The headline from this article could have been taken from a popular protest song of the 1970s and if I had been looking for a number of quotes, there would be simply too many so I will content myself with the words of George Santayana: "... Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it". Life of Reason (1905-6)
In some respects, I feel completely vindicated by recent events which have suddenly appeared in the press and more particularly the Washington Times (August 4, 2011) in an article by Eli Lake. The byline is “Russia uses dirty tricks despite U.S. “reset." According to the reporting team, Russia's intelligence services have stepped up a campaign of intimidation and dirty tricks against U.S. officials and diplomats in Russia and the countries that once formed the Soviet Union. As a foreign observer with a background in counterintelligence and counterespionage, I can only wonder why this information has been buried by and large by the mainstream press as it is two weeks old. I suppose the answer lies in the domestic preoccupation with the financial situation and the clash between President and Congress; political infighting and attempts to find a candidate to oppose Barack Obama. Further complicating reasons could lie overseas especially in the Middle East but from outside, there appears to be too much navel-gazing.
Eli Lake has good contacts within the U.S. intelligence community but it appears that writing adverse publicity against the Russian government and especially its intelligence arms is deliberately downplayed by the administration and lightly dismissed as having any real concern or merit. This "three monkey" attitude should not acceptable for the major Western Power and its Allies. Concealing problems does not make them go away and we have seen far too many important matters swept under the carpet. Just because the US press and media is focused on internal matters, that does not let the major media around the world free to ignore significant developments.
A prophet is without honor, recognition or profit in his own land.
Back in the early 1980s, a colleague ventured the suggestion that stripped of communist ideology; Russia would still be an important world player. He was derided gently for his views, especially by the mandarins in the state department and their foreign counterparts for whom the USSR was immutable and a major world player as a superpower by virtue of its ideology and perceived persistence as a state. The foreign service of his own country was less charitable with their views especially as they believed possibly implicitly that the USSR would survive forever.
It would be unreasonable to dwell any length on the arguments because as we all know, history, politics and current events dictated that the Soviet Union and its empire would unravel rather swiftly after the ascension of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev and his introduction of policies of and perestroika and glasnost. Yet even this apparent liberalism was doomed for several reasons including Gorbachev's lack of control and the hardliners attempted coup in 1991 which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the communist party.
Needless to say the celebrations of democracy in Russia were heralded as a triumph of the free market and the west over state socialism and the USSR. As a significant personage once said: the whole structure is rotten; kick in the door and the whole lot will collapse. And apparently it did for a while. I don't propose to criticize the economic policies which swept the west because of those responsible set in train policies and a series of events for which we are paying today.
Damned by failure
Notable U.S. historians and politicians proclaimed that Russia would be a partner of the West, become a democratic state with the rights and freedoms we take for granted. It was only a question of ensuring that if the Russian politics were reformed along with the economy and the Clinton Administration reached out to assist Boris Yeltsin and his associates. As I have noted frequently, the assistance was rendered by the participation of Vice President Al Gore and a host of State Department officials, who at best could be said to be "soft on the Russians" or at the worst, recruited assets. It seems to make no difference that the Congress committee that looked into the assistance of package found that their activities were more congruent with carpetbaggers and that throwing money and cutting deals would convert generations of communist into little capitalists. [1] It didn't work and the result was Boris Yeltsin. It must be said that he bravely resisted communist counterrevolution but the cost came with the handpicked selection of his successor, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, a former KGB Lt. Col. who had served in one of the largest KGB rezidenturas outside the Soviet borders but within the Empire, namely East Germany, where he worked for the legendary line K or counterintelligence branch.
It makes no difference that quite influential former senior Soviet official inside Russia and in the West, derided Putin and his service for the KGB. They appear to forget that counterintelligence officers are hard-nosed, usually more intelligent than given credit for and like most Lieut. Colonel's in any man's outfit, extremely ambitious. It helped his cause that he was a member of the St. Petersburg maffiya, the charming collective of former communist political apparatchiks (the nomenklatura), lawyers, public servants and well-sized leavening of what became known as the siloviki, mostly former officers of the armed forces and the security/intelligence services. It is said that this was a payoff protecting Yeltsin from prosecution on grounds of corruption. The existence of such corruption was never far from the news when groups known simply as the “oligarchs” wielded immense economic power until measures were taken against them.
The colleague who entertained continuing suspicions about Russia coined two adjectives to describe the accretion of power by Putin. For the first term and a half of his presidency, this was known as Putinization an ongoing process by which central control in Moscow became reasserted and many privatized companies became state monopolies, the biggest of which was surely Gazprom, the energy conglomerate which controls most of Russian sources of power and production of power, especially natural gas. Quite logically, the first muscle-flexing came via the energy giant Gazprom, when they decided to raise prices for natural gas to Ukraine, other former European communist states and Western Europe. You probably won't find the term Putinization written down and attributed to the person who coined the phrase but he said he could live with that because the second part of the process was Putinism whereby the former KGB Lieut. Col. could hand over the reins of power to the virtually unheard of Dmitry Medvedev, also a member of the St. Petersburg cabal and a lawyer.
Winners aren't always grinners.
Old habits die hard and espionage firmly refuses to fall away except in the West where it was believed there would be no more ideological struggles and we could face the future with confidence as evidenced by the work of Francis Fukuyama. [2] As we know, the atrocity of 9/11, the anniversary of which occurs in a few weeks, cruelly exposed the way most US intelligence gathering bodies had been run down in the name of a "peace dividend" and both the CIA and the FBI lost many valuable operational officers, who took the golden parachute or were pushed by the onboard advance of extremists whose contribution has mainly been in the field of managerialism, political groveling and turf wars. This was certainly not a unique phenomenon and applied to most Western security and intelligence services but the results will be felt for decades, despite pious platitudes from politicians.
Let's not bother with the French phrase: the more things appear to change, the more they stay the same.
Those in the West who fool and themselves and tried to dupe others obviously had various motives but were blind to history. A quick look at any ready reference book on the KGB reveals that since its inception in 1919, it has changed its name time and again but the leopard never changes its spots. Theoretically the organization was split into the SVR which took over the duties of the first chief directorate of the KGB, responsible for operations overseas and the FSB which took over the second chief directorate – a far from charming bunch of thugs who specialized in knocking on the door in the small hours and taking people to Gulags in, with very little in the way of a and due process or under other circumstances, liquidating enemies of the state, a term that was used to describe anybody on the wrong side of the authorities and at least some commentators have noticed that the FSB plays rough with critical journalists and opponents of those in high places.
Paradoxically, it is almost impossible to get US specialists in Soviet intelligence to recognize that Soviet military intelligence, the GRU, continued without any apparent disturbance to its operations overseas throughout the upheaval in the USSR or Russia and indeed under Putin has assumed a higher priority, public prominence and recognition and the massive increase in budget as well as a purpose-built headquarters. Coming from a former Chekist, (which is how former KGB officers define themselves as legatees of the first communist secret police) making such a rival powerful tends to beggar belief.
You might ask why I follow Eli Lake in talking about the increased threat from Russian intelligence. Fair question but I'm not on my own. At last the mainstream media is taking some notice of what veterans such as myself have been saying quietly for so long, largely because no one will publish our views. It is proven that Russian intelligence in the West, despite the upheavals at home, long ago surpassed Cold War levels by the mid-1990s and have increased incrementally since. That with a lost empire, including the not inconsiderable problem prompted by fundamentalist Islamic terrorism and the running sore which is Chechn'ya, now home to the Caucasus emirate and responsible for the various attacks in Moscow including the notorious bombing of the Moscow Metro (subway) in 2010 and the suicide bombing at Domodedevo airport earlier this year.
Most professional intelligence officers, provided that they were spoken to in confidence would admit that the Soviet and Allied intelligence services were highly professional. It was entirely human to hate the enemy but many of us directed such feelings towards communism as a system and not necessarily individual KGB/GRU officers. Plenty of them got under our skin and proved extremely difficult to catch in activities inconsistent with their official duties and furthermore, persuading governments to throw them out went through periods of impossibility. Only when quite literally red hot information came to hand, were the mass expulsions such as in the UK during the 1970s when 104 were either denied visa renewals or just expelled. Even the Belgians, not normally known for draconian action expelled 46, largely on the basis of some very valuable information from a defector source.
The US preferred to remove particularly irritating Soviet spies quietly as befits a superpower and the US had more to lose in a tip for tat expulsion war. It was noticeable that certain Soviet "diplomats" quietly left before their tour of duty was ended and others were refused visas to enter the US. That did not stop the latter being posted to the UN in New York which was adequately described by the former speaker of the house, Tip O'Neill, as being a hotbed of spies.
Why now? An examination of political blindness.
I have noted that there has been very little follow-up comment on Eli Lake's piece but the Russian intelligence services are extremely active in the US and the West, especially trying to acquire high-technology but the usual operations involving political intelligence, recruitment of agents and work among the émigré communities has varied very little from the good old days. Unencumbered by the yoke of communist ideology, the appeal is now monetary and nostalgia for the homeland.
Earlier this year, the US administration arranged in exchange with the Russians for a number of illegal agents monitored during a 10 year operation by the FBI and other services. It is not generally recognized that 10 people were arrested, an 11th (the paymaster) had escaped to Cyprus and a 12th had been intercepted trying to enter the US and sent packThis particular case released three important issues about which the US public appears to have been willfully misled. Firstly, there was no understanding of the role of an illegal residency; secondly the titillation offered by the extraordinarily attractive Anna Chapman and her sexual exploits were of greater interest and thirdly, no one seemed to recognize how important it was that the US government could have one of its major authorities run a top-secret operation for 10 years through changes of government without it being leaked.
Fed on the dramas of the Cold War and numerous spy films, the most damning thing that could be said about the Russian illegal agents was that they were just like your neighbor. This is exactly what is expected of illegal agents who arrive with a false background and identity and do their best to blend in and become apparently normal citizens, certainly more normal than Maj. Nidal Hasan. The females of the group were apple pie and home cooking Moms while the sexual charms of Ms. Chapman were extremely diverting. I recall telling an American acquaintance that the Russian operation was a brilliant success because they had been accepted as Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average who lived next door. In the face of what was once termed conventional wisdom about Russia and illegals, 11 people, possibly 12, were far larger than any one group and therefore, no one bothered to ask how many illegal rings there were among those expelled/exchange. Rumor has it that some were getting close to Secretary of State Clinton in but I have never seen anything more than tidbits in the whisper columns.
The whole concept of an illegal is not that they are there to spy by gaining access to those with scientific knowledge and classified information. They are there in the event that diplomatic relations break down and the officers of the legal rezidency (usually found in diplomatic, trade and premises and positions covered by diplomatic immunity) are expelled. Of all the former CIA and FBI officers who make a living by expert comment to the media, not one bothered to question why the Russians needed illegal rezidencies of such size, and it appears that their support officer under cover in the Russian mission to the UN was not expelled. Those that appeared in court looked so ordinary, so American, more so than just about any recent terror suspect except Najibullah Zazi, who looked every bit the kid next door.
Winning one for the Gipper.
Lastly, I always believe that credit should be given where it is merited. The SEAL team that removed the scourge of Osama bin Laden were fêted and no doubt decorated for a dangerous and successful operation. The FBI was damned with faint praise and yet running a counterintelligence operation for the best part of 10 years without a single leak stands as a record. I have seen no mention of anything other than congratulations to those involved and I know from personal experience counterintelligence is a tough and demanding area of work, especially when the alleged best and brightest are being used in counterterrorist work. I hope I live to see a book by one of the FBI participants in this operation.
As with other items and articles I intend to write, there is a very real reason for picking subjects selectively. What happened was no bagatelle and it says something about the designs of the Russian regime. Furthermore, while the US public is fixated beyond belief on the abilities and credibility (to say nothing of the legitimacy) of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., there is another election being held in 2012 and it would appear that Vladimir Putin is heading the running for President.
Many say that the US should not worry unduly about Russian intentions because Russia no longer has the Empire that once dominated much of Europe and Asia. However, Russia maintains links with old friends in the Western Hemisphere, Middle East and Asia and with its capacity for producing high-technology cannot be underestimated. In relative terms, the amount spent on the US space program was trivial by comparison with the defense budget yet if America remains in space, astronauts will ride in craft produced by Russians, Chinese and possibly Indians. The great hope that some of us had about the US landing on Mars is a dream further removed. With antipathy towards NASA, it could well mean that the old science fiction novelists' ideas of space being conquered by private enterprise becomes a reality.
That leads me to a final point. A few months ago, the death was announced of Sergey Olegovich Tretyakov, a Russian intelligence officer who had worked in place for the US, while serving with the UN and through the transition from the KGB to SVR. It's worth reading the book Comrade J by Pete Earley, as much for the introduction as for the content. The book is scarcely a bestseller, yet I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in Russian affairs. The usual suspects in the US media did their best to denigrate Tretyakov and dismiss the worth of his material. The fact that he was one of the most important role Russian intelligence officers recruited by the US is overlooked. No one wants to know and yet the book abounds with solid details about Russian thinking, operational matters and how they view the United States. Perhaps the most damning quote from the book is a direct quote from Tretyakov:
"I want to warn Americans. As a people, you are very naive about Russia and its intentions. You believe because the Soviet Union no longer exists, Russia is your friend. It isn't, and I can show you how the SVR is trying to destroy the US even today and even more than the KGB did during the Cold War." [3]
These are not the words of a mendicant or someone seeking glory: he was financially independent and only wanted to see the product of his work disseminated in the US. The late Sergey Tretyakov risked his life every day that he worked for the US and to see his words ignored must have been particularly galling. He was trying to prevent the West from itself and its proclivity for self-deception. There is much to commend dealing with the Russians in the same way articulated by President Reagan: "trust but verify." We owe it to ourselves to be honest about dealing with Moscow for the sake of our children. It falls into the category of keeping close to your friends but closer to your enemies.
Notes.
1. Russia's Road to Corruption: How the Clinton Administration Exported Government instead of Free Enterprise and Failed the Russian People. (2000) Members of the Speaker's Advisory Group on Russia. US House of Representatives 106th Congress. (Sometimes known as the Cox committee). Washington.
2. Fukuyama, Francis (1992) The End of History. Free Press Ill. ISBN 0-02-910975-2. One of the ironies of his writing is that his views were almost uncritically accepted while those of his visionary peer, Samuel P. Huntington, who wrote about the clash of civilizations and predicted the problems we face with fundamentalist Islamic terrorism lifting near penury and died supported only by a few friends. It is also reasonable to point out that Dr. Fukuyama has modified his views considerably over the past decade.
3. Earley, Pete (2007) Comrade J. Putnams, New York. ISBN – 13: 978-0-399-15439-3. I do not know Mr. Earley and in some ways this is an unashamed plug for his book. My home library is filled with books about espionage which make the shelves and my wife groan but this book has pride of place for its authenticity.
