Spying hard in Prague

In Prague, lovers stroll by the river, statesmen dine in chandeliered palaces and professionals hobnob at trade conferences — all under the watchful eyes of foreign spies for whom this central European capital is an espionage hub.

The importance of Prague and the rest of the Czech Republic for the spy world was stressed in a recent report by the country’s military counter-intelligence service (VZ) and by an official at a government agency that probes crimes of the former Communist regime.
According to these and other experts, this city of golden spires is especially popular for intelligence agents from countries outside — and potentially at odds with — the European Union and Nato military alliance.
The post-communist Czech Republic is today at an east-west crossroads. It’s been an EU state since 2004 and a Nato ally since 1999, but still has an active Communist party and has retained diplomatic as well as commercial ties forged during its 40 years as a Soviet satellite.
Prague’s location in Europe’s heart makes it a popular venue for diplomatic, scientific and professional gatherings, from a world astronomers’ conference a few weeks ago to a think-tank forum for world leaders slated for late this month.
VZ’s director, General Miroslav Krejcik, said in a recent TV interview that some foreign intelligence services were trying to use the Czech Republic as a base for activities in other EU and Nato countries.
The VZ report cited a recent example: “A member of a foreign intelligence service of a non-EU and non-Nato state, who worked in the Czech Republic under cover...was declared ‘persona non grata’ at the insistence of military intelligence”, and expelled. No other details were released.
Czech media speculated, and the government did not deny, that the spy may have been a journalist for Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency who was sent packing in May. Stirring more speculation was the Russian government’s denial of accreditation for a Moscow-based Czech TV reporter in August.
The Czech government has also exchanged spy accusations with Belarus and Cuba in recent years. Tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats exposed a level of diplomatic tension that rarely rises to the public eye but hints at the extent of the undercover activity.
Modern espionage has a strong history in Prague, dating from the period between the world wars. Covert operations were few during the Cold War, when urban neighbours Vienna and Berlin were hotbeds for spies from each side of the Iron Curtain, but resurged after the curtain fell.
“Central Europe always has been a centre for espionage,” explained Jiri Basta, a historian with the Czech Office for the Documentation and Investigation of Crimes of Communist Police (UDV). “It was Vienna in the 1950s, then East and West Berlin in the 60s.”
Basta stopped short of calling Prague a new spy centre. But when asked if the city still entertains Cold War-style espionage, he said: “Of course.”
The foreign spies snooping around Prague are not easy to identify, let alone catch.
In addition to “traditional” covers such as embassy employees, VZ’s report said today’s secret agents include “students, scientists, entrepreneurs, representatives of firms, journalists, or attendants of conferences.”
“They are well established in any given environment, and their intelligence activity is highly conspiratorial,” the report said.
And what sorts of data are spies snooping for in the Czech Republic?
That’s a question no-one in Czech intelligence will answer directly.
The VZ report gave just one hint by saying its agents last year intercepted “information on the possible processing of classified information in non-certified computing systems.”
Only spies know the rest of the story.

City tour
Full Name: Prague
Area: 496 sqkm
Population: 1,215,000
Currency: Czech Koruna
Location: Prague, the nation’s capital, is located in north central Czechoslovakia along the Vltava River. Berlin stands 217 miles to the north, Paris 652 miles west, and Budapest 341 miles to the southeast.
DID YOU KNOW: Good King Wenceslas from Christmas carol fame is buried in Prague.