In the past four years, Russia’s intelligence  services have stepped up a campaign of intimidation and dirty tricks against  U.S. officials and diplomats in Russia and the  countries that used to form the Soviet  Union.

U.S. diplomats and officials have found their homes broken into and  vandalized, or altered in ways as trivial as bathroom use; faced anonymous or  veiled threats; and in some cases found themselves set up in compromising photos  or videos that are later leaked to the local press and presented as a sex  scandal.

“The point was to show that ‘we can get to you where you sleep,’ ” one U.S. intelligence officer told The  Washington Times. “It’s a psychological kind of attack.”

Despite a stated policy from President Obama and Russian President Dmitry  Medvedev of warm U.S.-Russian ties, the campaign of intelligence  intimidation – or what the CIA  calls “direct action” – has persisted throughout what both sides have called a “reset” in the relations.

They have become worse in just the past year, some U.S. officials said. Also,  their targets are broadening to include human rights workers and nongovernmental  organizations as well as embassy staff.

The most brazen example of this kind of intimidation was the Sept. 22 bombing  attack on the U.S. Embassy in  Tbilisi, Georgia. A National  Intelligence Council assessment sent to Congress last week confirmed that the bombing was  ordered by Maj. Yevgeny Borisov of  Russian military intelligence, said four U.S. officials who have read the  report.

False rape charge

One example of such intimidation occurred in 2009 against a senior U.S.  official in the Moscow office of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the  congressionally funded nongovernmental organization that promotes democracy  throughout the world. The Times has withheld  the name of the official at the request of NDI.

According to a Jan. 30, 2009, cable from U.S. Ambassador John  Beyrle disclosed by WikiLeaks, USAID  employees received an email with a doctored photo of the NDI official reclining  with an underage girl.

The email from someone purporting to be a Russian citizen accused the  official of raping her 9-year-old daughter.

In the cable, Mr. Beyrle said the embassy  thought the Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) was behind the smear attack, which also appeared in  Russian newspapers. The FSB is the successor agency  of the Soviet-era KGB.

Kathy Gest, the NDI director of public  affairs, said, “The allegations recounted in the WikiLeaks memo are all false  and were protested at the time. We consider the matter closed and NDI, which is  legally registered in Russia, continues its  programs.”

Former Sen. Christopher S. Bond,  who served as the vice chairman of the Senate  Select Committee on Intelligence  between 2007 and 2010, said he had raised the issue of Russian intimidation of  U.S. diplomats with the Obama administration.

“We are concerned about the acts of intimidation as well as their record on  previous agreements and other activities,” Mr. Bond said. “It’s a real concern, I’ve  raised it. It’s not the intelligence  committee that fails to understand the problem. It’s the Obama  administration.”

Yevgeny Khorishko, a spokesman for  the Russian Embassy in  Washington, said accusations that Russian diplomats have stepped up  intimidation of U.S. officials were false.

“Those are absolutely false insinuations that are not worth any comments.  Such kind of ‘information’ is disseminated by those who are not pleased with the  new state of the Russian-American relations,” he said.

Recent escalations

Since 2007, according to two U.S.  intelligence officials, American posts in Belarus, Russia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan have complained about instances in  which junior Foreign  Service officers have come home to find jewelry rearranged, cigarette butts  stubbed out on the kitchen table, defecations in the bathroom, and break-ins  with nothing of value stolen.

More recently, visiting congressional staff on official delegations have  complained of having their hotel rooms broken into and seeing their things  rearranged, according to these officials.

David A. Merkel, who served as deputy  assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs in 2008 and 2009,  said he had seen an escalation in these kinds of direct actions starting in the  last two years of the George W.  Bush administration.

“It’s meant to limit a diplomat’s ability to meet with individuals by  aggressively demonstrating that they are being watched. If you are a political  officer and you are cognizant your actions are being watched, you are less  willing to meet with people, even if this is a normal activity for a political  officer,” said Mr. Merkel, who also served  as director for European and Eurasian affairs on the National  Security Council from 2005 to 2007.

Other U.S. officials said the intimidation campaign escalated even more in  2010 after the Obama administration expelled 10 Russian “deep cover” agents as  part of a spy swap.

Mr. Merkel said these acts of  intimidation were reported throughout what Russia  calls its “near abroad,” or the independent states that used to be part of the Soviet Union.

“It’s mainly focused on people whose jobs are domestic politics and human  rights reporting,” he said. “You have to appreciate how much courage it takes  for a foreign national, a Russian or a Belarusian to meet with our diplomats  because they know they are being watched.”

Another diplomat who was targeted for embarrassment was Kyle Hatcher, who  served at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow  as a political officer responsible for tracking religious freedom in Russia.

In August 2009, two Russian newspapers printed stories based on spliced video  footage of Mr. Hatcher at a hotel room, claiming he was employing the services  of a prostitute.

Two U.S. officials familiar with the incident,  who asked not to be named, said the U.S.  intelligence community saw this as the work of the FSB.

“They intercepted some phone calls he made and spliced them in a way that  made them look strange. Then they took footage of him in a hotel room or  something. They made it all look like they had footage of him in sex acts with  prostitutes in a hotel,” one of those officials said.

Long history

Moscow’s intelligence services long have played dirty tricks on U.S.  diplomats. In the “Spy vs. Spy” world of the Cold War, operations known as “honey traps” – a young, attractive woman woos a U.S. Foreign Service officer  into state of semi-undress where he can be photographed and blackmailed later – were commonplace.

The KGB-trained services also on occasion would  deliberately break into the hotel room or residence of visiting dignitaries. In  some cases, these incidents escalated and U.S. diplomats found their pets  killed.

These kinds of tactics largely quieted down after the Cold War, but a spike  in such incidents at the end of the 1990s prompted the Clinton administration to  form a special bilateral committee to look into them. Moscow’s representative at  the time was Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer who would later become president of the  Russian Federation.

The spike in these incidents, described by one U.S.  intelligence official as “discreet acts of intimidation,” has been raised  discreetly by members of Congress with the Obama  administration since 2009.

But the issue became public last month after The  Times published a series of stories about the bombing attempt in Georgia.

After The Times published an interview with  a Georgian interior ministry official laying out evidence that Mr.  Borisov was behind the bombing attempt, five senators led by Republicans Jon  Kyl of Arizona and Mark Kirk of Illinois asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to provide a  briefing on the incident.

In response to that query, the Obama administration released an assessment  from the National Intelligence  Council, the analytic arm of the Office of the Director of National  Intelligence.

That report, four U.S. officials said, concluded that two bombs were placed  outside a parking lot that abuts the U.S. Embassy compound. One bomb  exploded outside the parking lot, another unexploded bomb was tossed over the  parking lot wall.

The CIA  concluded that Mr. Borisov was acting on  orders from Russian military intelligence headquarters, according to these  officials. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence  and Research assessed that Mr. Borisov  was acting as a rogue agent, these officials said.

Jamie Fly, executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative who also  served on the National Security  Council staff in 2008 and 2009, said the incidents of intimidation of U.S.  officials were evidence that the “reset” policy had failed.

“These types of Russian activities directed against U.S. officials, combined  with Russian policies pursued by Moscow against U.S. allies, show the concept of  a reset in relations with Russia is a joke,” Mr.  Fly said.

Internal Russian politics

Mr. Obama was far more optimistic last week in an interview with Russia’s  official ITAR-Tass news agency.

“Well, first of all, I think it’s important for us to look back over the last  two years and see the enormous progress we’ve made. I started talking about  reset when I was still a candidate for president, and immediately reached out to  President Medvedev as soon as I was  elected. And we have been, I think, extraordinarily successful partners in  moving towards reset,” he said.

An administration official who defended Mr. Obama’s reset policy stressed  that the political leadership of Russia was  sincere in wanting to improve ties with the United States.

“There are most certainly some in the Russian government – nationalists,  hard-liners, KGB folks, etc. – who don’t like the  reset and are doing whatever they can to derail it,” this official said.

The official compared the Russia situation to  domestic U.S. political divisions.

“We also have our critics/skeptics here within the U.S. government who are  also still busy fighting the Cold War. And in these matters, they have good  justification since certain elements of the Russian establishment are also still  fighting the Cold War,” the official said.

This official pointed to Russia’s willingness  to help supply U.S. troops in Afghanistan and their support for U.N. sanctions  against Iran, North Korea and Libya as evidence of the reset policy’s  success.

“The Kremlin seems to be a willing partner, even if maybe some in that regime  don’t like this new trend and are doing what they can to derail it,” he  said.

However, on Tuesday, Mr. Putin, now Russia’s prime minister and widely seen as its real  leader, made some belligerent comments about the U.S., calling it a “parasite” on the world economy.

At a conference of the Nashi and Young Guard youth associations, Mr.  Putin also suggested that his country would invite the Georgian breakaway  province of South Ossetia into the Russian Federation, effectively annexing land  taken in a war three years ago.

Mr. Putin, a former FSB  director, is widely regarded as the real man in charge of Russia’s  elite establishment of current FSB and former KGB officers.

In 2006, sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya produced a study that found 78  percent of Russia’s current elite had ties to the KGB or FSB.

 

 

source:                                    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/4/russia-uses-dirty-tricks-despite-us-reset/?page=all