Last week it was confirmed that a former US ambassador worked as a secret agent for Cuba for no less than 40 years. Manuel Rocha (73) worked for the National Security Council and oversaw military missions. He was active until 2012.
How could he do this for so long without being exposed? “It is a very interesting case,” says Ben de Jong of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs in The Hague. “A lot of it takes place before the digital age and before social media took off. That’s an important point.”
Tensions
“In the 1980s there really was a gigantic spy war, but it is naive to think that it is much less now,” says intelligence expert Elsine van Os. In fact, the espionage cases are killing us. “Especially now that tensions in the world are so high,” Van Os explains.
Last year, seventeen Russian spies were deported from the Netherlands. “Almost every country has so-called diplomats working at embassies who are actually there to obtain certain information.” They are people who maintain their own identity and can often maintain it for a long time.
There are also spies who pretend to be someone else, for example to gain entry to a certain organization. “The internet and new technologies have made it really easier to find out someone’s identity,” says Van Os.
Erase tracks
For example, the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) discovered that one thing ‘Victor Muller Fereira’, who posed as a Brazilian student and applied for an internship at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, was actually working for the Russian secret service. The AIVD was tipped off and it later turned out that by simply running his photo through facial recognition software, a photo of him in the Russian army emerged.
“It has now really become much more difficult to cover your tracks,” says van Os. Once you are suspected, there are now many ways to actually prove that someone is a secret agent. For example, the AIVD may tap specific internet traffic in the interest of national security.
Cut out pages
In the past, as a spy you might have been able to remove a file from a filing cabinet unnoticed, but now almost all important information is stored in secure systems. “There is a well-known example of a Russian who took pieces from the archive out in his sock for 40 years.” That took a lot of time. In that respect, it is now easier: you can put an entire library on a USB stick.
“You will therefore suffer much greater damage if you do not close your systems properly. That is why there are many digital means to monitor what people are doing. If you work for the Dutch government and start browsing the systems, then it is quite possible Sometimes an alarm goes off somewhere and, for example, technical steps can be taken to provide less access to the system.”
Van Os also sees that people sometimes revert to old-fashioned methods. “For example, there was a case last year where someone had hidden things in cut-out pages of a book.”
De Jong explains that the contact between the secret agent and his client, in Roche’s case the Cuban service, is always the vulnerable point. “It’s often risky to have face-to-face meetings because that can be flagged.”
‘It takes a spy to catch a spy’
There are different methods to exchange information. For example, the ‘dead mailbox’, where the spy leaves information at an agreed location. The intelligence service will then collect the material at a later time. “Or they meet in a third country. For example, Roche worked as a diplomat for a long time in Latin America. The FBI is not in charge there and he could probably easily have personal meetings with the Cuban service.”
Hugo Vijver, former employee of the AIVD and MIVD, says that the arrival and development of the internet and the digitalization of society has fundamentally influenced the work of spies. He states that digitalization has made it much more difficult to build a credible cover.
Safe for fake passports
“Nowadays you are more likely to be suspicious if your past is nowhere to be found in social media or on the internet,” says Vijver. “It used to be easier to come up with a cover story about your past, it was harder to verify.”
You often see in movies a person who has a locker full of fake passports. Impossible nowadays, says Vijver. “This is due to digital verification of your identity and passports with readable biometric data.”
How Roche ended up being exposed? “It takes a spy to catch a spy”, it is sometimes said. Following an anonymous tip, an FBI agent posed as a Cuban spy. Roche bragged to him about his espionage work over the decades.
“The Americans have reached a settlement with him,” says De Jong. “He will receive a milder sentence and in return he must provide information about what secrets he has passed on and what he knows about the Cuban service. It works closely with Russia. So it is very important for America to know what information may be possible. ended up with the Russians.”
2024-03-04 08:22:35
#country #spies #job #harder
