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Covert ugliness certainly happened; during the Cold War I had a friend at a research lab where they got some sort of NSA blessed network land-line terminating c

by hga 12y ago

Covert ugliness certainly happened; during the Cold War I had a friend at a research lab where they got some sort of NSA blessed network land-line terminating communications device, it had to be in its own special room that was beefed up so that breaking into it would be detectable. As one of the two in the group with access to that room to maintain etc. it, he was required to get a special clearance, and one of the requirements was that he never ever visit certain parts of NYC (where he was from) and Long Island, where we know the UN KGB types spend a lot time (including on the beaches :-). That's because too many of our people just up and disappeared while visiting those areas.... Very different from a completely overt hit like this, or shooting someone with a rictin pellet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_Markov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_Markov), but, still, it happened sub rosa.

rdtsc 12y ago
> just up and disappeared while visiting those areas.... Disappeared as in "assassinated"? That sounds a little too made up. If I was the security officer of that employee I would also probably try to make up some scary stories to make sure he never even feels temped to go there by telling him "some" agents had been captured, tortured and dissolved in acid by secret and evil commie rat agents.
- hga 12y ago
  Nope, the key thing here is that they had were through to have valuable information, so they were thought to have been kidnapped in an area where it's really easy to exfiltrate people. I have reasons to believe this was something way beyond a security officer making up wild stories, e.g. he was working for one of the nation's top nuclear scientists, a protege of Edward Teller ... the other person cleared for that room. Who also lived under the restrictions, although things like overt, official conferences in Moscow were OK. The scientist was a real character, at one of those (maybe the only one), he sent back a post card saying "They've met my price! Please send my library." The security officer, while recognizing it was a joke, found it in very poor taste. And why bother with all this unless there were concrete reasons to make them no-go zones? If not a threat of kidnapping with a very Bad End, why were these areas off-limits???
  - rdtsc 12y ago
    The threat was not one of kidnapping but of them defecting and then being "ex-filtrated". This was not unusual. Doesn't mean there were assassinated. So my point still stands, there has not been any publicly known case of an assassination by Russia on US soil or by US on Russian soil. If you are a spy in any of those countries and want to defect, go to the to other country. Don't go to South America or Europe.

by hga 12y ago

rdtsc 12y ago

> just up and disappeared while visiting those areas.... Disappeared as in "assassinated"? That sounds a little too made up. If I was the security officer of that employee I would also probably try to make up some scary stories to make sure he never even feels temped to go there by telling him "some" agents had been captured, tortured and dissolved in acid by secret and evil commie rat agents.

hga 12y ago
Nope, the key thing here is that they had were through to have valuable information, so they were thought to have been kidnapped in an area where it's really easy to exfiltrate people. I have reasons to believe this was something way beyond a security officer making up wild stories, e.g. he was working for one of the nation's top nuclear scientists, a protege of Edward Teller ... the other person cleared for that room. Who also lived under the restrictions, although things like overt, official conferences in Moscow were OK. The scientist was a real character, at one of those (maybe the only one), he sent back a post card saying "They've met my price! Please send my library." The security officer, while recognizing it was a joke, found it in very poor taste. And why bother with all this unless there were concrete reasons to make them no-go zones? If not a threat of kidnapping with a very Bad End, why were these areas off-limits???
- rdtsc 12y ago
  The threat was not one of kidnapping but of them defecting and then being "ex-filtrated". This was not unusual. Doesn't mean there were assassinated. So my point still stands, there has not been any publicly known case of an assassination by Russia on US soil or by US on Russian soil. If you are a spy in any of those countries and want to defect, go to the to other country. Don't go to South America or Europe.