Brussels is
a hotspot for intelligence activities. Potential espionage
targets are abound.
Belgium's capital city not only hosts the NATO headquarters and the European
institutions –Council, Commission and Parliament. Also multinationals,
the International Trade Union Confederation, the World Customs Organisation and
the European Economic Area are headquartered in Brussels.
Next to
that come Eurocontrol, SWIFT, the European Aviation Safety Agency, the Western
European Union and up to 2500 international agencies, 2000 international companies and
150 international law firms.
Also
radical networks, secessionist movements, high technological research centers
and migrant communities –Turkish, Moroccan, Congolese, Rwandese–
are among the potential targets of foreign espionage.
Together
with New York and Geneva, Brussels is among the cities with the highest density
of information worldwide. Moreover in Brussels there's an abundance of classical espionage covers available
–journalism, lobby work and diplomacy.
Between
1500 and 2000 foreign journalists cover European summits. Approximately
15.000-20.000 lobbyists work in the European capital. And with 288 diplomatic
missions, 5.000 accredited diplomats and 60.000 people with a diplomatic or
related statute, Brussels is the diplomatic capital numero uno.
The Belgian
intelligence services, responsible for counter
espionage, are not quite overstaffed. The military secret service SGRS
has a staff of about 620 employees; its civil counterpart State Security (Sûreté) has between
650 and 700 employees. Until recently these services were not even allowed to
intercept emails or tap phones. That situatéion has changed since the Law on
Special Intelligence Methods came into force in September 2010.
In March 2015 MO*magazine reveals that the Belgian Federal prosecutor's office has launched an inquiry into two Russian intelligence officers that have clandestinely acquired the Belgian nationality with the help of Belgian diplomats. The Russian spy couple got married in Belgium before moving to Italy, where it has supposedly carried out its intelligence activities. The pre-inquiry by the Belgian Federal prosecutor's office into forgery, the use of false passports and corruption was launched in 2012 after a tip from the Belgian State Security.
In April 2015 the New York Times reports that all NATO partner nations have to limit the size of their delegations in Brussels to maximum 30 members. Citing 'Western officials', the move supposedly follows a confidential assessment by the alliance's Civilian Intelligence Committee that intelligence agents have been part of Russia's delegation. At least three senior officials from sensitive European departments have in recent years been called back from Brussels by their country of origin, on suspicion of having had contacts with Russian intelligence, MO*magazine reveals reveals, citing 'several knowledgeable sources in the world of security and intelligence'. In another article the magazine states that the number of Russian diplomats in Belgium had risen from 84 in 2011 to 171 in 2014.
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung the German intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) has listened in on officials from the EU Commission in Brussels. Phone tapping was supposedly done from the BND's Bad Aibling spying station in the south of Germany. The newspaper claims the information subsequently was transmitted to the American NSA. The Belgian State Security and the Federal Prosecutor's Office launch an investigation into espionage by the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) after the Austrian MP Peter Pilz reveals that as from 2005 the BND had access to 15 telecom connections with end point in Belgium. This allegedly was the result of a cooperation between the BND and the American NSA.
Belgian daily De Standaard reports that according to Privacy International a Belgian IP address, possibly of a Bahrain activist, was spied on with FinFisher technology. The Canadian journalist Judi Rever, investigating murders supposedly ordered by the Rwandese authorities, receives protection from the Belgian State Security while visiting Belgium in the Summer of 2014. In the Belgian daily Het Belang Van Limburg Rever explains she was in Belgium to interview Rwandese dissidents. 'An officer of the State Security informed me that the Belgian government had reliable information that the Rwandese embassy in Brussels could pose a threat for me.'
In March 2014 a
10-minute telephone conversation between EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign
minister Urmas Paet is posted on
YouTube. In the leaked phone call, the two politicians discuss the question who
was responsible for killing civilians at the end of February, during the Maidan
square protests in the Ukrainian capital Kiev. The audio recording has been
intercepted in Brussels – not in Tallinn – but it is not clear who
is behind the operation. Remarkably, the Belgian prosecutor's office does not
open an investigation into the leak as no official complaint is filed. Frans
Potuyt, head of the security office of the European External Action Service,
assures that his office is doing 'all the necessary to protect the security
interests of the EEAS' but declines any further comment on the case.
In a March 2014
press release Guy Verhofstadt,
former Belgian prime minister and president of the ALDE group in the European
Parliament, claims his meeting with Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny
has been bugged. Verhofstadt and Navalny had met in a Moscow hotel in May 2013
to discuss corruption and money laundering cases in Russia and their links to
the European Union. Later footage of the closed meeting was broadcasted on the
Russian tv channel NTV.
'Moscow hacks
Belgian state', Belgian daily De Tijd headlines in May 2014. 'After a warning
from the intelligence services we have concluded that our systems have been
infected during the Ukraine crisis', a spokesperson of the Belgian ministry of Foreign Affairs confirms.
'According to the first information available it turns out that certain files
on Ukraine have been copied.' According to 'well placed sources' cited by daily
De Standaard, it was the CIA that had tipped off the Belgian military secret
service about infection of Foreign Affairs by the Snake virus ('Ouroboros').
As a counter
measure the entire computer network of Foreign Affairs is shut down
temporarily. As a result local municipalities can no longer deliver passports
and thousands of Belgian diplomats and officials abroad cannot access the
internet anymore. The digital quarantine lasts 3 months – only as from
August 2014 the computer network of Foreign Affairs is fully operational again.
The Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office has launched a judicial inquiry into
the hacking case. It is also investigating the hacking of of the Belgian
Federal Public Service of Economy,
that according to daily De Tijd was discovered at the beginning of 2014.
In May 2014 the
Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet writes that the Hungarian Member of European
Parliament Béla Kovács is accused of spying for Russia: the Prosecutor's Office
in Hungary has requested the European Parliament to waiver the immunity of
Kovács amid allegations he spied on EU institutions. The MEP supposedly was
meeting with Russian dipomats in a 'conspiratorial manner'. In a press
conference in Budapest Kovács denies the accusations: 'I was never a member of
either Hungarian or any other foreign intelligence service. I have never worked
with them and they have never approached me.'
According to Le Nouvel Observateur a colonel has been dismissed from his functions within the French representation at NATO, Brussels, for not having respected basic security rules.
The Belgian military secret service ADIV discovers a highly complex virus on its own network that it uses to exchange
non-classified information between employees and to communicate with the
outside world. Because its own cyber security experts don't manage to analyse
the complex malware, the ADIV turns to the US Cyber Command for help. According
to general Eddy Testelmans, head of the ADIV, the Americans don't abuse the
situation. Testelmans: 'Our own specialists were present at all times. There
have not been any irregularities.'
The Russian
IT security company Kaspersky Lab identifies MiniDuke, a malicious program designed for spying on multiple government entities and institutions across the world. According
to Kaspersky Lab, a number of high profile targets have been compromised by the
MiniDuke attacks, including government entities in Belgium.
The
American information security company Mandiant publishes the report APT1:
Exposing One of China's Cyber Espionage Units. According to Mandiant, APT1 had conducted a cyber espionage
campaign against a broad range of victims since at least 2006. 'APT1 has
systematically stolen hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141
organizations, and has demonstrated the capability and intent to steal from
dozens of organizations simultaneous', Mandiant wrote. One confirmed APT1 server and one
victim were located in Belgium.
Also
Belgium's telecom company Belgacom,
the Belgian ministry of Foreign Affairs
and the Prime Minister's
Cabinet become victim of well directed cyber attacks. Criminal
investigations are ongoing. According to the German weekly Der Spiegel, the
British GCHQ is behind the espionage against Belgacom. The claim is based on
documents leaked by NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden.
During the
investigation into the Belgacom cyber espionage case by the Belgian Federal
Prosecutor's office – with the help of Belgian police, secret services
and the Dutch company FOX-IT – it is discovered that also the laptop of
professor Jean-Jacques Quisquater
has been hacked. The computer of Quisquater, a renowned expert in cryptography
at the UniversitÉ Catholique de Louvain (UCL), had been infected after clicking
on a bogus LinkedIn invitation by a (non existing) employee of the European
patent office, as Belgian daily De Standaard revealed. The modus operandi point
at state sponsored espionage.
In Iran Hamid Babaei is sentenced to six years
in jail for 'acting against the national security by communicating with hostile
governments'. According to Amnesty International, Babaei – a doctoral
student in finance and law at the University of Liege (Belgium) – was on
holidays in his homeland Iran when he approached by Iranian intelligence. 'They
asked him to spy on fellow Iranian students in Belgium. Hamid refused', Amnesty
writes in a press release, claiming the refusal is the real reason for the jail
sentence.
According to
Ian J. West of the NATO Communications and Information Agency, NATO is experiencing a growing
intensity and frequency of cyber
incidents. West: 'Threats range from low-level hacking attempts to more
serious attempts of denial of service or cyber espionage. Our cyber response
centre is at the core of NATO's cyber defence effort. In 2012, it responded to
more than 2500 cases, or about seven per day. Most of these online
incidents were dealt with automatically, using sensors, scanners and boundary
protection devices. The real challenge is from high-end targeted attacks, which
for NATO can number ten or more a month. It is mainly these high-level threats
that NATO's cyber defence experts deal with. Also, it is possible (or
even probable) that there are or have been undetected intrusions. It is always
a constant challenge in cyber defence to know the unknown.'
The Belgian
ministry of Foreign Affairs calls back a
Belgian diplomat from his post in Copenhagen on the suspicion of
espionage. Consul O.G. from Bruges, who during 25 years had been in contact
with the Russian secret services KGB and SVR, was suspended 'in the interest of the service'. The Federal
prosecutor's office launches a judicial inquiry.
Kaspersky
Lab initiates an investigation following a series of attacks against computer
networks targeting international diplomatic service agencies. It reveals Operation
Red October, a sustained cyber espionage campaign dating back as
far as 2007. According to Kaspersky Lab, the main objective of the attackers
was 'to gather sensitive documents from the compromised organizations, which
included geopolitical intelligence, credentials to access classified computer
systems, and data from personal mobile devices and network equipment.' Among
others, the spy operation focused on 'different cryptographic systems, such as
Acid Cryptofiler, which is known to be used in organizations of NATO, the
European Union, European Parliament and European Commission since the summer of
2011 to protect sensitive information.'
During a colloquium on economic espionage in Brussels Dany Van de
Ven, director of the Belgian Security and Defense Industry, reveals that two Belgian defense companies have
been the target of espionage. Information related to new technologies had been
stolen from their computers. At the colloquium the State Security announced a
brochure to sensitize Belgian companies for the risks of espionage.
The State
Security scrutinises the strategic position of the Chinese telecom
giant Huawei on the Belgian market.
Huawei provides the Belgian telecom operators Belgacom and Mobistar with
hardware for their 4G network. Alain Winants, head of the State Security:
'Bearing in mind the sensitive sector in which Huawei is active, the company
obviously is a point of interest for my agency.' According to Dominique
Vanhamme (VP European Channel Sales, Huawei) there is no reason to be worried:
'Huawei is trusted by the majority of the telecom operators in the world.'
Foreign
minister Didier Reynders orders an investigation into the allegation that Syrian intelligence is terrorising Syrian expats in Brussels
critical of Bassar al-Assad. 'The Syrian authorities do show an interest in the
Syrian diaspora in Belgium', Justice minister Annemie Turtelboom told members of Parliament.
According
to US investigators cited by Bloomberg news agency, in the Summer of 2011 hackers raided the emails of Herman Van Rompuy, chief of
the European Council, and Gilles de Kerchove, the EU's counter-terrorism tsar.
The hackers –supposedly Chinese, although Beijing denies any
involvement– also stole information from four employees of Van Rompuy's
cabinet.
At the eve
of the EU Spring Summit 2011 the European Commission announced it had been the victim of a severe cyber attack. 'The attack was
very focused', spokesperson Antony Gravili commented. 'People with bad
intentions were after data of certain officials of the Commission.' As a
counter measure, the full staff of the Commission and the EU's External Action
Service was refrained from access to work email at home and had to change its
passwords. The Security Directorate of the Commission launched an Action Plan
against Cyber Attacks and set up a Response Team to detect and analyse malware.
In 2011 the
State Security applied Special Intelligence Methods in 193 inquiries into espionage, the military
secret service SGRS in 54 inquiries. The data are cited in the Activities report 2011 of the Belgian Standing
Intelligence Agencies Review Committee. At least seven cases were related to foreign journalists suspected
of intelligence activities.
In its Annual report 2010 the State Security warns for foreign
espionage and interference by countries such as Pakistan, Russia, Serbia,
Colombia and China. It claims there are close links between the Kashmir Centre EU and the Pakistan authorities,
including the Pakistani secret services: 'Vigilance is necessary to avoid
interference.'
Russian intelligence activities in Belgium, according to the State Security, were focused at
the Atlantic defense policy, European politics and economic policy, and at the
Russian speaking community in Belgium. Also Serbian lobby groups drew the attention of the State Security as
'some of their members are possibly linked to Serbian intelligence'.
The State
Security launched an inquiry into the activities of the Colombian intelligence agency Departamento Administrativo de
Seguridad (DAS) and its activities directed against 'institutions and NGOs on
Belgian soil'. The State Security refers to allegations that the DAS had spied on the European
Parliament and members of the Belgian NGOs Broederlijk Delen and Oxfam
Solidariteit. The scandal on 'Operation Europe' broke after an inquiry by the
Colombian Attorney General's office.
Canadian
researchers publish Tracking
Ghostnet,
a report on a Chinese cyber espionage network affecting over thousand computers
worldwide. They discovered that the email traffic of the Dalai Lama office in Belgium had been
intercepted. Tashi Wangdi, representative of the Dalai Lama in Europe, commented
in the Belgian daily De Morgen that he was not surprised: 'This only confirms
what we had already suspected.'
Also the
Brussels embassies of India and Malta figured on the list of targets in the
Canadian report. That same Maltese
embassy –strategically located next to the Berlaymont building of
the European Commission– in 2007 had raised eyebrows within the security
world, when it turned out that China had provided it with furniture and office equipment for the value of 200.000 euro. The Maltese secret
service later sweeped the building but couldn't find any espionage equipment.
'Without
being aware of it, I have been spied on by a non European country during
several months', Javier Solana reveals in the Spanish daily El Pais. Solana was the
EU's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy. 'Bearing in
mind his function, it is normal that Mr Solana attracts the attention of secret
services of non European countries', Alexandro Legein commented, head of the Security Office of the European Council. 'The electronic
attack of Solana's communication could be traced back to servers in South East
Asia.' According to Legein, Solana is a permanent target of electronic
intrusion attempts by third parties.
A confidential memorandum by Stephen
Hutchins, the EU Commission's director of security, leaks out in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Hutchins warns that 'the threat of espionage is increasing day by day. A number
of countries, information seekers, lobbyists, journalists, private agencies and
other third parties are continuing to seek sensitive and classified
information.' Under the promising headline European officials warned of
'interns trading sex for secrets', the Telegraph cites spokeswoman Valerie Rampi: 'Like any large scale organisation which
deals with sensitive or confidential information, there are always people who
endeavour to gain access to this information. It could be the pretty trainee
with the long legs and the blonde hair.'
The NATO
headquarters in Brussels withdraws the accreditation of two Russian diplomats accused of espionage:
Viktor Kochukov, heading the political department of the Permanent Mission of
Russia to Nato, and Vasily Chizhov, the son of Russia's ambassador to the
European Union. As a result of the headquarters agreement between NATO and
Belgium the two Russian diplomats are instructed to be withdrawn from Belgium.
According to Alain Winants, head of the Belgian State
Security, the activity of the Russian intelligence services in Belgium has risen exponentially. Winants: 'It displays
a certain aggressivity and self-consciousness. Quite a lot of agents of Russian
services are active. The level of presence and the nature of the activities is
actually almost –if not exactly– the same as during the Cold War.'
Alexandro Legein, head of the Security Office of the European Council, confirms that analysis: 'Also we have noticed a
heightened interest of the Russian intelligence services, especially for EU
activities in the field of crisis management (both military and civil), non
proliferation and energy.'
In its Annual report 2009 the State Security focuses on Congolese intelligence activities in
Brussels. The arrival of Congolese ambassador Henri Mova in Belgium is 'marked
by an increased intention to control and follow the Congolese community, in
particular through the secret services.' In an interview with MO*magazine the State Security specified:
'The Congolese secret service has always had its presence at the Congolese
embassy, inter alia to keep an eye at Congolese opposition groups. A tiny part of
that opposition lately has become more radicalised, which explains why the
Congolese authorities show more interst for their activities. This does not
mean that there would be more Congolese spies in Belgium than before.'
The Belgian
weekly P-magazine reports on an incident at Brussels Airport involving security
guards of El Al, the Israeli airline.
Later the incident is also discussed in the Belgian parliament: 'In line with practices that have been
tolerated during the past thirty years, security guards of the airline in
question partly do perform security tasks on their own without the existence of
clear, formal agreements about it', State secretary Etienne Schouppe
commented. Schouppe announced that such an agreement was being discussed
and later also added that two Israeli security guards have a permit to carry a gun in the
airside zone of Brussels Airport.
In Estonia Herman Simm is arrested for treason. During 13 years, Mr Simm had been passing on
information to Russia. At the end of his carreer Simm headed the National
Security Authority in Estonia. He had access to top secret documents exchanged
between NATO member states. Likewise Simm had a clearence for EU classified
information (EUCI) as in Brussels he took part in meetings of the Commission
Security Policy Advisory Group and the Council Security Committee, two EU
advisary councils on information security. A NATO report called Simm the
'most damaging spy in the alliance's history'. He was sentenced to 12,5 years
imprisonment.
The Belgian
State Security informs Justice minister Jo Vandeurzen about attempts of electronic attacks against email accounts
of the federal government, probably emerging from China –alghough clear
cut evidence was missing. Alain Winants, head of the State Security: 'The
attacks clearly were well directed, aimed at certain people in Belgian
government offices in charge of files related to European affairs and energy.'
The attackers also used social engineering in order to convince the Belgian
officials to open the emails they received.
In the
Summer of 2008 Alain Winants, head of the State Security, asks Mohamed Yassine
Mansouri, chief of the Moroccan
intelligence agency DGED, to call back three of its officers from Belgium. Only a few
months before the Belgian Moroccan Abdelkader Belliraj –a former
informant of the State Security– had been arrested in Morocco for
terrorism; the State Security claims it only found out through the media.
According
to Winants the measures against the three Moroccan officers were not related to
the Belliraj case. Winants: 'Repeatedly there have been problems with the DGED
in terms of interference. The Belliraj case was the straw that broke the
camel's back; we noticed a blatant unwillingness on the Moroccan side to
cooperate.'
The
relations between the State Security and the DGED deteriorated so bad that the
DGED not only withdrew three officers but all its personnel from Belgium.
Moroccan ambassador Samir Addahre: 'The antenna was completely shut down; it
was the first time in our years of friendship that happened.'
Six people
questioned during the Belgian judicial inquiry into the Belliraj terrorist
network testified about activities of the DGED in Belgium, supposedly ranging
from blackmail over intimidation to outright threats.
Eavesdropping
equipment is discovered in the Brussels apartment of Gorka Elejabarrieta Diaz,
lobbyist for the Basque nationalist political party Batasuna. Behind the plinth in Diaz's living room a microphone
with sender (serial number 139SV5.1) had been hidden. Diaz filed a complaint at
the local police department of Ixelles, the Brussels prosecutor's office
launched an inquiry and the Federal Prosecutor's Office took over. The
espionage affair also led to a parliamentary debate, in which Justice minister Laurette Onkelinx said: 'One can't say that
the Belgian State Security at this moment is equipped to cope with any type of
threat, including espionage activities by third parties on our territory.' It
was the first time in recent history that a Belgian minister acknowledged that
the situation of foreign intelligence activities in Belgium had become
problematic.
Over one
thousand CIA-operated flights
have used European airspace from 2001 to 2005, says the European Parliament's
Temporary Committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for
illegal activities. In its final report on illegal CIA activities, the European
Parliament asked the Belgian government to reveal the results of all
investigations into the use of Belgian airports and airspace by airplanes
involved in extraordinary rendition. Also the Belgian Standing Intelligence Agencies
Review Committee launched an inquiry. In the CIA rendition case, no smoking gun
related to Belgium has ever been made public.
Congolese
VIPs visiting Brussels are sometimes accompanied by bodyguards who are members
and formers of criminal African gangs.
Such was the case during the visit of Olive Sita di Lembe, the wife of the Congolese president Jopseh
Kabila. According to sources within Belgian intelligence the gang members had
been recruited by the Congolese embassy in Brussels to maintain the order
during di Lembe's visit. In other occasions the Congolese intelligence agency
Agence Nationale de Renseignements (ANR) would call on gang members to spy on
Congolese diaspora in Brussels. The Congolese embassy denied the accusations
but Foreign minister Steven Vanackere confirmed the story in the Belgian parliament.
The
Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, a secret US government program to access
the SWIFT database, is revealed by several American newspapers. Based in
Terhulpen near Brussels SWIFT –the Society of Worldwide Interbank
Financial Telecommunication–secures communication between 10.000
financial institutions in 212 countries. Through the secret program of the Bush
administration American counterterrorism officials could access the data of
SWIFT traffic. The Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt claimed not to be
aware of this. Only four years after the news broke, the US reached an
agreement with the EU regarding the exchange of SWIFT data.
Between
2002 and 2006 a dozen spin offs of Liege University, all located in the science parc of Sart-Tilman, have
become the victim of remarkable burglaries. Whereas expensive equipment in the
offices of the companies was left untouched by the thieves, hard disks
containing sensitive data on clients and r&d had been stolen. The companies
in question –Keyobs, Centre Spatial de Liège, BEA, BATS, EVS, AMOS,
Greisch Ingénierie, Star Informatic, BMC Software, PI2– are active in high
technological industries such as space and defense, which makes the assumption
of economical espionage very plausible.
The
Brussels based private intelligence company European Strategic Intelligence and
Security Center (ESISC), headed by former French spy Claude Moniquet, claims
that the Chinese Students and Scholars
Association –a Chinese student organisation– runs an
international espionage network from Belgium: 'Priority targets are
laboratories of big universities, pharmaceutical firms and high technological
companies.' The State Security claims not to posess any information confirmng the existence of such a
network.
In its Activities Report 2004 (the
first of its kind in 175 years!) the Belgian State Security writes it is
following the activities of the Chinese
intelligence services. 'The technological and scientific knowledge that
China needs in order to develop often has to be taken from abroad. The Chinese
secret services show a special interest for the scientific and economical
potential.'
In the
Summer of 2004 the American CIA sends a secret note to the Belgian State
Security: 'In the spirit of our close missile nonproliferation partnership, we
would like to alert you to a matter of potential proliferation concern and
request your government's assistance in investigating this activity. The U.S.
has information that an Iranian company is attempting to
purchase a hot isostatic press from the Belgium firm Engineered Pressure
Systems International N.V. (EPSI).'
A few months later another CIA note is sent in order to prevent the export,
that eventually does take place however. The socalled Epsi affair leads to the
resignation of Koen Dassen as head of the State Security.
A phone
interpherence in the Justus Lipsius building,
the headquarters of the European Council in Brussels, leads to the discovery of
five black boxes with espionage equipment hidden in the concrete walls of the
building. The black boxes –which probably had been there already for
eight years– could be activated from outside Justus Lipsius and were
connected to telephone lines of the delegation rooms of France, Italy, Germany,
the UK, Spain and Austria. According to Alexandro Legein, head of the Council's
Security Office, the equipment was 'highly sofisticated' and a 'good example of
craftsmanship'.
The
succesful intelligence operation only had been discovered because a third party
had manipulated one of the telephone lines linked to the black boxes, in order
to find out which position the EU's member states would take concerning the
upcoming military invasion in Iraq. Three months after the discovery, the
Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office launched an inquiry into the case; in 2010
it will decide not to prosecute anybody. An inquiry by the Belgian Standing Intelligence Agencies
Review Committee raises the question of possible Israeli involvement.
The French
newspaper Libétration reveals that the British EU official Desmond Perkins, in charge of
encrypting the communication at the European Commission, had the encrypting
systems tested by the American National Security Agency. One of Perkins'
parents worked there.
Lernout & Hauspie, a once promising Belgian speech technology developer, is declared bankrupt after its stock market figures had dramatically declined following fraudulent constructions. According to Belgian journalist René De Witte the company had been infiltrated by the German Bundesnachrichtendienst.
Already
since the Cold War Brussels has been one of the world's hot spots for
espionage. Research in the intelligence archives of Berlin, Budapest, Bucharest,
Prague, Sofia and Warsaw reveal the 007 dimension of Europe's capital
city.
In 1967,
NATO moved its operational and political headquarters from France to Belgium.
The Belgian government was very much aware of the espionage threat triggered by
the relocation. 'As Brussels has become an important center of the western
world, we have to prevent it from also becoming an important center of
espionage', state the minutes of the Belgian cabinet meeting of 21 April 1967.
All in vain. The Belgian capital became the target of the KGB, the East German
Stasi, the Romanian Securitate and Hungarian, Bulgarian, Polish and
Czechoslovak intelligence officers.
Impossible
to tell exactly how many spies were active in Brussels during the Cold War.
Documents in the archives of the intelligence services of six former Warsaw
Pact countries do give an idea of the magnitude however. In the eighties, the
Stasi residence in Brussels (codename 'Residence 211') sent information
originating from 59 different sources to the spy headquarters in Berlin. In the
same period of time, 75 different Stasi operatives stayed over in Belgian
hotels. Together that makes at least 134 East German intelligence officers and
agents.
Next comes
the Soviet Union. The Belgian State Security estimates the number of Soviet
intelligence officers in Belgium during the first half of the eighties between
40 and 45. Of course not all eastern bloc countries used to send so much spies
to Brussel. At the end of the eighties, the Czechoslovak embassy in Brussels
e.g. employed seven spies under diplomatic cover. But what is for sure, is that
hundreds of spies walked the streets of Brussels during the Cold War.
To hide
their espionage activities, foreign spies operated under a cover. They
pretended to be journalist, businessman or lobbyist. The most popular cover was
the diplomatic one. Not surprisingly, as diplomats as a rule set up networks in
different circles in their host country –nothing odd about that. That
diplomats hold legal immunity, came in handy as well.
Some
examples. In 1976, Kurt Berliner started working as the first secretary at the
GDR embassy in Brussels. But he also was the resident, the chief of the local
espionage department. Berliner often visited the Belgian ministry of Foreign
Affairs, went for dinner with its officials, and later reported back to Berlin
back in secret notes. To set up his network, Berliner frequented the
prestigious Club International Château Saint-Anne in Brussels, still existing
today.
Another spy
operating under diplomatic cover was the Hungarian Marton Szecsödi, taking up
his position in Brussels in 1967. In fact, the State Security had given a
negative advise before his arrival –Szecsödi was known to be an
intelligence officer. Nevertheless he received an accreditation from the
Belgian ministry of Foreign Affairs. Szecsödi was tasked with collecting
information that could enforce Budapest's negotiation position, as Hungary was
exporting agricultural products to the then European Economic Community. One of
his targets in Brussels was the Hungarian economist Alexandre Lamfalussy, the
later founding president of the European Monetary Institute in Frankfurt,
forerunner to the European Central Bank. Lamfalussy, who also became famous as
one of the fathers of the euro, never fell for the recruitment attempts of the
Hungarian secret service though.
The Polish
secret service sent an intelligence officer codenamed Rycki to the famous
College of Europe in Bruges, in order to recruit its headmaster Jerzy
Lukaszewski –which failed. Polish spies were interested in the network of
alumni as many former students of the College of Europe take up senior
positions in the European administration. Also the Soviet KGB and the Hungarian
secret service showed interest for the institute in Bruges.
Already at
the end of the sixties, the European Economic Community had become a point of
interest for foreign spies, but the first and foremost espionage target in
Brussels not surprisingly was NATO. Especially the Stasi managed to penetrate
its political headquarters during many years. Stasi agent Rainer Rupp e.g.
worked there from 1977 until 1993, sending over thousand classified NATO
documents to Eastern Berlin.
Next to
military and political intelligence also economic espionage grew more and more
important during the Cold War. According to a document of the US Defense
Intelligence Agency, dated June 1989 and released after a FOIA request, 'theft
and illegal diversion of Cocom-restricted equipment and technology [had] become
the highest overall priority of Soviet and most other Warsaw Pact intelligence
services. The entire range of overt, covert and clandestine methods was
employed in this effort, most evidently through human intelligence.'
In 1992 the
Belgian State Security managed to uncover a network of agents that had been
secretly passing on technological information to the KGB. The counter espionage
operation, codenamed Glasnost, ended the secret double lives of, among others,
journalist Guido Kindt and engineer Francis Collard. Suspected of espionage,
both were detained for a couple of weeks but eventually they have never been
prosecuted.
During the
eighties, the B4 brigade of Belgium's State Security was in charge of counter
espionage. It had a workforce of about 100 intelligence officers. Within the
Belgian military secret service, department SDRA III (some 80 employees),
headed the spy hunt. 180 spy catchers, not too much bearing in mind Brussels'
international role. For that reason cooperation with allies –exchanging
intelligence via encrypted cables– was a necessity. Belgium's spies main
partners were the French, British, West Germans and Americans. And of course
neighbors Luxemburg and the Netherlands. The heads of service also exchanged
intelligence within the framework of the Club de Berne –set up in 1971 by
the Netherlands, France, Italy and Belgium.
A glimpse
of the everyday life of the Belgian counter espionage: scrutinizing hotel
registration cards of foreigners, boarding passes of airplane passengers and
migration files, especially of West Germans. Much attention obviously was paid
to the embassies of Warsaw Pact countries (at one point a secret observation
post opposite the Russian embassy was hindered by a growing tree that blocked
the sight. After cutting its branches and poring gasoline into the tree proved
unsuccessful, the military secret service finally aborted the surveillance
operation).
Foreign
diplomats leaving the capital city were tailed by shadowing teams. For years,
the military secret service tried to figure out why the idyllic village Suxy,
in the south of Belgium, was so popular with Soviet diplomats. Why were they
going there almost every weekend? Merely for picking mushrooms and enjoying
nature? Or was the KGB secretly operating dead letter boxes there, or hiding
communications equipment? Tail teams of Belgium's counter espionage would once
a month cover the route between Brussels and Suxy. All in vain. The Russian's
mission in Suxy remained a mystery, although Stasi spy Kurt Berliner claims the
goal was to verify whether Belgium was building new rocket launch sites.
Another
unsuccessful counter espionage operation: at the end of the seventies, both the
State Security and the military secret service started systematically
surveilling female NATO secretaries that were single. On the day of their
birthday, the young ladies were followed as from the moment they left their
offices in order to check whether they would fall prey to handsome East German
Romeo's. No one got caught.
Remarkably
enough, during the Cold War counter espionage was virtually non existing within
the European institutions. At the end of the eighties the European Commission
hired Pieter De Haan, former head of the Dutch civil intelligence service BVD,
to professionalise its Bureau de Sécurité (Security Office). New employees from
European member states were attracted, among whom several experts counter
espionage.
The
European Council waited even longer to set up a real counter espionage policy.
In 2000, the then-Deputy Secretary General Pierre de Boissieu hired
Alexandro Legein, a former Belgian State Security officer who in the last
15 years had been security director for a number of multinational
companies, to reorganise the Security Office of the Council. Legein quickly
realized that in order to meet the espionage challenge posed by the emerging EU
Common Security and Defense policy, he needed to include an effective counter
espionage component in his reorganisation blueprint.
During the
Cold War, the Belgian secret services succeeded in unveiling a certain number
of espionage cases. In the 25 years after the relocation of NATO to Belgium,
some ninety Warsaw Pact spies were forced to leave the country, the majority of
them Soviets. They were declared persona non grata or left on their own
initiative after their clandestine activities had been exposed. The measure of
expelling foreign spies –a sensitive matter in bilateral relations–
was only taken when they had seriously crossed the line. Often it made more
sense to let unmasked spies do their thing –and at least know what they
were doing– then to kick them out.
A certain
number of successes were the result of their own counter espionage achievements
–such as double agent operations. In other cases the Belgians were simply
lucky that an enemy had decided to switch sides. But in many cases the smoking
gun game from an ally –not seldom the Americans. The CIA e.g. informed
Belgium about the clandestine contacts between the Belgian army colonel Guy
Binet and some Russian runners, and also Stasi mole Rainer Rupp only could be
unmasked through intelligence from the US.
The Fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the end of the Cold War. Two years later, the
Soviet Union imploded. Countries from the former Warsaw Pact joined the EU and
NATO. These geopolitical developments also had consequences for the world of
intelligence. The State Security and the military secret service scaled down
their counter espionage capacity. But meanwhile Brussels remained an important
espionage capital.
This website is currently under construction. It was launched on 1.06.2011 and taken offline on 1.09.2014 due to back office problems. It will be relaunched during 2016.
www.targetbrussels.be is the website of the Belgian journalist Kristof Clerix. Contact details:
Kristof Clerix, Knack, Raketstraat 50 bus 2, 1130 Brussels, kristof.clerix@knack.be. Twitter: @kristofclerix.
Through his agent Read My Lips (www.readmylips.be) you can book Clerix for lectures on espionage.