Spy Games: Old Cold War and Hot New War

Two spy stories, in as many weeks, attest to how the old game of espionage has entered a territory somewhere between absurd and bizarre, and become dangerously irrelevant.

Last week’s exchange of Russian and American spies was, we were told, a mere speed bump in the accelerating cooperation between former Cold War enemies. This week, Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri, who either was or was not abducted by the CIA, flew back to Iran.

As the New York Times reported on July 9, “ten Russian sleeper agents arrested in American cities and suburbs were flown back to Moscow, while four men released from Russian prisons…were exchanged with surreal and even cinematic overtones as Russian and American airplanes met on a sunny tarmac in the heart of Europe.”

The Russian agents didn’t seem to be doing much spying here, though they used the latest technology, were well trained in espionage ‘tradecraft,’ and hid in plain sight as ordinary suburbanites chatting up their neighbors on problems with their kids and lawns.

President Obama, displaying a preternatural responsiveness that contrasts sharply and painfully with his handling of the Gulf oil crisis, was briefed more than two weeks before the arrests of the Russian agents. The exchange was prepared before President Medvedev’s visit to Washington on June 24, though it isn’t clear whether the whole business was mutually orchestrated at that time to its circa Cold War conclusion on July 9th.

If this is what is meant by American and Russian cooperation, we’re in deep trouble. It has nothing to do with real people with real problems, or even with reality itself.

Rather, “it has to do with the relations between the two countries, and with political games going on at the top,” said the lawyer for one of the freed Russians, Maria A. Veselova, who represented Mr. Zaporozhsky, a former Russian intelligence agent. “It is always connected with these chess games.”

The Iranian secret agent man affair is even more bizarre, with much higher and more immediate stakes—namely, the Iranian nuclear weaponization program, and whether America’s 51st state, Israel, is going to “bomb bomb bomb, bomb Iran,” in the words of John McCain. (California’s Beach Boys, who still play “Barbara Ann” on the circuit, should sue McCain for bad mimicry.)

I became friends with an Iranian fellow back in the mid-80’s who fled the Ayatollah’s Iran after the revolution that ousted the Shah, defeated Jimmy Carter, and kept American Embassy officials hostage for over a year.

Daniel had been wealthy in Iran (from construction he said), and was a quiet man with a ready laugh. I’d ask him questions about his country, and we would talk a bit about the politics of the time in both our countries (Reagan was president). At the end of our conversation, Daniel would always turn to me with a wry smile and say, “CIA?”

We’d both laugh, and go on our ways. A year or two after I had left the small college where Daniel was one of the audio-visual staff, I was in the area, and went on campus to visit a few old friends. I looked up Daniel, and after talking about American and Iranian politics a little (Daniel was always well informed on both scores), I bade my goodbye. Again he gave me the parting shot, “CIA?”

Daniel, I said, I’ve known you for ten years, and we’ve talked dozens of times. Why do you always ask me that?

“When I lived in Iran under the Shah,” he said, “the only Americans I ever knew worked for the CIA. They were always asking questions and showing interest in what people had to say. When I came to this country, no one ever asks me anything about my country, except you. So I think you might be CIA.”

No, I’m not, I informed him, but that is one of the saddest commentaries on America and Americans I’ve ever heard.

The CIA is an externally oriented ‘black ops’ spy agency that has done more harm to other peoples, and to the world as a whole, than the KGB did to Soviet citizens. Its existence depends on Americans remaining ignorant about its former, and present activities.

Espionage, of course, has nothing to do with the truth. Classified information pertains only to domination and warfare, by human or technological means.

On Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al-Otaiba, endorsed a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear sites, saying, “It's a cost-benefit analysis…we cannot live with a nuclear Iran.”

Perhaps under the same kind of threat to his family that the Iranian scientist Amiri’s family no doubt experienced in Iran, the UAE ambassador quickly recanted. But the damage was done, and the yahoo Netanyahu is laughing all the way to Israel’s Situation Room. Now it’s only a question of when Israel will attack, and whether nuclear weapons will be used in the ensuing war.

The games that nation-states play are funny and passé when it comes to Cold War antics. But as evidenced by the march toward another, much larger war in the Middle East, the same old nationalistic games are dangerously irrelevant to the borderless reality that the world has become.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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