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List of author's articles
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1920: Bolshevic secret services against Czechoslowak republic
The effort to secretly influence other states belongs to the roots of the Bolshevik Empire, the Soviet Union. It was taken over by retired KGB lieutenant colonel Vladimir Putin, who conducts the successor - Russian Federation. In fact, in both cases it was an imperial conquest - the acquisition of new territories or at least influence.
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40 years ago, Reagan declared Star Wars
Let me share with you a vision of the future which offers hope. It is that we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive. Let us turn to the very strengths in technology that spawned our great industrial base and that have given us the quality of life we enjoy today.
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American anti-missile umbrella? Bless the Lord for it!
I have a weakness for Americans - they saved my life in 1943. As a nine-year-old boy, I was sick to death, and when my dad came to their military doctors asking for a penicillin, they willingly gave it to him and refused the bottles of alcohol he offered them. During my visit to Normandy last year, I marveled at the rocks on which, on the morning of June 6, 1944, some American soldiers in the fierce fire of the Germans had to climb to cope with the invasion - and liberated us and provided me with a life-giving remedy. I realized again that millions of Americans had crossed into unknown Europe during World War I and World War II to save it from slavery. But I couldn't live in America. I've been there four times, I've met a large piece of land, I've befriended several people, but the American way of life probably wouldn't suit me.
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Apollo 20 was not on the Moon and did not find any aliens
Ufologists have come up with another rumor to draw the public's attention
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Apollo: Useful waste for billions
When American and Soviet experts began preparing the first satellites in the second half of the 1950s, they had no idea what it could bring to humanity. They only tried to find out what the space around the Earth looked like, but at the same time they had to bring relief to the generals who gave them the missiles in the form of spy satellites. No one really saw anymore.
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Area 51 a fairy tale?
White House contender Hillary Clinton has promised to declassify all the facts about Area 51. She wants to get young voters on her side. According to ufologists, this Pentagon base is hiding crashed starshells, the bodies of dead aliens and other evidence of alien visits to Earth.
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Autumn 1957: Great concern about Soviet missiles
The first satellite was launched by the Soviets on the night of October 4, 1957. The Americans had little to do with it. Based on intelligence information since February 1954, they expected Moscow to complete development of an intercontinental missile in the second half of the 1950s. The CIA's Central Intelligence Agency warned President Eisenhower on August 18, 1957, a few days before TASS announced the successful test of the first long-range missile, that the Russians were indeed preparing such a weapon......
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Back to the "Iron Embrace of the Earth"
When Valery Polyakov returned in 1995 from a continuous stay in space that lasted almost 438 days, he took twenty steps without help to the surprise of the rescue team. On Tuesday, as we saw in the TV footage, rescuers took Mikhail Kornijenk and Scott Kelly out of their space cabin on their hands - and they were in a state of weightlessness for 340 days. Russian and American specialists will now be researching this remarkable difference.
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CIA against the Moscow coup
Neo-Stalinist attempt to reverse the future ways not only the USSR but the world failed.
On Sunday, August 18, 1991, a quarter of an hour before midnight, security adviser Brent Scowcroft called President George W. Bush at a summer residence in Kennebunkport, Maine: "I just listened to CNN. There is a coup in Moscow. They dismounted Gorbachev. He is said to have resigned for serious health reasons. The state committee for the state of emergency took over the leadership of the state. The eight-member body is headed by current Vice President Gennady Janayev, its members are KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Interior Minister Boris Pugo, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov and the head of the military-industrial complex Oleg Baklanov. -
Cold War pawns
The recently deceased Otakar Rambousek, a legendary agent-walker, was one of at least 280 couriers of the third foreign resistance that the State Security managed to arrest - as calculated by historian Prokop Tomek. Several thousand people who helped them at home were also imprisoned by the State Security. After February 1948, when the Communists usurped power in Czechoslovakia, tens of thousands of people fled to the West - and from their ranks these couriers were recruited.
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Cosmonautics 2011
Outlook for 2011 in cosmonautics
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Crushed goals of American cosmonautics
We will continue to build the Orion spacecraft, which was the pillar of the Constellation, but we will not send people to the moon. Our goal is to orbit Mars with humans in the 1930s and visit other celestial bodies, such as asteroids. This is a major part of President Barack Obama's message he delivered two weeks ago in Florida.
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Czechoslovak secret police Polom event
When a scout unit from Janovice nad Úhlavou camped near Železná Ruda in the summer of 1948, we heard that some older scouts were transferring people across the border to West Germany from elsewhere. After the February coup, the Communists began their hunt for their political opponents - and many saw salvation abroad.
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Eights in our history
In the Czech nation, it is said that in the 20th century, the eight at the end of the century is fatal for us. However, this is not quite true - the eights, which signaled a certain breakthrough, we know from centuries past. For example, in 1348, Emperor and King Charles IV founded University of Prague - today Charles University. In May 1618, the evangelical nobles expelled two imperial governors and a scribe from Prague Castle - this defenestration was the beginning of the aristocratic resistance, which ended with the final subordination of the Czech lands to the Habsburg dynasty and their incorporation into the Austrian monarchy. In the turbulent year of 1848, when a number of uprisings broke out in Central Europe, the inhabitants of Prague also rose - their defeat led to the strengthening of the Austrian government. Ten years later, the National Theater in Prague began its activities - one of the symbols of patriotism. In 1878, the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers 'Party was established in Prague - the first workers' party in the Czech lands.
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Einstein waves
A discovery that will change the 21st century, but we do not yet know how.
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Everyone has tried anti-satellites
The Americans announced that after landing the space shuttle Atlantis, starting on Wednesday, February 20, 2008, they want to shoot down a spy satellite called the US 193. A year ago, the Chinese did something similar - hit the meteorological satellite with a combat missile, which shattered it into a large number of fragments. A number of states protested against the action, which the Chinese tested with an anti-satellite weapon. After all, after the collision, 2,800 fragments about 10 centimeters in size were formed, which can be observed from Earth, and it is estimated that perhaps 150,000 debris smaller, which are not visible. Not surprisingly, even after the announcement of the American intention, a number of protests arose.
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Feklisov, one of the Soviet superspies, died
Alexander Feklisov, a retired KGB intelligence colonel, one of the Soviet superspies, died in Moscow on Friday, October 26, 2007. He was one of the legendary spies in Moscow, and in 1996 President Boris Yeltsin awarded him the title of Hero of the Russian Federation. He boasted that he was driving a total of seventeen spies, citizens of other states. Feklisov was one of the people who contributed to the Cold War, but on the other hand he helped to ease tensions during the Cuban crisis.
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Former Lt. Col. of KGB became British Knight
The former Soviet spy became a British knight. This is unprecedented. On Thursday, October 18, 2007, the British Queen Elizabeth II passed. in the Buckingham Palace of the former lieutenant colonel of KGB intelligence Oleg Gordijevský to the Knight of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. The BBC recalled that the legendary spy James Bond has the same title - at least according to his father Ian Fleming.
This award is undoubtedly a boon to Russian intelligence services, which are as active today as they were at the height of the Cold War.
What did Gordievsky deserve this title for? -
How spies are killed
"Is it normal or not to kill fugitive spies?" Jana Bendová, who heads the journalism section at MFD, asked me by phone. Of course not! "Then write to us about it." I sat down and wrote. It didn't take much work. I knew a lot about the Soviet spies who had run over and whose lives were ended by an execution squad sent from Moscow. I just checked with Dr. by e-mail. Petr Zeman, a former director of the Czech Civil Intelligence Service, who also monitors the issue of security in retirement, that revenge on defectors is not one of the principles of Western intelligence services.
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I'm worried about our country
Until the early 1990s, Czechoslovakia fell under the curator of the realm of communism, the Soviet Union. After the coup in November 1989, we rejoiced in freedom, but it took some time before we fully realized that the West, including Germany, from which the two world wars had fought, was no longer our enemy. And then we tried to get along with our western neighbors, returning to the forgotten good manners and rules. When we became a little civilized, they brought us to NATO and the European Union
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Intelligence services are not omnipotent
The New York Twins, the London Underground, the trains in Madrid, the Reichstag in Berlin, the Eiffel Tower in Paris… These are all the technical highlights of our civilization. Attacking them is an attack on symbols.
Islamic terrorists know all this very well. That's why they focus on them - sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully. -
Interesting seminar: ... and Brezhnev has only one eyebrows
Do you know what joke circulated in the first half of the eighties in communist Czechoslovakia? Reagan has the United States, while Brezhnev only has eyebrows together… With this bon mot, the Brno historian Petr Suchý began his speech at the Senate on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at the seminar on Ronald Reagan on the third anniversary of his death.
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Is Russian intelligence so bad?
Reflections on the current state of Russian intelligence.
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Khrushchev: No Korolyov - the Soviet people created a satellite!
S.P. Korolyov was a hundred years old. Big anniversary. There are various articles about it with minor or major errors. I have devoted myself to Korolyov with breaks for half a century, so I would like to put some things in perspective, albeit in a broader context.
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Kuklinski - the first Pole in NATO
A CIA spy worked alongside the head of the Polish military junta, General Jaruzelsky
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Leading missile designer of the USSR as a CIA agent
The first declassified information about the Soviet space program is probably the tip of the iceberg - the Americans knew more than they admitted so far. Every foreigner, whether a diplomat, a businessman or a tourist, was clearly different from the local citizens - clothes, walking, gestures. A meeting of a foreigner with a Russian, Georgian, Lithuanian or other local person has always attracted the attention of others. Therefore, the news of the existence of an agent called the "Doll" or "Delta", which was one of the top rocket designers, is a surprise.
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Optional reading: JAN WIENER - FIGHTER
I don't like big words, but when I read books like FIGHT - ALWAYS AGAINST THE CURRENT about the life of Jan Wiener, I feel bad about it. It is another story of a man who fled from Hitler, found it difficult to get to England, where he joined the RAF, but after a "victorious February" he was persecuted by the Communists. How many such educated and capable people did the communist regime deprive us of.
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Perspective battlefield - space
President Donald Trump, as usual, issued an order: The military space forces should become independent! Without a single consultation with the Minister of Defense and the generals.
Space weapons are currently being prepared in the United States by the Air Force. The spy satellites have been operated since the summer of 1960 by a special institution - the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which is one of the five major intelligence agencies in the United States.
The Soviets overtook the Americans -
Remek was eighty-seventh
The first cosmonaut, neither a Soviet nor an American, came from Czechoslovakia 30 years ago.
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Rosenberg's network of atomic spies revealed
Alexander Vasilyev, a journalist and former member of the KGB, published other hitherto unknown names of Soviet spies.
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Russia opens a new Vostochny spaceport
If all goes well, on Wednesday, April 27, the Russians will begin operations at the new Vostochny (East) spaceport. It is to be opened by the launch of the Soyuz 2-1a rocket, which will transport three satellites into space. The carrier comes from the Soyuz family and is to carry a load of up to 7.8 tons on a low track, the original Soyuz had a capacity of 6.5 tons.
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Russian espionage is again threatening the world
Today, at least as many officers work for Russian civilian and military intelligence abroad as in the most tense times of the Cold War. This rise began after the accession of retired KGB lieutenant colonel Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin throne. And probably the accession of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to NATO, which remained the main enemy for Moscow ... also contributed to this ...
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Soviet illegals against America
The arrest of dozens of Russian illegals, deeply conspired spies, by FBI counterintelligence three weeks ago shows that Moscow's covert operations against the United States, which began eighty years ago, continue.
When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia at the end of 1917, they believed that this was the beginning of the world revolution of the proletariat. Therefore, they sent spies around the world to establish communist parties as a mushroom for future governments and at the same time obtain secret information that could help them in this effort. -
Stalin: War is inevitable (9.2.1946)
What did the world look like in the autumn of 1953, when the Mašín brothers and Milan Paumer shot their way out from communist Czechoslovakia through East Germany to West Berlin?
The world was definitely divided into the communist East and the capitalist West. And he was heading for a war that would kill perhaps hundreds of millions of people. -
Tereshkova whimpered during her flight
The world's first cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova celebrated her 70th birthday on March 6. President Vladimir Putin invited her to the Kremlin, where he congratulated her. And after a long time avoiding the media, she met with Russian journalists in Star City to continue creating a myth about her great deed.
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The basic task was to rule the world
90 years ago, the Soviet secret police were formed, later known by the acronym KGB. To this day, members of the Russian secret services proudly call themselves Chekists.
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The CIA is celebrating its 60th anniversary - does it have anything to celebrate or not?
The Central Intelligence Agency is celebrating its 60th anniversary. It was established by President Harry Truman on the National Security Act, which entered into force on September 18, 1947.
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The difficult situation at the end of World War II
There have been a number of mistakes and ignorances about the end of World War II in recent discussions. At least a few notes.
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The exchange between Israel and Hezbollah was organized by a mysterious German intelligence officer
Israel has been negotiating with the Hamas terrorist movement for three years to release the soldier Gilad Shalit, whom he abducted. Negotiations are complicated, secret, rarely anything penetrates the public. It was recently supposed to be transported to Egypt as a "neutral state" and then exchanged for a group of Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israel.
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The first people on the Moon
Fifty years have passed since we saw the first humans walking on the moon. It was one of the side effects of the Cold War. At the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviets launched an offensive in space: they were the first to launch satellites, interplanetary probes, and also the first man. On the other hand, the Americans fell behind, they were always second, and they considered it a national disgrace. They felt scientifically and technically superior to the rest of the world - and now that was suddenly not true.
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The Germans did not have spies at Goddard's
Recently, Marcel Grün wrote to iDnes that, according to Wernher von Braun, the Germans had spies with the American missile pioneer Robert H. Goddard before the war. I fell in love with Marcel, and he sent me a brief excerpt from a file where von Braun mentioned it in 1963. Another text showed that Nikolaus Ritter from the German military intelligence service Abwehr had created a spy network around Goddard.
I cheered. Major Ritter was a well-known figure, directing spies from Hamburg against Great Britain and the United States. So I reached for an extensive book (almost 700 pages) by the American historian David Kahn, Hitler's Spies. It is the best and most comprehensive study of German espionage during World War II that exists. In the register I found not only the password Nikolaus Ritter, but also rockets. -
The last secret of the Blunt spy
A few weeks ago, the British Library in London declassified an unfinished manuscript of the memoirs of Sir Anthony Blunt, a former curator of the royal court's art collections. She was allowed to do so twenty-five years after his death. Only these records revealed why the convicted Soviet spy did not - unlike many others - go behind bars, but remained in the service of the court until he retired himself.
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The last Soviet atomic spy declassified?
On Friday, November 2, 2007, the Russian presidency announced that Vladimir Putin had posthumously awarded the title of Russian hero George Kovalsky, the only Soviet intelligence officer who had infiltrated the Manhattan Project during World War II. All the other Soviet atomic spies were American, British and German communists. In this way, he declassified the illegal "Dmitry Delmar", about which Vladimir Lot wrote in 2002 in the book GRU i atomnaja bomba (GRU and the atomic bomb). Even five years ago, "Delmar" did not want to reveal his identity.
On Monday, November 12, 2007, the New York Times published details of the spy. -
The mythization of Korolyov continues
In Russia, they celebrated heavily the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sergei Korolyov, the mysterious Chief Designer, the man under whose leadership the R-7 rocket, the first satellite and the first spacecraft were created. At the same time, his adoration and mythization continued. However, when we look at the biographies of other important personalities, we find that this is nothing new, it is actually the fate of every distinguished person.
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The process with classified evidence
Sixty-five years ago, on March 6, 1951, a trial began in the United States with Julie and Ethel Rosenberg and their associates. They were charged with the crime of high treason - they gave Soviet spies details about the development of atomic bombs. The Rosenbergs were sentenced to death in an electric chair, and their companions to long prison terms. Everyone appealed, but higher courts upheld the original verdict.
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The third foreign intelligence department
Thanks to Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek, talk begins again about the third resistance. This is nothing new. We tried to portray it in the television series Czechoslovakia in Special Services, which was broadcast by ČT 2 in 2002, and I included it in the book of the same name.
However, on December 1, 1999, a colloquium on the third resistance was held at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. There I presented a paper, which I am publishing here for the first time. -
The third resistance existed!
It was a parade of heroes who defied the communist dictatorship. They met on Tuesday, November 13, in the Senate Chamber at a seminar called the Third - Anti-Communist - Resistance. All over seventy, many with a wand. They were touching in a way, but when they spoke, they remained tough.
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The uncertain future of Russian cosmonautics
Not only the USA but also other states can overtake Russia in the use of the Moon
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To the Moon! To Mars!
In the year of the fiftieth anniversary of the landing of the first humans on the Moon, the Americans were to return there. The Orion 12 spacecraft was scheduled to arrive in orbit around the Moon in June 2019 and the Orion 13 crew to be deployed on its surface in December. The project was proposed by President George W. Bush Sr. in July 1989. January 2004, US companies under the auspices of NASA had to build Ares 1 and Ares 5 missiles, the Orion ship and the Altair airborne module. At the same time, the Bushists opened up space routes for private companies, until then the NASA government agency had a monopoly on them.
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Until something happens
Andy Šándor celebrated his 50th birthday on Tuesday, July 10, 2007. Many people came to congratulate him at the Military Club in Prague-Ruzyně, many generals in civilian clothes and uniforms, including the Chief of the General Staff, many reporters in active service and in reserve, as well as many civilians. Pleasant environment and nice people. The Chief of the General Staff Vlastimil Picek awarded Šándor the Honorary Badge of the Czech Armed Forces of Přemysl Otakar II, King of Iron and Gold - I think this should be taken as a certain expression of rehabilitation.
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USSR-USA: Race not only for the Moon
The biggest battle between the superpowers during the Cold War took place in the 1960s.
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Who is Karel Köcher?
On Friday, June 15, 2006, Jan Kraus invited Karel Köcher, a former StB first and second administration agent, to relax. The gentlemen joked about Köch's career, as he was the only communist spy to break into the American CIA, and is strikingly similar to President Václav Klaus, with whom he was employed at the Forecasting Institute in the late 1980s. putsch. Nothing about whether it was moral to work for communist counterintelligence and intelligence, nothing about reporting his acquaintances… Köcher finally looked like a hero. The audience at the Ponec Theater applauded him. So what is it really like dr. Karel Köcher?
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Who shot down Gagarin? This is still unclear
When Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin boarded the cabin of a spaceship on the morning of April 12, 1961, he was an unknown lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force. When he landed on Earth a few hours later, he was a major and the most famous Earthling. When he died seven years later, he was a colonel. He was two weeks away from his appointment as General and Chief of the Cosmonaut Training Center.
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Why the moon? Because of romance, politics, or science?
In the second half of the next decade, Americans want to return to the Moon, on the surface of which their astronauts landed in 1969-1972, and no one has stepped there since. When President George W. Bush announced the program, some commentators pointed out that it was a response to reports from Beijing that the Chinese wanted to land there in the third decade of the 21st century. In reality, however, it is a dream come true for many experts around the world who have been working on the Moon's settlement and utilization projects since the 1960s, as Jeff Volosin, head of strategic department at NASA headquarters, recalled.
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With a billionaire in ten years on Mars?
President Barack Obama has halted the flight of American cosmonautics. It was expected that his successor would resurrect her to the new bursts. Recently, the situation has changed - billionaires are roaring into space. Since the beginning of this century, businessman Elon Musk, the owner of the pioneering company SpaceX, has been talking about sending people to Mars. He recently presented at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico his idea, which borders on fantasy.
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Wolf's East German intelligence chief has died
The lives of Markus Wolf, who died at the age of 83 on Monday, November 7, 2006, are unparalleled in the world of intelligence services. He was appointed head of East German intelligence at the age of thirty and remained in this position for 33 years. He is one of the legends of espionage - but if one can talk about legends in a positive sense in this world of intrigue and filth.
