NOT ‘BUSINESS AS USUAL’: RUSSIAN SPYING REQUIRES SEA CHANGE IN BENIGN VIEW OF MOSCOW’S INTENTIONS

(Washington, D.C.): The real news from
yesterday’s intelligence bombshell — for
nine years, a well-placed U.S. official
allegedly helped the KGB defeat the CIA’s
operations and neutralize Americans
and Russians involved in those operations
— is not that the Kremlin continues to
engage in espionage against the United
States. Nor is it even that Moscow is
still managing to do so with lethal
effectiveness.

After all, any realistic
assessment of the character of the former
Soviet Union’s conduct during the
Gorbachev years and most of the Yeltsin
era would establish that the essential,
malevolent character of the KGB has
remained unchanged. This reality will
certainly not be changed by the
withdrawal (or expulsion) of Aldrich
Ames’ Russian handlers or by promises
fatuously being sought by the Clinton
Administration that Kremlin spying
against the United States will cease.

The real news, rather, is
that the Clinton Administration appears
determined to pretend that all is well in
relations between the two nations. Just
this afternoon, President Clinton
reaffirmed his intention to insulate
political, economic and strategic ties
from the fallout of the Ames affair:

“I do not think that the
facts of this case at this time
undermine in any way shape or form
the policy we have followed for the
last year toward President Yeltsin
and his government and forces of
change in Russia, I do not believe
that. It is serious, though.”

‘They Just Don’t Get It’

It is bad enough that Mr. Clinton
should persist in such an attitude in the
wake of Russia’s successful sandbagging
of the NATO ultimatum on Bosnia.⁽¹⁾
After all, Administration assertions of a
“constructive” Russian role in
the former Yugoslavia are ever more
untenable in the face of the Kremlin’s
crowing over the past few days
concerning: its success in dictating
terms to the West, saving the Serbs and
reestablishing Moscow’s decisive position
in Eastern Europe.

Presumably, the Clinton team would
have regarded a similar gambit involving
the unsolicited Soviet deployment of
troops with Saddam Hussein’s forces in
Kuwait on the eve of Desert Storm as a
“welcome development”! As a
practical matter, though, such a step
would, as in Bosnia, have prevented the
use of Western arms to compel Russian
clients to give up their ill-gotten
gains. And, as in Bosnia, it would also
have served to enhance the strategic
position of Moscow’s clients — and of
the Russians themselves — in
negotiations that will follow, at the
expense of the victims of aggression.

What the Intelligence
Fiasco Tells Us

If the Clinton Administration’s
security policy mavens like Strobe
Talbott and Morton Halperin (or
“Halbotts,” for short) are
unable to comprehend such subtle
strategic jujitsu, even they
should be able to grasp the menace posed
by unchecked Soviet-style intelligence
operations being run against the United
States. These include:

• The use of the newly opened
  Russian embassy on Mount Alto to
  begin collecting signals
  intelligence from throughout the
  Washington, D.C. area.
• Intensified operations at the
  KGB’s signals intelligence
  collection facility at Lourdes,
  Cuba to obtain comparable
  commercial, as well as military
  data from much of the southern
  eastern United States.
• The exploitation by Russian
  intelligence of the relaxed
  post-Cold War atmosphere and
  reduced U.S. vigilance on
  security matters to recruit
  “sleepers” — agents in
  place who will be activated as
  the need subsequently arises.
• The Clinton State Department is
  feverishly pressing to reverse
  past decision barring the use of
  the new U.S. embassy building in
  Moscow despite the fact that it
  has been unalterably compromised
  by KGB bugging techniques. Such a
  step would greatly facilitate
  Russian efforts to spy on U.S.
  diplomatic and other activities
  conducted in and from that
  facility.

To this list must now evidently be
included Ames’ very serious compromise of
U.S. human intelligence collection
activities and counter-intelligence
programs designed to protect American
secrets from Russian spies. Certainly,
some Russian citizens and American agents
working for this country have been
rendered useless (in at least a few
cases, thanks to KGB firing squads).

In the words of Ken deGraffenreid, a
distinguished member of the Center for
Security Policy’s Board of Advisors who
formerly was responsible for intelligence
matters on the Reagan National Security
Council: “The KGB is the size it was
and is exhibiting the aggressiveness it
did during the days of the Soviet Union.
That is simply absurd under present
circumstances.”

‘See No Evil’

One might well wonder why the Clinton
Administration appears so unconcerned
about these and other ominous
developments related to unfriendly
Russian policies and activities.
Unfortunately, the whole blame cannot be
placed at the feet of an Aldrich Ames,
even though a intelligence officer in his
position would be ideally situated to
promote Russian disinformation.⁽²⁾

The problem seems to lie at
least partly with the Administration’s
Halbotts — policy-makers who seem
constitutionally unable or unwilling to
be realistic about Russia. The
Center for Security Policy has just
learned, for example, that (shortly
before a lengthy and sharply critical
Senate debate over his nomination to
become Deputy Secretary of State) Strobe
Talbott directed that a State Department
study entitled “Rogue Nations of the
Future” dealing with Russia and the
host of other problem countries emerging
on the world stage be sent back to
the drafters. His
instructions: Retitle it “Third
World Rogue Nations of the
Future” in order to permit the
excision of warnings that Russia may once
more become a pariah state.

Reckless Dismantling of Key
Institutions Likely To Be Needed In the
Future

One aspect of the Halbott mindset is
of special concern. In willfully
disregarding danger signs emanating from
Russia, the Clinton Administration is
continuing apace with the precipitous and
greatly premature weakening — and in
some cases, outright dismantling
— of institutions upon which the West
heavily relied for its security in the
past. These include:

• NATO: With its
  effective acquiescence to Russian
  opposition to extending NATO
  membership to qualifying East
  European democracies and Moscow’s
  Bosnia gambit, the Clinton team
  has added impetus to the decline
  of the Atlantic Alliance. The
  withdrawal of most U.S. forces
  from Western Europe and the
  serious erosion in the vital
  “special relationship”
  with Great Britain exacerbate the
  risks involved.
• COCOM:
  Effective 31 March 1994, the
  United States and its Western
  partners will terminate the
  Coordinating Committee on
  Multilateral Export Controls.
  This organization, known as
  COCOM, proved over the past few
  decades to be an indispensable
  tool for: impeding unfriendly
  nations’ access to strategic
  dual-use technologies (e.g.,
  those involved in weaponry of
  mass destruction); maintaining
  the qualitative edge of the
  West’s defenses; and minimizing
  the costs of doing so.

No replacement
organization is in sight
even though the need for a
multilateral entity to perform
COCOM’s functions is arguably
more needed today than ever. What
is more, in light of Moscow’s
unslaked appetite for militarily
relevant technologies and the
real prospect that such
technology will wind up in
offensive Russian weaponry or
retransferred to other
“rogue nations,” a
successor to COCOM must be able
to control flows of equipment and
know-how to Russia, as well.

• The Department of Energy
  Nuclear Weapons Complex:
  As reported in numerous Center
  analyses, the United
  States is going out of the
  nuclear weapons business,
  even as many other states are
  getting into it. Thanks in
  particular to decisions made by
  Clinton Energy Secretary Hazel
  O’Leary, the U.S. is losing the
  capacity to develop, test and
  produce nuclear weaponry.

Worse yet, it is also losing
the capability to maintain
such weapons as it currently
deploys (the inexorable
result of its inability to supply
fresh tritium gas required by
such weapons.) As a result,
within a decade or so, the nation
will be unable to rely upon its
nuclear stockpile for deterrence
thanks to effective unilateral
nuclear disarmament.

• Radio Free Europe/Radio
  Liberty: Recent Clinton
  and congressional initiatives
  have put at risk two of the most
  highly leveraged tools for
  promoting freedom — and
  combatting threats to it: Radio
  Free Europe and Radio Liberty.
  The Hungarian service has already
  been shut down; the Polish, Czech
  and Baltic services are facing a
  similar fate; the invaluable
  research arm of RFE/RL is being
  eviscerated; and the remaining
  organizations are in jeopardy, as
  well.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
believes that the time has come to
revisit these and other decisions flowing
from the Clinton Administration’s myopic
attitude towards Russia. The
United States simply can no longer afford
what has come to be “business as
usual” with the Kremlin.

At the very least, corrective actions
should be taken aimed at: denying Russia
new opportunities for easy espionage
(e.g., utilization of the new U.S.
embassy building in Moscow and
penetration of the American space
program); reversing the weakening or
dismantling of key institutions; and
establishing that further U.S. taxpayer
aid to Russia will clearly be conditioned
upon institution-building crucial to
democratic and free-market reforms and an
end to activities that endanger such
institutions in both Russia and the
United States.

– 30 –

1. For more on
this Russian master-stroke, see the
Center for Security Policy’s recent Decision
Brief entitled, Checkmate:
Russian Imperialist Gambit in Bosnia
Protects Serbs, Dooms NATO Initiative
(18 February 1994, No.
94-D19).

2. A
counter-intelligence professional can be
invaluable to a foreign power engaged in
misleading adversaries about its
intentions and capabilities. This can be
accomplished by having a mole confirm
disinformation and/or by assisting his
handlers in retooling their message,
where necessary.