The Spy Game Rolls Along

The time is well past when a major country could convincingly express surprise and indignation at catching another country spying within its borders. It has long been taken for granted that virtually all governments engage in some degree of military or industrial espionage, usually under diplomatic cover. Moreover, the identities of the spies are often known.

Each side, of course, tries to gain advantage by recruiting moles in the others’ spy agencies. Robert Philip Hanssen, for instance, was one of the FBI’s top spy-watchers, a position of high trust that made him privy to many secrets. It was because of what his work involved that the damage he did during his alleged 15 years of spying for Russia was reputedly so great. This week the United States acted to punish past Russian spying activities, and to try to limit future ones.

As a first step it ordered the expulsion of four Russian officials believed to be linked to Hanssen’s suspected perfidy. Two other Russian Embassy employees left the country suddenly after Hanssen’s arrest last month. As a second step, Washington told Moscow to withdraw 46 other Russians assigned to the embassy, the consulate in San Francisco or Russia’s United Nations mission in New York. All had presumably been identified as intelligence agents. Russia quickly indicated it will reciprocate “symmetrically.”

Washington has been concerned for some time by the Russian intelligence presence in the United States, which has risen sharply since its initial post-Cold War decline. The departure of 50 operatives and the likely expulsion of suspected American agents from Russia will crimp both countries’ intelligence operations but certainly not end them. Nor should it ease the pressure on the FBI to improve its internal security, especially in counterintelligence.

Quid pro quo expulsions do not herald a revival of Cold War tensions and hostility. Mutual mistrust remains, to be sure, because in a number of sensitive areas the national interests of Russia and the United States conflict. But the ideological element no longer dominates. The ordinary business of diplomacy and commerce can be expected to go on. And so, almost certainly, will the business of spying.