User:Vogelman/Sandbox

INCOMPLETE SANDBOX VERSION --Vogelman (talk) 21:05, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Erwin Van Haarlem was the alias used by a Czechoslovakian spy most probably working for a Communist Czechoslovak intelligence organisation, the Státní bezpečnost or StB, whilst living under cover as a Dutch national in London.

False Identity
Van Haarlem appears to have adopted the identity of a boy who died of scarlet fever aged 6 years old, and was the child of a Dutch mother and a German soldier, conceived during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during the Second World War, and given up for adoption to the Red Cross in Prague.

Joanna, who had Jewish roots, was shunned by her family and left the child with the Red Cross in Prague. No one ever heard of the child's whereabouts. Years later Vaclav Jelinek, a young Czech man who just finished his military service, was approached and recruited by the StB, the Czech Secret Service.

The StB decided to give him the false identity of Erwin van Haarlem and trained him over several years to become a skilled secret agent with a false - but existing - background. As a - pretended - child of a Dutch mother he had both Czech and Dutch nationality and therefore acquired a Dutch passport at the Dutch Embassy in Czechoslovakia. In 1975 he arrived in Britain and started his spying career for the Czech StB and the Russian Secret Service. Meanwhile, Mrs Joanna van Haarlem found him through the Red Cross and finally was reunited with her alleged son in 1977.

More than ten years she believed to have found her lost son, until he was arrested in 1988 by British Special Branch detectives in his apartment while receiving coded shortwave messages from a numbers station. Also, One-time Pads, used to decode messages, were found hidden inside soap bars in his apartment. DNA samples later confirmed that he wasn't Joanna's son. Vaclav Jelinek (photo) never told his real name during the investigations or at the trial and the spy with no name was sentenced in 1989 to ten year imprisonment. He was released and deported to Prague in 1994. Joanna finally found her real son who had changed his Dutch name in a Czech one at the age of 15. He knew nothing about the misuse of his name by the StB. Jelinek's story is a good example of infiltration under stolen identity during the Cold War.

The complete story of the false identity and how Jelinek was captured can be found on this web page. It also includes a link to a very intersting two-part radio program (in Dutch) with the story of his mother (part 1) and a 30 minutes interview with Vaclav Jelinek himself (part 2). A 30 minutes BBC Radio 4 program, explaining Number Stations that are used to transmit coded messages on shortwave radio (which also mention Erwin van Haarlem) can be downloaded on this page (6.6 Mb wma file). Very interesting!

Espionage Activities
Van Haarlem's activities in the United Kingdom started around 1975, having entered the country on a forged Dutch passport. appears to have particularly targeted those

Counter-intelligence officers from MI5, the British Security Service became aware of the activities of Van Haarlem sometime in the mid-1980's, possibly via information from a Czechoslovak bureaucrat who wished to defect. He was placed under surveillance.

David Shayler, a former employee of MI5, has claimed that during the surveillance there were occasions when the team was too drunk to perform their job correctly.

Arrest and trial
On XX, 1988 the man claiming the identity of Van Haarlem was arrested by Special Branch officers at his flat in Finchley, whilst receiving an encrypted Morse Code transmission on a shortwave radio from a numbers station. The one time pads necessary to decode such messages were found hidden in a cavity within a bar of soap.

Van Haarlem was convicted on 3 March 1989 of an offence under Section 7 of the Official Secrets Act 1920. He received a 10 year sentence and a recommendation that he be deported to completion of his sentence. Van Haarlem was deported to Czechoslovakia on 5 April 1992, having served 3 years of his sentence, under section 46 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991, which allows the early release of prisoners subject to deportation orders.

Television Dramatisation
The case of Van Haarlem was dramatised in a TV programme, "A Question of Identity", first broadcast on XXX XXX XXX, as part of the ITV "True Crime" series.

Claims of real identity
In November [2005], a man, Vaclav Jelinek, living in Prague claimed in a newspaper article that he was was the person who had undertaken the mission. He subsequently wrote a book, "xx" providing a full account of his activities.