I have a profound sense of ambivalence regarding the ten Russian spies whose prosecutions effectively ended this week when they pled guilty in accordance with a US/Russian agreement, received sentences of “time served”, and were deported to Russia in exchange for the release of four prisoners there.
Since none of us are privy to the actual value of their spies or our spies, we really have no way of evaluating the US’ deal. What we can say, however, is that it seems to do nothing in terms of deterrence. True, Anna Chapman’s spying days are done (at this rate, she’s more likely to become a talk show host or go on some Russian reality show), but I can’t imagine anyone who watched this scenario unfold decided that spying was a bad idea. What we might have taught people is that it’s probably a better idea to be a citizen of another country if you spy on the US, rather than be an American citizen spying on the US. Had any of these spies been American citizens, do we doubt that they would be facing massive terms of imprisonment?
Nor does this do anything in terms of transparency or accountability. Call it a fantasy, but part of me was looking forward to a trial of one of these cases. We might have learned something about sleeper cells in the United States – how they have come about, etc. Now, with the spies on their way, I assume much of this will revert to covert operations and secret investigations. Maybe that’s all the best for counterterrorism, but I would have appreciated the opportunity to learn something here.
Posted by Miriam Baer on July 10, 2010 at 06:13 PM
Comments
I don’t agree that Americans doing the same thing would have received long prison terms. This was not a case where they actually did anything that would qualify as spying. If they had been publicly identified as journalists and been paid by the state owned media of Russia, there would have been no espionage at all.
Moreover, if we were really concerned about Russian spying, we would have continued to observe them until they actually did do some spying, so that we could know what was going on. From a counterintelligence perspective, this isn’t a great move because there presumably will be replacements and they presumably will be more competent.
It seems to me that shutting this operation down is a recognition that Russian spying isn’t a real problem and that a fig leaf to get our people back in the U.S. is what was really needed.
Posted by: ohwilleke | Jul 12, 2010 5:14:10 PM
In the Coen Brothers’ terrific “Burn After Reading,” two not-very-bright people (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt) find what they believe to be classified CIA information, but really is the memoirs of a bitter former analyist; they bring it to the Russian Embassy. One of the recurring jokes is that no one (not the analyst himself, not the CIA Director, not other CIA agents) understand why they take the info to the Russians. Some version of an incredulous “The Russians? Really?” is a repeated line.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | Jul 11, 2010 1:16:55 PM
“The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming” suggests a comedic sequel on these spies.
Posted by: Shag from Brookline | Jul 11, 2010 10:25:29 AM
Patrick- I guess I doubt that books by former spies are likely to be objective sources of information about how effective spies are. And this group, while they look silly, don’t seem any less capable to me than many more famous spies. That is, able to do some damage, because it’s really hard to stop people who want to do damage, but no where near as skilled as popular accounts make them seem.
On the main subject of the post, I think I probably agree with David, the the nature of the wrong done by a foreign spy in a country and a citizen who spies for a foreign power seem significantly different to me, and as such, I don’t see any problem with treating the actors quite differently.
Posted by: Matt | Jul 11, 2010 8:12:12 AM
Miriam, your point about disparate treatment of American citizens is interesting. In the modern era, I think the Hanssen case tells us that we can’t tolerate internal moles who are out for dough. Jonathan Pollard (let’s not explode a tangent here) was another internal mole.
This group (not total clowns, by the way) falls into a different “intruder” category. There’s something less important about punishing them, then say, Hanssen, who sent people to their deaths. Maybe we want our spies to know that we have currency that we can and will trade for them if we can, if they get into a “bind.”
Nathan Hale was probably in the Robert Hanssen category, though his crimes against the Crown were much less damaging. (If it’s possible to compare.) They hung him.
Posted by: David Friedman | Jul 11, 2010 2:14:17 AM
Matt,
Ask the British how good the Soviets were at this stuff (again, by comparison). I myself have never thought any of them were “extremely capable and clever,” although I would not go so far as to claim the converse, namely, that it is “mostly a history of bunglers and the like” (indeed, it’s the bungling that frequently receives the most attention, scholarly and otherwise, by way of disabusing folks of fantasized and idealized portraits). My understanding of the intelligence services during the Cold War is admittedly second-hand and of the testimonial kind: largely due to conversations with my wife, who has read numerous books, fiction and non-fiction, on the subject, not a few of them by former spies of one kind or another.
Posted by: Patrick S. O’Donnell | Jul 11, 2010 12:19:54 AM
From what I have read, despite all the news attention lavished on it, this Russian spying operation seems to have been utterly useless. Their biggest coup was exchanging business cards with a physicist at a party or something. Getting a spy swap out of it seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Posted by: Bruce Boyden | Jul 10, 2010 11:37:33 PM
these Russian spies were clearly amateurish, at least by historic Soviet and Cold War standards
I actually wonder, and rather doubt this. Not _so_ much that this group was amateurish, but that others before were so much better. As far as I can tell, the history of intelligence services, our own and others, is mostly a history of bunglers and the like. I think the idea that spies are extremely clever and capable is mostly due to movies, and has about as much relation to the skills and activities of real spies as the fight scenes in the recent James Bond movies, made completely with fast cut camera work and computers, have to do with the actual fighting ability of spies. Maybe that’s wrong, but I think most of the actual evidence points to the intelligence services of the world not really being extremely capable.
Posted by: Matt | Jul 10, 2010 11:36:38 PM
Agreed. Expect Anna Chapman to appear in Playboy (or some such publication) in the near future (before people forget who she is).
Posted by: Patricia Craven | Jul 10, 2010 8:44:05 PM
I doubt any trial of these spies would have yielded any more information about sleeper-cells of the al-Qaeda sort than the Wikipedia entry and references on same, if only because what these Russians were up to was rather different in important ways than what al-Qaeda or similar groups are planning (i.e., it’s highly unlikely they were planning acts of terrorism). And these Russian spies were clearly amateurish, at least by historic Soviet and Cold War standards, no doubt lacking the system and ideological loyalty that motivated their predecessors (with added incentive owing to an awareness of the possible consequences for egregious failure).
In any case, the values and goals of transparency and accountability will remain elusive if not illusory (as in the case of those responsible for torture in the previous Administration) as long as the imperatives and values of the National Security State trump, crowd out, or ignore other, and more basic, constitutional principles and values (as it has often done so in the case of Obama’s foreign policy, which is not, to date, much different from that of the Bush administration). For more about this, see several recent articles by Thomas Crocker, among others, and Garry Wills’s latest book, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State (2010).
Posted by: Patrick S. O’Donnell | Jul 10, 2010 7:59:13 PM