The pace of contributions to the site slackened in late 2009 and it became inactive in 2010. It was still a useful repository for historical information – particularly as I was beginning to research this book. In mid-2010, the whole site went behind a pay wall, demanding a log-in and password but giving no indication of how to acquire one. Frustrated, I emailed Mr Elbaz again, simply asking him to invoice me for access to the archived material on the site. Any normal company would have responded to that – at least to ask how much I was prepared to pay. AIA did not respond. This fired my interest again. If AIA was not trying to make a profit, someone had sponsored it. But who? And why? It had no visible do-gooding or academic affiliation. I started investigating more vigorously.4
A bit more digging brought a real breakthrough: the identity of one of the AIA contributors. He turned out to be a colleague: Āris Jansons, a well-known Latvian journalist and an acquaintance of mine for nearly twenty years. He had worked at Radio Free Europe in Prague after the collapse of the Soviet Union. When its Latvian service closed in 2004, he returned to Riga to look for a job. In January 2006 he was browsing the web and noticed a mistakenly identified picture in an AIA story. He emailed the site to point out the error, and after receiving an initially dismissive reply from Mr Elbaz then received a rather friendlier letter offering him a job as the Baltics correspondent. Mr Jansons was intrigued. The money was good and, more importantly, the editorial quality was impressive. I have reviewed numerous emails between the two men, provided by Mr Jansons. Mr Elbaz’s brief to his new writer was a model of editorial professionalism. He gave a step-by-step guide to AIA’s needs. One priority was to avoid duplication with any other English-language source. Another was to use a snappy, and preferably intriguing, headline. Concision, relevance and topicality were vital. The only slightly puzzling aspect was an instruction to avoid any direct criticism of the regime in Uzbekistan. But that was hardly going to be a big deal for a correspondent in the Baltics. The first year went well, with generous pay and plenty of demand. Mr Jansons wrote excellent articles, under a pseudonym. After that, AIA began to plead poverty. Payments slowed and stopped. Eventually Mr Elbaz offered Mr Jansons shares in the company in lieu of pay, which he turned down. Mr Jansons found another job and apart from grumbling about his unpaid fees, thought no more of it: freelance life is like that.
So what was AIA really? It was run by a Russian: Mikhail Falkov. He had emigrated to Israel – as it happens from Soviet-occupied Latvia – in the 1970s. He is the longstanding owner-editor of IzRus, a prominent Russian-language website there. He is also a former PR adviser to the controversial Israeli politician, currently foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, a Soviet-born immigrant whose hard-line approach (towards both Arabs and dovish Israeli officials) and fondness for the regime in Russia arouse considerable controversy.5 Mr Lieberman once worked as a nightclub bouncer. In April 2011 he was charged by the State Prosecutor’s Office with fraud, breach of trust, money laundering, and witness tampering; he denies all wrongdoing, and the case was pending as this book went to press. In the eyes of his critics, he has imported thuggish Soviet-style attitudes and habits into Israeli politics. Mr Falkov’s IzRus website in 2009 carried an article denouncing Israeli embassies abroad which could be seen to echo Mr Lieberman’s dislike of his own diplomats. It said they were ‘fertile ground for orgies, sex with minors, sexual harassment and bribery’ which was ‘hidden from the public’.6 There would be those who might see Mr Lieberman, and his sidekick Mr Falkov, as prime examples of how Russia exerts its influence in other countries.
Mr Falkov declines to answer any questions about AIA’s finances, genesis and aims. It may well be that from his point of view it was indeed a purely business venture, which simply failed to gain the advertising that he hoped for. I am not accusing him of anything improper. But a few lines of text on the website give a tantalising hint of another explanation for its existence: suggesting a connection with the world of espionage, not of mere news. On the ‘about us’ section of the site, visitors were told:
AIA is open to cooperation on a commercial basis with those who possess exclusive and current information on policy and security issues in the countries of Asia and Eastern Europe… AIA accepts orders for collecting and analysing information on any issue that concerns policy and security… [it] can be either supplied confidentially to the client, or appear on our website.
That would be an unusual offer for anyone wanting to quash suspicion of involvement in espionage. It is possible that someone at AIA was hoping to act as a private intelligence broker. I have discussed the issue with people who think it likely that the outfit was operating on behalf of a government, wanting to flush out either sources of information, or demand for it. The ‘freelance news agency’ willing to pay generously for research material commissioned by anonymous clients was a staple of Cold War espionage: readers may recall George Smiley using it. The sort of people who read the published material on AIA’s website would have included those with an appetite – and a budget – for more sensitive information along similar lines. One explanation is that its website was designed, not necessarily with Mr Falkov’s consent or knowledge, to note the people visiting it, and perhaps to log details of their computers or even to plant viruses on them. Another is that its backers were interested to see what kind of orders came in: that could cast an interesting light on the behaviour and needs of government agencies. I do not find this completely convincing: no serious intelligence service would go shopping like this without thorough scrutiny of AIA, which would reveal its suspiciously flimsy structure. Another option is that it was an attempt by a government agency to spot potential sources of information. Any new contributors making themselves known to AIA would represent an interesting pool of potential sources. Those with access to real secrets could then be put on first consulting contracts and then developed, either directly or indirectly, as real agents if they proved useful. But the danger of a trap – a ‘dangle’ in espionage parlance – would be great.
More likely in my view is that AIA was (not necessarily with Mr Falkov’s consent or knowledge) a counter-intelligence operation. Defence, security and intelligence officials in the ex-Soviet region are often demoralised, disgruntled and outright discontented by the corruption and futility of their jobs. It would be most interesting for the FSB, say, to know which of them would be willing to nibble at the carrot of discreet extra income from a foreign information agency. People vulnerable to a phoney temptation could also be open to an approach by a real espionage service. Such potential weakness is best known about in advance. Widely read by just the right people, Axisglobe’s site would have been a neat way of flushing out such potential sources. But its putative role as part of an active intelligence operation was probably quite brief. It established its credibility, reaped its harvest, and then drifted into decay. Its significance may have been chiefly the way that it combined, certainly not for the last time, the anonymity of the internet with the human resources that the Russian diaspora represents for the intelligence and security services in Moscow. On 7 June 2011 the site was bought by a Japanese blogger for $940. That at least was a commercial transaction.
So far I have outlined much of the profile of Russian espionage: in cahoots with gangsters at one moment, bullying émigrés to cooperate at another, stealing industrial secrets the next, and turning to lobbyists and lawyers when that becomes necessary. This is bad enough for countries inside the EU and NATO. It is far worse for those on its fringes. I conclude this section with a detailed look at the frontline of Russia’s military-intelligence effort – the subversion, special operations and dirty tricks being practised in Georgia, a country that has challenged Russia’s claim to a droit de regard in the former Soviet Union. This idea is a central part of Russia’s foreign-policy thinking about its neighbours; nothing should happen that Russia does not know about, and nothing should happen that Russia does not consent to.