Thursday, Mar. 1, 2001. Page 9
Why Call It 'Intelligence?
'
By Pavel Felgenhauer
Last week FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested in the United States
and charged with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia for the last 15
years. A spokesman for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Boris Labusov,
told Russian State Television: "We never comment on whether any specific
person has or has not a relation to Russian special services." While speaking
Labusov noticeably smirked and added that "the greatest achievements of
intelligence services become public knowledge only after an exposure."
If Russian officials are trying to hide their alleged connection with
Hanssen, they are doing a pretty lousy job of it. In fact, they seem to be
quite proud of the idea that they had such an agent.
In the ’80s and ’90s, the Russians apparently managed to operate two highly
successful moles, one in the FBI and one in the CIA: Hanssen and Aldrich
Ames. Moscow obtained quite a lot of sensitive information from Ames and,
allegedly, from Hanssen as well. It’s also virtually certain that Ames and
Hanssen were not the only well-placed moles that Russia had in the West.
Soviet intelligence was not only highly professional, but also remarkably
successful. So why then did Moscow lose the Cold War?
A retired Russian intelligence official once told me that in the late ’70s,
Russian military intelligence managed to acquire a package of highly secret
documents revealing the true maximum production capacity of all U.S. heavy
arms-making industrial plants. It turned out that the United States could not
grossly expand tank and other heavy-weapons production even if the economy
were put on a war footing and that the Soviet Union had a towering advantage
in this field.
The spies who came up with this important intelligence were expecting bunches
of medals, but were harshly reprimanded by their superiors instead. The
documents were suppressed by the military chiefs and never reported to the
Politburo.
The Soviet military-industrial chiefs were at that time conjuring a massive
Western military threat in order to frighten the Kremlin into spending more
on defense. They were deliberately fabricating yarns about U.S. military
might and did not need any true information about American weaknesses.
The same thing was happening on the other side of the Cold War divide. At the
end of the ’80s, the CIA estimated Soviet gross domestic product as almost 60
percent of America’s. The agency portrayed Moscow not only as a military
superpower — which it was in many aspects — but also as a modern industrial
power, which it was not. As a result of such intelligence, the sudden
political, military and industrial implosion of the Soviet empire came as a
total surprise to the West.
Throughout the Cold War, both countries spent billions of dollars recruiting
moles that were used to find and "neutralize" enemy moles, while truly
important information was shoved aside as insignificant.
In 1995, for instance, the CIA produced a report that stated that no "rogue"
state could develop intercontinental ballistic missiles within 15 years, and
that if a threat of rogue ICBMs did develop, U.S. intelligence would detect
it years in advance.
This report disturbed many Washington decision-makers, so Congress formed a
special commission headed by Donald Rumsfeld, who is now secretary of
defense. The purpose of this commission was to conjure a rogue ICBM threat
out of thin air. In 1999, the Rumsfeld commission concluded that "North Korea
and Iran will have an ICBM force to attack the U.S. in five years" and Iraq
will have an ICBM force ready to attack the U.S. in 10 years or sooner.
Now, almost two years later, it’s obvious that the Rumsfeld report is a sham
and that the original CIA estimates are correct. But who cares? Rumsfeld was
appointed defense secretary because he is a good apparatchik who knows that
the truth is whatever the party says it is.
For almost a year now, the Moscow elite has been anticipating, in accordance
with intelligence reports, that the new Bush administration would be Russia’s
best friend no matter what happened here. At the same time, the West is still
waiting for President Vladimir Putin to reveal himself as the true liberal
that he must be at heart.
By now, though, both East and West must have disappointedly returned to the
drawing board to think up new policies — which no doubt are based on the
latest reports of their respective intelligence services.
Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent, Moscow-based defense analyst.
