she left for France as not leadership material and best employed as a "subordinate". But another training assessment of the wartime agent described her as "probably the best shot – male or female – we have yet had" and it was noted that "this student, though a woman, has definitely got leader's qualities. Cool and resourceful and extremely determined."……(Scotsman, 1 Apr 08)

Revealed: the story of the spy who led the French Resistance

Pearl Cornioley's training officer in Britain's wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE) had plenty of doubts about her potential as a secret agent. In 1943, he wrote: "She is so cautious that she seems to lack initiative and drive. She is loyal but has not the personality to act as a leader, nor is she temperamentally suited to work alone." The officer could not have been more wrong about a woman who would later become known as Agent Wrestler. Within 18 months, Ms Cornioley, then aged 29, was in sole command of 1,500 resistance fighters in western France. In that role she masterminded a campaign of sabotage and guerrilla warfare so effective that the German military put a price on her head of Fr1m……(Independent, 1 Apr 08)

The wartime exploits of British agent with million franc bounty on her head

…Pearl Cornioley, who was then known as Cécile Pearl Witherington, became one of the most illustrious members of the Special Operations Executive - set up to foster resistance to the Germans across Europe during the Second World War - after being parachuted into occupied France……(Telegraph, 1 Apr 08)

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