by Edward Lucas
The answer was that this particular corner of Russia overlapped, just, with the then footprint of the main Inmarsat 4-F2 satellite, which sits high over the Atlantic ocean in a geostationary orbit carrying a huge quantity of data between Europe and the United States.22 Such data networks are of great interest to Russia. The ability to listen in to mobile phone calls, bug emails, observe web-browsing habits and obtain passwords are essential ingredients of other espionage operations, both in gathering politically sensitive information and in garnering compromising material that can be used for blackmail – and also in stealing other countries’ commercial and industrial secrets.u
Industrial espionage was a big feature of Soviet-era intelligence too. But the economic planners who ran industry then were mostly incapable of putting into production the techniques and technology that the KGB’s spies so painstakingly and brilliantly acquired during the Cold War. Many of those constraints have now gone. Russian state-backed high technology companies operate more effectively than their Soviet-era predecessors. One reason is that they are not shackled by the constraints of the planned economy. Another is that the paranoid culture of secrecy has faded. Their experts and executives can travel freely; Western controls on the export of sensitive equipment that frustrated Soviet engineers during the Cold War have lifted.23 Not only can the stolen material be better used, but the threshold of treachery when obtaining it has sunk. In the days of ideological competition between East and West, even the most hard-up Western scientist might think twice about helping a totalitarian superpower whose very existence was based on lies and mass murder. Helping Russia sounds a lot less bad: after all, many Western businesses and politicians have deep interests in that country too. A German scientist or engineer who succumbs to a Russian approach to pass on secrets from his firm or university laboratory could be forgiven for thinking that if senior public figures can enrich themselves through connections with Russia, humble boffins can do the same.
Overall, America is the top target for Russian foreign intelligence. The partnership that has developed since the ‘reset’ is grudging and cautious, while the adversarial approach is deeply rooted and instinctive. As well as harassing and monitoring members of the Russian diaspora, a prime goal for the Russians is to assess and if possible influence policy-making. This includes scrutinising anyone who presents a direct or indirect challenge to the regime in Moscow through their activities in political life in Washington, DC, such as retired officials, commentators and policy-makers; and think-tank and academic experts who are involved in policy that affects Russia, its interests and its neighbours. Practical targets range from the symbolic, such as the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment,24 to the wonkish, such as understanding arguments in the Senate about arms-control treaties. A prime strategic interest is to weaken transatlantic security ties, thus strengthening Russia’s position in Europe. This is behind the Russian demands (so far fruitless) for a new European ‘security architecture’ that would exclude America and give Russia a legally binding veto over the continent’s decision-making. To that end, Russia stokes anti-Americanism in Europe and eagerly encourages American policymakers and thinkers to see the world in terms of bilateral deals between superpowers, rather than the sentimental old alliances of the last century. Russia is pushing on an open door in this: America’s commitment to NATO is weakening, as is Atlanticist sentiment in Europe.
Another priority for Russian spymasters is to promote the interests of their country’s business. The decision in 2010 to allow Rosoboronexport, the biggest Russian arms exporter, to renew operations in the USA is an example of a major breakthrough. Russia is interested in the listing requirements, disclosure rules and other hurdles that govern access to American capital markets (this is the ultimate goal for corrupt officials and businesses the world over: a listing not only brings in a cash windfall from foreign shareholders, but also gives an instant aura of respectability).
Russia also worries about the rapid growth of shale gas production in the United States. This means that America no longer imports LNG from other producers, creating a glut on world markets, which has allowed European countries to diversify their supply away from Russian pipeline gas. More generally, Russia seeks to limit America’s influence in world energy markets as well as to promote the interests of companies such as Gazprom and Rosneft. Associated with this are politically exposed Russian citizens who find it difficult or impossible to gain an American visa. Russian officials lobby the executive branch to allow these individuals to enter the United States, and try to bring additional pressure to bear via Congress. A signal example here has been the case of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian tycoon whose efforts to visit America have been dogged by controversy.25
The final and most dangerous Russian aim is to penetrate NATO countries’ security and intelligence agencies. Two notable successes in America in recent years are the cases of Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. Ames was a senior CIA counter-intelligence officer dealing with the Soviet Union. Before his arrest in 1994 he betrayed more than a hundred operations and twenty-five agents in the KGB and other Soviet power structures who had entrusted their lives to America. Around ten were executed. Hanssen was a senior FBI officer whose job was supposedly catching Russian spies, until he was exposed as one himself in 2001.
Espionage pervades this story, but in its classic form is only part of it. In all, Russia uses multiple tactics in pursuit of its goals. One is lobbying and diplomatic pressure. This is traceable through a close examination of the trade press, which reveals the growth and scope of Russian lobbying efforts, as well as declarations made under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (which was used as a legal stopgap to charge the spies caught in the summer of 2010). The second is the use of ‘unorthodox’ but legal tactics. These include threatening critics of the regime with legal action in English courts. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech in America, but it cuts no ice in London, where a defamatory statement risks a costly lawsuit, in which the author must justify the allegation with facts, or proof of fairmindedness or fact-checking. This has led a number of think tanks and analysts, even in America, to rephrase or withdraw their criticisms. Another carrot-and-stick tactic is to offer (or withdraw) access to meetings with Russian policy-makers such as Valdai, an annual shindig at which journalists, academics and think-tank experts are given a lengthy interview with Mr Putin.26 More scandalously, Russian lobbyists may also offer to donate (or withhold) funds for research programmes at think tanks and universities. Such activities may involve agents working either at Russian diplomatic missions or undercover.
Russia also enjoys a direct presence in foreign media. The Russian taxpayer in 2010 regularly subsidised struggling foreign newspapers including the Daily Telegraph and the Washington Post, which printed special advertising ‘supplements’ called ‘Russia Now’,27 highly flavoured to suit the official line and produced by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a government newspaper with a disgraceful record of historical falsification and propaganda peddling.28 The print editions try to make it clear that the inserts are not the work of their own journalists. But the paid-for material nestles on the newspapers’ websites, with a layout very similar to that of the real journalism. A disclaimer in tiny print states: ‘Russia Now is Paid Supplement [sic] to the Washington Post.’ On the Telegraph website a more prominent one reads: ‘This online supplement is produced and published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia), which takes sole responsibility for the content.’ But it does not specifically say that money has changed hands. A casual browser could easily be confused.
Also in Britain, two prominent papers, The Independent and the London Evening Standard, are in the hands of Evgeny Lebedev, the son of a former KGB officer, Aleksandr Lebedev, who worked in the Soviet-era rezidentura in London and is unfondly remembered by dissident émigrés of that era (he also became famous in September 2011 for his unrepentant use of violence against a fellow-discussant on a television programme).29 The papers have covered some otherwise boring Russia
n business stories with notable alacrity, and chronicled the social activities of their proprietor (to be fair, hardly unusual in the British media). No consistent signs have yet appeared of interference with the editorial line on Russia itself. (The Independent’s diplomatic editor, Mary Dejevsky, is a well-known British specialist on Russia whose distinctively optimistic line on the country’s prospects and problems long predates the paper’s change in ownership.) None of the other papers mentioned has adopted a pro-Russian stance, though the general shrivelling of budgets for foreign coverage has certainly weakened their ability to follow the intricacies of Russian politics and business.
More worrying than the advertising largesse and changes in ownership is the wider, subtler effect of Russian money on the media. Russian agents are adept at cultivating their media contacts, and in offering access in return for favourable coverage. Those who write hostile stories may find that they are no longer invited to Valdai. For professional Russia-watchers, an invitation to this event, normally held in November, is tantamount to a job ticket. Being barred can be a career-chiller, or killer. A tougher sanction, for journalists who are consistently critical of Russia, is a visa blacklist compiled by the FSB.
Russian influence and subversion crops up across the entire spectrum of public life in EU countries and America. Much of what goes on cannot be discussed openly for fear of libel suits, but occasional scandals give at least an outline picture. One is the role of Russian agents in bribing, blackmailing or bamboozling politicians. Sometimes the results are remarkably unsubtle, such as when they slavishly follow Russian talking points and voting strategies in international bodies such as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Readers may be forgiven for never having heard of either outfit: they are well-funded talking shops that pass sententious resolutions of great prolixity and little weight. However, Russia finds them useful forums for its agenda, for example, highlighting issues that divide or embarrass its European critics.30 More important than the bodies’ activities, however, is their membership: they consist of lawmakers who also have important jobs back home.
Those who observe the meetings of these bodies notice how often attractive young Russian and East European women accompany some of the middle-aged male MPs who make up the bulk of their membership. In most cases these women have doubtless been hired solely for their research skills. But the suspicion remains that in at least some cases someone has assigned them to these elected officials, with the aim of influencing their decision-making or obtaining sensitive information. This does not necessarily involve treason. Some politicians are stupid and naive enough to hire and hobnob with questionable assistants without considering that anything might be amiss.
In 2010, for example, Britain’s Security Service was alarmed to note that Katya Zatuliveter, a Russian citizen working in Parliament, had met a Russian intelligence officer based at the embassy in London. The spycatchers were convinced that they had spotted an active and dangerous spy. The use of attractive young women – lastochky (swallows) – to seduce Western targets was a mainstay of the KGB playbook. Ms Zatuliveter had a lengthy affair with her employer, Mike Hancock MP. He was a classic target: forty years older than her, portly, self-important, married – and also a member of the House of Commons Defence Committee and the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. She later bedded a senior NATO official (also married) dealing with Russia and Ukraine. No young British woman could enjoy a comparable career in Russia.
The Home Secretary ordered Ms Zatuliveter’s deportation. She appealed (odd behaviour if she were in fact a spy) – and MI5 suffered an unprecedented public embarrassment. The appeal tribunal included Sir Stephen Lander, the former director of MI5, as one of the three judges. The evidence MI5 presented in open court was unconvincing – and so too, apparently, was what it argued in the secret sessions. The tribunal concluded that it was unlikely Ms Zatuliveter was a spy: far more likely, she was just ‘an immature, calculating, emotional and self-centred young woman’.31 That she had met a Russian intelligence officer in London counted in her favour: were she really a spy, she would shun any such contact and meet her case officer only on her regular trips to Russia. It was astonishing that, even in secret, MI5 was unable to produce conclusive evidence of any wrongdoing. Nor was it clear why the service had risked publicly demanding its quarry’s deportation. A quiet warning would have stopped any espionage in its tracks. And if Ms Zatuliveter was a real spy, why not watch her in action? One explanation may be that MI5’s once-fearsome expertise in Russia has decayed severely since the end of the Cold War.
Whatever its practical failings, MI5 and sister services are right to believe that Russian citizens visiting the West under their own names are a far bigger part of the Kremlin’s espionage effort than old-fashioned ‘illegals’. A plausible example of the new echelon would be a comely young PhD student bearing a passport from an East European country (Commission officials responsible for counter-intelligence sometimes mention Bulgaria in this context). This ‘student’ of EU affairs is attractive, inquisitive and ruthless. She gets a job first as an intern, then as an assistant. That creates one line of attack. Simultaneously, she is researching her PhD (perhaps on EU energy policy, or trade relations with Russia, or some other topic of interest to the Kremlin). In one sense her behaviour is entirely legitimate. It is not a crime to ask questions flirtatiously, or to sleep with officials who answer them. Her identity may be forged, but is more often completely legitimate: perhaps acquired during a brief but perfectly convincing marriage to a Bulgarian. Only a detailed security vetting would uncover a family connection with Soviet-era intelligence structures and a stint learning spycraft in Russia. This ‘student’ (an amalgam of some real-life examples) will probably avoid any position where she comes under direct scrutiny: a job at NATO, for example, or in the commission’s new External Action Service. But her flatmates, bedmates or officemates may work in just such roles, and she will be only one step behind. Indeed, secretaries in sensitive offices in the European Union’s institutions turn out surprisingly often to have been born in the core countries of the former Soviet Union. They have EU passports now and it would be a suspicious soul who begrudged them a chance to make the best of the careers open to them. Nobody seems bothered by their presence or willing to check up on them; and if they did, it would be hard to know if a regular trip to see family in Russia was just that, or included a meeting with a spy agency. Such people are one arm of the Russian effort abroad and I will return to them later. But when they are not available, Russia’s spymasters turn to another reservoir of potential agents: the diaspora.
4
Real Spies, Real Victims
The Russian diaspora’s presence in the West reflects one of the great triumphs – and vulnerabilities – of the post-1991 era. The free movement of people from East to West was a defeat for the merchants of mind-control in Moscow, who feared that capitalist fleshpots would be an ‘ideological distraction’ for the hard-pressed proletariat of the ‘world fortress’. But the new regime in Russia is more resilient. It flourishes on contacts with the rich world, which offers everything from financial services to luxury goods, and it places no obstacles in the way of those wanting to leave. The Soviet leadership created the largest prison camp in history, keeping hundreds of millions of people bottled up behind the Iron Curtain, with travel privileges tightly rationed and dependent on cooperation with the KGB. Now tens of millions of Russians have travelled abroad: they are free (visa regimes permitting) to work, holiday, study, marry and invest there. Whatever counter-intelligence worries the new era creates, nobody should wish for a moment that the clock be put back to the dark days before 1989. But for Russia’s spymasters, targets and means of espionage overlap in this diaspora. These compatriots may know the secrets of the country they are living in. Or they may be able to help steal them. It is a sad truth that however far émigrés may flee oppression an
d corruption, their personal ties with their country of origin will always leave them vulnerable to bullying and blackmail.
The new problem is a greatly amplified version of an old one. As we will see in a later chapter, in the huge movements of refugees that followed the Second World War émigré communities from Soviet-block countries easily became pawns in spy wars. As the Cold War intensified, and the gulf between East and West deepened, personal ties across the Iron Curtain were increasingly scanty and easily scrutinised on both sides. Even so, they occasionally led to spectacular breaches in security. A successfully hushed-up scandal of the 1980s involved an émigré from one of the Baltic states (then still occupied by the Soviet Union) who worked as a dentist. That might seem an occupation of no interest to the KGB. But this particular dentist had a contract to provide treatment to the staff of a Western foreign ministry.v His files provided a perfect means of distinguishing between mainstream diplomats and intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover. When the spies were due for a dental check before or after an overseas posting, their agency’s personnel office made the appointment, not the foreign ministry’s. The intelligence officers’ files had a distinctive coding – doubtless for budgetary reasons. The KGB, in a clever bit of spycraft, tracked him down and threatened his family members inside the Soviet Union with the many miserable fates awaiting those who displeased the authorities there. When news reached him of their troubles, he was distraught – and with no security training, an easy target.