It wasn’t always so. In 2008, Tallinn suffered a major embarrassment when Herman Simm, once the Estonian Defense Ministry’s top security official -- and someone therefore privy to NATO secrets -- was discovered to be a Russian mole. Simm had been recruited by the Soviet Union in 1985. Ten years later, he was either re-recruited or reactivated by the Russian intelligence service SVR -- the successor to the KGB. Simm was caught owing only to the sloppy tradecraft of his second and final case officer, Sergei Yakovlev. Posing as Antonio Graf, a Brazilian-born businessman, Yakovlev made promiscuous approaches to other would-be recruits, including a senior Lithuanian official, which prompted Vilnius’ counterintelligence agency to start the initial investigation that exposed Yakovlev and then Simm.
Posted on: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 00:57:06 +0000
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