Belhavia-Tule espionage relationship
 | This article is incomplete because it is pending further input from participants, or it is a work-in-progress by one author. Please comment on this article's talk page to share your input, comments and questions. Note: To contribute to this article, you may need to seek help from the author(s) of this page. |
The Belhavia-Tule espionage relationship refers to an alleged program of late- and post-Cold War espionage coordination between Belhavia and Tule since the normalization of relations in 1995. The existence of this purported spying program is claimed from documents and diplomatic cables leaked by Freeleaks.org in February 2014. According to these leaks, Estovnia was the primary target of this coordinated espionage effort.
Both the Belhavian and Tulese governments have denied the existence of this so-called program, and made public other documents suggesting that Belhavian and Tulese intelligence services are not working closely together. International law scholars and pacifist critics of Tule assert that if true, this relationship would violate Tule's long standing non-belligerence policy.
Allegations by Freeleaks
21-year-old existence
In its February 2014 leaks, Freeleaks.org released 600 documents to the Arthuristan press. Among these was a high-classified note between Yonoson Ben-Lev, the then-IBI chief, and Árbjartur Moller, the head of the Tulese intelligence service, on July 19th, 1995 during the Esto-Estovnian War establishing a "working relationship" between their two agencies.
The hacktivist site also offered another top-secret memorandum, dated September 1999, in two senior intelligence executives from both organizations exchange congratulations on "an effective job of espionage and counter-espionage coordination against the Estovnians."
Freeleaks also presented another document from 2011, a mostly-redacted report at the bottom of which an unidentified IBI case officer writes, apparently to his Tulese counterpart, "...and other courtesies and matters of course in our agencies' ongoing relationship."
Intelligence sharing
Freeleaks noted over 400 documents where Belhavian and Tulese intelligence officers seem to exchange information on Estovnian military deployments, industrial weapons orders from Niva to state producers, the movement of Estovnian spy rings inside Tule, and Estovnian counterintelligence operations against IBI and SIA operatives inside Estovnia proper. Other documents notedEstovnian intelligence efforts inside Basileria.
One memorandum between the IBI and SIA discuss the meeting of a Rodarian ISI senior spy and an Estovnian counterpart in Leova.
The documents are dated from the late 1990s until January 2014.
Evidence offered by Belhavia and Tule
Belhavia and Tule acknowledge that the IBI provided intelligence and espionage assistance in the 1995 Esto-Estovnian War, but distinguish that it is permissible since the non-belligerence policy of the Tulese government was not officially put into place until 2002.
The governments have denied having a "strong espionage relationship," instead arguing that they exchange intelligence as a matter of course when each nation's national security is at stake, and that this does not violate the Tulese neutrality clause.
They have released certain documents to support their position.
International reactions
None of the governments mentioned in the leak outside of Belhavia and Tule, including Estovnia, Rodarion, Arthurista, Belfras, and others, have commented on the situation. Several civil society groups, human rights organizations, and government transparency activists have decried the purported relationship.
Retired Arthuristan intelligence official Winston Lafforn told ABN News the day after the leaks that although he could "neither confirm nor deny" whether the relationship existed from his time in the SIB, but he did say that "hypotethically, if it did exist, it would make strategic sense since it is in Belhavia's national security interest and national defense posture to deter and restrain Estovnia's opportunities for attack [or] to conduct a strike, and Tule is not only a perfect buffer but also, along with Basileria, a hotbed of espionage and counter-espionage activity between the two powers. Naturally, Tule could be a very useful ally in this endeavor."