As the American intelligence community tallies the damage done by the Aldrich Ames espionage affair, it also will try to answer another question: Just how good is the new, "reformed" successor to the KGB?
Allegations that the Kremlin had a high-level mole inside the CIA --and that Russian counterintelligence has rooted out a Russian defense plant executive spying for Britain -- are certain to raise new fears about the reach and activities of Russian intelligence.
Ironically, the spy-versus-spy fervor comes at a time when the KGB has been abolished and the two intelligence services that succeeded it appear to be in disarray, racked by budget crises, a 30 percent cut in staff, wrenching reorganization, an embittering loss of prestige and a disorienting change in mission since the Cold War's end.
If Ames, who was allegedly paid up to $2.5 million, is a turncoat, he may be among the last of a breed that will be difficult to replace.
Russian sources paint a portrait of a tamer, poorer and far more disorganized intelligence network that poses a greatly reduced threat to the West.
"Financial difficulties, political confusion, the complete lack of guidance from the political leadership as to what are the most crucial areas --all of this has been extremely detrimental to the intelligence community," said Alexei G. Arbatov, a national security analyst at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow.
Russian intelligence today "might continue some operations, but clearly they would be on a much, much smaller scale than previously," Arbatov said.
Even the old KGB was financed on such a shoestring that its overseas "residents," or spy station chiefs, were reportedly permitted to spend no more than $300 without approval from Moscow.
Now, the money crunch is so severe that employees of the Foreign Intelligence Service, the KGB successor agency that would have supervised Ames, do not have access to personal computers and must share typewriters, according to the Moscow newspaper New Daily which reported last week on the disarray in Russian intelligence.
Even so, he said, money could be found to reward an especially well-placed source
The Soviet Union always had great difficulty recruiting American agents. KGB documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union by Oleg Gordievsky, who defected in 1985, show that KGB bosses repeatedly reprimanded subordinates for an "unacceptably low standard" of recruitment, according to Christopher Andrew, a historian specializing in espionage at Cambridge University.
If the Soviets had problems snagging Americans, Russia is finding the task even tougher, said the New Daily article, which was based on interviews with 10 unnamed agents.
Because money was short and agents motivated by lucre tend to be unreliable, most Soviet foreign agents came in two types: idealists who wished to help the socialist workers' state; and anti-American activists, usually in the Third World, who sought to counter U.S. "hegemonic" intent toward their countries.
But it's not only foreigners that are proving difficult to recruit. Most bright, multilingual Russian graduates from elite universities would rather snag a job at IBM than in the supposedly reformed KGB.
The number of students at the Andropov Red Banner Institute, which trains intelligence staff, has dropped from 300 to about 50; the students are no longer Russia's best and brightest, the New Daily said.
After purges, attrition and two chaotic reorganizations, the Foreign Intelligence Service and the Federal Counterintelligence Service have about one-third fewer employees than the old KGB, Russian officials have said.
Insiders complain that many of the very best in their fields, such as skilled intelligence analysts, linguists, computer and communications experts, have found more lucrative jobs elsewhere.
Besides losing massive numbers of personnel, Russia has closed 30 overseas listening posts. Its once-massive agent network in Eastern Europe has been gutted.
Some say all of these factors have affected the quality of the daily intelligence briefing that appears on Yeltsin's desk each morning. "Only the Lord knows what garbage we are sending them," one FIS source told New Daily. "But they swallow it all."
Allegations that the Kremlin had a high-level mole inside the CIA --and that Russian counterintelligence has rooted out a Russian defense plant executive spying for Britain -- are certain to raise new fears about the reach and activities of Russian intelligence.
Ironically, the spy-versus-spy fervor comes at a time when the KGB has been abolished and the two intelligence services that succeeded it appear to be in disarray, racked by budget crises, a 30 percent cut in staff, wrenching reorganization, an embittering loss of prestige and a disorienting change in mission since the Cold War's end.
If Ames, who was allegedly paid up to $2.5 million, is a turncoat, he may be among the last of a breed that will be difficult to replace.
Russian sources paint a portrait of a tamer, poorer and far more disorganized intelligence network that poses a greatly reduced threat to the West.
"Financial difficulties, political confusion, the complete lack of guidance from the political leadership as to what are the most crucial areas --all of this has been extremely detrimental to the intelligence community," said Alexei G. Arbatov, a national security analyst at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow.
Russian intelligence today "might continue some operations, but clearly they would be on a much, much smaller scale than previously," Arbatov said.
Even the old KGB was financed on such a shoestring that its overseas "residents," or spy station chiefs, were reportedly permitted to spend no more than $300 without approval from Moscow.
Now, the money crunch is so severe that employees of the Foreign Intelligence Service, the KGB successor agency that would have supervised Ames, do not have access to personal computers and must share typewriters, according to the Moscow newspaper New Daily which reported last week on the disarray in Russian intelligence.
Even so, he said, money could be found to reward an especially well-placed source
The Soviet Union always had great difficulty recruiting American agents. KGB documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union by Oleg Gordievsky, who defected in 1985, show that KGB bosses repeatedly reprimanded subordinates for an "unacceptably low standard" of recruitment, according to Christopher Andrew, a historian specializing in espionage at Cambridge University.
If the Soviets had problems snagging Americans, Russia is finding the task even tougher, said the New Daily article, which was based on interviews with 10 unnamed agents.
Because money was short and agents motivated by lucre tend to be unreliable, most Soviet foreign agents came in two types: idealists who wished to help the socialist workers' state; and anti-American activists, usually in the Third World, who sought to counter U.S. "hegemonic" intent toward their countries.
But it's not only foreigners that are proving difficult to recruit. Most bright, multilingual Russian graduates from elite universities would rather snag a job at IBM than in the supposedly reformed KGB.
The number of students at the Andropov Red Banner Institute, which trains intelligence staff, has dropped from 300 to about 50; the students are no longer Russia's best and brightest, the New Daily said.
After purges, attrition and two chaotic reorganizations, the Foreign Intelligence Service and the Federal Counterintelligence Service have about one-third fewer employees than the old KGB, Russian officials have said.
Insiders complain that many of the very best in their fields, such as skilled intelligence analysts, linguists, computer and communications experts, have found more lucrative jobs elsewhere.
Besides losing massive numbers of personnel, Russia has closed 30 overseas listening posts. Its once-massive agent network in Eastern Europe has been gutted.
Some say all of these factors have affected the quality of the daily intelligence briefing that appears on Yeltsin's desk each morning. "Only the Lord knows what garbage we are sending them," one FIS source told New Daily. "But they swallow it all."
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