AP Has Scoop on Activist's Possible Ties to KGB

By: Desmond Butler and Matt Siegel, The Associated Press Lira Tskhovrebova flew nearly 6,000 miles to Washington on a mission: The self-described independent activist from South Ossetia wanted to challenge the strong U.S. support for Georgia in its war with Russia over the breakaway region and describe atrocities by Georgian troops.

Backed by an expensive public relations firm, Tskhovrebova lined up meetings with U.S. officials, including staff for Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of a panel overseeing foreign aid. The U.S. government itself paid for an academic event where she plans to speak this week.
What Americans meeting with Tskhovrebova didn't know is that she has ties to South Ossetia's KGB security service.

Georgia says she's a spy. Tskhovrebova ridicules the idea and says she is the victim of a smear campaign. But U.S. officials have become wary of her ? questioning who paid for her Washington tour.

Tskhovrebova's trip reflects the high-stakes campaign between Georgia and Russia, each eager to blame the other for their August war and to influence U.S. policy as Barack Obama assumes the presidency.

Georgian intelligence provided The Associated Press with secretly recorded conversations in which Tskhovrebova appears to discuss assignments, money and information with Vasily Guliev, who the Georgians say is deputy director for counterintelligence for the South-Ossetian security agency still known by the Soviet-era acronym KGB.

"I don't have any money left. Yesterday I learned super ... not super ... but very important information completely by chance," she told Guliev during a call in June 2005, according to the recordings. Guliev quickly agreed to meet with her privately.

Tskhovrebova said she did not know Georgian intelligence had been intercepting her calls until the AP showed her transcripts of the conversations. The wiretaps make clear her conversations have been routinely intercepted since at least 2005.

There is no evidence Tskhovrebova had access to secret information, but Guliev appeared interested in her frequent contact with Western organizations.

Tskhovrebova acknowledged that she routinely speaks and meets with Guliev, a family friend.

During a television interview with the AP, she said she knows Guliev works for the KGB. She denied working for the KGB herself. Her U.S. public-relations handler, Mark Saylor of the Saylor Co., objected to the questions and ordered AP's cameras turned off, while she reviewed transcripts of her wiretapped conversations.

Later, in a statement, Tskhovrebova called the release of the recordings "vicious, false and predictable." She said Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili routinely calls his opponents spies. "It is a charge easily made and impossible to disprove," she said.

"Nobody working for human rights in my part of the world can avoid contact with security officials," she said. "This is as true in Georgia as it is in Ossetia and everybody familiar with human rights work knows it."

South Ossetia is tightly controlled by security services. Mamuka Areshidze, an unaffiliated Tbilisi-based analyst who follows intelligence activities in the region, agreed with Tskhovrebova's assessment. "It's absolutely impossible for those going abroad and working with international organizations not to give information," he said.

Tskhovrebova said she works independently of any government and has not received instructions for her trip. The tapes offer no evidence otherwise.

In registering as a lobbyist for Tskhovrebova, Saylor Company certified that no foreign government directed the lobbying. In U.S. paperwork filed with Congress, Saylor affirmed that no foreign entity "plans, supervises, controls, directs, finances or subsidizes" Tskhovrebova's organization.

But Matthew Bryza, the deputy assistant secretary of state who works closely with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and is responsible for U.S. policy in the Caucasus, said he had doubts about Tskhovrebova's independence. Bryza canceled a meeting his deputies had planned with Tskhovrebova after the AP asked about it.

"It is unique in my years of experience in the Caucasus (region) that someone like this has representation by an expensive public relations firm. That sets off alarm bells," Bryza said.

Tskhovrebova said she could have answered Bryza's concerns. She said in her statement she was disappointed Bryza would not allow his deputies "to hear from victims of the August war, especially since his boss and many of his colleagues have met many times with Georgia's lobbyists." U.S. records reflect frequent meetings between State Department and lobbyists for Georgia.

In the earlier AP interview, Tskhovrebova, speaking through an interpreter, described how her trip took shape:
Before the war, she worked within South Ossetia. But she started an international campaign after surviving Georgia's bombardment of South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali. She emerged to a city in ruins with many dead after shelling by Georgia.

"I thought the world would stand against those who committed the war crimes," she said. Instead, Western media coverage favored Georgia.

Tskhovrebova says she met famed Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, an ethnic Ossetian, who led a concert in Tskhinvali weeks after its bombardment. She says Gergiev introduced her to Andrei Konchalovsky, an acclaimed Russian director, who helped her hire the Saylor Co.
Konchalovsky is the brother of noted director Nikita Mikhalkov ? one of Putin's most vocal supporters.

Tskhovrebova declined to say how much she is spending or to identify most of her financial backers, but Saylor has made extensive efforts for her. He traveled to Moscow and Tskhinvali to document her aid efforts, while the firm set up two Web sites, arranged the public events and appointments in Congress and helped Tskhovrebova place opinion pieces in the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor.

Aside from Leahy's office, Tskhovrebova also visited the staff of Republican Rep. Ron Paul and the Helsinki Commission, which helps formulate U.S. policy on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The OSCE, which had funded Tskhovrebova's work, has been barred from South Ossetia by the separatist government.
Helsinki Commission spokeswoman Lale Mamaux said that Tskhovrebova asked that conditions be put on U.S. aid so it doesn't bolster the Georgian military.

A spokesman for Leahy called the meeting routine. Paul's office declined to comment.

Tskhovrebova plans to participate this week in a conflict resolution event at George Mason University that was funded by a U.S. Agency for International Development grant. In a statement, the agency said it did not select the participants. It was unclear how much USAID paid for the event.

Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman, Shota Utiashvili, said Tskhovrebova's contacts with the KGB meant she was also working with the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency, since "it's the same organization."

Like the de-facto government itself, South Ossetia's security services are dominated by Russian nationals tied to Moscow. Even the top position in the South Ossetian KGB is currently filled by a Russian FSB officer.

"We have multiple pieces of evidence that prove that she (Tskhovrebova) is an FSB spy," Utiashvili said.
But some of the recordings cited by Georgian officials as incriminating appear ambiguous.

"I don't know whether they leaked honest copies to the media, but what I've seen shows nothing," Tskhovrebova said.

In one recording, Tskhovrebova is pressed by Guliev to provide information on co-workers at an alcohol and drug treatment center she founded. She asks Guliev why he is giving her such a "provocative assignment." Tskhovrebova, however, appears to resist providing him all the information he wanted.

Georgian officials described the monitoring as part of a successful espionage program aimed at capturing sensitive conversations of separatist government officials between 2004-2008. The program continues, but became less effective when South Ossetia switched from Georgian to Russian cell phone towers in 2007.

In one intercept that Georgian officials say took place Feb. 2, 2005, Tskhovrebova outlined to Guliev a meeting with Sabine Freizer of the International Crisis Group think tank. She listed other people Freizer had met on her visit.
Freizer and other Western workers at international organizations praised Tskhovrebova's work and said they had no suspicions.

And Freizer said in an interview: "I don't think she's someone who was invented by the Russian secret services, to put it bluntly."
___
Associated Press writer Matt Siegel reported from Tbilisi.