Whether or not Trump claims are true, Russia is still using sex for spying

In 1989 a U.S. State Department official, Felix Bloch, was discovered to be passing secrets to the Soviets having been compromised following an interest in sadomasochistic sex. He was forced to resign his post, though he was never charged.

Various British officials in Moscow also fell foul of Soviet honeytraps. John Vassall, an admiralty clerk working at the U.K.’s Moscow embassy, was famously blackmailed into spying for the KGB after being photographed during an orgy with several men at a time when gay sex was illegal in Britain. “I remember the lighting was very strong and gradually most of my clothes were removed. I remember two or three people getting on to the bed with me,” he recalled. “Certain compromising sexual actions took place. I remember someone in the party taking photographs.”

In the 1960s, Jeremy Wolfenden, The Daily Telegraph’s Moscow correspondent and an SIS agent, was also blackmailed by the KGB with photos of him having sex with a man. (Funnily enough, he was the son of Lord Woldenden, who chaired the committee that recommended Britain legalize homosexuality.)

Soviet intelligence also compromised Sir Geoffrey Harrison, Britain’s ambassador to Moscow from 1965 to 1968. In his own words, Harrison “let his defenses drop” and started a sexual relationship with a young, attractive Russian maid, who turned out to work for the KGB. As a result, Harrison was forced to admit the affair to Foreign Office mandarins, leading to his removal in 1968 and the end of his diplomatic career.

“It is happening all the time to diplomats and journalists, even to politicians,” he explained at the time. “If you are on a long tour abroad then your defenses can drop. It’s unforgivable but it happens.”

Then and now
Sir Anthony Brenton, Britain’s ambassador to Moscow between 2004 and 2008, described kompromat as “very much a part of the way Russia works.” Sure enough, various incidents of recent years prove that Western diplomats and luminaries on tour in Russia still need to keep their noses clean.

In July 2009 British diplomat James Hudson, then deputy consul general at Yekaterinburg, was humiliated by the release of a four-minute video, “Adventures of Mr. Hudson in Russia”, which showed him with prostitutes. There was no suggestion he was involved in espionage. He resigned his post. In a statement, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office warned that staff should “demonstrate high levels of personal and professional integrity.”

A month later, a U.S. diplomat was also involved in a sex scandal following a video which showed him with a prostitute being leaked online.

Whatever the truth regarding allegations against Trump, sexual entrapment was, and is, a tool frequently used by the Soviet intelligence services and their modern-day Russian descendants. The claims in the dossier are lurid and unproven, but they draw on very real precedents.

Dan Lomas is Programme Leader, MA Intelligence and Security Studies, University of Salford. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution / No derivative).