ANALYSIS: Russian spies and lessons for Ukraine (01/19/97)

ANALYSIS: Russian spies and lessons for Ukraine

by Volodymyr Zviglyanich

Recent arrests of Russian spies in the United States have acquired a cyclical regularity. The intelligence community and the American public had not yet forgotten the case of Harold J. Nicholson, a 16-year CIA veteran who had served as station chief in Romania and was arrested in November 1996, when a month later, on December 18, a 43-year-old FBI agent, Earl Edwin Pitts, was arrested on charges of spying for Moscow.

If this is a pattern, then one should expect at least 12 new high-profile espionage cases in the year to come. In real terms, the latest crop of spy arrests has again focused attention on the eternal questions of money and morals, the essence of the mysterious Russian soul and Russia's perception of the West and what it calls its "near abroad" - especially Ukraine.

Gold and gods

Mr. Pitts served at the Federal Bureau of Investigations, a government agency in charge of counterintelligence activities. By recruiting Mr. Pitts, the Russians - and there are very serious reasons to believe that Mr. Pitts was their most valuable asset at the bureau - had managed to penetrate the very heart of this country's counterintelligence service. The actual material and moral loss to American security and to the intelligence/counterintelligence system resulting from his deeds is yet to be estimated.

It is unlikely that the real sum of material loss for America caused by the sell-off of top secret information by CIA veterans Aldrich H. Ames, arrested in February 1994, who disclosed the identities of American agents in Russia, and Mr. Nicholson, and FBI Agent Pitts will ever be known.

However, one could assess certain breaches in the morals of the corporations called to serve and protect the American ideals. American society was always proud of its devotion to the ideals of freedom, democracy and equal rights for all, notwithstanding race or religion, and to the pursuit of happiness. That was the essence of "Americanism" and the Euroatlantic model of democracy in general in their competition with totalitarian systems - foremost with the "evil empire," as President Ronald Regan succinctly called the USSR.

The devotion to these ideals constituted the core of the officers' code of honor, especially for middle-ranking officers, whence came all three of the Russian spies - Messrs. Ames, Nicholson and Pitts. It was believed that for these people, who passed the security clearance and numerous polygraph tests, loyalty to their country, adherence to the ideals of democracy and accurate performance of their duties is higher on the list of moral priorities than money.

However, all three Russian spies betrayed their country for relatively small (in year-to-year terms) sums of money. Mr. Ames received $1.5 million for 10 years, Mr. Pitts was given $150,000 from 1987 to 1992, and Mr. Nicholson obtained $180,000 from 1994 to November 1996.

One could argue that the importance and harshness of the ideological and moral antagonism of the two systems - capitalist and socialist - during the period of the Cold War was over-exaggerated, and the zeal of the capitalist-socialist dichotomy typical of the first decades after the Bolshevik coup in 1917 continued to the most recent period. However, starting from the mid '80s, the competition of the intelligence communities of both camps for the morals and ideals of the people has dwindled and been trivialized. The question simply was: who will pay more?

Gen. Oleg Kalugin, acting chief of the KGB's Washington residency from 1968 to 1969 who is now a permanent resident of this country, said: "In the old days, there were strong ideological barriers to betraying your country. We were fighting for the minds of human beings across the continents ... Today, this is all gone. We do not see each other as mortal enemies any longer, so why not play along with the other side, as long as they are willing to pay you?"1

The end of the Cold War evidently has removed some of the traditional impediments to espionage. KGB officers apparently had no problems with recruiting agents from the CIA and the FBI. It is remarkable to observe the dynamics of the sums of money obtained by the agents: the oldest and least gifted KGB agent, Mr. Ames, got the biggest sum, whereas the younger and more capable agents, Messrs. Nicholson and Pitts, received markedly smaller sums of money, i.e., the volume of "gold" decreased while the significance of information for the Russians gradually increased.

Mr. Pitts, as was revealed during a 16-month undercover sting operation conducted by his fellow officers, was ready to sell top-secret information and his loyalty for any sum of money. Remarkably enough, he was not involved in a costly divorce process, as was Mr. Nicholson, nor did he suffer from alcoholism and depression, as did Mr. Ames.

The West's enchantment with Russian democracy, which allegedly reached historic pinnacle during the coup, affected decision-making in the West and resulted in the decrease of counterintelligence measures by the U.S. It was taken for granted that the sight of Boris Yeltsin atop a tank almost automatically signified the end of antagonism between the intelligence communities of the West and Russia, and between the political cultures of both countries. The propaganda services of numerous successors to the Soviet KGB in Russia have made a big deal of promoting this idea.

With this aim, a concept was elaborated of "strategic cooperation" of the intelligence communities of Russia and the U.S. in combating international terrorism, drug trafficking, etc., and this concept was hammered persistently and consciously into both the public consciousness and leadership mentality of the Western countries. However, so far nobody has heard about any case in which international terrorist activities (or drug trafficking) were curtailed due to the joint efforts of Russian and Western intelligence activities. On the contrary, the activity of dozens of agents of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia (SVR - a successor to the KGB) in the U.S. capital and other major cities now goes on almost openly.

The Russian soul and espionage

Weak knowledge about the historical peculiarities of the Russian collective psyche and the history of the Russian secret service on the part of government officials and middle-ranking officers in the CIA and the FBI might be partly to blame for this situation. According to former CIA Director Richard M. Helms, "Spying is part of the Russian nature. They were up to it all the time under the tsars. It will take much more than one little collapse of the Soviet Union to expunge it from the Russian psyche."2

Secret services in Russia from the tsars to commissars have functioned as the second (and essentially - the first) state power. From the times of the "Oprichnina"3 of Tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible) to the Bolshevik successors of "Iron Feliks"4 - Yezhov, Beria, Andropov and other "faithful Leninists" - state power in Russia was based on coercion by the "top" party nomenklatura of the society at large and by the necessity of top officials to possess information on the true sentiments of the society. An image of the enemy (both internal and external) and the need to have intimate knowledge of that enemy were the prerequisites for the existence of the totalitarian "ideocracy."

After the collapse of the USSR and the state ideology of Marxism-Leninism, the secret services of Russia eased their coercive activities against dissidents. That was erroneously perceived in the West as eliminating the coercive functions of the KGB successors, including those against the West. However, as arrests of Soviet and Russian agents have shown, the West continues to be, if not a direct enemy to Russia, then still a system that is far from being an ally. The situation is further complicated by the absence of a clear-cut Western perception vis-à-vis Russia: Is Russia an ally, a "strategic partner" or a competitor for world influence? Therefore, the activities of the intelligence services of Russia against the West and the U.S. have increased rather than stopped. Western financial assistance is spent, inter alia, for the recruitment of CIA and FBI agents rather than on the creation of full-fledged democratic institutions, a legal system to protect foreign investments and introduction of a true market economy.

Assistance and geopolitics

The Russian psyche and mentality did not essentially change with the break-up of the USSR.

Though, the West is no longer viewed as an ideological foe, the legacy of antagonism is preserved in a modified fashion. The West is perceived as threatening to Russia because it could deprive Russia of influence in countries under its domain since the times of the Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible. Therefore, in Russia it is considered morally and historically legitimate to oppose NATO enlargement.

This systemic antagonism has moved from the ideological realm into the more dangerous sphere of a geopolitical contest for global influence. Here Russia is especially unpredictable and, therefore, dangerous. It behaves like a state that it has preserved its dominance in Eastern Europe, although it has lost the might of the USSR. Russia does not want to lose influence in Eastern Europe - something that will inevitably occur in case of NATO enlargement.

Therefore, much Russian activity is aimed against NATO enlargement, as well as on collecting information with the help of recruited agents. Very often Russia does not known how to use this information properly; its information-gathering activities look like a face-saving strategy designed to demonstrate the potency of a former great power.

This attracts attention to the question of Western financial assistance to Russia. Is it proper to spend the American taxpayers' money on indirect financing of detrimental activities of Russia against the U.S.? One cannot control what exactly Western money is spent on after it is actually transferred to Russia. Moreover, the sum of this assistance is only a small fraction of the true volume of hard currency illegally moved abroad (some $80 billion). Russian authorities so far have done nothing to stop this money flight.

So, the question must be asked: Isn't it more rational to channel money from financing Russia (and its special services) toward aid to other former Soviet states - Ukraine first and foremost? This is a rhetorical question, as a paradigm-shift in the foreign-aid activities of the current administration is already taking place. One can only hope that cases like those of Messrs. Nicholson and Pitt will accelerate this process.

Lessons for Ukraine

What are the consequences of Russian espionage in the West for Ukraine?

1) After the collapse of the USSR, which occurred after Ukraine's Declaration of Independence on August 24, 1991, and its confirmation via a national referendum on December 1, 1991, Russian special services began to treat Ukraine as a country potentially dangerous for Russia. The danger lies first of all in the fact that Ukraine could eventually quit Russia's sphere of influence in Europe. That would signify the end of Russia's post-Soviet identity, which is fraught with the possibility of Russia's disintegration.

2) This fact has institutionally sanctioned the special services of Russia to conduct operations against Ukraine - both abroad and inside the country. Russia's activities against Ukraine acquired further momentum when the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia headed by Yevgenii Primakov, beginning with the end of 1993 (at the time of President Yeltsin's dissolution by force of the Russian Parliament) started developing a concept of "integration" of the former Soviet republics. It is understandable that any "integration" is impossible without Ukraine.

With the aim of gathering any and all information on the first steps of Ukrainian diplomacy, beginning in 1994 all Russian embassies have created special departments "on questions of the CIS member-states." These are staffed with the cadre officers of the former KGB and GRU (military intelligence). Their task is to collect information on Ukraine's attitude toward joining NATO, contacts of Ukrainian diplomats and state officials with those of the West, sums and conditions of Western financial aid to Ukraine, the state of economic reforms in Ukraine, and sentiments of the population there, especially in Russophone districts, etc. All this is the traditional set of measures used by the old Soviet KGB against the West.

3) Inside Ukraine the activities of the Russian special services are conducted almost openly - although on the surface these are disguised by the mutual obligation of CIS member-states not to conduct intelligence operations against each other. However, Ukraine is only an associate member of the Commonwealth of Independent States - a fact that deprives the Russian special services of the necessity to adhere even to such an ephemeral restraint. For example, as one highly positioned Ukrainian official said recently in Washington, of the 460,000 citizens of Sevastopol, more than 100,000 are retired Soviet officers who openly collaborate with the cadre of intelligence staffers of the Russian services. The two biggest intelligence centers of Russia abroad function openly in Sevastopol: the intelligence center of the GRU, subordinated to the Russian Defense Ministry, and the intelligence center of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, subordinated to the Russian navy.

Both of them, using the entire range of radio frequencies of the former Soviet BSF, have an opportunity to conduct electronic espionage activities in the southern industrial regions of Ukraine. Ukraine has raised the question of division of BSF radio frequencies many times during the negotiations on the fleet's division, but it has always been met with vehement Russian opposition. At the same time, Russia created a vast network of informers in Crimea, and in Russophone districts of Ukraine, such as the Donbas, Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhia, with the aim of promoting regionalism and creating potential centers of local opposition to Kyiv.

Conclusion

Russia's espionage activities in the West and in Ukraine are two sides of one coin - an attempt by Russia to preserve its dominant role in the European geopolitical space. Therefore, one cannot consider it accidental that Ukraine's First Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, Anton Buteiko, stated on December 17, 1996, that Ukraine no longer rules out the possibility of a future application for NATO membership.5 As follows from this statement, Ukraine's decisions will depend on the Russian Parliament's actions concerning the territorial claims recently raised by both chambers of the Russian Parliament - the Duma and Federation Council.

This decision could entail a drastic reconsideration of Ukraine's foreign policy and geostrategic priorities.

Dr. Volodymyr Zviglyanich is adjunct professor of East European area studies at George Washington University.

1. See: Michael Dobbs. "Through Tsars and Soviet Union, Spying Remains Second Nature for Russia" - The Washington Post, December 19,1996, p. A10.

2. Ibid.

3. Oprichnina - a special guard of Ivan the Terrible called upon to crush his internal enemies. The first chief of this prototype of the later tsarist okhranka (protective service), then the CheKa and the KGB, was Maluta Skuratov, Ivan's closest ally and executor of his bloody orders. Oprichniki moved on horseback and had brooms and dogs' heads attached to their saddles. The dogs' heads symbolized the heads of the tsar's enemies, and the brooms symbolized the "cleaning" efforts of this service.

4. Feliks Dzerzhinskii, first chief of the CheKa, an extraordinary commission created by Lenin after the Bolshevik coup in 1917. For his staunch ideological zeal and hatred of "class enemies" he was assigned to the pantheon of Bolshevik saints. "Chekisty" later became the nickname of KGB agents.

5. Monitor - A Daily Briefing on the Post-Soviet States, Wednesday, December 18, 1996, p. 1.

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