Con Coughlin: Don't they know the Cold War is over?
[Con Coughlin, the Telegraph's executive foreign editor, is a world-renowned expert on the Middle East and Islamic terrorism.]
For the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the exposure of a Moscow-run spy ring in the heart of the American suburbs could not have come at a more embarrassing moment. Only a few days before the FBI made its dramatic arrests in New York, Mr Medvedev was being fêted in Washington, where President Barack Obama entertained him to lunch at his favourite hamburger restaurant. Mr Obama and Mr Medvedev agreed that the two former Cold War protagonists had achieved their goal of "resetting" relations on a more amicable footing, and announced their intention to enter a new era of joint co-operation between the two countries, particularly in the sensitive fields of intelligence and counter-terrorism.
This new friendship now appears rather hollow, following the release of the FBI's detailed dossier on the espionage activities of a group of Russian agents. But it is not so much the exposure of the spy ring that is causing Moscow discomfiture, as the antediluvian methods used by its operatives in their somewhat laughable quest to penetrate the inner sanctum of America's policy-making establishment.
False names, invisible ink, dead drops, brush passes – these antiquated tricks of the espionage trade were supposed to have become obsolescent when the Iron Curtain collapsed 20 years ago. Instead, we discover that the hapless group of Russian agents, many of whom had been living humdrum, suburban lives as part of a "deep cover" operation since the mid-1990s, relied heavily on a Smiley-esque array of old-school techniques to maintain contact with their Russian handlers.
In a world where advanced satellite technology allows the world's spy-masters to eavesdrop on the phone conversations of Taliban commanders calling from remote mountain passes, and where sophisticated computer hackers can infiltrate government databases at will, there is something rather quaint about these Russian spies' archaic methods. It is surprising that modern-day Russia does not appear to have developed more creative techniques for running its spy networks than burying large sums of cash in upstate New York, or making payments by passing matching orange bags between two agents, in a classic "brush pass" manoeuvre.
No wonder the Kremlin was yesterday almost apoplectic when it denounced the FBI's claims that it had smashed a major Russian spy network. The Russian Foreign Ministry said the arrests were "deplorable", and lamented the fact that they had taken place against "the background of the reset in Russia-US ties". But the Russians have no one but themselves to blame for this embarrassing state of affairs. After all, it is their agents, not the Americans, who have broken the cardinal law of espionage: don't get caught...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
For the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the exposure of a Moscow-run spy ring in the heart of the American suburbs could not have come at a more embarrassing moment. Only a few days before the FBI made its dramatic arrests in New York, Mr Medvedev was being fêted in Washington, where President Barack Obama entertained him to lunch at his favourite hamburger restaurant. Mr Obama and Mr Medvedev agreed that the two former Cold War protagonists had achieved their goal of "resetting" relations on a more amicable footing, and announced their intention to enter a new era of joint co-operation between the two countries, particularly in the sensitive fields of intelligence and counter-terrorism.
This new friendship now appears rather hollow, following the release of the FBI's detailed dossier on the espionage activities of a group of Russian agents. But it is not so much the exposure of the spy ring that is causing Moscow discomfiture, as the antediluvian methods used by its operatives in their somewhat laughable quest to penetrate the inner sanctum of America's policy-making establishment.
False names, invisible ink, dead drops, brush passes – these antiquated tricks of the espionage trade were supposed to have become obsolescent when the Iron Curtain collapsed 20 years ago. Instead, we discover that the hapless group of Russian agents, many of whom had been living humdrum, suburban lives as part of a "deep cover" operation since the mid-1990s, relied heavily on a Smiley-esque array of old-school techniques to maintain contact with their Russian handlers.
In a world where advanced satellite technology allows the world's spy-masters to eavesdrop on the phone conversations of Taliban commanders calling from remote mountain passes, and where sophisticated computer hackers can infiltrate government databases at will, there is something rather quaint about these Russian spies' archaic methods. It is surprising that modern-day Russia does not appear to have developed more creative techniques for running its spy networks than burying large sums of cash in upstate New York, or making payments by passing matching orange bags between two agents, in a classic "brush pass" manoeuvre.
No wonder the Kremlin was yesterday almost apoplectic when it denounced the FBI's claims that it had smashed a major Russian spy network. The Russian Foreign Ministry said the arrests were "deplorable", and lamented the fact that they had taken place against "the background of the reset in Russia-US ties". But the Russians have no one but themselves to blame for this embarrassing state of affairs. After all, it is their agents, not the Americans, who have broken the cardinal law of espionage: don't get caught...