Page:House-Intel-Glenn-Simpson-Transcript.pdf/131

Rh The Orthodox church is also an arm of the Russian State now. And when I used to do terrorism reporting, the guys used to tell me about how the Russians were laundering money through the Orthodox church in Israel, and that it was intelligence operations. So --

MS. SPEIER: So the extent to which they are funding persons within let's say the Russian Orthodox church or funding the church, is the expectation then that those who are here in the United States, members of the Russian Orthodox church are doing something on behalf of Russia?

MR. SIMPSON: Well, I think -- I mean the thing that I have looked at is more in Europe, but it's using the Orthodox church as a cover to move money and for operational cover reasons, to give people, agents jobs. A lot of the senior people in the church are ex-, or maybe still KGB. And so -

MS. SPEIER: And very religious, I guess.

MR. SIMPSON: These are actually quite well documented. The other thing is the history of Russian espionage, a lot of the stuff they have been doing lately is really out of the old playbook. So from my background, as I don't have sort of any great investigative powers, so I read a lot. And a lot of what you read in the history of Soviet espionage is what you have been seeing lately. In any case, oh, and the classic one of course is. So, you know, that obviously is something that harkens back.

Q How about Mr. Mashkevich?


 * One minute, ma'am.

MR. SIMPSON: He is interesting. He is another Central Asian organized crime figure who is extremely well known to international law enforcement, involved in a lot of money laundering activities, a lot of kleptocracy, comes out of UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE