Sovietizing the Homeland Security State

by William Norman Grigg
Sep. 25, 2012

On Independence Day 1994, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh traveled to Moscow to visit the Lubyanka Square headquarters of the Russian secret police – which is now known as the FSB. During the Stalin-era purges, Lubyanka’s basement prison cells were used to carry out thousands of executions.

After touring Lubyanka, FBI Director Freeh signed a cooperation accord with Sergei Stepashin, who acted on behalf of the FSB. Under that agreement, the FBI and FSB would cooperate on counter-terrorism measures. Russian secret police would also receive training at the FBI’s academy in Quantico, Virginia.

The Russians were eager to return the favor. In 1993, a year before the cooperation accord, the Russians lent the FBI an expert in psychological warfare named Igor Smirnov to advise the Bureau in its assault on Waco’s Branch Davidian sect. Now Russia’s Speech Technology Center has provided the Department of Homeland Security with a surveillance system called “Voice Grid Nation” that will allow law enforcement agencies to compile a huge, searchable database of the voices intercepted through electronic surveillance.

The system will be installed at all 911 call centers, which means that anytime you call the police for help, they’ll add your voice to the Russian-designed database.