special report - European Voice

COMMENT
30 May 2013
11
Edward Lucas looks at
three oddities in the case
of a US diplomat paraded
as a spy by the Russian
authorities
The spy who bored us
Here is the big news from
the boiling cauldron of
the East-West spy wars.
Russia is being
annoying; the United
States barely notices and does not care.
The details are familiar: Ryan Fogle,
a third secretary at the US embassy in
Moscow was arrested, carrying –
supposedly – wigs, a compass, lots of
money, a map of Moscow, and a “Dear
friend” letter to a potential recruit in
the Russian security service, the FSB.
Much of this is unsurprising. So long
as Russia spies on the US (which it
does rather well), American spycatchers
will want to stop them. It did
this brilliantly when it recruited
Alexander Poteyev, who was in charge
of the ‘illegals’ (deep-cover agents) in
north America, who were rounded up
in the summer of 2010. They included
the sizzling but trivial red-head Anna
Chapman, and the far more important
Donald Heathfield. (I write about this
in my book “Deception”.)
Other reasons to spy on Russia
abound. It menaces its neighbours.
Links between organised crime and
officialdom are troubling. Islamist
extremists in the north Caucasus and
elsewhere can mount outrages abroad.
Russia has provided some temporary
and partial information on the latter to
Western services, but if an FSB officer
approached the CIA with the offer of
more, in exchange for money, it would
be worth taking a bit of a risk to find
out how much he knew.
Nor is it odd that the hapless Fogle
got caught. Espionage involves lawbreaking
and deceit, which is inherently
risky. If it did not, it would not be
espionage. Perhaps the source was a
trap – a ‘dangle’ in espionage parlance.
Perhaps Fogle’s tradecraft was sloppy.
All spy operations seem brilliantly
successful when they work and
shamefully bungled when they do not.
Espionage does involve occasional
doses of public humiliation to the other
side. America’s FBI released some
embarrassing videos of Chapman and
her colleagues. But nothing matches
the gratuitous treatment meted out to
Fogle and his embassy colleagues,
‘spotlighted’ (in spy jargon) on Russian
television. That – the first big oddity –
had echoes of the iciest days of the
Cold War. To add insult to injury,
Russia named the CIA station chief in
Moscow (a big breach of espionage
protocol). News also leaked of the
earlier expulsion of Thomas Firestone,
a prominent American lawyer in
Moscow, who formerly worked at the
US embassy. He is a leading authority
on official corruption in Russia.
What is going on? One answer may
be that Russia’s spy-catchers simply
wanted to crow about a rare success.
Another is that the whole affair fits the
story that the Kremlin tells to its own
people, of Russia as a besieged fortress,
the opposition as the puppets of
foreign spy services, and the West as
duplicitous and incompetent.
A second oddity is the Obama
administration’s response to a series of
gross provocations: a bored shrug. Its
top priority is big cuts in nuclear
weapons. A joint move on co-operation
in applying international humanitarian
law to cyberspace is expected soon.
Such stuff matters. Spy games,
ultimately, do not.
The third oddity is the change in
Germany, which for the first time since
the era of Helmut Schmidt and Jimmy
Carter is taking a tougher line on the
REUTERS
Kremlin than the US does. In past
years, political pressure blocked
intelligence and security officials from
attacking Russian targets, unless
organised crime was involved (in fact,
even that seemingly limited field
provided a rich harvest). But times
have changed. Having caught Andreas
and Heidrun Anschlag, two long-term
Russian deep-cover spies, Germany
now wants to trade them for jailed
Western agents. Time to re-read those
early novels by John le Carré.
Edward Lucas edits the international section of
The Economist.
LETTERS
Committed to transparency
In a letter published in European Voice last
week, (“Impossible to ignore lobbying
concerns”, 23-29 May), Koen Roovers from
ALTER-EU claims that EPACA, the
European Public Affairs Consultancies’
Association, fiercely opposes stronger rules
on the lobbyist profession.
An amazing statement given that
EPACA, both in its written contribution to
the Commission’s consultation on the
revision of its transparency register, and in
the two stakeholder meetings on the
revision of the register, where ALTER-EU
also participated, has stated our view that
further amendments to the register and
new requirements should be legislated and
mandatory This has been our clear
position for several years.
Furthermore, we have suggested a
number of ways to improve the accuracy of
the data in the register and ideas on how
to encourage even more organisations to
sign up to it.
EPACA represents a high proportion of
the professional European Union public
affairs services providers in Brussels. All
our members have to abide by our code of
conduct, which we have recently updated.
It now explicitly requires our members to
engage transparently with all stakeholders,
not just the EU institutions, thus going
farther than the transparency register code.
We are an engaged partner in the
transparency debate and we are committed
to leadership in quality and professional
standards in the public affairs community.
ALTER-EU has a number of good ideas
on how to improve the register and
strengthen the rules. Unfortunately, they
have chosen to position themselves in the
debate as the voice against corporate
lobbying, instead of being a voice militating
for an effective framework for ethical and
transparent lobbying. EPACA welcomes a
constructive dialogue and we are convinced
that if only ALTER-EU listened to what we
say, instead of making it up, our two
organisations would find a lot of common
ground in the efforts to improve the
transparency register.
Karl Isaksson
Chairman, EPACA
WORDS
European proverbs
Kozla boysya speredi, konya – szadi, a
likhogo cheloveka – so vsekh storon
(Russian). Beware of the goat – from its
front side, of the horse – from its back
side, and the evil man – from any side.
Zemheride yo urt isteyen, cebinde bir
inek tas˛ır (Turkish). Who wants yoghurt
in winter must carry a cow in his pocket
(if you want something difficult, you must
be willing to take the trouble to get it).
Padres, primos e pombos. Os dois
primeiros, não servem para casar. Os
dois últimos só servem para sujar a casa
(Portuguese). Priests, cousins and pigeons.
The first two are not good to marry. The
last two only make the house dirty.
Yesli khochetsya rabotat' lyag pospi i
vsyo proydyot (Russian). If you feel an
urge to work, take a nap and it will pass.
Kopeklerin duası kabul olsa gökten
kemik yaǧardı (Turkish). If
dogs’ prayers were accepted it would rain
bones from the sky.
Warm showers
The Germans have pinpointed some
particularly egotistic types:
Warmduscher. Someone who is easy on
himself (literally, warm showerer).
Trittbrettfahrer. To take advantage of
someone else’s efforts without
contributing anything (literally, the
person who rides on the stepping board
of a bus or train without buying a
ticket).
Nose in the clouds
It’s another short step from egotism to
conceit:
Nosom para oblake (Serbian). He's
conceited, puffed up (literally, he's
ripping clouds with his nose).
Cuello duro (Spanish). A snob, stuckup
(literally, hard or stiff neck – from
keeping one’s nose in the air).
You can respond, with comments,
additions and, where necessary,
corrections, through our website,
www.europeanvoice.com, where our
words column will regularly be found.
Adam Jacot de Boinod is the author of “The
meaning of tingo and other extraordinary words
from around the world”, published by Penguin
Books, and the creator of the iPhone app Tingo.