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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (60099)	9/14/1999 10:05:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

The same source should have repercussions in the US. Seems there may be new info on Felix Bloch, who was fired about a decade ago because of suspected spying. Bloch was, I believe, a big contributor to the Dem party. sddt.com Recently CBS reported that Castro sent a letter offering LBJ help in defeating Goldwater, here's an interesting alliance between KGB and the Dems: The KGB failed to find anything negative to stick to former President Ronald Reagan who was considered more anti-Soviet than others running for office. ''Probably no American policymaker at any time during the Cold War inspired quite as much fear and loathing in Moscow as Ronald Reagan during his first term as president,'' the book said. The KGB tried to discredit Reagan during his unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination in 1976, but seemed to have ''discovered nothing more damaging than alleged evidence of his 'weak intellectual capabilities','' the book said. The KGB was less involved in the 1980 presidential election, staying on the fence, but attempted in 1984 to prevent Reagan from winning a second term by trying to popularize the slogan ''Reagan Means War!'' ''Reagan's landslide victory in the 1984 election was striking evidence of the limitations of Soviet active measures within the United States,'' the book said. dailynews.yahoo.com

To: Bill who wrote (60099)	9/14/1999 10:07:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Respond to of 67261

September 14, 1999 International Commentary Too Old to Bother? When her life as a spy was made public over the weekend by the Sunday Times and BBC, 87-year-old Melita Norwood was unrepentant about having passed British secrets to the Soviets for some 35 years. "I did what I did not to make money, but to help prevent the defeat of a new system which had at great cost given ordinary people food and fares which they could afford, good education and health service," she said in a statement. Even in the relative comfort of our post-Cold War age, and even coming from a seemingly harmless octogenarian, such dogged devotion to a system that inflicted so much misery on so many is appalling. More to the point, espionage is a major crime and Mrs. Norwood's behavior became suspect long ago. But according to Home Secretary Jack Straw, now famous world-wide for his long detention of another octogenarian named Augusto Pinochet for possible extradition to Spain, British justice never saw fit to prosecute Mrs. Norwood. If it weren't so preposterous, one might think that Labour governments have one standard for old Stalinists and another for aged enemies of Communism. Mrs. Norwood's activities were detailed to MI5, the British secret service, by KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin in 1992. His new book, co-authored with Cambridge Professor Christopher Andrew, is a compendium of stolen KGB secrets and was the basis for the Sunday Times and BBC reports on Mrs. Norwood. But Mr. Straw admitted yesterday that suspicions about her were raised as far back as 1945. She was denied access to government secrets after September 1949 and her vetting clearance was revoked in 1951. A 1965 investigation left the Security Service "with the view that she had been a spy in the 1940s," but without court-admissible evidence to support it. Yet even after the Mitrokhin confirmation, "the view was taken by the Service that this material did not on its own provide evidence that could be put to a U.K. Court," according to Mr. Straw. The Service also thought, he said, that exposing the material would compromise leads to more recent espionage activities in Britain and elsewhere. These explanations are a mixture of legal truths, political realities and now familiar New Labour dissembling. It is true that Mr. Mitrokhin's notes, having been stolen from KGB files, would have presented evidential difficulty, though it would be up to a judge whether or not to admit them as evidence. And it is reasonable that previous governments felt there were bigger fish to fry. The British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in northern London, where Mrs. Norwood worked, was hardly the epicenter of operation Tube Alloys (the codename for the British project to build the atomic bomb). As personal assistant to the director, Mrs. Norwood would certainly have seen sensitive information, but her access was later limited and by her own admission she was unable to judge the significance of what crossed her desk. But that doesn't explain or excuse Mr. Straw's attitude today. Indeed, contrary to the suggestion in Mr. Straw's statement, Britain has no statute of limitations on espionage or any "indictable offenses" that must be tried by a jury. Given the government's zeal in arresting and abetting the prosecution of former Chilean President Pinochet under the most dubious of legal pretexts, the dismissive attitude toward Mrs. Norwood (code named Hola by the KGB) is inconsistent. Hola is indeed now a "frail pensioner." But Mr. Pinochet is 83 and in precarious health as well. Yet he remains under arrest (with extradition pending) despite saving his country from communism and restoring its economy before handing the controls over to elected leaders. There are undoubtedly more unmaskings to come. The "Mitrokhin Archive", as the book is called, exposes two Labour MPs, both now dead, as spies. It also details the activities of a so-called Romeo agent, a discredited former Scotland Yard detective who was jailed for corruption. His job was to seduce women employees of foreign embassies in the hope of persuading them to pass on secrets to the KGB. He still lives in north London and while his identity also has been known to MI5 for some time, he too has not been prosecuted. "Some of the same constraints on action applied as in the Hola case," Mr. Straw explained. "Constraints" seemed to be adjudged rather selectively by Mr. Straw. KGB espionage served a system that was criminal and oppressive and posed a threat to democratic societies. Mr. Pinochet's understanding of that truth motivated him to seize power to thwart a Castroite putsch that was generating political and economic chaos. We are hearing no legalistic arguments from the Labour government on his behalf. interactive.wsj.com