Rock on:

Old spying lives on in new ways
By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website

The affair of the transmitting rock uncovered by the Russians in Moscow is straight out of a John le Carre thriller - with a touch of James Bond gadgetry and a twist of the Keystone cops in the way it went wrong for the British.

Assuming it is true, it shows that despite the end of the Cold War, espionage is alive and well and providing plenty of employment.

It also shows how the delivery of information is now in the electronic age.

"It provides a fascinating insight into the new gee-whiz gadgetry used today," said Professor Richard Aldrich of Nottingham University.

Dead-drop updated

The old idea of the dead-drop ('letterboxes' the British tend to call them) - by the oak tree next to the lamppost in such-and-such a park etc - has given way to hand-held computers and short-range transmitters.

Just transmit your info at the rock and your 'friends' will download it next day. No need for codes and wireless sets at midnight anymore.

But the trouble with computers is they go wrong and that seems to have happened in this case. Then you need to make some repairs. Then it gets tricky.

Intelligence targets

But why do it at all?

The answer is that spying these days might have changed but it hasn't gone away.

No longer is the West worried about a sudden Soviet attack on Western Europe. It even co-operates with Russia on international terrorism.

But it also worries about the new Russian nationalism. It wants to know about the direction of Kremlin policy, about the security of old Soviet nuclear installations and Russian arms sales abroad - to Iran for a start.

And there is the catch-all brief given to the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also commonly known as MI6. This is laid out on the SIS website: "SIS provides the British Government with a global covert capability to promote and defend the national security and economic well-being of the United Kingdom."

Defending the 'economic well-being' of the UK gives plenty of opportunity for British agents to check on Russian industry (energy resources included) as well as monitoring the more traditional military matters. And of course, one side always seeks a double agent in the other side's intelligence agencies.

"If true, this is reminiscent of the dead-drop, though updated, and indicates perhaps a return to getting intelligence from humans rather than relying on satellites and monitoring," said Alex Standish, editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest.

The NGO factor

There is, however, one aspect to this particular incident which is worrying to Russia watchers.

It is that the Russian security service has linked what appears to have been an espionage operation to the issue of foreign help being given to Russian non-governmental organisations. It seems to be trying to undermine NGOs by associating them with spying.

President Putin, an ex-KGB officer himself, has cracked down on the NGOs and a new law regulates them tightly.

This is perhaps one reason the Russians have given such publicity to this incident.

"The Russians are convinced that the West is interfering in their domestic politics and in the affairs of ex-Soviet states and that this is done through the NGO's," said Professor Margot Light of the London School of Economics. "In the aftermath of the Orange revolution in Ukraine, Russia is determined to stop similar movements in Belarus and Uzbekistan."

One of the organisations named in the Russian television report was the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights monitor. It was said to have been given more than $40,000 by a British diplomat.

Mock shock

Governments tend to react to these incidents with the same mock outrage that Claude Rains as Captain Renault expressed in the film Casablanca when he closed down Rick's Café.

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" he declared, before accepting his own winnings.

Some years ago, when the Cold War was ending, I remember the then Soviet embassy in London rousing reluctant reporters on a Saturday afternoon to display some microphones which had been discovered plastered into walls in embassy flats. Soviet synthetic outrage was matched by the fake innocent British response: "Who? Us? Surely not."

The Foreign Office in London has not even bothered to deny this one outright. It said it was "concerned and surprised" at the allegations, though it also denied any wrongdoing in its support of NGO's.

"Surprise" is the usual word for these situations. When the former British minister Clare Short said that the British had bugged the offices of the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the run-up to the Iraq war (itself believable given that the US was bugging foreign UN missions at the same time) the man who was foreign secretary at the time, Robin Cook said he was "surprised." It is a convenient word. It does not admit and it does not deny.

Russian spy boom

And nor can the Russians really complain.

"Three years ago, we reported on a 300% increase in Russian intelligence agents in London," said Alex Standish. "This was a change initiated by President Putin after the Yeltsin days in which intelligence was run down."

And also only three years ago, an ex-FBI agent Robert Hanssen was sentenced to life without parole for spying for the Russians for more than 20 years. Hanssen liaised with the State Department on tracking Russian agents in the United States hiding under diplomatic cover.

Hanssen used old-fashioned methods. He was caught after he had left material at a dead-drop under a wooden bridge near his home.

What's in the pipeline:

Russia blamed for 'gas sabotage'

Georgia's president has accused Moscow of serious acts of "sabotage" after gas blasts on Russian pipelines cut off supplies to Georgia and Armenia.

Mikhail Saakashvili told the BBC the near simultaneous attacks close to Georgia's border were pre-planned actions orchestrated by Russia.

An electricity transmission line was also destroyed as Georgia experiences extremely cold weather.

Russia's foreign ministry dismissed Mr Saakashvili's remarks as "hysteria".

Russian prosecutors earlier described the attacks as deliberate criminal acts and said an investigation was under way.

Georgia has no gas reserves and was due to run out of gas on Sunday evening, correspondents say.

Relations between Georgia and Russia have been tense since Mr Saakashvili was swept to power by the so-called "Rose Revolution" in 2003, pledging to lead his nation on a pro-Western course.

'Planned attacks'

The two explosions occurred on the main branch and a reserve branch of the Mozdok-Tbilisi pipeline in the Russian border region of North Ossetia at around 0300 local time (2400 GMT).

The electricity transmission line in Russia's southern region of Karachayevo-Cherkessiya - also near the Georgian border - was brought down by an explosion just hours later.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Saakashvili said there was now huge pressure on his country's energy system, as it was experiencing its coldest weather in more than 20 years.

He said all gas supplies to Georgia were now cut off as was 25% of the electricity supply.

Mr Saakashvili said the gas pipeline was blown up in "an area fully under Russian control... with a heavy presence of Russian border guards", where there were no local insurgents.

"They happened at the same time, and basically they didn't affect supplies to Russia proper, so we can conclude that it was a very well-organised and very well-co-ordinated act.

"We've received numerous threats by Russian politicians and officials at different levels to punish us for basically for not giving them pipelines," the Georgian president said.

Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli added that the "political motive was clear".

He told the BBC that Russia was seeking "to make a problem for Georgia in winter, to make the government angry and to create instability".

Neither politician offered any evidence to back their claims.

The Russian foreign ministry described Mr Saakashvili's comments as the product of "hysteria and bacchanalia".

Russia's prosecutor's office earlier said what happened were acts of sabotage and that explosive devices had been found, the BBC's Damian Grammaticas in Moscow reports.

A spokesman for Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom said the company was doing all it could to restore gas supplies.

"We believe this situation should not be politicised," Sergei Kuprianov was quoted as saying by the Russian Interfax news agency.

Reports say it could take several days to restore gas supplies, due to the site's remoteness and poor weather conditions.

Price hikes

Georgia is holding emergency talks aimed at securing supplies from Azerbaijan and Iran, but this could also take several days, said Georgian Deputy Energy Minister Aleko Khetagurov.

Russia also supplies gas through Georgia to Armenia, which in turn sends some electricity back to Georgia.

Gas prices to the two countries were doubled in January to $110 per 1,000 cubic metres, as part of a series of recent price hikes for former Soviet countries.

Armenian President Robert Kocharyan is expected to discuss the gas situation in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a visit to Moscow which starts on Sunday.