Report: Czech military intelligence uncovered its own spies

Aug 2, 2010, 11:55 GMT

Prague - The Czech Republic's military intelligence service unintentionally revealed the identities of its own agents active after the fall of Communism, a newspaper report said Monday.

The blunder dates back to April, when the state-run Prague-based Insitute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes posted on its website a list of Communist-era spies provided by the country's military intelligence agency.

However, several hundred of those spies stayed on after Communism collapsed in former Czechoslovakia in 1989 and some may be active to this day, the daily Mlada Fronta Dnes said.

The institute took down the list in June after being alerted by military intelligence that it includes names of spies active after the fall of Communism, the report said.

While intelligence experts told the newspaper that any active spies on the list could be in danger and should be withdrawn, the Defence Ministry said that the list's publication was 'a problem, but the agency's activities were not under a direct threat.'

Among the compromised agents is Frantisek Masopust, who was the Czech charge d'affaires in Moscow until 2002 and currently heads a Prague-based chamber of commerce for the Commonwealth of Independent States, a post-Soviet group of former Soviet countries.

'I already know that they compromised me,' the newspaper quoted Masopust as saying. 'Whether it offends me or angers me? That is an understatement. This is something that should not happen in a normal country.'

The military intelligence and the institute are now trading accusations over who was responsible for the leak.