Previous expulsion over forged passports

IRELAND last expelled a Russian diplomat in early 2011 after a Garda investigation concluded that members of the country’s intelligence services were involved in the forgery of Irish passports.

It came after the FBI broke up a spy network involving 10 agents in the US in the summer of 2010. One agent was Anna Chapman, who became a celebrity in Russia.

Six passports of innocent Irish citizens had been compromised by a Russian operation, which involved replicating the details on fake documents. The forged passports had been passed on to the Russian spy ring in the US before their arrests. The Russian agents in the US were returned home in a ‘spy-swap’ deal in July 2010. Sergei Skripal was one of four individuals released by the Kremlin as part of that deal.

The Irish Government ordered the expulsion of one Russian diplomat in February 2011 after the Garda investigation into the forged passports.

Information operations – the attempt to influence the internal political functions of states as well as economic espionage and cyber warfare – became the weapons of choice for a Russia intent on restoring its global dominance with a new Cold War.

This time, however, there were a few differences. The objectives were the same, divide and conquer and steamroller opposition, but the methods were different, as the Estonians found out in 2007 when a Russian cyber attack shut down their nation and brought it to its knees for a number of days.

So, how has Ireland gotten so embroiled in this matter? The Crimean and Ukrainian attacks led to a series of EU sanctions being applied to Russia. EU countries, Ireland included, reduced their trading relationship with Moscow and when the sanctions started to bite, the Russians did what they’ve always done, they engaged in economic espionage.

In other words it used its intelligence agencies to infiltrate western states to penetrate companies to steal useful economic and technical information.

In our State, the security services of the Defence Force (J2) and the Garda (CSB) became aware of Russian interest in companies that form part of our foreign direct investment base.

Where possible attempts were made to head Russian espionage activities off at the pass, by ‘burning’ agents who were active in this area. This means letting them know they’ve been identified by our security forces. This is usually done by taking their photo in a very overt manner or visiting them to tell them not to bother looking to have their visa renewed.

However, you can only do this with agents who are undeclared and lacking any diplomatic status. Sending someone home with diplomatic credentials ratchets things up a level and in doing this, Ireland is telling Moscow we are not tolerating your activities here any more, but now doing so in unison with many more nations. Many of those nations have more to lose than Ireland in this exercise.

Remember, however, we have done this before, expelling Russian diplomats following their alleged misuse, theft or forgery of Irish passports in intelligence operations in the US in 2010. We also did it to the Israelis when they were alleged to have cloned Irish passports for use by an assassination team in Dubai. Note my use of the word ‘alleged’ here. The same levels of proof apply now as applied then, intelligence information from both Irish State resources and partner states.

We will always require the assistance of states that have mutual interests with ourselves, such relationships must be guarded for the good of our national security.

That something so lethal was used in a built-up civilian environment during peacetime is what is so repugnant to western civil society