The opening question from their first MI6 visitor to his young Estonian hosts was: ‘Are you legal?’ The British wanted to make sure that they were dealing with a properly constituted government agency, not an enthusiastic bunch of cowboys. What followed was a leap of faith in a normally cautious world. The British decided, in effect, to ‘adopt’ the newly formed Teabeamet (Information Board), and create a close partnership on the lines of those that existed with the ‘Anglosphere’ countries such as Canada or New Zealand. At a time when most of the world was still trying to find the Baltic states on the map, the first Estonian intelligence officers were starting accelerated training at Fort Monckton. The experiment was a resounding success. The baby spies soon became the darlings of the grizzled veterans of British intelligence.
Russia’s spymasters regarded the new developments with intense suspicion. Estonian spies were brazenly approaching any official with saleable secrets, and often walking off with precious pieces of military technology from under the noses of their ill-paid and under-motivated guardians. In the late summer of 1994 Russia delivered what it believed was a severe warning to the Estonian authorities to stop assisting Western special services in stealing military secrets. For the Russians the warning was unambiguous. Passed through diplomatic channels they expected it to be acted on at the highest level. But on the Estonian side it was taken merely as a bit of routine grumbling. The message was not heeded – and possibly never even received in the right quarters. In 2005 a belated Estonian parliamentary inquiry concluded:
Russian equipment was of potential interest to foreign intelligence authorities of various foreign countries and other special services and representatives of private capital military industry companies, possibly for the purpose of industrial espionage. The Committee reached the conclusion that Estonia might have procured… special equipment or high technology of the Russian army, which was of great interest to the intelligence services of various countries.
According to the report, this included:
space electronics, high technology directing and surveillance devices (like underwater radio buoys, radars), as well as anti-aircraft complexes… and electronic control systems… In one concrete case, Estonian military intelligence was officially offered for sale a device of Russian space electronics that enabled military reconnaissance with infra-red cameras… In the beginning of the 1990s also other military technology was available in Estonia, like night vision devices for military use. In the opinion of a specialist of Estonian special services it could have been possible that in the first half of the 1990s also the so-called nuclear briefcases were taken out of Russia…17
The reason for this remarkable glimpse into Western intelligence activity in Estonia was a tragic one. On 28 September 1994 a civilian ferry, the MV Estonia, sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea during an overnight trip to Stockholm, killing 852 passengers. The vessel was sloppily maintained, poorly loaded, and heading into heavy seas for which it had not been designed. But on two occasions in previous weeks, on September 14 and 21, the same boat had been used to carry ex-Soviet military equipment to Sweden, under the auspices of MUST, the Swedish defence intelligence service, which was working closely with SIS and the CIA.18
At the time officials pooh-poohed speculation linking the tragedy with any cargo on board. A strange report from a Russian group calling itself ‘Felix’ claimed that the captain had stopped in mid voyage and opened the bow doors in order to try to send a lorry carrying contraband (cobalt and heroin) to the bottom of the sea in order to avoid an impending customs search in Sweden.19 That appears to have been pure disinformation. But the idea that Estonia helped the West obtain Soviet technology was not a surprising one. Much of it was on semi-public sale in Russia anyway. As an editor of a Tallinn-based newspaper at the time, I was certainly aware of the trade.20 However I assumed that the spies in charge of such operations, presumably wily and expert, would use some form of secure and discreet transport – perhaps a private plane or boat. It never crossed my mind that such sensitive cargos would be transported on a civilian ferry.
The puzzling loose ends from the tragedy were partly tied together in 2005 when a Swedish customs official claimed that the shipments of classified material in the weeks before the sinking had indeed taken place under a special arrangement with the defence authorities. Rather shamefacedly, the Swedish authorities confirmed this, claiming that the operation had been authorised by an Estonian official whose name they had forgotten. Some intelligence sources say that the GRU indeed planted a bomb on a lorry carrying stolen Russian military technology on the fatal night. The aim was not to sink the vessel, but to cause a scandal that might stop future operations. By a savage fluke, the explosion on the lorry led to the failure of the Estonia’s poorly maintained bow doors. Roll-on, roll-off ferries are inherently dangerous: water in the car decks can quickly render them unstable and prone to capsize very fast. As the water poured in, the ferry listed, turned over and sank, leaving most of the passengers with no time to get to the inadequate lifeboats.
Whatever the cause of the inrush of water, the investigation of the sinking was not a high point for transparency.21 Official diving expeditions at the wreck suggest an unusual degree of interest in a disaster that supposedly stemmed solely from mechanical failure. Independent attempts to investigate the wreck have been shooed away: it is now out-of-bounds as a marine mass grave, thanks to an international agreement signed (interestingly) by the United Kingdom (which had only one citizen perishing in the accident) as well as by Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Poland, Denmark and Russia. Neither Norway (six dead) nor Latvia (seventeen) signed the treaty. Survivors and the victims’ families remain suspicious that they were the collateral damage in a war of nerves between Russia and the West. Limited forensic tests conducted by outsiders have failed to prove any explosion conclusively. Though I am sceptical of conspiracy theories, the official explanation of simple mechanical failure does not fully convince me. If foul play was involved, blame would lie first and foremost with those who placed a bomb on a passenger ferry. Yet at a minimum, the proven fact that ferry passengers were repeatedly used, in effect, as human shields for spy games deserves forthright criticism. A lot more people died in the Estonia than in Operation Jungle.
11
The Traitor’s Tale
In the chaotic conditions of the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Herman Simm was a reassuringly solid figure. In January 1967 he had taken the standard pledge of the Soviet police force, ‘I, a citizen of the USSR, hereby taking the oath of the Soviet Militsiya, do solemnly swear that I will serve faithfully to the end the Soviet people, Soviet homeland and Soviet government.’ Since then he had a stellar record of competence and hard work. He had forty-four awards, including three medals for exemplary behaviour. At a time when brusque Soviet official manners still plagued public service, he was polite and pleasant. As well as Estonian and Russian, he spoke excellent German with smatterings of other languages. Unlike many officials from the old days, he counted as a patriot. As head of security at Toompea Castle, the country’s seat of government, he had masterminded its defence against an assault by pro-Kremlin demonstrators on 15 May 1990 – the closest Estonia came to an armed clash during its struggle to regain independence. By his account, if the defence failed he stood ready to escort the country’s then prime minister, Edgar Savisaar, through a secret tunnel to the town below, where a speedboat would whisk him to safety in Finland. Later he claims to have ferried Estonia’s hard-currency reserves in suitcases to safety in Helsinki for the nascent central bank, forestalling a possible Soviet attempt to seize them.1