Week 28 (2010): Advice for Russian Spymasters

Two weeks ago, as you know already, ten Russian spies were arrested in the USA. They were charged with conspiracy to act as agents of a foreign government without notifying the US Attorney General. The ten Russians were swapped for four Russians serving sentences in Russia’s prisons. Most of the ten “illegals” lived under false names, in pairs and produced children with paired colleagues to make the cover look authentic; they sometimes swapped identical coloured bags when crossing each other in a public place, sent messages using invisible ink, buried money in fields. One of them took a Canadian boy’s death certificate and acquired a forged passport. (He had obviously read The Day of the Jackal.) If since the retirement of Frederick Forsyth, you have missed exciting stuff, please read the attached fifty pages.  They are both entertaining and educative.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/062810complaint1.pdf

http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/062810complaint2.pdf

Complaint one is filed by Amit Patel, a special agent with FBI, who was given the pleasant task of following Anna Chapman and some others residing in the USA since 1990s. What you read here are handful of examples out of thousands of conversations tapped, bugged mails, decrypted codes, video evidence, meetings with embassy staff and so on. Complaint no. 2 is filed by a lady agent, Maria Ricci, who also for years has been following the Russian spies. For the past fifteen years, at least ten SVR agents were gathering intelligence for Russia, and loads of FBI agents were conducting a counter-intelligence operation against them.  These efforts of fifteen years culminated in the deportation of all ten spies in less than two weeks since their arrest. When describing the whole affair a range of adjectives like bizarre, clumsy, old-fashioned, funny and amusing, shocking and illegal have been used. In this article, I shall not discuss any details about the spies themselves or the case, because you can read as much as you like and more on the www. I’ll simply offer some lesser known facts, my analysis of the case and finally some useful advice to the Russian spymasters so that similar embarrassments can be avoided in the future. 

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1. SVR is Russia’s foreign intelligence service. The arrested spies worked for SVR. Is SVR the same thing as KGB?
2. In today’s Facebook and Google world, why is Russia conducting stone-age spying?
3. Why were Russian spies swapped for Russian spies? How could Obama, with a stroke of the pen, pick up Russian prisoners and fly them to the free West? Why did he not free Khodarkovsky – Russia’s erstwhile richest man, who is imprisoned for the past seven years?
4. And finally, the most intriguing question that many have asked. The Russians were charged with acting as agents without notifying the US Attorney General.  Is this some kind of a joke – like the US visa form asking the applicant whether he is a terrorist?

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Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (SVR) is translated as Foreign Intelligence Service.

Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) was translated as the Committee for State Security. It was formally born in 1954, but in reality existed under different names since the Russian revolution of 1917. KGB was formally dissolved in 1991, along with the death of the Soviet Union; but continues to exist under different names.

In 1991, about half a million people were employed by the KGB. KGB was grouped into at least sixteen key departments called “directorates” (Управления). Each directorate was assigned a specific area of security. For example, the 5^th chief directorate (later called “Z”) dealt with censorship and security against artistic, political or religious dissent. (The Russian Hare Krishnas were persecuted by this arm). The 9^th directorate provided bodyguards for the communist party leaders and their families. The 1^st chief directorate was responsible for foreign espionage. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s de-facto head, worked in the 5^th directorate, and later in the 1^st chief directorate for a long time. He worked as a spy in Germany between 1985 and 1990.

Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, KGB disintegrated as well. Geographic disintegration was expected and happened. Ukraine and Byelorussia, for example, have their own security agencies now. What was unexpected was the splitting of KGB into two organisations.

Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (FSB) translated as Federal Security Service calls itself the successor of KGB. But in 1991, the First Chief Directorate was removed from it. This de-merged department was formed into SVR, another successor agency dealing exclusively with foreign intelligence. The former KGB, thus, are now FSB+ SVR. (A rose by any other name…, but Russia now has two roses smelling as sweet).

The reasons for such a split can only be speculated. It’s possible the new Russia (meaning Yeltsin) felt the erstwhile KGB to be too powerful. Or the split could have been done to create new positions for important people who had become jobless. People fill vacancies, but sometimes vacancies are created for people. Whatever the reasons, a new organisation SVR was created in 1991, with its chief reporting directly to the Russian president. As Parkinson’s Law suggested, the new organisation formed their own new directorates, thereby creating more directors and more deputies. The Russian spies caught in the USA were employed by SVR.

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What happens in major corporations? A department or a business unit tries to justify its own existence. Human beings are driven by self-interest and instinctive self-preservation. Would you seriously expect a business manager to go to his boss and say, “Sorry, I think I am redundant, and the department I am running is redundant. Please dissolve it”?  

Every company and each country have people who are redundant, activities which should be shut down, initiatives that should not have been suggested.

Two years ago, India sent a spacecraft (chandrayaan-1) to the moon. The mission succeeded and the Indian flag was planted on the moon. The spacecraft detected water on the moon. The Indian media talked about it endlessly, trying to convince Indians that this was a moment of great national pride.

When half of the country’s people don’t have access to drinking water, what’s the sense in detecting water on the moon? The USA and other civilized countries have long abandoned moon trips as hugely loss-making, and suitable only for the cold war times. And India, fuelled by the self-preservation instincts of scientists, embarks on this senseless mission. You can’t expect the head of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to assess his own mission objectively. He has to keep his job, and he must keep the organization running.

It’s the same with the United States of America. Many contemporary wars, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, continue because employed soldiers need to be employed somewhere, because new weapons need to be tested. The world will be a far more peaceful place if the war hawks and their departments, along with the nuclear scientists are given redundancy packages and sent home.

The same thing and worse happened with the SVR. In the age of Facebook and Google, the presence of sleeper agents (illegals) executing orange-coloured bag swaps on a railway staircase should only happen in a cheap movie. A good hacker sitting in his heated Russian apartment is capable of gaining far better information than the ten spies managed in the past two decades.

The size of a corporate man’s importance is decided by the size of his budget. As a result, you’ll see every director in a big organization fighting to increase the headcount under him, start new expensive initiatives, and ask for higher budgets. SVR is no exception. In fact, it is in direct competition with FSB. SVR must continue to preserve its budgets and ask for more. Sleeper agents are one guaranteed way of spending much and regularly. The longer they are stationed in a foreign country, the longer you preserve the budgets.

The Russian spies in the USA did not even look interested in finding out anything. If you are living in America (instead of Russia), earning two salaries (American job and Russian espionage) why would you ever want to risk going back? They sensed that their employer looked equally uninterested. No urgency was required of them despite lack of results for more than ten years. (In the American courts, the Russian spies could not be charged with espionage, because they had not managed to access or send a single piece of classified information). 

The same goes for the other side. Americans continued to follow the incompetent spies since the 1990s. Instead of arresting them, they were happy to follow them. The American paranoia is targeted at Islamist terrorists, not at Russians. If the illegals were Muslims, would FBI have trailed them for ten years – without any action? FBI is also a corporation, and their directors also must preserve their budgets and headcount. The American taxpayer’s money and Russia’s natural resources were wasted on a farce. 

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Why did the swap happen? Why were Russians swapped for Russians? And why ten for four?

Obama’s current worry is Iran, not Russia. And his advisors have told him that the Iran issue can be dealt by using Russians as intermediaries. (USA and Iran have no diplomatic relations).  What are ten inept spies compared to the threat of another Islamic nuclear bomb? That is the reason why Obama had to sign the deportation of the Russian spies and do it as quickly as possible.

The real swap of agents vs Iran issue happened behind diplomatic doors. (This is further confirmed by Russian president Medvedev seeking on 16 July “appropriate” explanation from Iran on its nuclear programme). But that could not be cited as a White House press release. It became essential to create a spy swap.

As we saw above, the KGB cold war methods are outdated now. America does well with satellite surveillance and hacking. It can also buy Russians to spy for them. Capitalism won the cold war. Modern Russia has no ideology. Therefore, American communists can no longer be recruited to spy for Russia.

Secondly, it is easier for a Russian agent to infiltrate America. America is a land of immigrants and strange accents even from those holding American passports don’t surprise anybody. That’s not the case with Russia. A foreigner, no matter how fluent in Russian, stands out in the crowd. Why would an American want to risk a long imprisonment in a Siberian colony?

Safe to assume that the USA has no sleeper agents in Russia. Or if they have, none of them is in Russian prisons. The White House staff had to browse hurriedly through their files to dig out names of those charged with espionage. They evidently could not find more than four satisfactory names. Why did Obama not free people like Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man in 2004?

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003, and has been kept in prison under different pretexts. (A riddle circulating in Russia in 2004: What is a question to which every American citizen will answer “yes” and every Russian citizen “no”? The question was: Would you swap places with the richest man in your country?)

There is a reason why Obama could not free other people. Russia rules by decree, America doesn’t. It must produce some existing law to justify its actions. On this occasion, it appears that the Geneva conventions (1929&1949) were invoked. They deal with the treatment of prisoners of war. According to the Geneva conventions, prisoners of war can be exchanged.

As a result, Obama could not free any political prisoners in Russia– they were not prisoners of war. Only those charged with espionage could be considered as POWs.

USA and Russia want to take their relationship to heights never before. In order to achieve that, they had to first acknowledge the existence of war between them.

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Finally, the charge itself: Acting as agents without notifying the US Attorney General. The non-notification made the agents illegal. Did American justice seriously expect the Russian spies to go and register themselves with the US Attorney General’s office?

As a matter of fact, the USA does have a Foreign Agents Registration Act, 1938. The Counterespionage Section (CES) in the National Security Division (NSD) is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Act. At the US Dept of justice website, you will find the browseable database that tells you which foreign agents are registered. (http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fara/)

This act is used, among others, by the Saudi royal family to improve its image battered after 9/11. Qorvis communications, a consulting firm based in Washington D.C., is registered with FARA as Saudi Arabia’s agent. In 2002, Saudi Arabia gave 15 million USD to Qorvis to raise awareness of the Kingdom’s commitment to the war on terror. The heavy PR campaign covered all major media; the spokesman appeared 50 times on television. More importantly, the lobbyists met several White House staff – something that the Russian spies did not manage over a span of fifteen years.

Granted that the agents registered under FARA are not spies (presumably). Historically, though, the act was introduced during the Second World War to keep track of the German spies in the USA.  

My advice to the Russian spymasters in SVR is to use FARA in future. Register your spies with the US Attorney General. That way Russia can officially transfer millions of dollars to the spies and save on cash bags clumsily buried in fields. The spies can lobby actively, and actually meet high ranking politicians in the White House. The FBI agents will trail your spies, but they were doing that anyway – so nothing changes. The Russian Foreign Intelligence agency keeps its budgets, keeps the staff, conducts the spying activity far more efficiently, and since the agents are registered there is no fear of their getting arrested.

When Facebook and Google have made the world an open place, there is no reason why spying should be secret.

Ravi

 

The web-o-graphy:

1. http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/062810complaint1.pdf

http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/062810complaint2.pdf

The two complaints by FBI agents. If you are spy fiction lovers, read to feel nostalgic. You will not meet textbook spying anywhere else now.

2. http://svr.gov.ru/ (In Russian, naturally): Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Agency’s website. If you are Russian, you can apply for a job through this website.

3. http://www.fsb.ru/ (In Russian): Russia’s Federal Security Service, the other child of KGB.

4. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/305?OpenDocument

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/375?OpenDocument

Geneva conventions of 1929 and 1949 detail the way prisoners of war should be treated.

5. http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fara/ : USA’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Browse through the database to find registered agents from your country.

6. http://projects.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=332&sid=100

Details of Saudis spending millions in this report from the center for public integrity.

R.