Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [245]
RUSSIA
More has been written about Russian intelligence than about any other except for that of the United States. Russian intelligence capabilities probably most closely parallel those of the United States, although the KGB and the CIA were not directly comparable during the cold war.
The now-defunct KGB was the last in a long line of Russian and Soviet intelligence services whose primary responsibility was to combat internal dissent. The following KGB directorates had foreign intelligence roles.
• First Chief Directorate (Foreign): responsible for all nonmilitary intelligence, foreign counterintelligence, HUMINT, foreign propaganda, and disinformation
• Eighth Chief Directorate (Communication): SIGINT, both offensive and defensive, the latter role shared with the Sixteenth Directorate (Communications Security)
One can question the KGB’s effectiveness in its broader and more important internal security role. KGB leadership was involved in the abortive 1991 coup against Mikhail S. Gorbachev that led to the demise of the Soviet Union. Moreover, the KGB clearly misread—or failed to report—the depth of anticommunist discontent in both the satellite states and the Soviet Union itself.
The Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlnie (GRU)—Main Intelligence Administration—was and remains the military intelligence organization charged with the collection of a large array of intelligence related to military issues. The GRU has HUMINT, SIGINT, and IMINT capabilities. During the cold war, the Western services viewed the GRU as an occasional rival of the KGB. (Col. Oleg Penkovsky was a GRU officer.)
As with any other HUMINT enterprise, the records of the KGB and GRU are mixed. Successful penetrations of U.S. and British services include the cases of CIA agent Aldrich Ames and FBI agent Robert Hanssen, from the former, and Philby, Blake, and Prime, from the latter. At the same time, however, Western services recruited spies in the Soviet Union and, apparently, the post-Soviet state. Oleg Penkovsky is among the best known. It should also be noted that the damage done by Ames—and perhaps Hanssen simultaneously—involved at least twelve other U.S. agents. Moreover, Hanssen’s arrest apparently came as a result of information supplied by a U.S. intelligence source in Russia.
Like so much else in what was the Soviet Union, the intelligence services have been forced to undergo an unplanned transition. The KGB’s First Chief Directorate emerged as the Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki (SVR)—External Intelligence Service. It is responsible for intelligence liaison, industrial espionage, and HUMINT and for the handling of Ames and Hanssen, carryover assets from the KGB period. The SVR has made much of the fact that it has reduced its overseas presence, attempting to portray itself as a more benign organization than its predecessor. Some observers believe this may have been largely cosmetic. Russia is now more open and accessible than was the Soviet Union, making it easier for the SVR to have contacts with agents in Russia instead of overseas. However, both Britain and Germany have reported the presence of large numbers of Russian spies. MI5 director Evans said there had been no decrease in “undeclared Russian intelligence officers in the U.K.,” and that their activities and those of the Chinese diverted resources from efforts against al Qaeda. Similarly, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service [Bundesamt für Verfassungschutz (BfV)—Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution] said that one third of all Russian