ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 20, 1996 TAG: 9612200018
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
The object of the Washington-Moscow spy-vs.-spy game used to be measuring military might. Now, it's learning secrets that could give one country a political or economic advantage.
``They're a paranoid country,'' said Loch Johnson, an intelligence expert and former aide to the late Defense Secretary Les Aspin. ``They want to know what we're thinking with respect to their own destiny.''
And that means recruiting spies for Russia, including potential traitors inside the FBI, CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. In recent charges:
*On Wednesday, the FBI arrested Earl Pitts, an FBI supervisor and former counterintelligence officer. He was charged with selling secrets to the former Soviet Union and Russia during 1987-92 for more than $224,000.
*Last month, former CIA station chief Harold Nicholson was arrested. He pleaded innocent to selling the identities of new CIA agents since 1994. The Russians allegedly paid Nicholson more than $180,000.
*In 1994, Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer who has been called the most damaging U.S. spy for Moscow, pleaded guilty and is serving a life term. His spying, for which he was paid more than $2.7million, has been blamed for the deaths of 10 Western agents. His capture also led to reforms within the CIA to better identify counterspies, partly by examining their finances.
James Woolsey, who was the CIA director when Ames was caught, said Russia remains as interested in keeping tabs on the United States as it was during the Cold War. And Washington isn't losing interest in finding out what Moscow is up to.
``Even though we cooperate with Russia in some areas - counternarcotics, counterterrorism and to some extent nonproliferation - there are still a number of areas where our interests are at odds,'' Woolsey said.
``So the fact that they conduct espionage against the United States in the post-Cold War world shouldn't surprise people.''
On this, the Russians agree. Vyacheslav Trubnikov, director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, said Thursday: ``No state ... can exist without intelligence. We must not make a drama out of this.''
The drama these days is sometimes in the counterintelligence in which U.S. and foreign agencies try to weed out renegades in their ranks even as they sow the seeds of treason among the other side.
Pitts, for instance, is accused of giving undercover FBI agents posing as officers for Russia's SVRR intelligence service sensitive and classified documents with personal and medical information about fellow agents who ``might be vulnerable to recruitment.''
He also ``provided strategies by which the SVRR might recruit additional agents, plans to smuggle into the FBI Academy an SVRR technical expert'' and a cipher lock, key and his own FBI identification badge for copy-making purposes, said U.S. Attorney Helen Fahey.
Counterintelligence operations here and in Russia have increased since the Cold War ended in 1991, according to Woolsey, Johnson and other experts. Practitioners of such spycraft call it a ``wilderness of mirrors'' where ``nothing seems real, and everything may reflect a lie,'' said Johnson, author of ``Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile World.''
``The Russians want to know what our intelligence services are up to and which of their own people are traitors,'' Johnson said. ``The only way of finding that out is by penetrating the U.S. intelligence agencies.''
Russia also is interested in gathering economic information, even engaging in industrial espionage, to help its own companies compete in a global economy full of tariffs and trading rules that can hurt or help a country, Johnson said. The United States also has increased its economic intelligence efforts fourfold since the end of the Cold War, he added.
Vincent Cannistraro, a retired 27-year CIA veteran who was a counterintelligence officer, said that despite warming relations over the past few years, Russia ``is not our enemy and is not our ally.''
``There is a kind of dynamic tension between the United States and Russia that isn't going to go away until Russia is a full democracy,'' he said.
And spying for the other side, a profitable enterprise, could increase, according to outgoing CIA Director John Deutch.
``Some, very few but some, case officers in the CIA and in other agencies of the government as well just don't think that it's that big a deal any more to give away secrets,'' Deutch said. ``It seems to make it easier to spy for money now because of the fact that our country's survival is not at stake the way it was during the Cold War.''
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The object of the Washington-Moscow spy-vs.-spy game used to be measuring military might. Now, it's learning secrets that could give one country a political or economic advantage.
``They're a paranoid country,'' said Loch Johnson, an intelligence expert and former aide to the late Defense Secretary Les Aspin. ``They want to know what we're thinking with respect to their own destiny.''
And that means recruiting spies for Russia, including potential traitors inside the FBI, CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. In recent charges:
-On Wednesday, the FBI arrested Earl E. Pitts, an FBI supervisor and former counterintelligence officer. He was charged with selling secrets to the former Soviet Union and Russia during 1987-1992 for more than $224,000.
-Last month, former CIA station chief Harold Nicholson was arrested. He pleaded innocent to selling the identities of new CIA agents since 1994. The Russians allegedly paid Nicholson more than $180,000.
-In 1994, Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer who has been called the most damaging U.S. spy for Moscow, pleaded guilty and is serving a life term. His spying, for which he was paid more than $2.7 million, has been blamed for the deaths of 10 Western agents. His capture also led to reforms within the CIA to better identify counter spies, partly by examining their finances.
R. James Woolsey, who was the CIA director when Ames was caught, said Russia remains as interested in keeping tabs on the United States as it was during the Cold War. And Washington isn't losing interest in finding out what Moscow is up to.
``Even though we cooperate with Russia in some areas - counternarcotics, counterterrorism and to some extent nonproliferation - there are still a number of areas where our interests are at odds,'' Woolsey said.
``So the fact that they conduct espionage against the United States in the post-Cold War world shouldn't surprise people.''
On this, the Russians agree. Vyacheslav Trubnikov, director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, said Thursday: ``No state ... can exist without intelligence. We must not make a drama out of this.''
The drama these days is sometimes in the counterintelligence in which U.S. and foreign agencies try to weed out renegades in their ranks even as they sew the seeds of treason among the other side.
Pitts, for instance, is accused of giving undercover FBI agents posing as officers for Russia's SVRR intelligence service sensitive and classified documents with personal and medical information about fellow agents who ``might be vulnerable to recruitment.''
He also ``provided strategies by which the SVRR might recruit additional agents, plans to smuggle into the FBI Academy an SVRR technical expert'' and a cipher lock, key and his own FBI identification badge for copy-making purposes, said U.S. Attorney Helen Fahey.
Counterintelligence operations here and in Russia have increased since the Cold War ended in 1991, according to Woolsey, Johnson and other experts. Practitioners of such spycraft call it a ``wilderness of mirrors'' where ``nothing seems real, and everything may reflect a lie,'' said Johnson, author of ``Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile World.''
``The Russians want to know what our intelligence services are up to and which of their own people are traitors,'' Johnson said. ``The only way of finding that out is by penetrating the U.S. intelligence agencies.''
Russia also is interested in gathering economic information, even engaging in industrial espionage, to help its own companies compete in a global economy full of tariffs and trading rules that can hurt or help a country, Johnson said. The United States also has increased its economic intelligence efforts fourfold since the end of the Cold War, he added.
Vincent Cannistraro, a retired 27-year CIA veteran who was a counterintelligence officer, said that despite warming relations over the past few years, Russia ``is not our enemy and is not our ally.''
``There is a kind of dynamic tension between the United States and Russia that isn't going to go away until Russia is a full democracy,'' he said.
And spying for the other side, a profitable enterprise, could increase, according to outgoing CIA Director John Deutch.
``Some, very few but some, case officers in the CIA and in other agencies of the government as well just don't think that it's that big a deal any more to give away secrets,'' Deutch said. ``It seems to make it easier to spy for money now because of the fact that our country's survival is not at stake the way it was during the Cold War.''
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