#5
Russo-US Special Services Collaboration Post 11 Sep Mulled
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
4 December 2001
[translation for personal use only]

Transcript of conversation with Yuriy Kobaladze, former major general of the Foreign Intelligence Service, and an unnamed "High-Ranking Staffer of the Russian Federation Armed Forces General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate," by Vladimir Bogdanov, date and place not given, under the "Viewpoint" rubric: "Secrets Must be Shared"

"A case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted." This proverb characterizes best of all the situation that has developed in mutual relations between the Russian and US intelligence services since the 11 September tragedy. The presidents of our countries have made statements on the close cooperation that has begun between the Russian and US special services in regard to joint antiterrorist actions.

But what form should such cooperation take and how realistic is it anyway? Yuriy Kobaladze (in the past a major general of the Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence Service) and a high-ranking staffer of the Russian Federation Armed Forces General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), who wished to remain anonymous (for understandable reasons), now talk about this.

[Question] A question for you both. Literally the day after the 11 September terrorist acts, Yevgeniy Primakov, a former leader of the Foreign Intelligence Service, stated that this was a matter of shame for the special services of all countries including Russia. The impression was that they were all completely helpless in the face of well-coordinated international terrorist actions.

Yuriy Kobaladze:

Let us recall those "happy" times when Bakatin [chairman of the USSR KGB] received the US ambassador in his office on Lubyanka Square and when delegations from the Foreign Intelligence Service and the CIA paid visits to one another. It really seemed then that something unusual and new was happening in relations between the former enemies. Positive working contacts in the joint campaign against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the trafficking in weapons and narcotics began to be established. This included the campaign against international terrorism.

But unfortunately these all proved to be no more than noble intentions. Spy scandals began with the result that the Americans harbored grievances against us and then there was the war in Chechnya.

Our partners withdrew "into their shell." But strange as it may seem our foreign policy departments (and not just the special services) proved to be more ready for this cooperation and more honest and frank. We found that we had a closer understanding of the English expression that "the work of the special services is a dirty business which is why it must be carried out by gentlemen."

To cut a long story short, instead of concrete cooperation and the actual adoption of any real measures all our efforts went up in smoke, as it were. This also led to the tragic events of 11 September. But I do not want to be a pessimist pure and simple.

My personal impression is that this was the first time that the Western countries, above all the United States, believed in our sincerity and admitted that they had made a mistake. And they entered into professional cooperation with us.

The level of real opposition to international terrorism is rising, albeit slowly. The fact that the Americans spend around $30 billion a year on their intelligence community and are prepared to spend as much again in combating this world threat shows that this is a very serious business.

A new subdivision is being formed within our Foreign Ministry which will tackle the problem of terrorism in the world. Within our special services, too, a reorganization is taking place aimed primarily at a greater concentration of forces and attention on the campaign against international terrorism.

High-ranking GRU Staffer:

I would not say that this was a matter of shame for the special services, in any event not the Russian special services, but a matter of shame concerning the attitude that exists within the political leadership's views on the interrelationship with crime.

In the world today there are at least 10 international structures combating terrorism. The public at large knows little about their work. This is understandable. Their work needs no publicity. Rather the reverse. But if we, operating solely on the basis of official information, believe that international terrorism revealed itself in its full magnitude only on 11 September, then any talk of collaboration between the special services is pointless. We will simply be trailing along in the wake of Washington's policy.

You have to understand that international terrorism, by its activities in Chechnya, is trying not only to dismember the Russian Federation but also to try out the forms and methods of struggle against the legitimate organs of power, models of the command and control of bandit formations, and methods of funding them and is actively training future terrorists from many states to commit similar acts anywhere in the world. In a conversation intercepted by our special services, Khattab's leader bluntly stated: "Train the personnel, we will need them in the future in other countries."

Hence it is not Russia that should ally itself with the United States but vice versa. The entire civilized world should have allied itself with Russia when it called for an armed struggle against this evil back in the nineties.

But what have we seen so far? A broad stream of moral and financial support from the countries of the Near East and the United States bound for Maskhadov, Khattab, and the other bandits.

The Americans must accept that Russia is not a secondary partner in this struggle but an equal partner.

[Question] But do they regard us as equal partners today?

[Answer] I believe that we are already approaching this stage. But for collaboration between the special services to be truly equal and effective it must be developed and built up at a level of equal partners alone. Collaboration between the special services must be organized on the basis of the common decisions of our countries' supreme leadership regarding the aims and tasks of the joint campaign against international terrorism. There must be clearly formulated goals, tasks, and areas of activity here and the special services' manpower and resources used to resolve the common tasks must be identified in concrete terms.

Collaboration between special services must only be centralized, not arranged in such a way that, for example, the Foreign Intelligence Service works only with the CIA or the Federal Security Service with the FBI and so on.

And of course the main form of collaboration must be in the area connected with information exchange.

Israeli special services' analysts believe that it took 18-24 months to prepare the 11 September terrorist acts. Were there really no "leaks" at all in those two years? I find this hard to believe. This information should have been "shared" with colleagues as a matter of urgency.

However, too much openness is also harmful. In spring 1995 one of our Russian special services gave the Russian media a transcript of radio intercepts of conversations between Dudayev and Udugov, probably to show that the regime in Chechnya is truly a gangster regime. The effect was staggeringly negative. First, this had absolutely no effect on the pro-Dudayev media. And second, the United States sent special equipment to the bandits in Chechnya via the territory of Germany and Turkey and for a long time this prevented our special services from monitoring the gunmen's talks.

Do not get me wrong but if we want to achieve real results in this difficult and dreadful war the media must be completely disconnected from our joint work with our Western counterparts. Perhaps it would be best if someone like John Le Carre were to give a colorful account of today's covert operations in one of his thrillers a few years from now.

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