Word: belgians
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When seven astronauts blasted off aboard the space shuttle Atlantis from Cape Canaveral earlier this year, they scarcely imagined that a longtime KGB spy would be among those waiting to fete their homecoming. But veteran Belgian aerospace journalist Guido Kindt was on hand in Houston, the site of the Johnson Space Center, to offer them a hero's welcome. Ostensibly there to wrap up a deal to ghostwrite the autobiography of the shuttle's Belgian crew member, Kindt apparently had other business: he was keeping an eye on the U.S. space program for his paymasters in Moscow. Once back...
Does this add up to a new, from-Russia-with-love era? Hardly. Moscow's Belgian spy ring was blown by a top Russian diplomat in Brussels who has been singing like a canary to the CIA since defecting to the West last year; he spilled details of an elaborate and expanding Russian network based in the Belgian capital. The case demonstrates the Kremlin's hunger for foreign military and industrial secrets despite the end of the cold war. "They would feel absolutely naked without an espionage service," says a senior British diplomat. "Their innate suspicion of foreigners demands...
...Russian agents have tried to recruit several U.S. citizens as spies, including a sailor based at the U.S. Navy's giant Hampton Roads facility in Norfolk, Va. Wayne Gilbert, the FBI's counterintelligence chief, complains of a continuing influx of Russian agents disguised as businessmen and tourists. In the Belgian episode, SVR spies had targeted a sensitive nato battlefield communications system. Elsewhere in Europe, the Russians have shown interest in everything from electronic banking systems to civilian computer software with potential military applications...
...young American replaced Maurice Bejart as resident choreographer for Belgium's national opera house. The deal included doubling the size of the company to 24, spacious rehearsal studios, production budgets of up to $1 million for new works, and most important, the opportunity to work with live musicians. The Belgian capital's reputation for good food and great beer didn't hurt either...
Devastated by outbreaks of paralytic polio, the people of the Belgian Congo (now Zaire) had every reason to be thankful in 1957, when they became the first large group to receive an experimental polio vaccine. Ironically, the quest for deliverance from this ancient scourge may have made them unwitting participants in the birth of a new plague -- AIDS. That, at least, is the contention of a speculative but intriguing article in Rolling Stone...