Take The "Group Of Ten" Seriously

Those in the media, politics, or academia who portray the recently arrested bunch of Russian spies as being a sort of The Pink Panther Meets James Bond escapade of no real moment are simply demonstrating both a lack of knowledge of the ways of the deep penetration asset and the past behavior of Russian (in the Soviet guise) espionage. The fact that not one classified document has been shown to have been passed by any of the agents to the controllers at Center is a tribute to the efficiency of the FBI and not a damnation of the spies as a collection of failed wannabes.

The most important word in the lexicon of espionage is "patience." Time, a very great deal of time, is necessary to install an illegal. It takes years to establish a cover identity. It takes even more years to maneuver the spy to a point where that individual has access to important information.

Some corners may be cut, some time saved, when a hostile service can recruit an agent-in-place. The agent-in-place was very much a feature of Soviet espionage during the Thirties and Forties when the supply of homegrown Communist ideologues provided ready recruiting and easy placement in sensitive areas. Even in those salad days when Leftists were to be found in every New Deal agency and most of the new bureaucracies established in the pressure of war, the Soviets took time, were willing to see months, even years pass fallow of high level catch.

Importantly, even when ideologically motivated homegrown agents were plentiful and fruitful in their productivity, the Soviets backstopped these individuals with elaborate networks of long resident illegal penetration agents. Having your own person--a genuine Russian with all that implied and implies--assured a higher likelihood of higher quality catch as well as a greater willingness to roll with the punches rather than roll over if caught by the imperialist camp's counterintelligence services.

It must also be understood that often the desired catch is not to be found in a secret document, a confidential memo, a classified operational plan. Often the best catch is found at insider social functions, at think tank sponsored conferences, at inside-the-Beltway cocktail get togethers. A species of very useful information is that of human foibles, human failings, who-is-sleeping-with-whom (both literally and metaphorically,) who is unhappy at work, feels unappreciated by the boss, who is willing to leak and what can they leak.

Social interactions also provide for the opportunity to informally but definitely affect policy as it is being formed. This setting provides for enormous personal leverage on the thinking which will someday fossilize into policy. So the agent of espionage can also serve as an agent of influence.

Historically, the Russians have prized both forms of agent equally. The Kremlin has long understood that it is even better to influence policy than it is to ferret out the policy from some Burn Before Reading archive. So, the well placed spy is a highly effective person-to-person diplomatic program. The effectiveness comes from the secret nature of the spy's true loyalties and affiliations.

Yes, it would have been more tidy if the Feeb could have let the Gang of Ten stay out and about awhile longer. It might have been more satisfying to the Bureau and the Department of Justice. There must have been excellent reasons to run the take-down earlier than would have been optimum.

The reason is implicit in the fate of Agent Number Eleven, the spy who got away. This man, alleged to have been the network's paymaster, had already beat feet when the pop went down. Arrested in Cyprus, the man was let out on minimum bail by an obliging magistrate whereupon he sought a more hospitable climate--something not hard to accomplish on the divided island.

It is probable that the whole group was in the process of exfiltrating the US at the time of the arrests. Somehow, the FBI counterintelligence operation had been blown after years of successful running.

At that point the Bureau had only two options. One was to let the boys and girls head back to Russia with a heap of "lessons learned" to pass on to Center. The other was to drop the dime on them and hope that at least one weak link would break under the threat of the (relatively) mild penalties for failing to register as a foreign agent and money laundering so as to provide the counterintelligence shop useful information on Russian methods.

The Feebies made the right choice. Now, the challenge is simply to see if the self-defined elite of American politics, media, and academia can face up to the reality of Russian espionage. They would be well advised to do so as the Russians are not going to suddenly end their love affair with doing things covertly.

Way To Go, Center!

Looks like the Kremlin forgot to push its "reset" button. Not that Vladimir Putin or Dimitri Medvevdev can be held personally responsible. These guys have been too busy since coming to power five years ago to review the file covering espionage operations started back in the days when Bill Clinton was making amorous with White House interns.

The ten Russians arrested in the US along with an eleventh reportedly picked up in Cyprus were popped as the FBI finally wrapped up an investigation which started even as the Republicans in the House of Representatives were protecting American morality by impeaching the president. The timing of the Feebs' move is open to question.

Not even the most pessimistic assessment of the long and winding road of Russian plotting gives any hint that the Moscow Moles were anywhere near any key to any executive lavatory. The snippets of documents filed by the Department of Justice (at least as quoted in the several media accounts) make for fun reading by devotees of the spy versus spy genre but show no real evidence of any honest-to-gosh, bottled in bond, US government secrets.

On the US side the nearly twenty year caper complete with codes and cyphers, false identities, dead drops and brush passes to say nothing of wiretaps, surveillance teams, black bag jobs, and all the other features of a trade craft based spy yarn is portrayed as a major success against a crafty, dedicated, and omnipresent adversary. A reminder, according to at least one old time Soviet secret agent, of the worse days of Cold War excess.

The Russian response has been restrained--at least by Kremlin standards of the past. The Lads in the (New) Kremlin allow as how the people arrested may have been Russian nationals but will not go so far as to concede that their purposes in traveling under false names may have been nefarious in the slightest. Vladimir (The Good Czar) Putin did go a bit ballistic, averring that the "US police had gone out of control" in comments to visiting Bill Clinton.

Vlad Of The Bare Chest did seem more concerned over the timing of the Department of Justice action and its possible aftershocks than he did the slight problem of Russians being caught in rather flagrant disregard of normal protocol. At first the Russian Foreign Ministry took much the same line, noting that the episode should be viewed in the context of the improving relations between Russia and the US.

However, the Foreign Ministry did harden its position a few hours later. The new, improved narrative took the view that the arrests must be seen as an attempt by unnamed but certainly sinister forces to erode the new harmony between the Men in the Kremlin and the Guy in the Oval. There were dark ruminations about similar incidents in the past which always, in the Foreign Ministry's eyes, took place during times of improving relations. The parallel was obvious; by the timing of the arrests and the relative lack of harm done the US, someone in the US government was doing his evil best to toss a spanner in the works.

The timing was a bit odd, considering that only a few days earlier, President Obama had been making ever-so-nice with Dimitri Medvedev. Both men had toasted the successful pushing of assorted "reset" buttons. The Nice Young Man Of The People From Chicago took his counterpart out to a nearby and apparently renowned throughout the world hamburger joint for a quick bite of an appropriately populist food. Smiles all around.

The Russians have been playing the espionage game against the US without pause during and after the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Despite changes in name, alterations in the form of government, reduction in geographic extent, erosion of military, economic, and diplomatic power, the game went on. Changes in Russia of a more positive nature since the emergence of Putin and his protegee, Medvedev, would or have served to change the nature and character of the game.

The Russians have a long history of using espionage as a preferred tool of state. Quite often, regardless of the nature or the regime, czar, commissar, or president, the Russians have used espionage to their advantage. The directors of FBI, CIA, and the Office of National Intelligence have all stated on the public record that Russian espionage had continued year after year at or above the level achieved during the Cold War. No one familiar with the spy-versus-spy scene has found a need to dissent from this appreciation.

It has been fashionable for some years within the ever-so-progressive circles of the American hoi olligoi to poo-poo the assessments offered by the US intelligence community regarding the unchanging nature of the Russian love of espionage or its targeting of the US as the "main enemy" as so much Cold War alarmist rhetoric spewed in support of ever greater budgets. It never crossed the closed minds of the "progressives" that maybe, just maybe, the professionals in the wild and wacky world of espionage might possibly know what they were talking about.

The arrests and their high profile juxtaposition with the heady, dare one write, "giddy," meeting of Obama with Medvedev may serve as a healthy corrective for all those in government as well as outside that the Russians play a very hardball game in pursuing national interest. The mere fact that the Russian clandestine service was willing to invest quite a few years in establishing the bona fides of their agents, quite a few patient years of moving their pawns into potential positions of access to critical information found in venues outside of the official agencies, shows a deep commitment to the art and craft of espionage. The fact that the controllers back at Center were content to wait more years before having any real chance of a payoff underscores both the commitment to and high appreciation for the results of spying.

Regardless of what any member of the American elite might wish, Russia is not and will never be an American "friend." This is true not because the Russian government is necessarily and automatically hostile to the US. Rather it is the result of the realistic and realpolitck nature of the Russian pursuit of national interest. The Russians understand that friendship exists only between people, individuals. It does not exist, cannot exist, between states.

It was an English Foreign Secretary who once observed that states have neither lasting friends nor lasting enemies, only lasting interests. The Russians are in tandem with this concept.

Look at it this way. Just because the Russians spy on us doesn't mean they don't like us. Heck, it's only business, nothing personal.