Col. Stanislav Lunev
Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2001

According to FBI officials, Hanssen spent most of his career in counterintelligence, but for at least 15 years actually worked for Russian intelligence. They said Hanssen has done extreme damage to the security of the United States.

While it’s a terrible thing to have a spy inside the very U.S. government agency charged with fighting against espionage in this country, it would be extremely difficult to say that it is unexpected. Russian intelligence is not only spying against the U.S. and America’s friends and allies now, but is much more active and aggressive than it ever was during the hottest days of the Cold War.

We know how dangerous Chinese intelligence activity against the U.S. was under the Clinton-Gore administration. During the last eight years America has had a very strange relationship with Russia, based primarily on a massive money flow from the U.S., as well as on secret sweetheart deals between Washington and Moscow.

But the mainstream press did not bother to inform Americans about the level of Russian intelligence penetration of U.S. governmental and private institutions. Very brief reports about this type of really dangerous hostile activity were not, until today, noticed by the American public, but its influence is many times greater than the alleged Chinese intelligence penetration.

Red China’s intelligence machine has not been operating against the U.S. for as long a time as Russian intelligence has. In addition, up until now the Chinese have not had so much of the up-to-date technical and technological capabilities as Russian military and political intelligence agencies (the GRU and the SVR) have at their disposal.

It is important to understand that around the clock, every day, about 100 Russian spy satellites are collecting all possible secret and classified information about the U.S., its troops and facilities worldwide.

Russian intelligence experts are decoding and very carefully analyzing information from those space satellites and reporting the most important data to the government for its practical use.

Space intelligence is working in close cooperation with air, naval and electronic intelligence and reconnaissance, whose mobile and ground-based stations are located around the perimeter of Russian territory and worldwide. This includes such well-known giant electronic spy stations as those in Cuba, Vietnam and other countries, and the so-called "scientific" and "merchant" ships, which are operating all around U.S. territory and monitoring American submarines and other warships at sea.

As the Washington Times reported recently, Russian merchant ships are spying on U.S. nuclear submarines in the Pacific Northwest and reporting the information to the Moscow headquarters of the military intelligence service. The classified July 2000 CIA report obtained by the paper reveals that recent intelligence "provides the first solid evidence of long-suspected Russian merchant ship intelligence collection efforts against U.S. nuclear submarine bases."

The paper also reported that some Pentagon officials fear the intelligence data could be sold or leaked to international terrorists, like those who bombed the destroyer USS Cole in October.

This information challenged the official Pentagon response to the April 1997 incident involving the firing of a laser at a U.S. intelligence officer and a Canadian helicopter pilot as they photographed the Russian merchant ship Kapitan Man as it spied on a U.S. nuclear missile submarine in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, north of Seattle.

The Laser’s beam caused permanent eye damage to Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jack Daly, an intelligence officer, and Canadian Capt. Pat Barnes, the helicopter pilot.

At the time the incident was covered up in order to avoid upsetting U.S. relations with Russia. Prior to the incident, then Vice President Al Gore had met with Russian Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin and actually discussed loosening customs controls on Russian ships entering U.S. ports.

As NewsMax.com previously reported, Russian military and political intelligence agencies’ personnel are very actively operating inside the U.S., where they are recruiting people with access to the most sensitive American secrets.

Hundreds of these spies, who are pretending to be diplomats, experts, journalists and other "legal" Russian representatives, are operating from Washington, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and other stations.

In addition, the GRU and SVR are using thousands of people who come to the U.S. as members of numerous governmental, parliamentary, scientific, cultural and other delegations, businessmen, students, immigrants and others for intelligence purposes. They are well trained and prepared to carry out the main task of penetrating the very heart of U.S. secrecy.

The curtains over this extremely sensitive area, and over the level of Russian intelligence penetration of the U.S. were recently slightly parted by former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

In his "Midnight Diaries" Yeltsin revealed that he was informed by Russian intelligence about the relations between Bill Clinton and Monika Lewinsky far in advance of when it became known to the U.S. Congress, national security authorities and – finally – to the public.

If the Russian intelligence penetrated the very secrets of the private life of the U.S. commander in chief, which were known only by a few persons inside the inner circle of the White House, we can imagine what other deep, dark secrets found their way to the GRU and SVR stations in Washington, D.C.

The new U.S. administration inherited from the Clinton-Gore team a very poor legacy in the extremely important area of national security, and the new people in the White House need to do a lot of hard work to fix the problems in this area

In this connection the new spy case against Hanssen would be a good reminder for all of us that Russia’s aggressive intelligence activity against this country is real and dangerous and desperately needs to be taken care of – not in the future, not tomorrow, but now.

Also see:
New Developments in Russian Espionage Against U.S.
Russian Espionage: Mercury Continues to Rise.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Hanssen Case
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