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Did you know that South Africa had a secret services department?
Here’s a little information on the SASS:
The South African Secret Service (SASS) is a South African intelligence agency. It is responsible for all non-military foreign intelligence and for counterintelligence within the Service itself. It is also responsible for gathering, correlating, evaluating and analyzing this intelligence. The Service is run by a Director-General, who is also a member of the National Intelligence Co-Ordinating Committee (NICOC), to which he reports. The service performs intelligence at the request of the President and the Minister of State Security.
The SASS was formed in 1995 following South African first multiracial elections. It was created to take over the foreign intelligence functions of the now-defunct National Intelligence Service (NIS), with the domestic intelligence responsibilities taken up by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). Both the SASS and NIA were created as part of the Intelligence Act of 1994.
Unsurprisingly, the Service is extremely secretive about its operations, and thus few details reach the public. However, when taking current South African policy and concerns into account, it appears the attentions of the SASS are currently focused on two main areas: The activities of Al-Qaeda and similar groups abroad in relation to South Africa’s security, and the activities of illegal South African mercenaries, most especially in parts of Africa and Iraq. The South African Secret Service is one of the elite intelligence organizations in Africa; another is the State Security Service in Nigeria.
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Here is an awesome list of TRUE spies 😉
1. Mata Hari Born: 1876; Died: 1917
Spied For: Germany (and Possibly France)
Mata Hari was the stage-name for Dutch-born Margaretha Geertruida (Grietje) Zelle who was an exotic dancer and high class prostitute in Paris. In 1905, after divorcing her husband, she began her career as an exotic dancer, taking the name Mata Hari (meaning “sun” or “Eye of the Dawn”). She posed herself as a princess from Java. Posing as an exotic person was possible in those days because the lack of telecommunications. During this period of her life she was often photographed in scant clothing or nude.
She mixed with the upper class and became a courtesan to many important high-ranking military men and politicians. This put her in a very good position to gather information. During World War 1, the Netherlands remained a neutral nation, enabling Mata Hari, a Dutch national, to cross national borders freely. At one point she was interviewed by British Intelligence and she admittedly to being a spy for the French. The French later denied this. It is still unknown whether this was true.
In January, 1917, the German Military Attache in Madrid sent an encoded radio signal to Berlin, stating that they were receiving excellent information from a German spy codenamed H-21. French intelligence intercepted the messages and were able to identify H-21 as Mata Hari. On February 13, 1917, Mata Hari was arrested in her Paris hotel room. She was subsequently tried for espionage and found guilty. She was executed by Firing Squad on the 15th of September, 1917 at the age of 41.
2. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Born: 1915, 1918; Died: 1953
Spied For: The Soviet Union
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were American Communists who were executed for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. They met in the Young Communist League in 1936, where he was a leader. They had two sons. Julius was recruited by the KGB in 1942 and was regarded as one of their top spies. He passed classified reports from Emerson Radio, including a fuze design which was later used to shoot down a U-2 in 1960.
Julius also recruited many people sympathetic to the cause to assist the KGB. He provided the KGB with thousands of documents from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics including a complete set of design and production drawings for the Lockheed’s P-80 Shooting Star. A former machinist at Los Alamos (the US Nuclear Development Area), Sergeant David Greenglass confessed to having passed secret information on to the USSR, and in doing so, implicated his brother-in-law: Julius Rosenberg. He initially denied any involvement by his sister Ethel. The Rosenbergs were arrested.
In 1951 the case against the Rosenbergs began. Greenglass, the prosecution’s main witness, told the court that his sister Ethel had typed nuclear secrets he gave her at a meeting in their home, and that he gave Julius a sketch of a cross-section of an implosion type nuclear bomb. Both Rosenbergs were found guilty and sentenced to death. Their conviction gave fuel to Senator McCarthy’s investigations into anti-American activities. They were both executed by electric-chair in Sing Sing Prison in 1953.
3. Aldrich Ames Born: 1941
Spied For: The Soviet Union
Ames is a former CIA Counter-intelligence Officer who was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union in 1994. On his first assignment as a case officer, he was stationed in Ankara, Turkey, where his job was to target Soviet intelligence officers for recruitment. Due to financial problems in his personal life as a result of alcohol abuse and high spending, Ames began spying for the Soviet Union in 1985, when he walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington to offer secrets for money.
Ames was assigned to the CIA’s European office where he had direct access to the identities of CIA operatives in the KGB and Soviet Military. The information he supplied to the Soviets lead to the compromise of at least 100 CIA agents and to the execution of at least 10. He ultimately gave the USSR the names of every CIA operative working in their country; for this they paid him 4.6 million dollars. Ames used the money to live well beyond his means as a CIA agent, buying jewellery, cars, and a $500,000 house.
In early 1985, the CIA began to notice that they were losing their “assets” at a very rapid rate. For unknown reasons they were not willing, in the early stages, to believe that they had been infiltrated by the KGB, instead presuming the leak to be via bugging devices. When the FBI were finally brought in to investigate, Ames became the primary suspect. Fearing he would defect on a CIA trip to Russia, The FBI arrested him at the airport with his wife. He was given a life sentence and is incarcerated in the US Penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.
5. Klaus Fuchs Born: 1911; Died: 1988
Spied For: The Soviet Union
Fuchs was a German-born theoretical physicist who worked in Los Alamos on the atom bomb project. He was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first fission weapons and early models of the hydrogen bomb. Whilst attending university in Germany, Fuchs became involved with the Communist Party of Germany. After a run-in with the newly installed Nazi government, he fled to England where he earned his PhD in physics. For a short time he worked on the British atomic bomb project.
It was while he was working for the British that he began to give information to the Soviets. He reasoned that they had the right to know what the British and the Americans were developing. In 1943 he was transferred to the United States to assist on the Manhattan project. From 1944 he worked in New Mexico at Los Alamos.
For two years he gave his KGB contacts theoretical plans for building a hydrogen bomb. He also provided key data on the production of uranium 235, allowing the Soviets to determine the number of bombs possessed by the United States. On his return to the United Kingdom in 1946, he was interrogated as a result of the cracking of some Soviet ciphers. He was tried and sentenced to fourteen years in prison, the maximum term under British law for passing military secrets to a friendly nation. he was released after nine years and immediately moved to Germany where he lived out the remainder of his life.
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Carol Fleming was enjoying an evening away from her job as a hospital debt collector when she overheard a cocktail party conversation that would change her life.
It was summer 1982, and a woman at the party in northern Virginia was talking passionately about a job that offered travel, challenges and upward mobility.
Fleming, an adventurous young woman from rural Pennsylvania, was intrigued. And 13 months later, she was at work for the CIA. Before long, she was learning how to unravel the nuclear secrets of foreign governments – and how to thrive in the male-dominated agency.
Her two-decade career took her to many of the world’s political hot spots, and to a club in Pakistan where she met her future husband, a high-ranking Saudi diplomat. For months after their marriage, she kept a secret from him.
Now 52, retired from the CIA and living in Huntersville, Fleming is facing her biggest challenge – breast cancer. What she learned as an intelligence officer, she said, is proving invaluable.
“Knowledge and information is empowerment,” she said, “whether it’s planning an intelligence operation or fighting against a deadly disease.”
Until her mid 20s, Fleming’s only foreign travel consisted of trips across the Canadian border, just a few hours from her childhood home in northwest Pennsylvania. The CIA opened her eyes to a larger world.
Her job as an intelligence officer took her to at least 80 countries, including Pakistan and India, where she was assigned to gather information about issues important to Washington policymakers. Among them: the status of chemical and nuclear weapons programs in other countries.
When Fleming joined the CIA, a former agency supervisor said, “it was still an old boy’s club. Women were still discriminated against.”
But Fleming succeeded, he said, because she was sharp, inquisitive and got along with almost everyone. She also had guts.
“What a courageous woman she has been,” said the man, who asked not to be named because he still does intelligence work. “She’s done a lot of daring stuff.”
Traveling undercover, Fleming at times posed as a business consultant. Other times, she said she worked for the State Department or Pentagon.
With a wig and a change of clothes, she could shift to new persona in less than five minutes.
Most of her real work occurred at night. She often met informants – “assets” as they’re called – for clandestine encounters.
During “brush passes” with sources, she would sometimes convey instructions on paper that would dissolve when dropped in water. Her informants were often equipped with everyday office accessories – lamps, for instance – that CIA technicians had embedded with hidden cameras for photographing confidential documents.
“One wrong move on my part, one wrong move on the part of my asset … and he could be executed or his family could be put in prison,” she said.
Some of her sources were motivated by greed, others by revenge or dissatisfaction with their jobs. Her favorites were those driven by ideology.
She recalls a late-night drive with an informant. They passed a park with a statue of a long-range missile, festooned with flashing lights. The source pointed to the missile. If you’ve ever wondered why I’ve been working with you and risking the life of me and my family, that’s why, the source said. Instead of playground equipment, we have this.
Harboring a secret
In 2000, Fleming was in Pakistan, posing as a diplomat at the American embassy. Late one night, she found herself at an embassy club, where she met a Saudi Arabian diplomat.
Famished from a long day’s work, Fleming dug into a plate of fries. Then she realized the plate belonged to the Saudi diplomat.
Oh no, she said.
In my country, he responded, if anyone eats off my plate, I am responsible for that person for the rest of my life.
The diplomat was charismatic, kind and funny, she said, and he soon made his intentions even more clear: American girl, he said, whether you like it or not, you’re going to be my wife.
She and Abdullah Othman Al-Ajroush married three years later.
CIA spies weren’t expected to fall in love with foreigners, much less marry them. Fleming knew it was time to leave the CIA.
In 2002, shortly after she had resigned, agency officials said she was free to reveal that she’d worked for the CIA.
She’d been married about three months, but her husband still didn’t know she was a spy. That night, she girded herself for what she expected would be one of the toughest conversations of her life.
“I was a nervous wreck,” she said. “I feared, ‘Is he going to see me withholding a major secret about my life as a betrayal?’ ”
After dinner, she sat down with her husband, held his hand and said: There’s something about me that you don’t know.
She tried to break the news gradually, but finally blurted out: I’m not the person you thought you married.
She was relieved by his response: I didn’t marry the CIA. I didn’t marry the State Department. I married Carol Ann Fleming.
The fight of her life
She and her husband were living in the Saudi capital of Riyadh when they were besieged by unexpected enemies.
In June 2008, after finding a lump in her breast during a self-exam, Fleming learned she had cancer.
Another shock came four months later. Doctors found her husband had leukemia. In February 2010, her husband died.
Fleming is still fighting. Though cancer has spread to her liver and bones, she believes new treatments offer hope.
Doctors recently placed radioactive particles directly into her liver – a procedure they hope will kill all or most of the cancer there.
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1. A Spy Camera – Every Spy needs a secret camera to capture visual evidence. There are all kind of cameras for every kind of mission; some can be hidden, others worn or tacked to your body and some others can be sent as gifts to unsuspecting targets.
2. A Bug Detector – A bug detector can help you sweep for hidden wireless microphones and concealed transmitters which include spy cameras with wireless transmitters or FM transmitters on frequencies from 50 Mhz to 3 Ghz.
3. A Wireless Network Detector – The best way to get corporate secrets if are spying on a company or a person is to tap into their networks. If they are on wireless it might be pretty easy as well, depending on how secure it’s set to be – half of them are not at all secure.
4. A Sound Amplifier – The sound amplifiers or “super ears” as they are usually called in the spy circles, do for ears what binoculars do for your eyes – amplification.
5. A GPS Tracker – GPS loggers are usually small devices that can be placed in cars, boats, briefcases or any other moving object to record the location, speed, direction and even altitude (if you keep it in a plane).
6. Computer Monitoring Devices – If you are spying on colleagues or someone inside a place you have access to, getting their computer passwords can tell you a lot.
7. Trip Wires – You would have seen trip wires in pretty much most of the best spy movies or “heist” movies usually in the form glistening red laser beams. Cross the beam and a loud alarm sounds, which normally summons scores of security guards, ninjas, or robot henchmen. That’s what a trip wire does.
8. Secure Storage Devices – If you ever get caught with spied data, then these devices can really save you. Depending on the risk level you can either pick up biometric finger print scanning storage devices, or devices that self-destruct after you punch the password wrong a couple of times like a biometric device.
9. Shredders – Another thing to have if you ever are in the risk of getting caught. An automatic CD/DVD Shredder can save you from the evidence. Of course, you can always use a microwave to kill the electronic stuff.
10. Emergency Gear and tools – A good spy as you can figure is about tools and gear and the right kind of gadget can help you save your life sometimes. Of course, needless to say for a spy a swiss army knife is essential.
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Here is Part 2 for you in our series: ”What do you need in order to be a great Spy? Part 2”.
- Great disguises: All great spies need a top disguise in order not be be recognized from other missions.
- Safe houses: Need to hide away for a bit to take the heat off? A safe house is vital to any spies armory.
- A cool watch: All spies need to look the part so a budget watch is not going to do.
We will have more tips soon! Please vote in our poll too and let us know which South African Olympian would be the best spy?
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This is Part 1 in our series of ”What you need in order to be a great Spy”.
- Sense of humor: Spies are sometimes required to work long hours and hide in bushes with lots of bugs and weird animals around. Thus a good sense of humor is vital if one is to survive.
- Great eyesight: You need this in order to see the person that you are tracking!
- Watch Spy Movies: Always a good place to start. Just don’t drink and spy like James Bond otherwise you might regret it after too many brandies.
Do you agree with our suggestions?
Watch out for Part 2 which is coming soon. Get to www.online360.co.za and get kitted out in Spy Gear now!
Hello Online360 fans,
We though that this story would make you laugh. Please dont try and emulate these village folk:
In May this year, a bunch of villagers mistook the common European bee-eater for an Israeli spy.
Villagers became suspicious of the dead animal, which was found in a field, because it had a metal ring around its leg which was stamped ‘Israel’.
After deciding that its nostrils were too large and could have been carrying a microchip for spying, fitted by Israeli intelligence, the villagers called the police.
The dead bird was then taken to government experts who declared that it was safe. At one stage, a counter-terroism unit was involved in the investigation.
Haha! We hope you enjoyed that one. Our team will be adding further funny stories to make you laugh too:)
A new competition will also be announced very soon so keep your eyes open for that one!
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The Online 360 Team
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