Last week Sergei Ivanov, head of the Kremlin’s Security Council,
publicly characterized United States intelligence as “lazy.” The
countries possessing great intelligence traditions, he said, included
Israel, Britain and Russia. These services had the professional
expertise required to get things done. The CIA, on the other hand, was
merely awash in money.
This statement was a departure from past Russian practice. Starting
in September 1990 Russian officials began depicting their own
intelligence as degenerate and corrupt. At that time an anonymous KGB
colonel told Russian journalists that the USSR’s foreign intelligence
administration was incompetent. Two years later KGB General Leonid
Shebarshin, former head of the KGB’s foreign intelligence branch (now
called the SVR), said the CIA had bested the KGB during the Cold War.
Shebarshin acknowledged that 15 KGB officers had been exposed as
traitors between 1975 and 1990, including 9 defectors.
In keeping with Shebarshin’s frank admission of defeat, SVR First
Deputy Chairman Viacheslav Trubnikov acknowledged in 1992 that 10
Russian intelligence staffers “went over to the West” in 1991. Secret
police chief Sergie Stepashin, at the beginning of 1994, said that
Russia was overrun with foreign spies — admitting that twenty such
persons had been arrested in the previous year.
Shortly after Stepashin’s statement, however, Russian intelligence
officials would hesitate before depicting themselves as crippled and
defeated.
Disinformation of this kind was no longer credible. The reason the
KGB fraternity suddenly clammed up about their own incompetence should
be obvious.
In late February, 1994, an American CIA official, Aldrich Ames, was
arrested for espionage. But this was no ordinary espionage. Ames was a
highly placed intelligence official. Between 1985 and his arrest in
1994, Ames betrayed nearly the entire CIA Operations Directorate to the
Russians. In fact, he sent over personnel records, including
photographs. Ames also managed to identify the CIA’s major sources in
the Soviet Union. Many of America’s spies in Russia were arrested. Many
were executed.
The facts in this case are stranger than fiction. From 1990 to early
1994 the Russians alleged their own incompetence. KGB General Oleg
Kalugin’s book, “The First Directorate,” is representative of Moscow’s
disinformation line during this period. As the number two man in KGB
foreign intelligence, Kalugin was in a position to know about Aldrich
Ames. Nonetheless, Kalugin advances the same disinformation theme as
Shebarshin and Stepashin, writing that “neither I nor my colleagues had
much luck” in Washington. Asserting that the Walker spy ring was a
disappointment, Kalugin further states that “the number of good spies
was shrinking while the number of defectors was soaring, all of which
left us further and further behind the CIA.”
General Kalugin, like all “former” KGB officials, is a very tricky
man. Everything he says must be sifted for lies. Nothing about him is
straightforward. And that also applies to his comrade in the Kremlin,
Sergei Ivanov.
Last week’s statement by Ivanov, in which he mocks the CIA and
praises British intelligence, is not good news for the British. As shown
by the KGB disinformation campaign of 1990-1994, Russian compliments in
this area are seldom innocent. Such audacious flattery — coming in the
wake of four British intelligence fiascoes involving the loss of secret
information — serve a very specific purpose. As it turns out, the
Russians are trying to cover their tracks in a series of money
laundering scandals that have been traced to banks in London and New
York. If the British begin to connect the dots, life could become
difficult for the Kremlin.
Already the truth of Russia’s penetration of Western banks has
received widespread attention. Last week the Russian press buzzed with
gossip about Western banking officials caught on videotape with Moscow
prostitutes. Several months ago British and U.S. law enforcement began
investigating the laundering of more than $7 billion in Russian cash
through the Bank of New York.
While the American side of the investigation will be blocked by the
usual suspects, the Russians have decided to neutralize British efforts
with a special deception campaign. This campaign involves false
friendship and treacherous cooperation.
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s acting president, arranged a deal last month
between Russia’s secret police and British intelligence. The deal was to
share intelligence resources in order to combat the Russian mafia.
What the British don’t understand is that Russian money laundering in
London and New York was probably directed by the Russian intelligence
services to begin with. Except for isolated groupings of crooks, the
main body of the Russian mafia was created by the GRU (military
intelligence) and KGB. Therefore, the idea of Vladimir Putin helping the
British catch the Russian mafia — or uncover money-laundering
operations — cannot be taken seriously. The new and unprecedented
cooperation between Russian and British intelligence officials will be
used to deceive the British about the nature of Russian organized crime.
As promised, Russia will open over 8,000 files on international
criminals based in Russia. But these files will contain deadly
disinformation.
According to one of the highest ranking East European defectors of
the Cold War era, Jan Sejna, Russian grand strategy had five principal
thrusts. The fourth of these was to infiltrate organized crime
worldwide, and to establish organized crime syndicates under Kremlin
sponsorship.
In the 1950s the Russians conducted a number of classified studies on
organized crime. These studies were conducted to identify the world’s
main crime syndicates and to discover methods for infiltrating them. In
1956 the Russians began to coordinate the various East European security
services in a gigantic campaign to subordinate all the world’s mafia’s
to the Kremlin. According to Sejna the early Czech operations in support
of the Russians were “very successful.” (Sejna’s testimony is laid out,
with additional supporting material, by Joseph D. Douglass, Jr., in a
book called “Red Cocaine.”)
Although the British are currently sharing a good joke with the
Russians at the CIA’s expense, the current fools are all in London.