 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(March 2015) |
John Helmer (born 1946) is an Australian-born journalist and foreign correspondent based in Moscow, Russia since 1989.
| This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(March 2015) |
John Helmer (born 1946) is an Australian-born journalist and foreign correspondent based in Moscow, Russia since 1989.
Born and raised in Australia, Helmer graduated in political science from Harvard University in the United States. He published several books on military and political topics, including essays on the American presidency and on urban policy in the US and essays on Greek, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern politics and foreign policy. Since 1989 he has published almost exclusively on Russian topics. [1] He was married to Australian journalist and foreign correspondent Claudia Wright who died in 2005. [2]
Yuri Shvets alleged he was recruited by the KGB in the 1980s when he left to live in Russia permanently. [3] Victor Cherkashin said that Helmer was unaware that Shvets was a KGB officer, and that Cherkashin himself called Shvets off. Later, after Shvets' concerns attracted controversy, Cherkashin confirmed that Helmer was not an agent. [4]
Helmer has been based in Moscow since 1989 and, from there, has worked for Australian Financial Review , The Australian and other newspapers. [5]
Writing in the New Jersey Star Ledger , journalist Dave D'Alessandro described Helmer as, "the journalist residing in Moscow who has been a pebble in Mikhail Prokhorov’s shoe since oligarchs have been collecting their billions under the protection of a corrupt, Fascist state.... the kind of journalist who turns up dead once a month or so inside Putin's Russia." And also as, "a fascinating and talented fellow, if not a fair bit over the top in his pursuit of truths." [5]
Aldrich Hazen Ames is an American former CIA counterintelligence officer who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1994. He is serving a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, in the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana. Ames was known to have compromised more highly classified CIA assets than any other officer until Robert Hanssen, who was arrested seven years later in 2001.
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards.
John Cairncross was a British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and spy during the Second World War. As a Soviet double agent, he passed to the Soviet Union the raw Tunny decryptions that influenced the Battle of Kursk. He was alleged to be the fifth member of the Cambridge Five. He was also notable as a translator, literary scholar and writer of non-fiction.
Oleg Danilovich Kalugin is a former KGB general. He was during a time, head of KGB political operations in the United States and later a critic of the agency. After being convicted of spying for the West in absentia during a trial in Moscow, he remained in the US and was sworn in as a citizen on 4 August 2003.
Yuri Vasilevich Krotkov was a Soviet dramatist. Working as a KGB agent, he (allegedly) defected to the West in 1963.
As early as the 1920s, the Soviet Union, through its GRU, OGPU, NKVD, and KGB intelligence agencies, used Russian and foreign-born nationals, as well as Communists of American origin, to perform espionage activities in the United States, forming various spy rings. Particularly during the 1940s, some of these espionage networks had contact with various U.S. government agencies. These Soviet espionage networks illegally transmitted confidential information to Moscow, such as information on the development of the atomic bomb. Soviet spies also participated in propaganda and disinformation operations, known as active measures, and attempted to sabotage diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and its allies.
Victor Ivanovich Cherkashin is a former Soviet foreign counter-intelligence officer of the PGU KGB SSSR. He was the case officer for both Aldrich Ames, a CIA counter-intelligence officer, and Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent.
The Clean Ponds is a large pond in Moscow, Russia, located in Basmanny District, on the Boulevard Ring. The pond gives its name to Chistoprudny Boulevard, which runs from Turgenevskaya Square and Sretensky Boulevard towards Pokrovka Street, where it adjoins Pokrovsky Boulevard, and to Chistyye Prudy station on the Moscow Metro. According to retired KGB colonel Victor Cherkashin, author of Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer: The True Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, the adjoining 'Chistyi Prudy ' is also part of "an old, prestigious neighborhood." On page 177 of his book, Victor Cherkashin spells the area as 'Chistyi' as opposed to 'Chistye.'
Yuri Borysovych Shvets is a former Soviet intelligence officer of Ukrainian origin. He was a Major in the KGB between 1980 and 1990. From April 1985 to 1987, he was a resident spy in Washington, D.C. While there, he held a cover job as a correspondent for TASS, a Soviet state-owned news agency. He left the KGB in September 1990.
Yevgenia Markovna Albats is a Russian investigative journalist, political scientist, writer and radio host.
Konstantin Georgiyevich Preobrazhenskiy is a former KGB lieutenant colonel, an intelligence expert and the author of several books and numerous articles about Russian secret police organizations.
Colonel Sergei Olegovich Tretyakov was a Russian SVR officer, who defected to the United States in October 2000.
The Committee for State Security, abbreviated as KGB was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, OGPU, and NKVD. Attached to the Council of Ministers, it was the chief government agency of "union-republican jurisdiction", carrying out internal security, foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence and secret police functions. Similar agencies operated in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from the Russian SFSR, where the KGB was headquartered, with many associated ministries, state committees and state commissions.
Victor Louis was a Soviet journalist who had close work connections with the senior levels of the USSR KGB. He was used by the Soviet government as an informal channel of communication and for subtle disinformation operations in the Cold War. Viewed as an agent provocateur of the secret police, he was hated and boycotted by the Moscow intelligentsia.
Russian espionage in the United States has occurred since at least the Cold War, and likely well before. According to the United States government, by 2007 it had reached Cold War levels.
Angus Roxburgh is a British journalist, broadcaster, former external PR consultant to the Russian government, and singer-songwriter.
Sexpionage is the involvement of sexual activity, intimacy, romance, or seduction to conduct espionage. Sex, or the possibility of sex, can function as a distraction, incentive, cover story, or unintended part of any intelligence operation.
The Academy of Foreign Intelligence is one of the primary espionage academies of Russia, and previously the Soviet Union, serving the KGB and its successor organization, the Foreign Intelligence Service. It was attended by future President Vladimir Putin during the 1980s.
Claudia Wright was an Australian journalist, noted for highlighting the cause of feminism, and being one of the first journalists to interview Middle Eastern leaders in the 1970s.