Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Russian spies remain in U.S. despite KGB's fall Date: Sun, 15 Nov 92 16:56:27 EST Message-ID: \SE A;NATION;SPECIAL REPORT \HD Russian spies remain in U.S. despite KGB's fall \BY Bill Gertz \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT MOSCOW MOSCOW - Russia's foreign intelligence service says it is cutting the number of spies posted abroad by as much as 40 percent, but U.S. counterspies insist that operations against the United States have shown little decline. "You hear different figures, but you can say that it's up to 40 percent," Yuri Kobaladze, director of the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR) press office, says of the personnel cuts. "It's a dramatic reduction." He declines to answer when asked if SVR personnel reductions in the United States, once regarded as the KGB's "main enemy," amounted to 40 percent but rejects claims by Western intelligence that Russian spying is on the rise around the world. Before he became press spokesman, Mr. Kobaladze, 43, worked undercover as a KGB officer with Soviet news agencies and television for 25 years. The new spy agency is called the SVR, for Sluzhba Bneshny Razvedki Rossiy, or Foreign Intellignece Service of Russia. It was formed from the foreign espionage branch of the KGB earlier this year after the KGB was disbanded in the wake of the failed August 1991 coup. A U.S. counterintelligence official says the SVR has reduced some agents who posed as officials due to economic constraints and the demise of Soviet organizations that once provided cover. But the cuts do not come close to 40 to 50 percent, the official says. "We're still very concerned about the number of intelligence officers," says the official. "The number is way beyond what we consider to be acceptable, given the kinds of relations they want." Other foreign spying is done by the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, and the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information, successor to the KGB's electronic intelligence-gathering unit. Gen. Fedor Ladygin, a senior military arms expert described by U.S. officials as a hard-liner, was recently appointed as the new director of the GRU. The GRU military intelligence service remains "extremely aggressive" in spying, the U.S. counterintelligence official says. SVR Director Yevgeny Primakov, 63, a one-time aide to former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, has tried, with mixed results, to change the image of the service. He sought to distance the SVR from past KGB activities by refocusing its priorities on problems of terrorism, economics and nuclear proliferation. In September, Mr. Primakov met with CIA Director Robert Gates. Still, the SVR suffered a series of embarrassments this year, including at least seven defections and another 10 intelligence officers who were given the boot by Western European governments for spying. Once the self-professed "sword and shield" of the Soviet Communist Party, the former KGB now bans membership by its employees in any political parties. Also, the SVR is now governed by a law passed last summer by the Russian parliament that limits its role to collecting "political, economic, scientific/technical and ecological" intelligence. One section of the new law states that intelligence agencies may perform work for both government ministries and "firms and companies of the Russian Federation." This unusual arrangement means government intelligence agencies can plant agents within private businesses and use the firms as cover for carrying out operations. FBI counterintelligence officials said they fear the spying potential of the numerous former KGB officers now in the United States. Mr. Gates told a congressional committee in April that Russian technology collection was "just rolling forward" under Mr. Primakov. Asked about the SVR's role in industrial espionage, Mr. Kobaladze says only that he hopes the Russian government will assign the agency to support fledgling private businesses with economic intelligence. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM