CNSNews.com
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2001

The arrest of veteran FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Philip Hanssen on charges that he has been selling U.S. secrets to Moscow since the mid-1980s indicates that Russian policy toward the United States hasn't changed much since the days of the former Soviet Union, analysts said.

"In fact, the Russians have not only continued to spy on the United States, but in some categories there has even been an intensification of espionage, particularly in the realm of technology acquisitions," said John Lenczowski, director of the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of national security affairs.

Many at the top of the Russian military-industrial complex are people who are extremely resentful of having lost the superpower status they enjoyed during the Cold War, analysts said. Russia is no longer as feared and respected as it used to be, nor is it an indispensable player in major international events, they said.

"This is something that is so contrary to the worldview of the leadership that they have been doing everything they can to retain as large an international power profile as they can," Lenczowski said Tuesday.

At a press conference Tuesday in the wake of Hanssen's arraignment, FBI officials said the accused agent was one of more than six espionage cases the United States has prosecuted in the past decade.

"With each case, we hope it will be the last," said U.S. Attorney Helen Fahey.

Hanssen is the third FBI agent in history to be arrested on charges of spying for the Russians. In 1984, Richard W. Miller was arrested and later sentenced to 20 years in prison for spying for Moscow; in 1997, Earl Pitts, was sentenced to 27 years in prison after admitting he spied for Russia during and after the Cold War.

FBI Director Louis Freeh said Hanssen independently disclosed the identity of two KGB officials who, first compromised by convicted CIA spy Aldridge Ames, had been recruited by the United States. The two agents were subsequently arrested by the Soviets, found guilty of espionage and executed, Freeh said.

Frank Burd, a Russia expert and president of the Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs, said the case highlights Russian President Vladimir Putin's efforts to re-establish Russia's influence both in Europe and areas peripheral to Russia.

"Mr. Putin is engaging in a very traditional Realpolitik," Burd said.

The United States is particularly interested in technology sales that Russia is making to states of concern, such as Iran and Iraq.

"We're very concerned about what the Russians and the Chinese are selling Iran, Iraq and other countries," Burd said, especially after it was disclosed that the cable connecting the radars in Iraq came from China, giving the Iraqis a capability they did not have a short while ago.

For its part, Russia is carefully monitoring U.S. deployment of a national missile defense, which Russia claims will violate arms control agreements and trigger an arms race. During the Kosovo conflict, Russia protested the U.S.-led bombing of Serb forces in Yugoslavia and the use of NATO forces in what it considered to be non-defensive actions.

However, Burd said the history of the two countries since the collapse of the Soviet Union has largely been marked by missed opportunities for cooperation.

The United States tried to be helpful economically, but was not very effective in the long run, analysts said.

"We've also been a little insensitive to their interests with respect to NATO expansion. If we were going down a path of accepting a substantial place for Russia in the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we did take some steps that contradicted that," Burd said.

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