Russian President Boris Yeltsin has marched to the brink of war with Chechnya a couple of times in the past, and then backed off at the last minute when friends and enemies alike raised a clamor of protest. Nonetheless, last week he authorized the use of force in the region. This back-and-forth approach reveals much about the operating style of Russian intelligence organizations. As always with such operations, the story is complicated. But the case of Chechnya, once sorted out, proves that classic covert operations are increasingly difficult to conceal in a world where even ordinary citizens have caught on to the unmistakable signs of hidden manipulation.


The history of the Chechen crisis looks something like this. The republic's president, Dzhokhar Dudayev, declared independence in 1991. Yeltsin, though, refused to recognize Dudayev's declaration and offered covert support for Chechen groups that wanted to remain part of Russia. Dudayev charged that the opposition was financed and controlled by Russia. Moscow denied it. The Chechens claimed the opposition forces were commanded by Russians and included Russian soldiers. Moscow denied it. The Chechens protested that an air raid on the Chechen capital of Grozny, killing nine civilians on Dec. 1, was conducted by Russian pilots. Moscow denied it. Then Yeltsin issued an ultimatum: If a cease-fire was not reached , Russia would intervene to restore order.


Does all this sound familiar? Detail by detail, the unfolding events in Chechnya have mirrored the U.S. plan of nearly 35 years ago, to invade Cuba and topple Fidel Castro's government -- plans formed and half-carried out not once, but twice. The initial attempt was too big to hide. First, U.S. bombers raided Castro's airfields. The State Department insisted the pilots were Cuban defectors, the planes belonged to Castro, the government of John F. Kennedy had nothing to do with it. Then a flotilla of ships landed a thousand armed men on a beach along a stretch of Cuba's southern coast called the Bay of Pigs. The State Department again insisted the fighters were simply Cuban patriots, the force had armed and trained itself, the United States had nothing to do with it.


If Castro had taken longer to crush the invading force, the plan would have called for the invaders to declare a new provisional government. Then Washington would have recognized the rebel government and intervened with U.S. troops "to restore order."


Kennedy manfully shouldered the blame, but was furious at the failure. Less well-known is the fact that the president charged his brother, then Attorney General Robert Kennedy, with overseeing a second attempt. Brought in to run the show was Edward Lansdale, the psychological-warfare expert who had helped the government of the Philippines defeat a communist insurgency.


Lansdale's master plan called for an aggressive campaign of covert operations culminating in a victory parade through the streets of Havana before the congressional elections in November 1962. What actually happened in November 1962, it will be remembered, was a collective worldwide sigh of relief at the peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis.


Lansdale's program and his paramilitary raids on Cuban sugar refineries and the like were overshadowed by the Soviet-U.S. confrontation that appeared to threaten the outbreak of nuclear war. Castro knew what was going on, of course, but the U.S. public did not see through the veil of secrecy until the mid-1970s, when a Senate committee investigated the CIA, including the efforts to assassinate Castro that had been a central feature of Lansdale's plan.


The comic side of these plots -- which involved poisoned cigars, the Mafia, a fountain pen rigged to inject a deadly toxin and exploding seashells -- convinced many that Lansdale's program promised nothing more than an embarrassing sideshow. But, whenever an intelligence operation looks like a joke, look again.


In this case, as usual, there is a missing piece in the Lansdale timetable between blowing up sugar refineries and the victory parade. CIA officers who worked with Lansdale insist that the White House had agreed to provide in 1962 what had been refused at the Bay of Pigs -- open U.S. military intervention. One of Lansdale's assistants at the CIA said his boss was no fool; he had no illusions that CIA propaganda leaflets would trigger a popular uprising. That was just window-dressing. The victory parade would follow direct U.S. military intervention "to restore order."


The Kennedy-Lansdale plan never worked out, and neither did Yeltsin's. In his case, the problem was that everyone was on to the "secret" plan from the start. Dudayev's forces captured a score of Russian soldiers who admitted they had been recruited by the Federal Counterintelligence Service. Political opponents ridiculed the Yeltsin government's feeble claim that the soldiers were "volunteers" -- a ploy that worked better for President Eisenhower back in the more-innocent 1950s, when U.S. pilots involved in a CIA operation were captured in Indonesia.


The story about the "volunteers" was the first to go: Next was the Yeltsin threat to send in Russian troops to "restore order." The fighting had been started by the Russians and everyone knew it. Yeltsin sent Defense Minister Pavel Grachev to meet Dudayev and call a truce. They met in Ordzhonikidzevskaya, a town named after one of the founders of the Soviet Union's first intelligence service. Grachev took back all of Yeltsin's threats of war, and then conceded, almost as an afterthought, that yes, it was true, the planes and pilots that raided Grozny were Russian. There was no secret to give away. The Chechens and everybody else knew an old trick when they saw one.





Thomas Powers is the author of "The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA." He contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.