Guess the Ruskies didn't donate to the Clinton reelection effort:
Russians told to cut number of spies in U.S.
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By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
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he Clinton administration has warned Russia to voluntarily reduce the large number of intelligence officers operating in the United States or face cutbacks in diplomatic positions or expulsions, The Washington Times has learned.
U.S. Ambassador James Collins delivered that message in Moscow several weeks ago during a meeting with Vladimir Putin, the former KGB domestic spying chief and currently Russia's top Security Council adviser, according to administration officials familiar with the issue.
The warning followed two recent expulsions of Russian intelligence officers from the United States and the ouster of a U.S. Army attache from Moscow last month.
According to national security officials, the matter was raised briefly by White House National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger during a telephone conversation June 24 with Mr. Putin. The two security advisers resumed regular telephone talks last month after contacts were cut off by Moscow to express displeasure with the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
Mr. Collins then met several days later with Mr. Putin to deliver the warning that aggressive
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Russian intelligence activities in the United States must be stopped.
The matter is expected to be raised in talks this week between Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who arrives in Washington for his first talks since taking over for dismissed Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov.
According to the officials, Mr. Collins told Mr. Putin that Russian intelligence staffing in the United States had returned to "Cold War levels," and that the spying was undermining good relations.
During the Cold War, the FBI estimated that at least half the diplomats accredited to Soviet missions in Washington, New York and San Francisco were spies. The numbers decreased following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
If the same ratio exists today, it means half the 124 diplomats posted to the Russian Embassy here are engaged in intelligence work. Scores more are operating out of the Russian mission to the United Nations, the officials said. Russian agents also operate out of consulates in San Francisco and Seattle.
Mr. Collins told Mr. Putin that the Russian intelligence services should "voluntarily" cut back on the number of spies working here by quietly recalling intelligence officers as they return to Russia for summer vacation and not sending them back, the officials said.
If Moscow fails to undertake the cutbacks on its own, the United States will take action unilaterally, Mr. Collins informed the Russians.
The options being considered by the administration for reducing the intelligence presence include reducing the number of diplomatic posts available to Russian officials, limiting visits by suspected spies operating outside the government, or forcing the cuts through expulsions, the officials said.
The matter of Russian intelligence activities has been raised in the past during other high-level meetings between U.S. and Russian officials. The recent exchange was the first time the U.S. government threatened to take action to reduce the spying presence, however, the officials said.
FBI officials have said privately that Russia continues to have among the most aggressive foreign intelligence services working in the United States. Russian intelligence activities have included recruitment of government officials as agents, attempts to steal political and military secrets, and acquisition of high technology with both civilian and military applications.
Unlike the recent nuclear espionage scandal involving Chinese agents stealing U.S. nuclear warhead and missile secrets, Russian spying activities have been kept quiet by the Clinton administration in order not to upset relations with Moscow.
One official familiar with the recent spying problems said the diplomatic appeal to reduce Russia's spying presence was prompted by repeated FBI reports of aggressive spying activities by both the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and its military counterpart known as the GRU.
"They are operating in full swing without missing a beat," said the official. "In some cases they have the same KGB personnel here now who were working against us during the Soviet period."
Asked to comment, a senior State Department official acknowledged the problem is not new. "We have a regular dialogue about matters of the presence of foreign officials," he said, declining further comment.
A Russian Embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment.
Former intelligence official Kenneth deGraffenreid said Russian spying has continued at aggressive levels since the end of the Cold War based on Moscow's goal of seeking high-technology military, political, and economic secrets.
Mr. deGraffenreid was the intelligence director for the White House National Security Council during the Reagan administration. During that period he directed two separate mass expulsions of KGB and GRU officers in an effort to reduce Russian spying.
"As an open, democratic society there are limits on what we can do in terms of protecting the security of our high-technology secrets, Mr. deGraffenreid said in an interview. "We can only clamp down so much from a security perspective. The way we can make up for it is with better counterintelligence and reducing the size and access of the foreign intelligence threat."
Mr. deGraffenreid said that if the administration is pressuring Moscow to reduce its intelligence presence, "it is an entirely appropriate response."
"The American people may not realize it, but the intelligence threat today is every bit as bad as it was during the Cold War," he said.
Mr. Collins said during a recent interview with the Russian weekly newspaper Arguments and Facts that the United States does not favor a weak Russia. "Our interests presuppose the existence of a strong, prosperous and predictable partner with which we can cooperate," Mr. Collins said. "This does not mean that we will have no disagreements. There will always be disagreements."
The interview made no mention of the recent spat over spying.
In May, the State Department ordered a Russian intelligence officer working undercover at the U.N. mission in New York to leave the country after he was caught spying.
It was the second time in six months that FBI agents had caught a Russian spy.
The State Department allowed the Russian intelligence officer to quietly leave the country rather than expelling him. The incident was protested at the time as part of "aggressive" spying by Russia.
Then last month the Russians retaliated by ordering the expulsion of Lt. Col. Pete Hoffman, the assistant Army attache in Moscow. The expulsions were first reported by The Washington Times.
The FBI has said very little publicly about the foreign intelligence threat.
FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said in a speech last year that "the simple truth is that there has been no peace dividend in the form of a reduced need for FBI counterintelligence operations."
"On the contrary, foreign intelligence activities against the United States have grown in diversity and complexity in the past few years," he said, noting that spying by Russia, South Korea and China "are just the tip of a large and dangerous intelligence iceberg."
Ah well. JLA
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