Walker spy ring and the KGB

The Viginian-Pilot newspaper reports this week on the Walker Spies and where they are imprisoned. Call it the long wait. Not having any sympathy for spies I have even less sympathy for Oleg Kalugin who claims to be retired as a Soviet KGB general. General Kalugin rose quickly in the First Chief Directorate and became the head of worldwide foreign conterintelligence (Line KR). He served at the center of some of the most important espionage cases of his period, one of which was the Walker spy ring which credited Kalugin with his aggressive operational methodology. Not good enough. They were caught and we should be asking ourselves who did we really catch? Why isn't Kalugin in prison for his role in the Walker spy ring?

Kalugin has taught at the The Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (note; the spelling of 'Centre'). Kalugin has also taught at the Catholic University and travels throughout the country lecturing. There's much more to this picture. While the Walker spy ring wiles away the hours of their broken lives in prison, Kalugin continues to represent himself as a reformed intelligence officer spy.

Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Nikolai Patrushev has charged that foreign governments are using non-governmental organizations for espionage and to promote changes of government in former Soviet republics. According to the Itar-TASS news agency, Patrushev has named the U.S. Peace Corps, which pulled out of Russia in 2003 amid spying allegations, the Saudi Red Crescent, and British and Kuwaiti aid groups among the NGOs possibly used by foreign intelligence services. Peace Corps spokeswoman Barbara Daly dismissed Patrushev’s charges as “completely baseless, without merit and not true,” the Associated Press reports.

Last week the Pentagon released proposals for a consolidated brig at the Naval Support Activity Northwest Annex in Chesapeake. It is believed that it will make the best use of taxpayers dollars by creating five joint facilities across the country. Although the defense department recommendations won't be finalized until later this year the approximate cost of building the facility in Chesapeake Virginia will be $14 million but the cost to the environment has not yet been determined.

More importantly we may be paying more for our national security than has ever been accounted for just having the likes of Oleg Kalugin and Yevgeni Primacov in our nations Capitol. No doubt Kalugin knew more about the USS Americas cruises than many of our sailors. Under a highly secret sinking the CVN66 America went down last weekend in the Atlantic. I attended her commissioning in Norfolk in 1965. Somewhere in the Atlantic after a classified test to discover what it would take to scuttle a behemoth the size of the America she was sunk. She was the largest warship ever sunk by any means in war or peace and hopefully her replacement will also be commissioned 'America' in 2008.

OD