Spy versus Son of Spy

“I enjoy being made to feel stupid when I’m pleading for my country.

Gives me a glow all over.”

— Bill Cosby as Alexander “Scotty” Scott

from the television show “I Spy.”

Did we check? Of course we checked. We always check. But, as we expected, it came up negative. Robert Hanssen — the alleged Russian mole in the FBI — is not now, nor was he ever been a subscriber to Russian Life magazine.

Of course he could have been picking up his copies of the issue on the newsstand … Much more discreet ...

Spying is an odd thing.

We are both attracted and repulsed by it. It seems so fascinating and exotic, while at the same time it is founded on two of the most base human actions: deceit and betrayal.

As this issue was going to press, a new book came out in Germany written by a former friend of Russian First Lady Lyudmila Putin. The author, Irene Pietsch, met Mr. And Mrs. Putin when the latter was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. By Pietsch’s account, she became a friend and confidante of Lyudmila. But she broke with the Putins when Vladimir became the head of the FSB (heir to the KGB) and has now “defected” to some arm of the World Publishing Agglomeration so that she can reveal all sorts of banal details of the Putin’s family life. Stuff you really couldn’t care a whole lot about, but, well, now that someone has written about it, you might as well read it. Repulsion …. Attraction …

Interestingly, in Russian there is a linguistic differentiation that we don’t really employ in English. In Russian there are shpioni (spies) and razvedchiki (agents). Shpioni are the bad guys—the visiting team. Razvedchiki are the good guys—the home team. Or, to put it another way, your razvedchik is a my shpion.

While Ms. Pietsch may have never set out to be in the spying game, you can bet Russia’s president-razvedchik considers her a full-fledged shpion now.

It is interesting how quickly we tend to forget about spies in between scandals. The names of arrested spies fade from memory almost as fast as last week’s dinner menu (e.g. George Trofimoff, Stanislav Gusev, Daniel King, all were at the center of a US-Russian spy scandal within the last year or so). We also tend to forget that we usually only find out about the stupid spies – the ones that get caught.

When he was apprehended by the FBI, Hanssen had a trunk full of classified documents, athletic tape and crayons to mark his dead drops and loads of other incriminating evidence he just routinely carried around with him. He even had entered into his Palm Pilot an appointment time and reference to an espionage rendezvous.

And this guy went undetected for 15 years.

You gotta think there are still more clever razvedchiks out there, right? Even if we were catching the stupid half of all the spies, that still leaves a fair number of smarter spies out there sorting through our garbage cans, looking for National Missile Defense Plans.

OK, OK. We expect this. Spying is a fact of life, a way to protect our national interests. And Cold War or no Cold War, we just like reading one another’s mail. And we aren’t going to stop.

What with one of our presidents a former spymaster and the other the son of a former spymaster, the penchant for cloak and dagger could be expected to increase. As if to underline this potentiality, very soon after the Hanssen spy scandal started to break, both US and Russian spokespersons were quick to point out that this really should have no effect on relations between our two countries. What’s a little betrayal between friends, after all?

At the CIA’s website (www.cia.gov) the agency describes what it is looking for in its razvedchiks, otherwise known as  Operations Officers: “For the extraordinary individual who wants more than a job, this is a way of life that will challenge the deepest resources of your intelligence, self-reliance, and responsibility. It demands an adventurous spirit... a forceful personality... superior intellectual ability... toughness of mind... and the highest degree of integrity. It takes special skills and professional discipline to produce results. You will need to deal with fast-moving, ambiguous, and unstructured situations that will test your resourcefulness to the utmost ... Central Intelligence Agency’s Clandestine Service Trainee Program is the gateway to a unique overseas experience.”

Not exactly the trailer for a James Bond movie, but it certainly would sift out those persons with low self esteem.

Further down the page we find that persons over 35 need not apply and that the CIA is “particularly interested” in persons who can speak “Central Eurasian” languages.

And you thought the Cold War ended when the Berlin Wall came down ...

— Paul Richardson