China #1 Country for ‘Sexpionage’

2 December 2011 By Ray Semko

https://raysemko.com/2011/12/02/china-1-country-for-sexpionage/

Brian McAdam said countries have been using sex to gather intel for over 1,000 years, and it hasn’t slowed a bit. “Many countries are still carrying on sexpionage, and the number one country is China.”

This statement was made by a former Canadian diplomat at a recent security conference in Canada about defending against espionage. Attendees and speakers were from the government and private sector. McAdam also said that:

“Virtually all” hotels in China are rigged with microphones and video cameras and many brothels, karaoke bars and massage parlours are owned by Triads that co-operate with Chinese intelligence services. The aim is to catch unwary Westerners in “honey pot traps.”

Mr. McAdam said men of influence are often targeted and face trumped up charges of rape or attempted rape and are forced to co-operate or face jail time. “They want to capture people in shameful activities – alleging sex with minors is a common method used,” he said.

The targets of Chinese intelligence?

“Public servants and politicians are the main targets but the Chinese are also after the technology and military sector, so they target engineers, business people and scientists, too. “People say they won’t fall for it, but they do. Executives with a heavy travel schedule turn up in Shanghai or Beijing jet-lagged and find themselves in need of affection. People succumb.”

McAdam said that the intel services have plenty of time to plan a targeting/recruitment operation from the time you submit your visa application. They begin by using social media to get to know you and may approach you first there.

McAdam also said that Chinese industrial/economic espionage costs Canadian companies $1 Billion per month.

Other speakers included a defector from the PRC’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). He talked about the case of a Canadian Member of Parliament who had been sending flirty/fawning emails to a female reporter with the Chinese Xinhua news agency. She would be expected to cultivate the relationship, collect information and provide it to the MSS.

“In general, this should be normal. I mean, MSS or other Chinese organizations with intelligence [duties] should do this as normal,” he said. Li said politicians are always one of the first targets for agencies. “Especially senior politicians like him.” Intelligence agents often use being a reporter as a cover, he said, though not all overseas Chinese reporters are intelligence agents. Such agents gather secret intelligence in open ways, a method that works better than working through secret channels, said Li. Getting into an affair to gather intel is business as usual, he added.

Travel smart and if you get caught up in a situation, talk to your security office immediately.

May 10, 2017

Robert Hanssen: American Traitor

On May 10, 2002, former FBI agent Robert Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison for selling U.S. secrets to Moscow.

Elizabeth Nix

One of the most damaging double agents in modern American history, Robert Hanssen gave the Soviets, and later the Russians, thousands of pages of classified material that revealed such sensitive national security secrets as the identities of Soviets spying for the U.S., specifics about America’s nuclear operations and the existence of an FBI-built tunnel underneath the Soviet Embassy in Washington.

Hanssen’s double life began in 1979 and ended in 2001, when he was arrested after the FBI discovered, thanks to help from an ex-KGB officer, that Hanssen was a mole. A church-going father of six, Hanssen is thought to have been motivated by money rather than ideological beliefs. While covertly working for Moscow on and off over the years, he was paid $600,000 in cash and diamonds, with another $800,000 supposedly held for him in a Russian bank. Hanssen was only the third agent in FBI history charged with spying.

Born in 1944, Hanssen was a Chicago native and son of a police officer. He graduated from Knox College in 1966 then attended dental school at Northwestern University before quitting the program to earn an MBA. He went on to work as an investigator for the Chicago Police Department then joined the FBI in 1976. He worked for the agency in Indiana and later New York City.

Hanssen’s deceit began in 1979, when he volunteered to spy for GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency. He soon informed the Soviets that one of their generals, Dmitri Polyakov, was in fact a CIA informant who’d been spying for America since the 1960s. The Soviets eventually executed Polyakov.

>>5719919

In 1980, after Hanssen’s wife reportedly caught him with some suspicious-looking papers, he admitted to selling secrets to the Soviets, but claimed the information he’d given them was worthless. At his wife’s insistence, Hanssen promised to sever ties with the Soviets and confessed to a priest, who told him to donate the dirty money to charity. However, in 1985, Hanssen resumed his espionage activities, this time for the KGB. He gave the KGB the names of three Soviet officers collaborating with the CIA and FBI. The three spies were arrested and executed.

Meanwhile, Hanssen continued to rise through the FBI’s ranks, eventually working in senior counterintelligence roles. In 1991, with the Soviet Union breaking apart, he stopped spying, possibly due to fears that he’d be found out. But In 1999, while serving as the FBI liaison to the U.S. State Department, he once again resumed his double-agent career, this time for the SVR, a post-

Soviet, Russian intelligence service.

Hanssen’s downfall came in 2000 when the FBI, which by then suspected there was a mole in its ranks, paid $7 million to an ex-KGB officer to procure information from SVR headquarters that helped identify Hanssen as the turncoat. The FBI put Hanssen under surveillance in late 2000, and on February 18, 2001, he was arrested at a park in Vienna, Virginia, after making a drop of classified documents in a plastic garbage bag for the Russians. Nearby, FBI agents discovered a bag with $50,000 in cash, intended as Hanssen’s payment. When he was arrested, Hanssen reportedly exclaimed, “What took you so long?”

In order to avoid the death penalty, Hanssen struck a deal with the government and agreed to cooperate. In July 2001, he pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage. The following May, he was sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences behind bars with no possibility of parole. He is doing his time at the federal supermax prison near Florence, Colorado, along with such notorious fellow inmates include “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, Oklahoma City Bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef, who carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Hanssen wasn’t the first FBI agent arrested for spying for the Russians. In 1984, 17 years before Hanssen’s arrest, Richard Miller, a 20-year veteran who was stationed at the FBI’s foreign counterintelligence unit in Los Angeles at the time of his arrest, was arrested for selling classified documents to Russian agents, one of whom he was having an affair with. In 1986, Miller was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. His conviction later was overturned but at a second trial in 1990 he was again found guilty. Miller was released from prison in 1994.

The second FBI agent caught spying for Moscow was Earl Pitts, who volunteered to become a mole for the KGB in 1987. He handed over classified information to the Russians until 1992, by which point they’d paid him more than $220,000. In 1996, Pitts was caught in an FBI sting operation. He pleaded guilty to espionage and in 1997 was given 27 years in prison.

Robert Hanssen shares the title of one of America’s most notorious moles with Aldrich Ames. A CIA operative who spent more than 30 years with the agency and specialized in Soviet and Russian intelligence services, Ames was arrested for spying for Moscow in February 1994, almost seven years to the day before Hanssen was caught.

>>5719927

The son of a CIA officer, Ames began working for the CIA in the early 1960s and started selling classified information to the Soviets in 1985. Like Hanssen, he volunteered his services rather than being recruited. Apparently motivated by greed, Ames raked in some $2.5 million in illicit payments from the KGB and other Russian spy groups over the years. CIA agents grew suspicious of Ames when they noticed he was living seemingly above his means.

The FBI got involved in the case and started investigating Ames in May 1993. Following his arrest and guilty plea in 1994, he was given a life sentence with no parole. His wife was convicted of conspiring to commit espionage and received five years behind bars. As a result of Ames’ espionage more than 100 American intelligence operations were comprised and several U.S. presidents were given tainted intelligence reports.

https://nypost.com/2009/08/16/the-cia-siberia-and-the-5m-bar-bill/

THE CIA, SIBERIA AND THE $5M BAR BILL

On Dec. 4, 2001, five members of a Las Vegas-based charter crew were detained by Russian authorities after they landed without visas in Petropavlovsk. The remote Russian city, located on the Kamchatka peninsula and surrounded by active volcanoes, is nine time zones east of Moscow and cannot be reached by road.

Three days earlier, the privately owned Boeing 737 had left Biggs Army Airfield in Texas, carrying the crew and 16 Americans traveling on tourist visas. The plane, a luxury aircraft outfitted with wood paneling and a three-hole putting green, had been chartered by a small company from Enterprise, Alabama, called Maverick Aviation.

What the plane and its passengers were really doing in Russia in the middle of winter is only hinted at in an appeal filed by two federal prisoners this year. But interviews with those involved in the case reveal a secretive, and sometimes comical, mission to strike back at the Taliban after 9/11 — a rare glimpse into the CIA’s efforts in Afghanistan.

According to unclassified court documents, the group was traveling to a helicopter plant in Siberia, where Maverick Aviation, which was experienced in acquiring Russian aircraft for the US military, was planning to buy two helicopters for a “customer.”

Not mentioned: That “customer” was the Central Intelligence Agency.

The CIA needed Russian helicopters because of its clandestine operations in Afghanistan. On Sept. 24, 2001, a Russian-made helicopter loaded with $10 million in cash carried a small CIA team into Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley. Code-named “Jawbreaker,” the mission was to cement support among tribal leaders and pave the way for US military operations. It was the first entry of Americans into Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

The aging helicopter, an Mi-17, was the team’s only way of getting in or out of the country. Though hardly state-of-the-art, the Russian helicopter had a distinct advantage for the CIA: it allowed the agency to operate relatively unnoticed in an area where Russian equipment left over from the Soviet occupation was commonplace.

There was only one problem: The CIA owned only one Russian helicopter. It needed more, but a clandestine American agency couldn’t exactly pick up the phone and call a Russian factory. So it turned to Jeffrey Stayton, then the chief of the Aviation Division at the US Army Test and Evaluation Command and an expert in Russian copters.

Stayton’s plan was to find a private American company to buy the helicopters, send a team of people over to pick them up from a plant in Siberia, modify them to CIA standards, and then get them to Uzbekistan, a staging ground for CIA operations into Afghanistan. And they would do it all within a matter of weeks.

Eventually, the team included William “Curt” Childree, whose company, Maverick Aviation, won the contract to buy the helicopters and organize logistics; Army personnel and contractors from El Paso with experience modifying Russian aircraft for use by the US military; and then “six guys from the customer’s office,” as Stayton put it (a CIA team that included special operations personnel).

That’s when things started to get complicated.

>>5720068

In an interview, the pilot, Fred Sorenson, said he thought visas they had ordered would arrive by FedEx by the time the plane landed. When he found out over satellite phone that the papers hadn’t arrived, the plane was already descending, so he hid the fact from the crew for fear of a cockpit argument. The team was detained on arrival.

In the end, the visas came, and the crew was released the next day. But when the plane finally made it to Ulan Ude, in Siberia, the crew and passengers faced more challenges. To say merely that it was cold does not capture the Siberian winter, where temperatures that month approached 30 degrees below zero. Even worse, the team was in a Russian hotel with spotty electricity and limited heat.

The charter crew was shocked at the conditions (Siberia, after all, was off the beaten track of their typical VIP clients), but the Army personnel from El Paso also seemed woefully unprepared. None of them had ever been to Russia before — some had never left Texas — and the rough conditions shocked them. “I had the sense that I might end up in a Russian jail,” Kimberly Boone, a Russian translator for the Army, later recounted in court testimony.

Several members of the team grew sick with flu-like symptoms. There was also a major hitch with the helicopters. According to the factory, there was the equivalent of a mechanic’s lien on the helicopters, and they couldn’t be released. While Stayton and Childree attempted to negotiate the release from the factory, the Army personnel were told to act like tourists on a winter getaway to Siberia: They visited a Buddhist monastery and shopped for fur coats.

Childree, by then suffering from pneumonia, flew to Moscow to meet with the broker, where he found that a competitor (no one knows for sure who) had apparently offered $30,000 to kill the deal.

After some heated discussions, the helicopters, which cost about $1.6 million each, were released.

Back in Siberia, meanwhile, Stayton was having problems with Brian Patterson, the Army warrant officer in charge of the El Paso team, who, according to multiple people on the trip, was drinking heavily.

Lisa Teuton, a flight attendant for the charter company, recalled several members of the El Paso team drinking and bragging about their work for the CIA. “It just blew me away,” said Teuton. “I thought they would have been more professional and more secretive.”

The charter crew, fed up with the delays and the conditions, threatened to leave, but the El Paso team was having none of it. According to Sorenson, chief warrant officer Patterson poked him in the shoulder and said: ‘If you leave, we’ll shoot you down.’ “

Patterson laughed when asked about the incident. “I would like to know how I could accomplish that,” he said.

>>5720073

That night, while the others were settled in their rooms, the crew surreptitiously checked out of the hotel. They used some of their remaining cash and alcohol to bribe airport personnel not to notify the Army of their departure. With no cash left for additional fuel, and no clearance to fly over China, the aircraft headed toward Japan, as the flight attendants kept watch out the windows to see if they really would be shot down.

*

The real question was: Did anyone not know it was a CIA trip? The CIA team had traveled under the amusingly obvious cover name of Donovan Aerial Surveys (William “Wild Bill” Donovan is regarded as the father of the CIA). The Russians in Ulan Ude were wondering what a group of private Americans were doing in Siberia in the middle of winter buying helicopters.

“They were very curious the whole time [about] why we were there; they would ask questions: ‘What are you doing?’ ” Joe Perry, a master sergeant on the mission, recalled. “Our rooms were bugged . . . It was just unreal some of the things they were doing.”

Relations with the Army team had been bad from the start. Stayton was unhappy with many of them, and the CIA considered them a nuisance. After one final argument, Stayton informed the Army’s Patterson that his team was going home immediately on commercial flights. The CIA team would finish the work on the helicopters.

Less than a week later, the two helicopters were packed in an Antonov cargo plane. When Stayton and the CIA personnel left Russia on the evening of Dec. 31, 2001, they had just 30 minutes left on their visas.

From the perspective of the CIA, the mission to Siberia, whatever its quirks, was a success. But the contract, which was administered by Army officials in New Mexico unaware of CIA involvement, quickly attracted scrutiny from the Army Criminal Investigative Division.

Agents found some unusual things. For instance, Army officials paid the most of the $5 million contract in a credit card transaction in an El Paso bar called the “Cockpit Lounge.” More troubling, the file was missing signatures; included few of the required supporting documents; and no invoices. When asked by investigators to explain why he allowed so many irregularities to go unnoticed, Edwin Guthrie, the contracting officer, responded: “Sleep apnea.”

There were other strange aspects, all related to the CIA’s secret involvement. Money allotted to pay expenses associated with mystery “subcontractors” (CIA personnel traveling under fictitious names); helicopters bought by the military being given civilian registration numbers (another quirk of CIA aircraft); and large cash transactions (typical of Russia). “They, the government, really leaned on me,” said Childree, noting that provisions, such as support for the CIA personnel, were added on to the contract at the last minute.

Investigators also focused on all the problems that took place on the trip, which the El Paso team blamed on Maverick Aviation and Stayton. “It was a nightmare,” recounted Boone, the Russian translator (it was Boone’s first trip to Russia).

But John Wilson, whose company also competed for the helicopter contract and was interviewed by law enforcement officials, was surprised that anyone thought the problems were a big deal. Buying helicopters in Russia isn’t easy. “I sat there going: Is that all?” he said. “That’s a good trip; I mean, really, honestly and truthfully, that was a pretty good trip as far as normal stuff goes.”

>>5720078

In December 2007, six years after the mission to Siberia, Army official Stayton and private contractor Childree went to trial in the Middle District of Alabama on charges of defrauding the government.

A five-year investigation into the mission that spanned from Ulan Ude to Enterprise revealed that just days after returning from the mission to Russia, Childree wired money from his bank account to pay off Stayton’s second mortgage — about $61,000.

Both Stayton and Childree maintain the payment was a loan between two friends of 30 years, and had nothing do with the contract. But Stayton never listed the financial relationship on a government disclosure form, and other than a thank-you note to Childree, the two men never memorialized the loan in any paperwork. Government prosecutors argued the problems on the mission were the result of Maverick Aviation’s lack of planning. The payment was not a loan, they said, but a payoff made so that Stayton would steer the contract to Childree’s company (although Maverick had the lowest price of three bidders) and to cover up his poor performance.

Complicating matters, the judge ruled that no classified information could be used at trial: no mention of the CIA, Afghanistan, or even “9/11.”

While acquitted of bribery, both men were convicted of fraud, and Stayton was found guilty of the additional charge of obstruction of justice. Both Childree and Stayton, who are appealing their conviction, believe that if the jury had known the real purpose of the helicopters, they would have understood the seemingly strange parts of the mission were not a cover up.

Childree, now 70, is scheduled to be released from prison next year; Stayton, 59, won’t be released until 2012. Both have been diagnosed with cancer and are receiving treatment in prison medical facilities.

Secrecy still has a weird effect on the case: Stayton, in interviews, won’t use the name “CIA” when referring to the mission, even though the agency, for its part, treats its “secret” Mi-17s as an inside joke. The first Russian helicopter in Afghanistan was painted with the fictitious tail number 91101 — a reference to the 9/11 attacks.

What never came out at trial was the crucial role the Mi-17s played in the early months of military operations, when they were used to transport and resupply CIA paramilitary teams in Afghanistan. One picture taken during Operation Anaconda in March 2002 shows one of the CIA aircraft bought by Maverick being used by special operations personnel to transport a wounded Northern Alliance member. Though widely available, the picture was classified by the government at trial.

In response to questions about the CIA’s involvement in the mission to Siberia and its procurement of Mi-17 helicopters, George Little, a CIA spokesman, replied: “The CIA does not, as a rule, comment one way or the other on allegations regarding the agency’s contractual relationships.”

>>5720068

https://www.expedia.com/g/pt/maverick-aviation-group

Maverick Aviation

Flying over the American Southwest since 1995, Maverick Aviation was founded by former pilot Greg Rochna to offer a truly VIP sightseeing experience to visitors keen to explore the Grand Canyon, Valley of Fire, and fascinating region around Las Vegas, Nevada. As of 2015, Maverick also flies through the tropical skies over the Hawaiian island of Maui. With its headquarters on the Las Vegas Strip, Maverick Aviation has 4 different bases of operation for convenience: Las Vegas Strip (McCarran International Airport), Henderson Executive Airport, Grand Canyon South Rim, and Grand Canyon West Rim. The company has seen steady growth as a result of its dedication to exceptional service. In 2008, Maverick Airlines was formed, and currently operates 6 aircraft that fly to the Grand Canyon and on charter flights. Mustang Helicopters was formed in 2009 for flights from the Henderson Executive Airport to the Grand Canyon, and in 2015, Maverick Aviation expanded to its first location outside of the Southwest United States on the verdant island of Maui, Hawaii, operating out of their Kahului Heliport.

Maverick Aviation has been offering exceptional service and world-class experiences to visitors for over 20 years. Professional and friendly pilots greet every passenger and offer a brief orientation prior to boarding the helicopter or plane and provide personalized narration over voice-activated headsets for an interactive and individualized tour. Maverick Helicopters land farther and deeper in the West Rim of the Grand Canyon than any other operator, delivering unparalleled access to one of the natural wonders of the world. The company's commitment to safety and maintenance has been recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), who awarded Maverick Aviation the prestigious "Diamond Award" for excellence in maintenance, training, and aircraft safety that exceed industry standards. Maverick has also gotten a nod from the Travel Channel on their "Top 10 Best Helicopter Thrill Rides in the World" list, received the "Best of Las Vegas" award from the Las Vegas Review Journal, been listed on the "Best of Nevada" by Nevada Magazine, and been named "Best Tour Company" for the fourth consecutive year by the Southwest Nevada Hotel Concierge Association.

Maverick Aviation operates the largest and youngest fleet of ECO-Star helicopters in the world with over 40 choppers. The ECO-Star (EC-130) Helicopter, produced by Airbus Helicopters, is the safest and most comfortable tourism helicopter in the world, limiting flight noise and equipped with wraparound windows for superior visibility. Twenty-three percent larger than the common A-star model, the ECO-Star seats 7 passengers in individual, front-facing seats and rear theater-style seats. The helicopter has surround sound, fuel-efficient engines, and a low-noise Fenestron Tail Rotor to reduce noise by 50%. This reduction in external noise makes for a more pleasant ride and also reduces the sound impact on the natural habitats you are exploring.

The Maverick Aviation Group also operates 2 different types of airplanes. The Beechcraft 1900D is a 19-passenger, pressurized twin-engine turboprop plane that can travel up to 285 knots (328 mph or 528 km/h) and can take off and land on grass and rough runways. It also boasts a spacious stand-up cabin so most passengers can walk upright in the aisle. The brand new Cessna Grand Caravan 208 was added to Maverick's fleet in 2012 and has an air-conditioned cabin that holds 9 passengers in luxurious leather bucket seats with extra legroom. Every seat is a window seat on the single turboprop plane, which has a cruising speed of 184 knots and flies at lower altitudes for incredible, up-close aerial views.

Maverick Helicopters and the Maverick Aviation Group offer group tours and customized charter flights over the Grand Canyon, the Valley of Fire, and the Las Vegas Strip. You can soar over the engineering wonder that is the Hoover Dam, touch down on the rim of the canyon to test your courage on the vertigo-inducing Skywalk, admire dramatic sandstone rock formations and gorges, land in the canyon for a whitewater adventure on the rushing Colorado River, and be back in time to catch the desert sun setting over the neon lights of Sin City. In Hawaii, you can take in the dramatic volcanic landscapes of Haleakala National Park, catch glimpses of waterfalls in the Hana Rainforest, or keep your eyes peeled for whales as you hover by the sea cliffs of remote Molokai, catching postcard-worthy views of these tropical isles for a birds’-eye perspective on paradise.

>>5720068

Wonder if the CIA still uses Maverick?

Las Vegas?