Armenian law currently gives the NSS the exclusive right to share such classified information with other state bodies, including the Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS).
A bill circulated by the FIS would allow the latter to access state secrets without the NSS’s permission and help. It says this authority would enhance the FIS’s ability to perform tasks and be only used for intelligence gathering.
The bill needs to be discussed and approved by the Armenian government before being sent to the parliament. Observers believe that the government is unlikely to oppose it.
The government has already curtailed the NSS’s powers in the last two years. In late 2022, it separated an agency providing bodyguards to the top state officials from the NSS and made it directly subordinate to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
And early this year, the NSS lost a division investigating serious cases of corruption, smuggling and drug trafficking. Its powers were given to Armenia’s Investigative Committee.
The FIS formally began its activities around the same time. Opposition leaders and other critics view its creation as another blow to the NSS, which is the successor to the Armenian branch of the Soviet KGB.
Armenia already had intelligence services operating within the NSS and the Defense Ministry. Some of Pashinian’s detractors have linked the creation of the FIS to his efforts to move the South Caucasus country away from Russia and reorient it towards the West.
A senior pro-government lawmaker confirmed late last year that the FIS director, Kristine Grigorian, underwent training abroad before taking up the post. According to an Armenian newspaper report, Grigorian was trained by “Western intelligence services” after unexpectedly resigning as the country’s human rights ombudsperson in January 2023.
The chief of Britain's foreign intelligence agency, Richard Moore, visited Yerevan and met with Pashinian just days before the Armenian parliament passed a government bill on the FIS in December 2022. The two men met again in Munich in February this year.
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns and his deputy, David Cohen, also visited Armenia in July 2022 and May 2024 respectively.