[Infowarrior] - Russian spy at NATO may have passed IW and MD secrets

[Richard Forno]

(c/o D)

 From Times Online
November 16, 2008
Russian spy in Nato could have passed on missile defence and cyber-war  
secrets
Roger Boyes in Berlin

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5166227.ece

A spy at the heart of Nato may have passed secrets on the US missile  
shield and cyber-defence to Russian Intelligence, it has emerged.

Herman Simm, 61, an Estonian defence ministry official who was  
arrested in September, was responsible for handling all of his  
country's classified information at Nato, giving him access to every  
top-secret graded document from other alliance countries.

He was recruited by the Russians in the late 1980s and has been  
charged in Estonia with supplying information to a foreign power.

Several investigation teams from both the EU and Nato, under the  
supervision of a US officer, have flown to the Estonian capital  
Tallinn to assess the scope of what is being seen as the most serious  
case of espionage against Nato since the end of the Cold War.

“The longer they work on the case, the more obvious it becomes how big  
the impact of the suspected treachery really is,” according to Der  
Spiegel magazine. A German official described the Russian penetration  
of Nato as a "catastrophe".

Comparisons are being drawn with the case of Aldrich Ames, the former  
head of the CIA counter-intelligence department who was in effect  
Russia's top agent in the US.

"Simm became a proper agent for the Russian government in the  
mid-1990s," says the Estonian deputy Jaanus Rahumaegi who heads the  
country's parliamentary control commission for the security services.

On the face of it, the Simm case resembles the old-fashioned Cold War  
spy story. He used a converted radio transmitter to set up meetings  
with his contact, apparently someone posing as a Spanish businessman.

As in the 1950s and 1960s, it seems that the operation was a husband- 
and-wife team. His wife Heete – who previously worked as a lawyer at  
the national police headquarters – has also been detained on charges  
of being an accessory to treason.

Mr Simm was ensnared because of blunders that have dogged modern  
espionage ever since the KGB first pitted itself against the West.  
First, he bought up several pieces of valuable land and houses  
including a farmhouse on the Baltic Sea and a grand white-painted  
villa outside Tallinn.

Second, his contact officer got careless and tried to recruit a second  
agent – who reported the incident to the security authorities. That is  
when the Estonian mole-hunters began to reconstruct the movements of  
the supposed Spaniard and followed the thread back to the agent inside  
Nato.

But Mr Simm was not some relic from the days of Kim Philby or other  
notorious deep-cover agents. He was at the cutting edge of one of  
Nato’s most important new strategic missions: to defend the alliance  
against cyber-attack.

Mr Simm headed government delegations in bilateral talks on protecting  
secret data flow. And he was an important player in devising EU and  
Nato information protection systems.

Estonia – described by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as  
"Nato's most IT-savvy nation" – conducts much of its government and  
commercial business online. People vote and pay their taxes online,  
government meetings involve almost no paperwork.

As a result, when it angered Russia in 2007, by removing a Soviet war  
memorial, it became the target of hostile attacks on the internet.  
Estonia has been lobbying hard to put cyber-defence on the Nato  
agenda, and has set up a Cyber Defence centre in Tallinn which is  
supposed to help the Alliance as a whole. Now that project could be  
compromised.

The other important question in the Simm case is whether he was  
operating alone. A senior Estonian police officer claimed asylum in  
Britain in the 1990s reportedly telling the authorities that he was  
trying to escape pressure from the Russian secret service to sell  
secrets.

The Russians, it seems, were keen to buy as many place-men as they  
could: the prospect of Nato forces hard up against the northern  
Russian border was too alarming for the Kremlin. Moreover, Mr Simm was  
for many years in charge of issuing security clearance: he could have  
nodded through other Russian agents.

Mr Simm is likely to be formally arraigned at the beginning of next  
year after the damage control teams from Nato have completed their  
work. If found guilty he could face between three and fifteen years in  
prison. Neither the Simms, nor their defence lawyer, have commented on  
the charges.

Nato too has refused to say anything. But there is no doubting that  
the case is a serious embarrassment. And though Russia may have lost  
an agent – "a gold card operative" according to one Estonian newspaper  
– it has achieved a tactical victory by sewing suspicion between  
western Nato members and the new east and central European entrants.