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Washington, D.C. 703.268.

4453

CRIMINAL JUSTICE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATES


7/1/2010

2010-007

DISMANTLED RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE OPERATION- A LESSON FOR


LATIN AMERICA DEMOCRACIES

www.cjiausa.org
By: Jerry Brewer

On June 24, 2010 President Barack Obama took visiting Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev to munch hamburgers at Ray’s Hell Burger in suburban Arlington,
Virginia. Media described the casual meeting as “symbols of high-level bonding that


are important in the relationship between the two nuclear powers.” Further, they
described this casual lunch by the “two youthful leaders” as a “useful counterpoint to

jbrewer@cjiausa.org
superpower summitry and the high tensions at the end of President George W. Bush’s
administration.”

Obama’s White House was quick to issue a 10-page fact sheet detailing how Mr.
Obama has “reset” the relationship with Russia.

Meanwhile back at the highest levels of the FBI’s counterintelligence offices, agents
were preparing to take down 11 agents of Russia’s SVR intelligence service operating
in the U.S. The operation was described by the Justice Department as a multi-year
investigation. Their mission and operational acts were "to search and develop ties in
policymaking circles in the US." This was a deep-cover operation for the Russian
agents and their handler(s) operating unilateral in lieu of possessing diplomatic or
other military cover for their mission.

Peruvian-born Vicky Peláez, who has been living and working in the US for more than
20 years and writing opinion columns for the Hispanic newspaper El Diario/La
Prensa, a widely read Spanish language newspaper, was described as very critical to
US policy towards Israel, Cuba, and immigration, among other foreign policy issues.
She was arrested along with her Uruguayan husband Juan Lazaro under charges of
espionage.

The couple is being accused of conspiracy against the US and money laundering via a
real estate business to cover their ties with the Russian federation. The investigation
file states that Pelaez received money from a Russian representative in 2000, during a
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trip to a South American country, and her husband received money too in 2007. There is also a tape
with the recording of a conversation about how they entered the US with $80,000 that the Russia had
paid them.

In advance of President Obama's visit to Russia last year, intelligence headquarters in Moscow sent
directives to the defendants living in New Jersey requesting information on the U.S. position regarding a
new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, Afghanistan, and Iran’s nuclear program. Moscow indicated that
it needed intelligence reports "which should reflect approaches and ideas of" four sub-Cabinet U.S.
foreign policy officials.

At the professed declaration of the ending of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and western world
in 1991, the spy business was apparently left out of the loop. This massive apparatus continued to churn
and reinvent itself. Many thought the clandestine mystique was over. The Russians under Vladimir
Putin and President Medvedev never forgot that human intelligence (HUMINT) should not be sacrificed
and that it takes people on the ground to make the intelligence product a reality with plain common
sense and basic fundamentals of tradecraft.

Over the years the Russians installed nearly four hundred KGB and GRU (military branch) spies in
strategic positions in the United Nations in New York City. It became a massive spy facility that
operated openly and with absolute impunity on U.S. soil. The Soviets controlled the U.N. Library,
known to be the most comprehensive intelligence collection machine they had in this hemisphere. The
GRU operated technical acquisition of recruited U.S. military and other disloyal assets out of several
facilities in Mexico City. Aeroflot Airline offices were a favorite “notional” facility for agent cover.
The CIA responded with highly effective surveillance and counter-surveillance teams and specialists in
those years.

Cuba's intelligence and spy apparatus has been described as a "contingency of very well-trained,
organized and financed agents." Too, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has adopted the previous
Soviet-styled Cuban intelligence service (DGI) as his model for Venezuela's security service, known as
the DISIP, utilizing Cuban intelligence counterparts and advisors.

Cuba has trained thousands of communist guerrillas and terrorists, and has sponsored violent acts of
aggression and subversion in most democratic nations of the southwestern hemisphere. U.S. government
studies within the intelligence community documented a total of 3,043 international terrorist incidents in
the decade of 1968 to 1978. Within that study, "over 25 percent occurred in Latin America."

Recent reports are that Cuba has been expanding intelligence operations in the Middle East and South
Asia. This reported by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

Cuba has consistently maintained a well-organized and "ruthless" intelligence presence within Mexico,
as have the Russians. Much of their activity involved in U.S. interests that include recruiting disloyal
U.S. military, government, and "private sector specialists," as well as highly suspected in interfering in
Mexico’s political and election process.

With narcoterrorism insurgency, assassinations, and assorted revolutionary mandates a primary concern
in Latin America, there have been links established between Middle Eastern terrorists with Latin
American leftist intelligence services and Mexican drug trafficking organizations. Leaders of non-
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democratic nations and vociferous critics of the U.S., such as Chavez of Venezuela and President Rafael
Correa of Ecuador, have been quick to end any form of support to their neighbors or the United States in
drug and terrorism interdiction efforts. And the stark significance of their subterfuge and rhetoric in
resisting U.S. drug and terrorism initiatives in defense of their Latin American neighbors is indeed
suspect.

The Mexican cartels have pushed as far south as Argentina. Last year Buenos Aires police found three
corpses "killed execution style." The three were identified as "pharmaceutical industrialists." Police
reported ties to Mexican narcotics traffickers, this due in part to six Mexicans apprehended in Buenos
Aires, as police described the "first mounted synthetic drug laboratory in Argentina."

Cuban espionage has been linked to nefarious associations with the Chinese, Iranians, as well as with
Venezuela. Their mission has been, in part, to subvert U.S. interests globally. Affiliation with radical
terrorist organizations and other state sponsors of terrorism is widely reported. Hezbollah fundraising
activity in the form of "financial transactions" on Margarita Island in Venezuela has apparently gone
unnoticed by President Chavez, a dedicated disciple of Fidel Castro.

The corruption and collusion of hostile rogue foreign intelligence organizations remains a significant
catalyst in launching, recruiting, and supporting transnational organized criminal elements in a myriad
of activities throughout Latin America.

Prior to Russian President Medvedev taking over for Vladimir Putin, Putin’s regime much like that of
Venezuelan Hugo Chavez, had moved quickly to cut back on basic freedoms of speech and journalists,
elimination of or degrading political opposition, as well as placing restrictions on non-government
groups. Both Putin and Chavez sought to end presidential term limits, as did other South American
leftists. This included President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras. The Honduran Supreme Court in a no-
non-sense approach ordered the military to remove Zelaya for violating the Honduran Constitution. An
angered Hugo Chavez was quick to come to Zelaya’s assistance and later in March 2010 awarded
Zelaya a position as coordinator of Petrocaribe.

Putin directed the KGB in the 1990s. As well, those who were part of the political and business elite of
Russia were known to increasingly include former spies who had “previously proven themselves to
Putin.” The percentage of former Soviet-style spy apparatus personnel in Putin’s government was
estimated to be at a startling figure of 78 percent by a Moscow-based center for the “Study of Elites.”

There is no doubt that President Obama must keep an accurate and focused eye on the international ball
that appears to be bouncing out of control in strange and unnatural movement. The cold war is
apparently still alive and it is clearly anti-U.S. and the Russians have quickly telegraphed their true
intentions to be a non-trusting partner and certainly suspect in their relationships with leftists leaders in
Latin America.

Hugo Chavez’s massive military arms purchases from Russia, as well as regular visits with leaders of
Cuba, Syria, Lebanon, North Korea and Iran, require fluid democratic foreign intelligence
service/HUMINT scrutiny.

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CRIMINAL JUSTICE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATES


United States of America
——————————
Jerry Brewer is C.E.O. of Criminal Justice International Associates, a global risk mitigation firm.
Website is located at www.cjiausa.org. jbrewer@cjiausa.org

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