A KGB officer who defected in London in August 1971 after he had been recruited six months earlier by a joint MI5–Secret Intelligence Service section that had compromised him as he conducted an illicit affair with his secretary, Irina Temlyakova.
Working under Soviet Trade Delegation cover, Lyalin was a Department V sabotage expert who had prepared contingency plans for attacking certain strategic sites in the event of hostilities. In addition, he was responsible for running three agents in London, Sirioj Abdoolcader and two Cypriot tailors, all of whom were arrested upon his defection.
Lyalin’s unplanned defection took place after his arrest on drunk-driving charges and acted as the catalyst for Operation FOOT, the expulsion of the entire KGB and GRU rezidenturas, whose membership he had identified. After his defection Lyalin was resettled in England with a new identity. He died in 2002.
Showing posts with label L. Show all posts
Showing posts with label L. Show all posts
Friday, November 5, 2010
LUDWIG, KURT
Born in Ohio in 1903 but brought up in Germany, Ludwig was an Abwehr officer who was arrested while on a mission in Austria in February 1938. He was released soon afterward, following the Anschluss, and in March 1940 arrived in the United States, where he established an extensive spy ring. The existence of Ludwig’s organization became known to the Federal Bureau of Investigation when his reports, written in secret ink concealed in ostensibly innocuous letters addressed to neutral countries, were detected by British censors in Bermuda.
The FBI eventually identified Ludwig as the reports’ author, “Joe K.,” from clues contained in the correspondence. He was placed under surveillance, thus leading to the compromise of other members of the network. These included his young secretary, who later gave evidence against him at his trial in March 1942 and received a reduced sentence of five years in prison. Ludwig was arrested in Seattle in August 1941, and eight others were charged with espionage, including a scientist, Paul Borchardt, and a soldier based at Governor’s Island, New York. Because his espionage had been conducted before Germany declared war on the United States, Ludwig received a prison sentence of 20 years and escaped the death penalty.
The FBI eventually identified Ludwig as the reports’ author, “Joe K.,” from clues contained in the correspondence. He was placed under surveillance, thus leading to the compromise of other members of the network. These included his young secretary, who later gave evidence against him at his trial in March 1942 and received a reduced sentence of five years in prison. Ludwig was arrested in Seattle in August 1941, and eight others were charged with espionage, including a scientist, Paul Borchardt, and a soldier based at Governor’s Island, New York. Because his espionage had been conducted before Germany declared war on the United States, Ludwig received a prison sentence of 20 years and escaped the death penalty.
LOGINOV, YURI
A KGB illegal, Loginov had approached the Central Intelligence Agency in Finland in May 1961 and wanted to defect, but had been persuaded to return to Moscow as a spy. He was enrolled as AE/GUSTO and over the next three years met his CIA case officers whenever he traveled to Europe. Later suspected of being a plant, Loginov was arrested in May 1967 while undertaking a mission in South Africa and was questioned at length by BOSS interrogators with assistance from the CIA. Convinced that Loginov had tried to dupe the CIA, he was exchanged in a spy swap in July 1969 and returned to Moscow. An incomplete account of his case was published in South Africa as Spy in the Sun by Barbara Carr.
LOCKERBIE
The sabotage and destruction of Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 resulted in the deaths of 269 passengers, crew, and people on the ground and prompted the largest antiterrorist investigation ever conducted by MI5. Adetailed forensic examination of the contents of the cargo hold revealed that a bomb had been concealed inside a battery-operated cassette recorder, which had been placed in an unaccompanied suitcase consigned from Malta. The bomb’s timer was traced to a Swiss manufacturer, which identified the purchaser, and eventually two Libyan intelligence officers were charged with murder and tried before a Scottish court empanelled in The Hague. One, Abdelbasset Megrahi, was convicted, and Libya subsequently offered compensation to the families of the victims.
LIDDELL, GUY
MI5’s director of counterespionage from 1940 to 1945, Liddell had been decorated with the Military Cross during World War I and later had joined Scotland Yard’s Special Branch as a civilian analyst concentrating on Soviet espionage. In 1931 Special Branch’s staff was amalgamated with the Security Service, and Liddell was appointed an assistant to Brigadier Jasper Harker, the director of B Division, succeeding him in June 1940.
Socially well connected, having married into the Barings banking family, Liddell oversaw MI5’s dramatic growth during the first 18 months of the war as the threat from Fifth Columnists, enemy aliens living in Britain, the fear of a Nazi invasion, and an Abwehr espionage offensive all posed a threat to the country. Liddell’s actions and opinion were documented by him in 12 volumes of a daily journal that he dictated from August 1939 to June 1945. Code-named WALLFLOWER, these sensitive documents were retained in the safe of the director-general until they were declassified and then published in 2005.
After the war, Liddell was appointed deputy director-general of MI5, but in 1953 transferred to the Atomic Energy Authority as a security adviser. The end of his career had been marred by a close wartime friendship with Anthony Blunt, who had served as his personal assistant, and by his friendships with the Cambridge Five spies Guy Burgess and Kim Philby. He died in 1958, seven years after the defections of Burgess and Maclean, aware only that Blunt had fallen under suspicion but not that he would confess to having spied for the Soviets throughout World War II.
Socially well connected, having married into the Barings banking family, Liddell oversaw MI5’s dramatic growth during the first 18 months of the war as the threat from Fifth Columnists, enemy aliens living in Britain, the fear of a Nazi invasion, and an Abwehr espionage offensive all posed a threat to the country. Liddell’s actions and opinion were documented by him in 12 volumes of a daily journal that he dictated from August 1939 to June 1945. Code-named WALLFLOWER, these sensitive documents were retained in the safe of the director-general until they were declassified and then published in 2005.
After the war, Liddell was appointed deputy director-general of MI5, but in 1953 transferred to the Atomic Energy Authority as a security adviser. The end of his career had been marred by a close wartime friendship with Anthony Blunt, who had served as his personal assistant, and by his friendships with the Cambridge Five spies Guy Burgess and Kim Philby. He died in 1958, seven years after the defections of Burgess and Maclean, aware only that Blunt had fallen under suspicion but not that he would confess to having spied for the Soviets throughout World War II.
LIBERTY, USS
A U.S. Navy signals intelligence ship festooned with huge antennae, the Liberty was attacked by Israeli aircraft and gunboats in the Mediterranean off the coast of Sinai in June 1967 with the loss of 34 crewmen killed. The Liberty had been commissioned in December 1964, ostensibly as a naval auxiliary research vessel, but was actually a signals intercept platform controlled by the National Security Agency. The former World War II cargo ship was manned by wireless technicians, linguists, and other intelligence personnel. Commanded by William McGonagle, the clearly marked and flagged Liberty had been stationed in international waters north of Port Said when the Six-Day War broke out. The ship was strafed and bombed with napalm by two pairs of Mirage and Super-Mystère jets, before being attacked by three torpedo boats. Holed below the waterline, and with 171 wounded personnel, Commander McGonagle nevertheless sailed his ship to Malta.
Israel later claimed that the attack had been a case of mistaken identity—insisting that the Liberty had been erroneously reported to be an Egyptian troopship, the El Quseir—and paid compensation to the U.S. Navy, the survivors, and the dependants of those killed. Several subsequent investigations uncovered no evidence that the episode was anything other than a tragic accident, although the U.S. Navy’s official court of inquiry was conducted in conditions of such secrecy, and its subsequent report was so highly classified, that there was considerable speculation about the possibility that the attack had been a deliberate attempt to prevent the NSA from collecting information about the Sinai campaign that might have been damaging to Israel’s interests. Others have suggested that Israel intended to obliterate the Liberty and pretend the Egyptians had been responsible, so as to draw the United States into the conflict. The issue remains live, especially among the Liberty’s surviving crew.
Israel later claimed that the attack had been a case of mistaken identity—insisting that the Liberty had been erroneously reported to be an Egyptian troopship, the El Quseir—and paid compensation to the U.S. Navy, the survivors, and the dependants of those killed. Several subsequent investigations uncovered no evidence that the episode was anything other than a tragic accident, although the U.S. Navy’s official court of inquiry was conducted in conditions of such secrecy, and its subsequent report was so highly classified, that there was considerable speculation about the possibility that the attack had been a deliberate attempt to prevent the NSA from collecting information about the Sinai campaign that might have been damaging to Israel’s interests. Others have suggested that Israel intended to obliterate the Liberty and pretend the Egyptians had been responsible, so as to draw the United States into the conflict. The issue remains live, especially among the Liberty’s surviving crew.
LEUNG, KATRINA
Code-named PARLOR MAID by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Leung allegedly in 1997 removed and copied a secret document from the briefcase of her FBI handler, “J. J.” Smith. When her home was searched in 2002, a transcript of a telephone conversation with her Chinese contact was discovered. Although neither Leung nor Smith was charged with espionage, the case demonstrated that the FBI had been active in the field over a long period.
Born Che Wen Ling in Guangzhou, Leung had been brought up in Hong Kong by her aunt, Susan Chin. She had met her husband Kam, who was working on his doctorate in biochemistry at Cornell University, where she had studied engineering as a graduate student before switching to economics. Apparently her first contact with People’s Republic of China officials occurred in New York in 1972, when Kam had worked as a volunteer at the Chinese mission to the United Nations.
Leung ran her own business consulting firm in California and was a director of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, as well as being a major Republican party campaign contributor. She also made 71 overseas trips during the 20 years she worked as an agent for the Bureau, but failed to declare 15 of them. On those trips she is alleged to have been in contact with Ministry of State Security (MSS) officers on 2,100 occasions and was given a gift of $100,000 by the PRC president, Yang Chankung.
Smith, who met her for trysts in London, Hawaii, and Hong Kong, is said to have found out that Leung was copying the classified material from his briefcase, and he also discovered in 1991 that Leung had been reporting to an MSS case officer in Beijing and was probably a double agent for the MSS, if not a triple agent, yet he apparently continued to provide Leung access to the secret information anyway.
When questions were raised by analysts at FBI headquarters about Leung, Smith declared, untruthfully, that she had taken a polygraph test and passed it. Indeed, Smith filed no less than 19 evaluation reports describing Leung as “reliable.” When challenged by the FBI, Smith denied having had an affair with the attractive Leung, only to be contradicted by tapes that recorded the pair together in a hotel.
Leung was also involved with another former FBI agent, William Cleveland Jr., who was the head of security at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory nuclear weapons research facility in California. When Cleveland was interrogated about this relationship, he lied, and it was not until his fourth interview that he admitted that he had had a sexual relationship with Leung from 1988 until he retired in 1993 and that he resumed the sexual contacts in 1997 and 1999. He, too, continued the sexual relationship even after he discovered that Leung had unauthorized contact in 1991 with the MSS intelligence service.
Leung was well connected in Beijing, and the Indonesian Chinese tycoon Ted Sioeng, whose family was investigated by the FBI for illegal donations to the Democratic party, was a friend. She had business-related contacts with companies such as Northern Telecom (Canada). Apparently Smith made little effort to conceal his relationship with Leung, and she accompanied him to his retirement party, which she videotaped, and also to President George W. Bush’s inaugural parade in Washington, D.C. She lectured classes at the FBI’s training academy at Quantico, Virginia, on the management of double agents.
Born Che Wen Ling in Guangzhou, Leung had been brought up in Hong Kong by her aunt, Susan Chin. She had met her husband Kam, who was working on his doctorate in biochemistry at Cornell University, where she had studied engineering as a graduate student before switching to economics. Apparently her first contact with People’s Republic of China officials occurred in New York in 1972, when Kam had worked as a volunteer at the Chinese mission to the United Nations.
Leung ran her own business consulting firm in California and was a director of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, as well as being a major Republican party campaign contributor. She also made 71 overseas trips during the 20 years she worked as an agent for the Bureau, but failed to declare 15 of them. On those trips she is alleged to have been in contact with Ministry of State Security (MSS) officers on 2,100 occasions and was given a gift of $100,000 by the PRC president, Yang Chankung.
Smith, who met her for trysts in London, Hawaii, and Hong Kong, is said to have found out that Leung was copying the classified material from his briefcase, and he also discovered in 1991 that Leung had been reporting to an MSS case officer in Beijing and was probably a double agent for the MSS, if not a triple agent, yet he apparently continued to provide Leung access to the secret information anyway.
When questions were raised by analysts at FBI headquarters about Leung, Smith declared, untruthfully, that she had taken a polygraph test and passed it. Indeed, Smith filed no less than 19 evaluation reports describing Leung as “reliable.” When challenged by the FBI, Smith denied having had an affair with the attractive Leung, only to be contradicted by tapes that recorded the pair together in a hotel.
Leung was also involved with another former FBI agent, William Cleveland Jr., who was the head of security at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory nuclear weapons research facility in California. When Cleveland was interrogated about this relationship, he lied, and it was not until his fourth interview that he admitted that he had had a sexual relationship with Leung from 1988 until he retired in 1993 and that he resumed the sexual contacts in 1997 and 1999. He, too, continued the sexual relationship even after he discovered that Leung had unauthorized contact in 1991 with the MSS intelligence service.
Leung was well connected in Beijing, and the Indonesian Chinese tycoon Ted Sioeng, whose family was investigated by the FBI for illegal donations to the Democratic party, was a friend. She had business-related contacts with companies such as Northern Telecom (Canada). Apparently Smith made little effort to conceal his relationship with Leung, and she accompanied him to his retirement party, which she videotaped, and also to President George W. Bush’s inaugural parade in Washington, D.C. She lectured classes at the FBI’s training academy at Quantico, Virginia, on the management of double agents.
LEE, WEN HO
The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted an inquiry code-named KINDRED SPIRIT, which it inherited from the original review of the Chinese acquisition of the W.88 nuclear warhead technology. Two of the three best suspects on a list of 70 people at Los Alamos National Laboratory known to have traveled to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) between 1984 and 1988 were the Taiwanese-born Wen Ho Lee and his wife, Sylvia Lee, who worked at Los Alamos as a data entry clerk with a Top Secret clearance.
The KINDRED SPIRIT investigation failed to gather enough evidence to mount a prosecution, but it did lead the mole hunters to Wen Ho Lee, who had been recorded in December 1982 holding a telephone conversation with the suspect in which he had suggested he could find out “who had squealed” on the scientist. Although he had initially denied the conversation, Lee admitted it when confronted with the evidence and then acted as an agent for the FBI, attempting to entrap the suspect in telephone calls and a personal meeting in California in which he wore a wire. The embarrassment for the FBI in May 1996, after an inquiry lasting eight months and the pursuit of 12 possible leads, was that their own informant, Wen Ho Lee, had been
identified as the “only individual with the opportunity, motivation and legitimate access to both W.88 weapons systems information” known to have been betrayed to China.
Lee was interviewed formally by the FBI in January 1999 and again in March and was finally arrested in December 1999 and kept in solitary confinement, supposedly to prevent him from compromising any further information. Actually, the FBI hoped that, in jail without bail, the scientist would crack and confess, but after 227 days of imprisonment, he was released in September 2000 after a plea bargain: the prosecution would drop 58 of the 59 charges in return for information on the whereabouts of the crucial missing seven tapes.
With the promise of immunity, Lee admitted there had been more like 17 or 20 tapes, but insisted he had discarded them in a trash dump. None were ever recovered and Lee was convicted of a single felony and sentenced to the time he had already served.
A counterintelligence assessment of Lee made a convincing argument for him having been recruited by Li De Yuan at a conference held at Hilton Head, South Carolina, in 1985, and this had heralded his first known trip to Beijing the following year, to address the Tenth International Conference on Fluid Dynamics. The FBI had briefed Lee before his attendance and had also approved a second trip, in 1988, when he had met senior explosives expert (and future chief of the PRC’s entire nuclear weapons program) Hu Side and the director of the Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, Zheng Shao Tang, in his hotel bedroom. Upon his return from each trip, he had listed the names of the scientists he had met, but had denied having been asked about any classified information. Years later he would admit that he had helped the Chinese with hydrodynamic nuclear codes on both occasions. A third invitation, to both Wen Ho and Sylvia in early 1989, to attend a conference on experimental fluid mechanics at Chengu, was declined on instructions of the increasingly anxious head of security at Los Alamos, and although they could travel to the PRC no more, there were no restrictions placed on trips to the Republic of China and Hong Kong, which they visited in March and December 1998 and again in 1992.
The KINDRED SPIRIT investigation failed to gather enough evidence to mount a prosecution, but it did lead the mole hunters to Wen Ho Lee, who had been recorded in December 1982 holding a telephone conversation with the suspect in which he had suggested he could find out “who had squealed” on the scientist. Although he had initially denied the conversation, Lee admitted it when confronted with the evidence and then acted as an agent for the FBI, attempting to entrap the suspect in telephone calls and a personal meeting in California in which he wore a wire. The embarrassment for the FBI in May 1996, after an inquiry lasting eight months and the pursuit of 12 possible leads, was that their own informant, Wen Ho Lee, had been
identified as the “only individual with the opportunity, motivation and legitimate access to both W.88 weapons systems information” known to have been betrayed to China.
Lee was interviewed formally by the FBI in January 1999 and again in March and was finally arrested in December 1999 and kept in solitary confinement, supposedly to prevent him from compromising any further information. Actually, the FBI hoped that, in jail without bail, the scientist would crack and confess, but after 227 days of imprisonment, he was released in September 2000 after a plea bargain: the prosecution would drop 58 of the 59 charges in return for information on the whereabouts of the crucial missing seven tapes.
With the promise of immunity, Lee admitted there had been more like 17 or 20 tapes, but insisted he had discarded them in a trash dump. None were ever recovered and Lee was convicted of a single felony and sentenced to the time he had already served.
A counterintelligence assessment of Lee made a convincing argument for him having been recruited by Li De Yuan at a conference held at Hilton Head, South Carolina, in 1985, and this had heralded his first known trip to Beijing the following year, to address the Tenth International Conference on Fluid Dynamics. The FBI had briefed Lee before his attendance and had also approved a second trip, in 1988, when he had met senior explosives expert (and future chief of the PRC’s entire nuclear weapons program) Hu Side and the director of the Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, Zheng Shao Tang, in his hotel bedroom. Upon his return from each trip, he had listed the names of the scientists he had met, but had denied having been asked about any classified information. Years later he would admit that he had helped the Chinese with hydrodynamic nuclear codes on both occasions. A third invitation, to both Wen Ho and Sylvia in early 1989, to attend a conference on experimental fluid mechanics at Chengu, was declined on instructions of the increasingly anxious head of security at Los Alamos, and although they could travel to the PRC no more, there were no restrictions placed on trips to the Republic of China and Hong Kong, which they visited in March and December 1998 and again in 1992.
LEE, PETER
A naturalized American from Taiwan, Dr. Peter Lee had worked as a laser expert at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory before joining the defense contractor TRWto work on a classified antisubmarine project for the U.S. Navy. In January 1985 Lee visited Beijing, having been invited to lecture at the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics (IAPCM).
Peter Lee (code-named ROYAL TOURIST) under interrogation admitted that he had met Chen Nengkuan, the leader of the PRC’s nuclear weapons program at the China Academy of Engineering Physics, in his hotel room. Lee had made several trips to Beijing and in a plea bargain with the prosecution in March 1998 admitted to having compromised classified information in return for a fine of $20,000 and a year in a halfway house.
Lee was only slightly connected to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation code-named KINDRED SPIRIT, which focused on Wen Ho Lee, a friend of Peter Lee’s who was also originally from Taiwan.
Peter Lee (code-named ROYAL TOURIST) under interrogation admitted that he had met Chen Nengkuan, the leader of the PRC’s nuclear weapons program at the China Academy of Engineering Physics, in his hotel room. Lee had made several trips to Beijing and in a plea bargain with the prosecution in March 1998 admitted to having compromised classified information in return for a fine of $20,000 and a year in a halfway house.
Lee was only slightly connected to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation code-named KINDRED SPIRIT, which focused on Wen Ho Lee, a friend of Peter Lee’s who was also originally from Taiwan.
LAKAM
The Hebrew acronym of the Lishka LeKishrei Mada (Science Liaison Bureau). LAKAM was created in 1957 under the leadership of a Shin Bet officer, Benyamin Blumberg, to acquire and protect scientific and technical intelligence for Israel. It played a key role in the development of Israel’s covert atomic industry and undertook highly secret, deniable operations in support of it, including the management of front companies to procure components for nuclear weapons and enriched fuel for the Dimona reactor.
LAKAM was closed down in 1986 when its director, Rafael Eitan, a veteran Mossad officer, was compromised inadvertently by one of his sources, Jonathan Pollard, an American naval intelligence analyst who had been supplying classified satellite imagery to his Israeli handlers since 1984.
LAKAM was closed down in 1986 when its director, Rafael Eitan, a veteran Mossad officer, was compromised inadvertently by one of his sources, Jonathan Pollard, an American naval intelligence analyst who had been supplying classified satellite imagery to his Israeli handlers since 1984.
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