East-West Mistrust Hasn’t Crumbled, as Arrest Shows

WASHINGTON — The arrest of a high-level FBI agent accused of spying for Russia for a decade after the demise of the Soviet Union reveals just how little things have changed since the Cold War.

Despite the end of an intense ideological rivalry, Moscow still runs its largest intelligence program in America, focused on issues ranging from arms technology to U.S.-Russia policy intentions, American officials and Russia experts said.

“In fact, the espionage operations designed to steal vital secrets of the United States are as intense today as they have ever been,” U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said at a news conference Tuesday.

The arrest of Robert Philip Hanssen also underscores a recent and troubling increase in tension between the two governments, analysts said. Suspicions run particularly deep within Russia.

“The Russians now view the United States as the only superpower--and as the only major country that is hostile to its intentions and ambitions,” said Dmitri Simes, a 1973 emigre from Russia who is president of the Nixon Center, a nonpartisan foreign policy think tank in Washington.

Part of the tension is due to the different mind-sets of the two new administrations.

Russian Leaders ‘Much More Nationalistic’

Russia’s government is headed by a former KGB general, Vladimir V. Putin, under whom the intelligence and security services in Moscow have far more influence.

“If you look at who’s running Russia, it’s a much more nationalistic crowd than even two years ago,” said Michael McFaul, a Russia expert and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

“And it’s filled with former KGB officers--including the president himself. If you spent your whole life in the KGB, you don’t erase that mind-set overnight, or even over a decade.” McFaul added.

In a reflection of Putin’s priorities, he has made dozens of trips outside Russia since his election in 2000, including visits to North America. But he has yet to visit the United States, and he does not plan to in the near future.

In the United States, the Bush administration is pushing ahead enthusiastically with development of a national missile defense system, which Russia vehemently opposes.

Moscow warns that the program could lead to abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and other disarmament accords negotiated between the United States and Russia over the last half-century.

“It’s striking when you look at the kind of issues that dominate relations a decade later,” McFaul said. “So many of them are from the same agenda of the Cold War, just with different names: arms control, regional conflicts and European security.”

But two recent flash points--the expansion of NATO to include former East Bloc nations and the U.S.-orchestrated bombing of Serbia because of its actions in Kosovo--have contributed to a souring of relations.

“The new wave of suspicions started with the U.S. push for an expansion of NATO,” McFaul said. “But the seminal event was Kosovo. Before that, there was a vocal minority of pro-Western liberals [in Russia] who said Russia was integrating into Europe and so NATO’s expansion was not harmful. But U.S. actions in Kosovo hurt the prospects of easily resolving differences.”

Recurring Spy Scandals a Chronic Irritant

A recent poll reveals the depth of suspicion in Moscow. More than 55% of Russians view the United States as a serious security threat, according to last year’s joint survey by the Carnegie Endowment and Harvard University. Only about 1 in 4 said the United States was not a threat.

In contrast, only 8% of Americans view Russia as a top national security concern. China and Iraq were ranked as greater threats by 36% and 15% of Americans, respectively, according to a poll by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, a Washington polling group.

There has been a regular stream of spy scandals involving Russia and NATO nations nearly every year since the Cold War’s end, providing a chronic irritant to improved relations.

Tensions between Washington and Moscow recently were evident in the case of Edmond D. Pope, an American businessman who was charged with trying to obtain plans for a top-secret Russian torpedo. He was sentenced by a Russian court to 20 years in prison, twice as long as the sentence meted out to Francis Gary Powers in 1962. Pope was pardoned by Putin shortly after the trial and has returned to the United States.

‘A Growing Appetite’ for Military Tools

In 1999, Russia expelled two American diplomats on grounds of espionage. The United States expelled one Russian diplomat for allegedly monitoring a bug placed inside a State Department conference room. It also charged a Navy code-breaker with selling data to the Russians. Last year, U.S. officials arrested a retired Army officer on charges of spying for Russia for decades.

And when it comes to intelligence, the Russians have a long wish list, experts say.

At the top of the list is military technology. Moscow was stunned by NATO’s effectiveness in Yugoslavia and wants to acquire its own arsenal of high-tech weapons, sophisticated electronics and radar detection equipment, Simes said.

“Russia lags significantly behind the United States. And it’s concerned about national missile defense, so it has a growing appetite for those things that make America unique in the world,” he said.

Political intelligence can be almost as important for the game of diplomatic positioning and long-term goals.

“There’s a belief among many in power that you can only trust what you steal, as Russians don’t have a tradition of an independent media. For people in epaulets who play a growing role in the Russian decision-making process, it’s second nature to look for political intelligence through clandestine collection, even if it’s just as easily found on the front pages of the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times,” Simes said.

But just as critical as specific data is intelligence on America’s spy program.

“A great deal of what they seek is about intelligence activities. It began during the Soviet period and was carried over by Russia,” said Ray Gartoff, a former U.S. intelligence officer and ambassador to Bulgaria who now is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank based in Washington. “That hasn’t changed at all, even if there is a greater interest on both sides in seeing whether there are possibilities for resolving differences and having reasonable relations.”

Konstantin Preobrazhensky, a former KGB spy in Japan who now works as a political analyst, said Russian officials are no doubt gloating over their success.

“From the corporate point of view, Russian intelligence organs may consider it a big success that they had a spy in such an important position in the USA for so many years,” he said. “Even the fact that he was caught can’t diminish their pride at this achievement. All agents, no matter how smart and careful . . . get caught eventually.”

Despite its ability to cultivate a senior U.S. counterintelligence official, however, Russia has had some difficulty running an espionage operation in the United States, according to Russia experts.

“When you’re a failed state like Russia, when you have so many defectors, when you work under the assumption that the CIA and FBI have a lot of assets inside Russian intelligence services, even a greedy American would have to think twice about offering services to Russia because of the danger that it might be short-lived,” Simes said.

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Times staff writer Maura Reynolds and researcher Sergei Loiko in Moscow contributed to this story.