Burn after reading

Burn after reading

by The Economist online

ENCRYPTED data hidden in digital images, radiograms, invisible ink, switching bags at a train station in Queens, burying pots of money in upstate New York to be dug up two years later—the allegations made against ten supposed Russian agents have enough in them to delight fans of cold war spy fiction. But it is the details revealing the prosaic drudgery of the crack spy's lot that are really gripping. Even Moscow Centre's prized assets write down passwords that they cannot remember and leave them lying around at home. They argue with their masters over whose name should be on the title deed to a house. One agent has to be taught how to use an ATM card. Computers malfunction and, like many other expats, agents complain that at headquarters: "they don't understand what we have to go through here."

The impression given by the documents provided to the courts is of a service trying to justify its usefulness to politicians. Information about goings on in the gold market, presumably of the type pumped out by countless analysts on Wall Street, was "v. useful" and sent directly to the Ministers of Finance and Economic Development. An agent is instructed to try "to single out tidbits unknown publicly but revealed in private by sources close to State department [sic], Government, major think tanks."

Meanwhile the spies try to come up with something to please their handlers. The best exchange in the documents could have been adapted from "Our Man in Havana":

LAZARO: They tell me that my information is of no value because I didn't provide any source...it's of no use to them.

PELAEZ: Really?

LAZARO: Yes. They say that..."...without a source...without stating who tells you all of this...It isn't...your report isn't."

PELAEZ: [Interrupts] Put down any politician from here.

Why did the FBI spend years investigating what appears to be a bunch of no-hopers? One thesis is that they were not spies but spotters—people whose job it was to identify who, among the pool of people in and around government with access to sensitive information, had a drink problem, large personal debts or was passed over at work. Once identified, such people might be approached by another agent and offered a bribe.

Another is that the FBI was encouraged to prosecute this lot as a way of strengthening the hand of President Dmitry Medvedev against the siloviki—spooks who managed to hang on to their privileged positions after the fall of the Soviet Union and substituted the public interest for their own. This would fit with America's strategy of friendliness to Mr Medvedev and frostiness towards Russia's prime minister and former president, Vladimir Putin.

Russia's response has, so far, been calm and measured, particularly when compared with some of the Kremlin's anti-America rants of a few years ago. The Russian government has called the allegations baseless. But on June 29th it confimed that the suspects are indeed Russian citizens (link in Russian), rather than Americans, Canadians and Peruvians as their passports would suggest.

This leaves Russia in an awkward position. Expelled spies, whether Russian, American or British, are normally met by symmetrical expulsions on the other side of the Atlantic. Since this lot were not working within an embassy that is trickier. The Russian government might choose to expel some Americans working in think-tanks in Moscow. Or it might continue to insist that these people had nothing to do with it.

Either way, the timing of the accusations (which look like they were postponed until after Mr Medvedev's visit to Washington) suggest America is hoping the episode will do minimal damage to the reset of relations between the two counties.