Vladimir Putin is a practitioner of the martial art of judo. It allows a weaker opponent to defeat a stronger adversary. Rather than confront that opponent head-on, the trick is to leverage their strength to throw them off balance. That is what Russia has done with the West. Using the West’s openness was at the heart of the illegals program, but the Kremlin’s judo has evolved since 2010 as the internet and social media have offered new opportunities. The internet’s fundamental features make it a perfect place for those who want to obscure or hide their identity—opening the way for what I call the new “cyber illegals.”
One reason the 2010 illegals story was downplayed was that the Russian spies did not get hold of classified information. But this was another mistake. What if spies are not after secrets but influence? The Kremlin’s agents have learned to marshal espionage, influence operations, and use technology in a novel way as they engage in a conflict with the West that for many years went unrecognized.
These changes were slow to be appreciated in the West, partly a result of the deliberate playing down of the events in 2010 and partly because of the continued hold of a Cold War mind-set. This is a story that matters not just because of what it tells us about Russian and Western espionage but also because of its consequences and repercussions. The pain and humiliation of the defeat in 2010 would not be forgotten in Moscow. It left scars on Putin personally. Russia’s leader, who worked with the illegals program as a young KGB officer, has risen to power and cemented his hold on it thanks to a story he told his people about spies and treachery. Revenge for that humiliation would come served in a bottle of perfume eight years later and in a new campaign unleashed against the West by the Kremlin. Russia is now barely out of the news. But that also has risks.
THE CIA’S APPRENTICE spies who have been chosen to operate in Moscow are given an extra level of training on how to spot the surveillance teams that will be following them. Identifying the tiny telltale signs that suggest the woman in the shop or jogger on the street is not just a member of the public but actually a Russian surveillance operative takes an extra degree of preparation required from anywhere else. After a training mission out on the streets, the students report back to their instructors on which of the people they thought were really watchers. But some trainees become so hyperaware they get it wrong, believing that ordinary people are in fact operatives trailing them. These false positives are known as “ghosts.” A form of paranoia is always a risk for those who work in intelligence. It can also apply to nations as well. Russia and the West have sometimes seen “ghosts”—the hidden hand of the other side when it is not there, especially now. Trying to distinguish between the apparition and the real is difficult but a clearheaded appreciation is vital to avoid the dangers of miscalculation.
The aim of this book is not to demonize Russian spies, let alone all Russians. It is a mistake to not try to understand how the world looks from inside the Kremlin. A mind-set that Russia is a besieged fortress under subversive attack from the West—and particularly the CIA and MI6—has played an important role in justifying Moscow’s actions. Spying is supposed to illuminate the other side’s intentions, but it can also increase tension and drive conflict. This book is based on interviews with dozens of intelligence officers in London, Moscow, Washington, and elsewhere, including some who have served as illegals. Many have worked at the front lines and in most cases they spoke anonymously, but their accounts help explain how we got to where we are today.
It is tempting to talk about a “new Cold War.” That conflict is long gone. There is a new one that is being fought today with both old techniques, like illegals, and new ones. And the best place to start this story is at the moment that the last conflict ended.
August 18, 1991
THE SMALL BAND of Western spies operating in Moscow had learned to trust their instincts. And that Sunday afternoon some of them could sense something strange in the air. For CIA and MI6 officers working undercover in the capital of the Soviet Union, the shadow of the all-powerful KGB was everywhere. It was on the streets and in their bedrooms, black cars trailing them, eyes watching them, microphones listening in. They had received the most intense training that their agencies offered in order to survive in the belly of the beast—the bleak and unforgiving capital of their adversary. CIA officers would walk the streets continually so they knew every crossroads and alley better than those in their hometowns. That was so that when the moment came to “go black” and lose a tail they might have a shot. The phrase “Moscow Rules” referred to this highest level of tradecraft—or spy skills—required to contact Russian agents who were providing secrets to you. There was no room for error, since one mistake might mean leading your KGB tail to them. You would be expelled. They could end up dead.
The MI6 station was smaller than its American counterpart—only a handful of officers. The head of the station had been a special forces officer and he liked to run. One benefit was that it let him stretch his surveillance team. Perhaps you might be able to lose them for a second or two in order to drop a package off or pick it up. In order to keep pace, the KGB assigned an Olympic runner to stay on his heels. That worked until the MI6 man, running on the outskirts of town, decided to jump into the Moscow River and swim across just to annoy his surveillance team. But late that Sunday afternoon there was a mystery. When the youngest member of the MI6 station went for his regular run in a nearby park, he could see the usual surveillance was there as he began. But then, as he became increasingly breathless in the summer heat, he realized the surveillance had vanished. No watchers. No parked car. That had never happened before. Catching foreign spies was the KGB’s priority. What could have been so important that they were called away?
The mystery was solved the next morning when the spies turned on the radio. Hard-liners were seizing power in a coup. The country’s leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who had been progressively opening the country up, had been detained in the Crimea. Some of the KGB’s best surveillance teams—normally reserved to follow foreign spies—must have been pulled back to deal with events. The KGB was the sword and the shield of the Soviet state. The bulk of its half-million personnel were devoted to internal security; its mind-set was the constant search for enemies who threatened the grip of the Communist Party. The chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, feared Gorbachev’s reforms were undermining the pillars on which the Soviet Union had been built, leaving it at risk of collapse, and he was one of the plotters. That Monday morning, columns of tanks made their way across the capital, scattered amid the usual morning traffic as people returned from the weekend. But there was something tentative about the move; the soldiers seemed unsure how to act. The CIA’s chief of station, David Rolph, had only arrived three months earlier from Berlin (“at least I’m going somewhere stable,” he told colleagues) and now found himself in the middle of a crisis no one had predicted. He told his officers to fan out across the city and find out what was going on.
In the place known as “the Woods” or, more formally, as “Moscow Center,” elite KGB officers watched with surprise from the window as the endless column of tanks trundled toward the city center. Yasenevo is set among trees half a mile from Moscow’s outer ring road. From 1972 it has been home to spies whose job it is to steal secrets around the world—then known as the KGB’s First Chief Directorate. Past the barbed wire and guard dogs sits a gray 22-story building set in a park by a lake. Most of the staff was shuttled in every morning in anonymous buses but the most senior generals were housed on-site in a compound of dachas.
At