Analysis: Tokyo 'spy capital' of the world

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=109889

Thursday, 17 August 2000 2:10 (ET)

TOKYO, Aug. 11 (UPI) -- The worst-kept secret in diplomatic chanceries
and corporate boardrooms is that Tokyo is the spy capital of the
world.

> From industrial espionage and Internet codes to old-fashioned
surveillance and disinformation, analysts agree, no place can hold a
flickering candle to the capital of Japan.

"There is so much information of every kind from every nation
available here," said a Western diplomat. "Because of scant preventive
laws, foreign spies can operate with near impunity."

In one recent case, police said they discovered that four Russian
intelligence agents collected information about unreleased electronic
products in Japan.

The activities, which involved a Japanese accomplice, indicate that
the SVR-the successor of Russia's KGB intelligence agency-has
developed an interest in industrial espionage because Russia's economy
is in such poor shape.

Nikolai Kovalyov, the head of Russia's domestic Federal Security
Service, said in March his agency had stopped the espionage activities
of 28 foreign spies, all with contacts in Japan and in the process had
arrested seven agents hired by secret service organizations in the
United States, Britain, China, Spain and Japan.

The end of the Cold War actually produced a glut of unemployed spies
on the Tokyo market, forcing many to scramble of them to maintain
their visa status.

Because many of these spies had computer training, some have managed
to secure employment as "information technology" or IT specialists
with commercial firms.

"Big Brother" used to be the euphemism applied to the eavesdropping
and surveillance activities of Soviet and Chinese Communist
intelligence organizations.

But now the United States National Security Agency based at Fort
Meade, Md., with its all-seeing Echelon super-Internet system, is the
world's most sophisticated.

Or is it?

Several European nations -- and Japan, South Korea and Taiwan -- are
quickly catching up.

The system known as Carnivore, the FBI's new e-mail surveillance
system, has been virtually cloned in Japan and holds dangers for abuse
of personal privacy as well as espionage.

Technology may be in the forefront, but there is still demand for the
old-fashioned human espionage operative.

One former spy was so effective with his cover that he was head-hunted
by a London management consulting firm and is now working for a major
multinational firm in Oman.

His income is more than when he was the top intelligence agent of his
nation's espionage team in Tokyo.

Among the reasons that Japan is a clandestine agent's paradise is that
there is no anti-espionage law, due primarily to lingering
sensitivities about the old Kempeitai (thought police) of the World
War II era.

Also, lax patent laws and shipping regulations make Japan an "easy
come, easy go" destination.

Example computer software that can't be shipped from Canada to the
U.S. directly is shipped first to Japan "in a plain wrapper" and then
shipped back to the U.S.  Lately, some shipments of bootleg Viagra,
the sexual empowerment drug, have been intercepted.

The sheer numbers of foreign residents is another problem in keeping
track of suspected spies.

Monitoring 657,000 Koreans, 234,000 Chinese, 201,795 Brazilians,
84,508 Filipinos, 44,168 Americans, 37,000 Peruvians, 18,000 Thais,
13,000 Britons, 10,000 Vietnamese, 8,000 Indonesians, 8,000 Iranians
and 100,000 "others" living amid 125.9 million Japanese strains the
capabilities of the National Police Agency.

Police suspect that most of the spies come from the ranks of
businessmen, diplomats and journalists -- "anyone who can handle a
laptop computer," a police agency official was quoted as saying.

At least 200,000 of the foreigners call themselves "businessmen" and
live in Tokyo with their families, communicating regularly around the
world by telephone, fax, e-mail and regular mail.

There are 124 embassies, 24 sub-embassies or international
organizations such as trade offices as well as the Chosen Soren North
Korea Residents Association establishment that is widely believed to
function as a de facto foreign ministry for North Korea.

There are 1,536 accredited diplomats , or "legal spies," as some
Japanese call them.

There are 832 news correspondents representing 280 news organizations
from 48 countries and territories. The United States accredits 334
correspondents in Japan, Britain, 159; South Korea, 52;  France, 46;
Germany, 40; Taiwan, 21; Australia, 19; Hong Kong, 18;  Russia, 15;
down to one each from places such as Belgium, Finland, Hungary,
Israel, Malaysia, Nigeria and Norway.

Long neglected, interest has been revived in Japanese intelligence
recently with the North Korean firing of a rocket over Japanese
territory in August 1998.

Politicians hurried to propose legislation that would allow building
of Japanese "spy satellites"  and joint research with the United
States on the Theater Missile Defense(TMD) system.

Up to now, Japan has had to be satisfied with leftover crumbs from
U.S. satellite intelligence reports.

There is interest, but little information available on the other side
of the coin, Japanese intelligence.

Even before the North Korean rocket shot called attention to weak
Japanese intelligence, an American, Andrew L. Oros, was looking into
the situation.

A doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at
Columbia University in New York, Oros had begun investigating for his
thesis "Change and Continuity in Japan's Foreign Intelligence-Related
Activities Institutional Evolution in Post-Cold War Japan."

He had heard rumors of an intelligence build-up in Tokyo. To get
closer to the action, he gained a research fellowship at the Graduate
School of Law and Politics, University of Tokyo.

Aware of Japan's "closed intellectual shop," as detailed by Ivan Hall
in his book "Cartels of the Mind," Oros was nonetheless astounded by
the cool reception to his efforts. "Never have so many doors closed so
fast," he said.  "I may have to broaden the scope of my paper. "

One of the most revealing books on modern spy activities in Tokyo is
"On The Wrong Side My Life in The KGB" by Stanislav Levchenko,
published in Washington in 1988.

In the book and in a later interview Levchenko gave a spy's-eye view
of life

in Tokyo and how easy it was to compromise Japanese newsmen and gain
information from them.

"Often they would give me important information for no money just for
the sense of getting even with a bad boss, a betraying spouse or other
lack off self-esteem," he said.

This picture may not have changed a great deal since the end of the
Cold War.

Thus, even while Japan may finally be making some moves to beef up its
own previous neglected intelligence capabilities, Tokyo appears to
remain a wide open city for espionage operations by other powers.


*==============================================================*
"Communications without intelligence is noise;  Intelligence
without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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