A $250 million Norwegian spy ship is being dispatched to snoop on Russia's activities in the Arctic.
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Cold War-style spy games return to melting Arctic
By KARL RITTER
11 hours ago
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View photo
This image made available by
the Norwegian Military on Thursday, June 5, 2014 shows a Norwegian
vessel passing through the Bosporus in Istanbul Turkey, on March 2,
2014. The mysterious ship the size of a large passenger ferry left a
Romanian wharf, glided through the narrow Bosporus that separates Europe
and Asia, and plotted a course toward Scandinavia. About a month later,
at the fenced-in headquarters of Norway's military intelligence
service, the country's spy chief disclosed its identity. It was a $250
million spy ship, tentatively named Marjata, that will be equipped with
sensors and other technology to snoop on Russia's activities in the
Arctic beginning in 2016. (AP Photo/Norwegian Military)
OSLO, Norway (AP) — In early March, a mysterious ship the
size of a large passenger ferry left a Romanian wharf, glided through
the narrow Bosporus that separates Europe and Asia, and plotted a course
toward Scandinavia.
About a month later, at the fenced-in headquarters
of Norway's military intelligence service, the country's spy chief
disclosed its identity. It was a $250 million spy ship, tentatively
named Marjata, that will be equipped with sensors and other technology
to snoop on Russia's activities in the Arctic beginning in 2016.
"There
is a demand from our political leadership to describe what is going on
in this region," Lt. Gen. Kjell Grandhagen said in an interview at the
hilltop surveillance base outside Oslo. Of particular interest, he said,
are Russia's ambitions to develop oil and gas and shipping
opportunities in the Arctic — and the "military aspects in terms of
being able to defend that."
As climate change eats away at the sea
ice covering the North Pole, Arctic nations are fishing for secrets in
East-West spy games echoing Cold War rivalries. The military dimension
remains important, but this time there's an economic aspect, too:
getting a leg up in the competition for potential oil and gas resources,
along with newly accessible shipping lanes and fishing waters.
Even
before the Ukraine crisis put a chill on cooperation between Russia and
the West in the Arctic— joint military exercises have been suspended
and Canada skipped a meeting of an Arctic environmental task force in
Moscow in April —Western nations in the region accused Russia and China
of launching cyber-attacks and other espionage operations.
In
Canada, a naval officer was sentenced a year ago to 20 years in prison
for spying for Russia. And in December police arrested a Toronto-based
employee of Lloyds Register accused of trying to supply China with
sensitive information about Canada's plans to build Arctic patrol ships.
The Chinese government called the allegations groundless.
"Canada
has been experiencing levels of espionage comparable to the height of
the Cold War," the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service's
oversight committee said in a report late last year. The intelligence
service has been reorganized to put more focus on Canada's northern
perimeter.
The Arctic — surrounded by the U.S., Canada, the Nordic
countries and Russia — was a fault line during the Cold War as NATO and
Soviet submarines spied on each other beneath the ice cap. After a lull
following the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the Arctic is regaining its
strategic importance as warming makes it more accessible. Summer sea
ice reached a record low in 2012 and scientific projections suggest it
could disappear completely this century.
Shipping is already
growing, albeit from low levels, in the Northern Sea Route north of
Russia. The melt is also opening a new energy frontier — the Arctic is
believed to hold an estimated 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil
and 30 percent of its untapped gas.
The most accessible resources
are within national boundaries and are undisputed. Security analysts
say the risk of conflict lies further ahead, if and when the ice melts
enough to uncover resources in areas where ownership is unclear. The
U.S., Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia are expected to have
overlapping claims.
Critics say the U.S. is lagging behind in the
race. A recent climate change report by a panel of retired generals
found that despite a slew of planning documents, the U.S. has limited
capabilities to operate in the Arctic. It said the Coast Guard has only
one fully ready icebreaker and the U.S. Navy has few ice-hardened
vessels that can operate in the Arctic, other than nuclear submarines.
"The
geopolitical situation is ever more nuanced and complex. The risk of
maritime events, or even unpredictable flashpoints, endemic to national
security is growing," retired Admiral Frank Bowman warned in the report.
In
April, the first oil supplies were unloaded from an ice-resistant
platform in Russia's Pechora Sea, a development that President Vladimir
Putin described as "our first step in developing the Arctic sea shelf."
Even
amid the current focus on Ukraine, Putin stressed at a national
security meeting that Russia needs "to maintain Russia's influence in
the region and maybe, in some areas, to be ahead of our partners."
In
2007 Russia resumed long-range strategic bomber flights over the Arctic
and planted a Russian flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole. More
recently, it asserted control over the Northern Sea Route with naval
deployments and by reopening a military base on the New Siberian
Islands.
Meanwhile, Russia has been accused of using clandestine
means to glean secrets about the Arctic plans and activities of its
Western "partners":
—In Denmark, political science professor Timo
Kivimaki two years ago lost his job at the University of Copenhagen and
served 2½ months under house arrest for violating Danish espionage laws.
The case is classified but in a rare interview, Kivimaki told The
Associated Press he was arrested on his way to a meeting with a Russian
diplomat, carrying a briefcase with public documents about Danish
experts studying Arctic policy. Kivimaki said he wanted to foster
peaceful relations between Arctic stakeholders and denied his activities
had anything to do with espionage. Denmark's domestic intelligence
service, PET, declined to comment on the case.
—In Norway,
security officials say the country's Arctic plans and know-how,
including cutting-edge technology for offshore drilling in harsh weather
conditions, is attracting unwanted attention from foreign spies.
Without mentioning the nations involved, Norway's counter-espionage
chief Eirik Haugland said spies have tried to identify critical points
in Norway's Arctic infrastructure "just in case" of a future conflict.
Haugland
said a foreign agent traveled to northern Norway a few years ago to map
the landing point of an underwater communications link with Svalbard, a
strategic archipelago halfway between mainland Norway and the North
Pole. "If you sabotage this cable, people on Svalbard are quite blind.
But also we (on the mainland) are quite blind about what's going on in
Svalbard," Haugland said.
Documents leaked by former National
Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have prompted Norway to be
more open about the fact that spying goes the other way, too.
An
NSA document, dated April 17, 2013, and cited by Norwegian newspaper
Dagbladet in December, said the Norwegian Intelligence Service had
helped the NSA with access to "Russian targets in the Kola Peninsula" —
home to Russia's Northern Fleet — as well as reports on Russian energy
policy.
The NSA wanted to deepen its intelligence exchange with
its NATO ally "on Russian political, natural resources and energy
issues," Dagbladet quoted the document as saying.
Grandhagen, the
Norwegian intelligence chief, declined to comment but said it's no
secret that Norway cooperates on intelligence matters with the U.S.
"You
give something and you get something back in other areas. And we give
information in areas where we have a good competence and good access,"
Grandhagen said. Asked what that might be, he said: "I think our
understanding of our neighborhood is an area where we are strong."
Grandhagen
said Russia also is modernizing its capabilities to collect
intelligence, including in cyberspace. He declined to comment on Russian
media reports that Moscow this year will reopen a Cold War-era military
base in Alakurtti, near the land border with Finland, and staff it with
surveillance experts to monitor NATO's activities in the Arctic.
"What
I can say is we're aware that Russia has a significant intelligence
apparatus including various means to monitor activity on our side,"
Grandhagen said.
Russia's Foreign Ministry and the SVR foreign intelligence service didn't answer AP requests for comment.
___
Associated
Press reporters Matti Huuhtanen in Helsinki, Jim Heintz in Moscow and
Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.
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