ONE WORLD ESPIONAGE --
WHO IS THE ENEMY?
WHOM DO WE TRUST?
January 19, 2004
By Toby Westerman
Copyright 2004 International News Analysis Today
www.inatoday.com
In the war on terror, the United States is sharing intelligence information with other nations on an unprecedented level. The U.S. needs friends to counter the threat of Islamic fundamentalist fanatics, but the question remains: how committed are various nations to America's war on terror?
Among the espionage terror coalition, Russia may be considered to have the finest human intelligence capability, inherited from the KGB, itself an heir to seventy years of experience and novel development in deception, infiltration, and betrayal.
There are, however, strong indications that America remains a target of Moscow's intelligence activities, and places in question to what extent Washington can rely upon the Moscow elite.
Evidence of Moscow's continued prowess in espionage - and the direction of its efforts -- occurred on February 18, 2001 when the world learned, to the FBI's profound embarrassment, that one of the agency's top agents, Robert Hanssen, was working for Russian intelligence, and earlier for the Soviet Union.
The individual mentioned as the Russian who purportedly informed on Hanssen, former intelligence colonel Alexander Zaporozhsky, was arrested and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Zaporozhsky's fate is seen by a number of intelligence experts as an indication that the Moscow--Washington spy war continues, with some U.S. intelligence officers suspecting that one or more high level Russian agents function within sensitive areas in the U.S. government.
One of the strangest, but little publicized, recent instances of Russian espionage in North America is the case of Dmitry Olshevsky and Yelena Olshevskaya. Arrested in Canada in 1996 for spying, counterintelligence authorities stated that the two posed as native Canadians, and used names taken from the tombstones of deceased infants to establish their identities.
The couple lived in Canada for at least six years, according to press reports. The time of the spy couple's activities appears to span the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the "new" Russia, as does the espionage case of Robert Hanssen.
The events surrounding Zaporozhsky, Hanssen, and the Olshevsky/Olshevskaya couple point to a disturbing continuity between Soviet era and present-day Russia espionage efforts. Recent changes in priorities, however, have weakened counterintelligence efforts directed against possible Russian infiltration, and turned valuable resources to the prevention of terror attacks against the U.S.
The question of Moscow's actual commitment to the war on terror is fundamental to the success of the common effort, but becomes additionally pressing in light of Moscow's traditional support of those who are violently opposed to the U.S.
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