SPY SEX SCHOOL: Inside Vladimir Putin's Red Sparrows sexpionage training ground
MOSCOW, RUSSIA: A new book by Mark Hollingsworth revealed a sex espionage school of the KGB outside of Moscow. 'Agents of Influence' by Mark Hollingsworth provides insight into the KGB's Cold War erotic espionage strategies.
In order to obtain kompromat, the KGB targeted Western ambassadors and lawmakers and trained women to act as honeytraps, according to the book. Blackmail, entrapment, eavesdropping and theft were some of KGB's methods. The book also details the eavesdropping tactics used by the British security agency. The new book is expected to be out on April 13.
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Before we delve into what the book says, we first need to know something about the The British Embassy. Located on the Saint Sophia embankment in Moscow, it represented rank and prestige in politics and diplomacy during the Cold War. The entrance was constructed in the 1890s by a Russian sugar trader and it featured a red-carpeted ornamental staircase and a heavily paneled Scottish baronial hallway.
A large ballroom with a fine parquet floor and white and gold decor, that made the first floor feel like a scene from 'Anna Karenina', was used for extravagant parties and dances. The Kremlin wall, which the house faces across the river, was broken up by watchtowers. An infuriated Joseph Stalin used to rage as he peered across the red-brick wall at the capitalist adversary because no other consulate enjoyed such an unobstructed view of the core of the Soviet empire. The embassy was one of the KGB's top targets for subverting, destabilizing and upsetting UK interests.
Who is Mark Hollingsworth?
Investigative journalist and author, Hollingsworth is best known for his book 'Londongrad - From Russia with Cash, the Inside Story of the Oligarchs', one of his 10 works. Additionally, he has penned renowned studies on the MI5 and the Saudi Royal Family in addition to biographies of Mark Thatcher and Tim Bell. He began his job as an employee of the Granada TV award-winning 'World In Action' program, and he currently makes frequent contributions to The Times, Mail on Sunday, The Guardian and The Sunday Times. His most recent piece, which was just released by Tatler magazine, was an investigation into the BBC Panorama interview with Princess Diana, as per his website.
What did the book reveal?
'Agents of Influence' spoke about a school that taught women to honeytrap influential men. The most recent instance being the flame-haired "sophisticated agent of Russia," Anna Chapman, who was exposed in June 2010 in New York as a member of a 10-person Russian espionage network after working for Barclays Bank. One of Stalin's final actions as ruler on Christmas Eve 1952 was to order Britain to relocate. He died three months later, and the British turned down the offer of a new embassy on a larger site, as per the Daily Mail.
The KGB employed a broad variety of strategies, including eavesdropping, arson, burglary, honeytraps, drink-spiking, blackmail, drug planting, constant car and foot pursuit, telephone harassment and entrapment. The ultimate goal of the KGB was to amass kompromat, damning information that could be used to buy and sell political sway. The KGB trained carefully chosen instructors, singers, dancers and actresses at a "sexpionage" school in Kazan, east of Moscow. Vladimir Putin, who was a former KGB officer, quickly inserted his fellow ex-KGB comrades into all spheres of Russian life after assuming power in late 1999.
Who are the members of the club?
Young, underprivileged females were instructed on how to speak to foreigners in clubs, hotel lobbies, or even fictitious brothels called "malinas" (Russian for raspberries), fitted with bugging equipment and cameras. The British security agency had its own shady practices. The Eve Club was a hub of sexual, political, and espionage intrigue and was housed in a dimly illuminated underground nightclub off of Regent Street in London, as cited by TDpel media. Exotic, half-naked women in headdresses performed on a small stage, while attendants poured champagne in crimson velvet-lined booths. The members of the club included nine MPs, 12 ambassadors, 30 diplomats, five QCs and 70 titled Englishmen, including the Duke of Devonshire, Duke of Rutland and Duke of Norfolk.
Who was John Profumo?
War Secretary John Profumo was one of the club's more intriguing guests. In December 1954, he celebrated his stag night there. Profumo subsequently got involved in an infamous espionage controversy as War Secretary after having an affair with Christine Keeler, who was also sleeping with a KGB officer at the time. The objective of the KGB's active measures abroad was usually to locate so-called "agents of influence." Ray Mawby, a Conservative MP and Junior Minister, was a successful recruit who spied for the Czech security agency in exchange for payment.
KGB intelligence operations
Mawby even gave over the floor plans for the Prime Minister's private office in the Commons. Two successful KGB espionage operations in the United States contributed to the Cold War's end. When Gorbachev took office as president in March 1985, he understood that while Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's combative language was risky and provocative, they were not about to start a nuclear conflict. This was primarily because of information and documents that Robert Hanssen, an FBI officer with access to classified US assessments on Gorbachev and the possibility of a nuclear war, and Aldrich Ames, a CIA employee who worked on Soviet operations, sold to the KGB.