NewsMax.com
Thursday, March 22, 2001

The Russian foreign ministry, equivalent to the State Department, threatened Thursday that it may send home not half a hundred but "hundreds" of American personnel enjoying diplomatic immunity there.

The move is in retaliation for 54 of its agents being booted from the United States for engaging in covert information-gathering.

And that is in addition to Moscow's earlier expelling of five U.S. diplomats and ordering all Soviet personnel working in the American Embassy to quit their jobs.

That was strictly a tit-for-tat response to Washington's initial expulsion of four Russian diplomats for engaging in illegal information-gathering. Two others had high-tailed it before they could be run off.

Foreign personnel who have diplomatic immunity may not be arrested for spying, but are subject to being sent home as persona non grata.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin Powell summoned Russian Ambassador Yury Ushakov to the State Department and informed him which four of his embassy personnel were being expelled immediately.

The next day, Powell added another 50 to the go-home list. That is what has set off the Russians so.

Under time-honored gentlemen's rules of espionage – if there is such in the real world of spying – when one nation sent a "diplomat" packing for snooping on his host, the other nation would respond in kind.

A game of blow for blow: Send one home, get one back. Send three home, get three back. And so on.

But upping the ante this high – "hundreds" of American diplomats for 54 Russians – is unprecedented. Not even when then-President Ronald Reagan in 1986 expelled some 80 Soviet diplomats did Moscow react this strongly.

What has held the historic diplomatic expulsion to an even-Steven basis has been each nation's fear of unraveling its own overseas spy networks if it overreacted.

Should the possible-spy diplomats being shipped home reach a critically large number, it could conceivably cut deeply into a nation's ability to conduct an effective espionage operation abroad.

It was not known immediately whether the U.S. government would respond in kind to this latest Russian move, or even go Moscow one better by expelling more than "hundreds" of its personnel.

This escalation is of concern to both the Central Intelligence Agency, which runs America's spies in other countries, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, charged with catching foreign spies operating here at home.

Sending as many as 54 possible foreign spies home at one clip is highly unusual for the United States, and when the State Department did this it was interpreted immediately, in Russia as well as in this country, as Powell seizing control of this issue.

Traditionally, it is the FBI that has set the number of expulsions, since it has the responsibility for keeping tabs on the foreign diplomats spying under cover of diplomatic immunity.

The initial four deportees are believed to be connected with the case of Robert Hanssen, the FBI counterspy now under arrest for spying for 15 years for the Russians.

The FBI is under severe criticism for having allowed this to go undetected for so long, and now Powell's dramatic action is construed as the State Department's taking charge of damage control in the Hanssen case.

If those first four expulsions were linked with the Hanssen case, the next logical question is: Were the additional 50 also connected?

If so, it's an omen that this case may have ramifications far more serious than originally indicated – and it's already been termed the most-damaging espionage in American history.

According to the Moscow bureau of Agence France Presse news service:

This war of retaliation between Washington and Moscow is no mere tiff but a confrontation that is "the most serious between the two countries since the height of the Cold War."

Shortly before the expulsion story broke, Russian President Vladimir Putin was dismissing fears that the Hanssen spy scandal could sour relations between the two counties.

"Don't overdramatize the situation," he was telling Russian news media.

"As for the new U.S. administration's policy toward Russia, it's not worth such drama. In any country, a new leadership always rethinks the former policies."

But that attitude changed swiftly when Powell gave four and then another 50 Russians their walking papers.

Putin's immediate response was to have his top foreign-policy aide, Sergei Prikhodko, angrily denounce the Bush-Cheney administration for indulging in "spy mania."

Interfax news agency quoted Prikhodko as saying:

"If these reports are true, such action would cause deep regret in Russia.

"Any campaigns of spy mania or searches for an enemy are only worthy of deep regret and are a relapse into the Cold War era."

Next to be heard from, however, were Russia's security forces.

Reuters news agency reported its sources there said Moscow can be expected to "retaliate swiftly."

Then, RIA Novosti, the official state news agency, cited one senior Russian security-service source as saying that "hundreds" of U.S. Embassy officials might now be expelled.

The agency said by expelling 54 Russians the United States was trying to put Russia in "its place in the new world order."

RIA Novosti went on to note, ominously, that while 190 Russians work in the Washington embassy, there are some 1,100 U.S. diplomats stationed in Moscow who might be at risk.

Itar-Tass news service quoted an unnamed "high-level source in the Russian government" that Russia's response may be "ingeniously unpleasant."

He spoke of "wide-ranging and diverse" responses, but that they did not necessarily include retaliatory expulsion of U.S. diplomats.

The foreign ministry also took this opportunity to place further diplomatic pressure on Washington.

It blasted as an "openly unfriendly act" the U.S. government's intermittent contacts with Chechen separatist guerrillas, who have for 18 months been waging war against Russian troops in that breakaway province in the Caucasus.

Meanwhile, James Collins, the American ambassador to Moscow, was summoned for a half-hour meeting Thursday morning with Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov.

Emerging with a stony face, Collins told reporters who swarmed outside the Stalin-era foreign ministry building:

"I have no comment. Whatever comment will come from Washington or from the Russian government."

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

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