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Exposing Russia Barry Farber The cartoon showed a meterological observatory so jam-packed with the most modern weather-predicting devices you could hardly see the two meteorologists crouched in the corner. They were smothered by every state-of-the-art, imaginable, and even unimaginable piece of futuristic weather forecasting equipment.
"I predict rain," said one of the weathermen. "Why?" asked his partner. "Because," replied the first, "my corns hurt!"
You don't have to be a Henry Kissinger or a Zbigniew Brzezinski or a successful intelligence agent to ferret out some of the most closely-guarded top secrets of the world's most important countries.
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Sometimes all you have to is pay attention when those secrets tumble out. One tumbled out on me not long ago and my corns still hurt. Are you ready for a Russian top secret?
Russia is no friend of the United States. How did this great secret come tumbling out?
It's no secret that democracy is having a tough time in Russia. All you have to do is note the page one stories about the many critics of the Kremlin being shot dead, poisoned, or slapped behind bars for unending sentences. Vladimir Putin is clearly no fan of democracy.
Russia is a cold-war loser that has a terrible time forgiving us for winning. What made my corns hurt was a statement by Russia's ambassador to the United Nations that told us a lot more than I suspect the Putin regime wanted anybody to know. Go back to Oct. 15, 2006 when the Security Council voted unanimously against North Korea for its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The delegate from North Korea heard the vote and stormed out of the chamber forthwith. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton then took the floor to denounce the behavior of North Korea's representative saying it reminded him of Soviet dictator Nikita Krushchev banging his shoe in protest at the General Assembly in 1960.
The Russian ambassador wasted no time taking the floor to protest the American ambassador's gross and uncalled-for insult to a former dictator of the Soviet Union. That's it. That's all. And that's enough.
Theoretically, you see, the Russia of today is a democracy boundlessly grateful to the Western world and particularly to its leader, the United States, for persisting and prevailing until the wicked old Soviet Union fizzed away like an Alka-Seltzer tablet under Niagara Falls. Theoretically, therefore, the Russia of today despises every single Soviet ruler and emphatically agrees with every insult cast — or that ever could be cast upon them — regardless of the source. At least that's the theory.
For the Russian ambassador to spring to his feet and defend Nikita Krushchev is dramatic proof that Russia's "gratitude" for being "liberated" from communist dictatorship is somewhat spotty. Can you imagine a German ambassador today protesting an insult to the late Adolf Hitler? Or an Italian ambassador protesting an insult to the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini? Those countries feel totally unconnected to those criminal leaders in their past.
Russia, obviously, does not share that disconnect with its communist past. And its ability to pretend they're a grateful new member of the world fraternity of democracies can be pierced when something like Bolton's comment zings them by surprise. In the early 1980s when Soviet so-called "journalists" in America began to appear on talk shows, American journalist and war correspondent Charles Wiley was giving one of those Soviet radio guests a particularly hard time, thanks to his steel-trap knowledge of Cold War history.
During a commercial break Wiley teased the Soviet guest by saying, "I believe you're really a colonel in the KGB." "Don't be silly," snapped the Russian. "I'm a general!" My evalutation: I don't think he was kidding. And I don't think the dangling of money, sex, or drugs could have elicited that outburst from the Russian; only a successful jape at his vanity during a moment of stress when he was losing a radio argument to an American journalist who happened not to be as clueless as Soviet supposition assumed.
Forewarned is forearmed. Do our leaders understand this? Does the awareness of Russia's true feelings reverberate through the twisted alleys of twilight Foggy Bottom? I like to think five and half acres of experts are making sure Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice measures every move through this lense. I fear the thought that we take Russia at face value for one geopolitical clock-tick.
There was a long-forgotten movie during World War II in which the plot pin-wheeled around "Who is the German spy?" A woman on the American counterintelligence team was tolerated by her male partners but condescended to at all times and never taken seriously. In the climactic scene, she was with her teammates at a Washington cocktail party with the man we were led to suspect least, or not at all, as being the German spy. Suddenly she took her lit cigarette and jammed it onto the back of his bare hand; eliciting a torrent of profanity — in German! As they led the now-dramatically-exposed enemy agent away in handcuffs she coolly explained, "When someone is suddenly alarmed like that, regardless of his training, he cries out in his native tongue."
I don't know if the back of the Soviet — forgive me — the Russian ambassador's hand still hurts.
My corns definitely do. Editor's note:
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