Cloak And Dagger

The White House decision to expel nearly 50 Russians it claims are intelligence officers may make diplomatic waves, but the presence of "spooks" in the nation's capital is par for the course.

"Practically every nation of any size in the world has an intelligence capacity," said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence policy analyst with the Federation of American Scientists. "Most large foreign embassies in the U.S. have some number of persons whose job includes intelligence collection."

But the popular picture of a spy — a dashing figure scaling walls and using a mini-camera to photograph secret documents — doesn't apply to the vast number of people keeping an eye on the United States.

"Intelligence simply means the collection of information about potential threats to a nation, whether those be military, economic or other kinds of threats," said Aftergood. "So intelligence is an entirely normal activity for government."

When the CIA or FBI isn't willing to share, most "spies" can simply open a newspaper to get valuable info. Indeed, most intelligence comes from "open sources."

According to a recent report from the National Counterintelligence Center, "Company annual reports, patent data, corporate and government Internet sites, and marketing materials are exploited" by countries and private companies keeping tabs on America.

What the foreign agents hope to learn is also more complicated than Jmes Bond films would have us believe.

The first order of business for foreign spies is to know who we have spying on them. Indeed, accused spy Robert Hanssen is charged with betraying inside secrets of America's counterintelligence — or counter-spy — efforts.

"The next thing they want to know is what are we keeping secret," Aftergood said. "If we have decided that we don't want them to know something, then that is an indication to them that they should try to find it out."

Sometimes, merely getting access to internal operations is valuable, regardless of what information such activities actually uncover.

The Center's annual report found that spying on U.S. companies targeted technologies like weapons, guidance systems, navigation methods, electronics and information warfare, among others.

According to defense companies reporting to the NCIC, 58 percent of the people who tried to spy on them in 1999 were individuals or working for foreign companies. Twenty-two percent were government-sponsored spies, and 20 percent were working for entities affiliated with government agencies.

A survey of company heads found that China, Japan, Israel, France, Korea, Taiwan and India did the most industrial spying. Experts say Washington is also cognizant of who is spying on its stuff, but tolerates it because it, in essence, does the same thing.

"There's an unspoken areement that everybody does this and that it will be mutually tolerated as long as it remains within certain boundaries," said Aftergood. "The Hanssen case evidently exceeded the bound of what is tolerated and this expulsion is the result."

While trying to catch double agents, the United States is also busy refining its methods for gathering data abroad.

A 1997 Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy report recommended that American embassies abroad do a better job of sniffing things out — even if it means asking tourists to report what they saw.

In addition to collecting data from American diplomats, military personnel and other government representatives, "the State Department should also strengthen its efforts to acquire information from Americans living or travelling abroad in private capacities," the report suggested.

By JARRETT MURPHY
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