We’ve shared the story of Carsten L, who was with the BND (Germany’s external security service) and how he was arrested and charged with espionage/treason for being a recruit of a Russian intelligence organization. The BND officer stands accused of providing information concerning Ukraine and the German, NATO, optic vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia. What we did not know, until now, courtesy of investigative reporting of Der Spiegel and others, was the modus operandi used by Russia.
The first item of import is that we learned that the FSB (Russian security service) was the sponsor of the operation which ultimately recruited and handled Carsten L. This makes sense given that the FSB was also the entity charged with preparing Ukraine for transition to Russian occupation and had been given millions of rubles to prepare the political landscape to welcome Russia with open arms. We know how that went. What we didn’t know is that in 2021, the start of the recruitment of this source within the BND was playing out in Germany and in Russia. His ultimate recruitment and delivery of classified materials is believed to have occurred in September 2022.
This was not the classic case where an intelligence officer cozies up next to a target of interest and evolves a relationship and eventually pitches the individual to provide information of interest. Rather, this was a very convoluted daisy chain of activities involving multiple individuals with little or no intelligence training. In the parlance of ClearanceJobs, this was a Secret Squirrel operation, which produced results (as the blind squirrel finds an occasional acorn, so are the success of the amateur intelligence officers).
The Russian FSB daisy chain recruitment
The cast of characters include:
- Carsten L, the penetration of the BND and asset of the FSB
- Arthur E, a well-to-do businessman with business ties in Russia
- Visa M, A wealthy Russian with connections to Russians in powerful seats, to include contacts within the FSB. Visa is married to Olga Belyavtseva one of the richest women in Russia (whose ascension from meat-packer to millionaire is a story in and of itself).
Long story short, Arthur befriended Carsten, talked about him to Visa, and Visa talked to the FSB. The FSB expressed interest, provided some low-level tasking to see if Carsten was manipulatable, and when Carsten showed that he was willing to provide information which he knew was going to Russia, the FSB upped the ante and brought Carsten on board as a collaborative source.
Carsten, for his part, tried to paper his relationship with Arthur E over as a development of a source on activity in Africa, where Arthur E was engaged in the diamond business. Arthur wanted permanent residency in Germany and requested Carsten’s assistance, and got that assistance a few weeks later.
We’ll step right through the recruitment scenario which took place at a bordello in Germany where the three “sat around the bar in their towels” (all the better to determine if one is wearing a wire) and move right to the tasking of Carsten L and the quid pro quo. The narrative provided by Der Spiegel largely comes from the testimony of Arthur E, and not from Carsten L.
We are told that Carsten smuggled his information out of the BND by carrying it out the door. Nothing sophisticated, nothing high tech. He carried the information out (Reality Winner did the same). Tasking came from the FSB who met with Visa in Moscow and with whom Visa would receive tasking, passing it back through the daisy chain.
As can be expected, the questions concerned Germany’s intent on providing weapons and defensive systems to Ukraine, where they were located, and what training had been received.
In addition, and here is the parallel with Edward Snowden, he snowed his colleagues into providing information to which they had access, but he did not. These individuals were unwittingly manipulated by Carsten to provide classified information which Carsten had no need to know.
In October, four large envelopes of information were provided to the FSB in Moscow by Visa from “his friend in the BND.”
This case poured cold water over the German – NATO countries intelligence relationships, especially given that the BND did not discover the insider gone bad within their own house. Rather, they learned of Carsten L via a NATO partner who discovered BND documents within their own intelligence efforts which penetrated Russia. Nonetheless the country who did the discovering was willing to put their owns source(s) at risk to inform Germany they had a problem. To Germany’s credit and most probably the saving grace to the liaison relationships across the board was the fact that Germany was able to put a bow on their investigation in short order.
How Will You REspond to Being Targeted?
The takeaway for all is, adversaries will target your personnel, continually. Being targeted is not an offense, it is the cost of being engaged in classified work. How one reacts when this targeting evolves to the adversary attempting to forge a relationship and obtain one’s services as a source is where the rubber hits the road. All CI training courses of cleared personnel should include a section on comportment during and reporting after of a hostile intelligence pitch. Carsten L didn’t deflect the approach, indeed some may say he relished the approach and was not reluctant in the least to provide information of interest to the FSB. Had he reacted differently, perhaps the FSB would have had a “source” which was providing disinformation/misinformation or none at all.
