New Alias, Old Tricks

By Bruce W. Nelan

The very initials made people quail. The Soviet Union's Committee for State Security -- the KGB -- was not just an intelligence agency: it was a terrifying, repressive secret-police monolith that controlled the lives of ordinary Soviet citizens and most of the country's leaders, and fought in the trenches of the cold war as well. When the U.S.S.R. broke up in late 1991, so did the KGB, though some say the vast organization has simply metastasized. As Secretary of State Warren Christopher noted last week, Moscow's intelligence service "may have changed its name, but it has probably not changed its method of operation."

That is certainly true of the overseas espionage organization, the Foreign Intelligence Service, known by the Russian initials SVR and headed by Yevgeni Primakov, which reports directly to President Boris Yeltsin. It was the first segment of the old KGB to open for business on its own in October 1991. The SVR took over most of the spies and analysts from the parent organization.

Another piece of the KGB has turned into the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information, which is the Russian equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency. An additional 8,000 troops have joined Yeltsin's Presidential Guard, similar to the American Secret Service. Domestic investigations originally went to a new Ministry of Security, but Yeltsin was apparently uncertain of its loyalties during his struggle with parliament last year. He disbanded the ministry in December and replaced it with a Russian FBI equivalent, the Federal Counterintelligence Service, a 75,000-person agency that will be in charge of internal security.

Its director, General Nikolai Golushko, claims that his officers arrested more than 20 foreign spies last year, including one Russian who had caused major damage to national security. "If the CIA had discontinued its activities in Russia," Golushko's spokesman said last week, the agency "would have been closed down." The implication is that Moscow did not make a public fuss about its arrests and cannot understand why Washington is doing so with the Ames case. "This incident," says Yuri Kobaladze, press spokesman for the Foreign Intelligence Service, "does not concern relations between our two countries."

The Russians are poor-mouthing the SVR, claiming that it has cut its staff 40% over the past three years -- without giving any actual numbers -- and has closed 30 overseas stations. Even Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general often critical of Russia's continuing intelligence operations, says Primakov "is in charge of a demoralized organization that is struggling for resources."

While the SVR may have shrunk, U.S. intelligence officials say it is still active and highly professional. Harry Brandon, who retired two months ago as the FBI's deputy assistant director for intelligence, watched as Russian spies burrowed for U.S. secrets long after the Soviet Union disintegrated. "They're certainly collecting ((secrets)) in the economic and technology area," he says.

The SVR's main activity, spokesman Kobaladze says matter-of-factly, is information gathering from overt and covert sources. Naturally, "that does not mean we will stop gathering information on you, and you on us, right? There are friendly states but no friendly intelligence services." Right.

With reporting by Sally B. Donnelly/Moscow