>
– Peruvian-American Journalist Pelaez Visited Havana, Photographed in Company of Cuban Intelligence, Received Payments at SVR Drops in Venezuela
– Pelaez’s Husband US-Based Money Handler for Shining Path Guerrillas, Former Baruch College Prof Arrested with Wife
– Cue Twilight Zone Theme Song: SVR Paymaster Materializes in Cyprus, Skips Bail, Allegedly Escapes aboard Infamous Freighter MV Arctic Sea
Communism’s dead, we’ve been told a gazillion times by the MSM, academic, and dot.gov. However, this ruse has served as an effective cover for communist agents to ply their trade in the USA, well into the 21st century.
The plot has thickened behind the 10 accused Russian spies busted by the FBI in late June, as well as their paymaster, “Christopher Metsos,” who was detained by Cypriot authorities then released on bail, only to escape altogether. The Canada Free Press has picked up some eye-popping quotes from Cuban-American writer Arthuro Cobo that exposes a dark nexus between Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), heir to the Soviet KGB; Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate (DI), formerly known as the General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI); and Venezuela’s Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN), known as the National Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP) until 2009.
In 1980 Bay of Pigs invasion veteran Cobo alerted US authorities to the presence of Castroist spies among the Mariel Boatlift refugees. Cobo is quoted as saying regarding the current Kremlin spy flap in the USA:
The 11 arrests so far are the tip of the iceberg. Many more to follow, many in South Florida.
The South American country where Vicky Pelaez [one of the accused] picked up her payments from Russia’s SVR was Venezuela.
Russia’s SVR, Castro’s DGI (Directorio General de Inteligencia) and Chavez’s SEBIN (Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia) are all linked. They all share agents and information. Castro-Cubans run Chavez’s intelligence agency practically lock, stock and barrel.
Vicky Pelaez was a frequent traveler to Cuba where she met with Castro’s DGI. Pictures exist of those meetings.
Prominent figures in South Florida are under investigation and the net is closing on them. One suspect was very close to a US presidential candidate [Barrack Hussein Obama?] during the 2008 campaign.
Peruvian-American journalist Pelaez (pictured above in undated photo), who was formerly employed by New York’s El Diario/La Prensa, has also written for Cuba’s state-run media. In 2006 she prostrated herself before Cuba’s retired communist dictator:
Fidel Castro is already immortal! He is a man who inspired and demonstrated the fertile path of truth for other leaders! We had the moments of Christ, Mohammed, Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Newton, Pascal, Bolivar, Marti, Che Guevara, etc.
Fidel Castro Ruz belongs to that glorious group of rebels! With his towering intelligence, discipline, drive, and persistence he launched his heroic struggle and gained his people’s support to fight for a new and sovereign Cuba! But his fight is not over!
For his part, Castro quoted Pelaez extensively and approvingly in his May 8, 2010 column “Reflections,” which appears in the Communist Party of Cuba organ Granma.
Significantly, Pelaez’s husband Juan Lazaro, according to Miguel Angel Sanchez, one of Vicky’s former colleagues at El Diario/La Prensa, once served as the US-based treasurer of Shining Path, Peru’s bloodthirsty Maoist rebels. At one time Lazaro taught at Baruch College-The City University of New York. Lazaro has admitted to US authorities that his wife made several trips to South America to receive money at SVR drops, but his own identity is unknown. “Lazaro” is an alias. It is no exaggeration to refer to Pelaez and Lazaro as “communist agents.”
Meanwhile, Metsos, the Russian national who channelled funds to the SVR spy ring by way of covert money drops, skipped the USA and fled to Cyprus, where he was arrested, only to be released on bail on June 30. He paid for his own bail from a bank account in Larnaca, Cyprus. The mysterious “Metsos” promptly disappeared, but Cypriot President Dmitris Christofias defended the actions of his underlings, charging the US Justice Department with negligence in forwarding pertinent documents to Nicosia. “Only now are they providing them, only now are they preparing them,” protested Christofias, the European Union’s only communist leader and a slavish ally of Russian Communist Party boss Gennady Zyuganov. He added: “I don’t think it is appropriate to apportion blame to the Cyprus Republic.”
Cypriot authorities seized Metsos’ laptop computer, which is also sought by US counterparts. Incidentally, “Metsos” is a false identity stolen from a Canadian citizen.
During the Cold War Cyprus was a haunt for spies from both the Free World and the Soviet Bloc and an important SIGINT post for the US and British militaries. Today, the island is divided between the internationally recognized, Greek-speaking Republic of Cyprus, which is a haven for the Russian Mafia, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is occupied by Turkish troops. Cypriot authorities suspect that Metsos might have snuck into northern Cyprus, which has no extradition treaties with other countries.
In a bizarre twist to the SVR-DI-SEBIN nexus in America, the Information Dissemination website, citing sources in “maritime circles,” asserts that Metsos left Cyprus by rendezvousing with a certain freighter that was passing the island. It is known that on July 1 the infamous MV Arctic Sea just “happened” to be steaming past Cyprus. On July 24, 2009 eight to 10 English-speaking men, travelling in an inflatable boat, approached the Canadian-owned Arctic Sea off the coast of Sweden as it began its voyage from Jakobstad, Finland to Bejaia, Algeria, supposedly transporting 6,700 cubic meters of lumber. Fifteen Russian nationals manned the ship. The Arctic Sea crew claimed that the intruders, who professed to be Swedish policemen, searched the ship and left, leaving some crew injured.
A hijack alert was belatedly issued by Interpol on August 3 and the Russian Navy dispatched its Baltic Sea Fleet to search for the Arctic Sea. The vessel failed to reach its destination on the scheduled date of August 5 and was never seen passing through the Strait of Gibraltar. On August 14 the Arctic Sea was at last sighted off the Cape Verde Islands and three days later Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov announced that the Russian Navy had seized the ship. No suspicious cargo was discovered. Intriguingly, Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, admitted that Moscow had deliberately supplied false information to the media in order keep Russian plans secret.
On August 18 Serdyukov confirmed that eight hijackers had been arrested, and two days later the Estonian Security Police listed one of these men as Estonian, two as Latvians, and two as Russians. Some of them had prior criminal records.
At this time Finnish police acknowledged that the hijackers had demanded a ransom but, strangely, the Arctic Sea’s owners denied receiving any such communication. On August 18 the security chief of a Russian insurance agency, Renaissance Insurance Group, told newspapers that two weeks prior someone claiming to represent the Arctic Sea hijackers telephoned his office, demanding 1.5 million pounds or else the ship would be sunk and crew killed.
On October 29, more than two months after its seizure, the Russian Navy finally delivered the Arctic Sea to Malta, where it was inspected by Maltese police, and on November 11 the ship, repaired and re-certified, finally delivered its cargo of lumber to Algeria.
On June 11, 2010 the Russian Prosecution Service sentenced Latvian citizen Dmitry Savins to seven years imprisonment for leading the would-be hijackers. In his testimony Savins identified Eerik-Niiles Kross, head of the Security Coordination Office in the Estonian State Chancellery in the late 1990s, as the operation’s mastermind. Eerik-Niiles is the son of Jaan Kross, one of Estonia’s most famous writers. He denies Savins’ charges.
Since the summer of 2009 conspiracy theories have abounded concerning the Russian government’s account of the Arctic Sea saga. One theory posits that Russia, instead of taking the easy route over the Caspian Sea, was shipping S-300 air defense units to Iran, while a second theory holds that Moscow as possibly transporting MiG-31 fighter jets to Syria. Tarmo Kouts, former commander of the Estonian Defense Forces, offers yet another theory: “Only the presence of cruise missiles on board the ship can explain Russia’s strange behavior in the whole story.” Indeed, in addition to the Russian Navy deploying its Baltic Fleet to chase the Arctic Sea, the Russian Air Force dispatched two Ilyushin Il-76 transport planes to Sal International Airport in the Cape Verde Islands. Both during and after the Cold War, the communist regime in Cape Verde has permitted Soviet and Russian aircraft to utilize Sal as a refuelling base en route to Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Big oceans, small world,” concludes Information Dissemination blogger “Galrahn” as he ponders Metsos’ alleged rendezvous with the Arctic Sea. If true, we can only say: No kidding.
Since the FBI believes that some elements of the SVR spy ring have been operating in the USA for as long as 20 years, that is, since before the collapse of the Soviet Union, we should consider the possibility that this subversive entity, which apparently has links to Communist Cuba and Red Venezuela, may have ties to the Cuban Five, which were convicted in 2001 of spying for the Castroist regime. Russian politicians have on several occasions called for the release of the Cuban Five. As quoted above, Bay of Pigs vet Cobo alludes to future arrests of foreign agents in South Florida. “At one point in 1978,” writes the Miami Herald, “Castro boasted to a visitor that he had 300 agents in South Florida alone.” KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, who resides in the United Kingdom, contends that the Russian Federation presently operates 400 SVR agents in the USA.
To this real-life Tom Clancy-esque drama, we should add the following data. Russia’s primary allies in the Caribbean Basin are Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. In November 2008 David Smith, senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, observed: “In the medium term, beware of a potential Cuba-Nicaragua-Venezuela military triangle astride the approaches to Florida, the Mississippi, Houston and the Panama Canal, within [Russian] bomber range of America’s eastern seaboard. This would replicate the Soviet Cuba-Nicaragua-Grenada triangle smashed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1983.”