Spy Scandals at the Bulgarian National Security Agency: Let's DANS

Novinite Insider » EDITORIAL | Author: Ivan Dikov |October 26, 2009, Monday // 23:14
Bulgaria: Spy Scandals at the Bulgarian National Security Agency: Let's DANS

One of the main characteristics of the Global Age (from about 1990/2001 on) as opposed to the Modern Age (16th-20th century) is the shifting of power centers away from the modern political institutions.

Before the end of the 20th century the institutions of the modern nation-state were generally the actual centers of power. Even though there had been many instances of this shifting power centers trend in the Modern Age, it has become a lot more prevalent in the Global Age where the modern state institutions are only a part of the picture, and oftentimes a very negligible one.

Other internal and external non-state actors and factors, often not clearly visible for the public and acting in secret, have gained a lot of momentum, and - being a lot more powerful than the nation-state institutions in one or many different spheres - have started to impose their will on them, and to generally use them in order to satisfy their own interests.

Now, Bulgaria after 1990 is a nice example in hand. For the last 20 years the Bulgarian state and its Modern Age institutions have clearly not been the defining power center. Instead, they have been supplanted and used by outright organized crime structures, semi-formal political circles, and some business interest circles. These of course have been in close contact and under the influence of more powerful foreign factors of similar nature (not really foreign nation-states).

Clearly, these players have tried to replace or take over some or all of the Bulgarian state institutions and their functions - and have been rather successful for the most part - from the private gangster armies (literally - armies of the order of tens of thousands of men under arms) in the mid 1990s - to the taking over by political circles and "rings" of connected firms of whole sectors of the national economy - such as agriculture - in the first decade of the 21st century.

Actually, the extent of this shift of power away from the Bulgarian state has been so grave and so overwhelming at many points in the last 20 years, that one can’t help but think that Bulgaria would have made a nice failed state, a European Somalia of a sort, or a larger version of Transnistria, had it not been for the EU and US backing for a functioning Bulgarian state…

For obvious reasons, one of the most interesting state structures of whose taking over all those non-state factors stand to benefit a lot is the intelligence service.

One of the topics that has dominated the news in Bulgaria over the last few months is the State National Security Agency DANS, dubbed the Bulgarian FBI, and its activities after its formal creation on January 1, 2008.

DANS is the brainchild of former Socialist Prime Minister, Sergey Stanishev. According to widespread opinion, he set up the agency by removing existing intelligence structures from the Interior Ministry headed at the time by his deputy at the Socialist Party, Rumen Petkov, in order to devoid Petkov of much of his influence. Banal as this interpretation might have been, it does make a lot of sense – in the very least because DANS does not seem to have made much of a contribution to Bulgaria’s national security or to fighting organized crime. Or perhaps its contribution is so top secret that it is invisible for the naked eye.

Two more things are worth brief mentioning here. One is the Galeria spying case in which, as it turned out, key Bulgarian journalists have been "monitored", i.e. spied on, DANS agents had "conversations" with them, etc. One can’t help but thinking of the former State Security (DS) of the communist regime, which did basically the same before 1989.

The second thing is the already notorious incriminating top secret DANS report that former PM Stanishev allegedly received in October 2008. According to PM Borisov, his predecessor hid the report and showed it to the officials that it incriminated with corruption and abuses - allegations that have been rejected by Stanishev who claims the Prosecutor’s Office had been investigating the claims of every single report of the security agency.

Borisov said he was given a copy of the top secret intelligence report by a former DANS undercover agent Aleksei Petrov - a man whose name first surfaced when it was revealed that former Interior Minister Rumen Petkov together with Petrov had a meeting with the notorious Galevi Brothers, feudal racketeers from the town of Dupnitsa. This revelation caused a scandal leading Petkov to resign as Interior Minister in April 2008.

The DANS report in question entitled "Information regarding the actions of persons and circles, exerting destructive influence on the functioning of ministries and structures of the state administration", and was published online by an unknown person the night of October 27, 2009. It is still not confirmed that this publication is an actual top secret report of the Bulgarian national security agency.

It is also totally unclear how much of what the report says is true. There are plenty of details and interesting claims in the 26-page report including that a man known as a consultant Stefan Gamizov had blackmailed the former DANS chief Petko Sertov. The names of Aleksei Petrov and former DANS Deputy Director Ivan Drashkov also appear in it, among others.

Unless one has been one of the DANS secret agents, or has some very big shot friends in high - and low - places in Bulgaria, it is very hard to tell what exactly is going on here, and who is serving whose interests, and who is benefiting from what appears to be a darned mess to the outside observer.

Yet, there are some conclusions that even an outside observer can make with a high degree of certainty.

One is that the Bulgarian National Security Agency seems to be leaking information to all sides. Another is that it has been used (and probably set up) to serve the interests of actors other than the alleged sovereign in Bulgaria – the Bulgarian people – and not even of a Bulgarian state trying to control the people – such a simplistic picture would have been characteristic of the good old times.

As a result of this whole "Dansgate" scandal, Bulgaria’s PM Borisov has indicated the ill-fated agency may be shut down. It is unclear if that is the best solution. But it seems that Dansgate is just a symptom of what has been going on for a while, and not just in Bulgaria. The shifting of power centers is a global trend – and while the Modern Age state institutions still stand some of their ground in stable Western states, in a country such as Bulgaria that is not quite the case.

It will take Borisov an awful lot of effort to restore at least some of the power in Bulgaria to the Bulgarian state institutions, to make them at least one of the major power centers in the country, and that is only on the condition that he does want to attempt to do that.

By the way, a secret agent of DANS gets paid about BGN 1 500, maybe BGN 2 000 per month max. With the enormous amounts of money in organized crime and political and business circles that are potential targets for intelligence activity, one should expect those agents to be extremely patriotic and devoted individuals with overwhelmingly high morals and personal integrity in order to do their job properly.

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Tags: DANS, State National Security Agency, Sergey Stanishev, Boyko Borisov, former PM, Prime Minister, Galeria, spy scandal, spy, spying, report, intelligence, intelligence service, State Security, Modern Age, Global Age

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