Underside Of A New Era

After Russia expelled American diplomats Friday, retaliating for American expulsions earlier this week, leaders of both countries stressed the strength of their relationship and their continued cooperation.

Experts, meanwhile, stressed that no matter how warm and fuzzy that relationship becomes, the two nations will probably continue to spy on one another, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.

"Espionage has been, is now and will continue to be for the foreseeable future the kind of a dark underside of foreign policy and national security policy," said former Deputy Secretary of State and Russia expert Strobe Talbott.

That's well understood by both sides. No one at the U.S. embassy in Moscow could have been surprised by the Russian order that 50 American diplomats would have to leave. It was an exact tit-for-tat retaliation to the American expulsion of 50 Russian diplomats whom the FBI suspected of being spies.

The White House said Friday that it now considers the matter closed.

Mr. Bush told reporters he thought Moscow would understand the United States did the right thing in expelling the Russian diplomats, and said the expulsions should not prevent a meeting between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"We want to be good friends with Russia. We're not standing back from Russia. We're not looking for ways to offend Russia," he said.

Putin, himself a former intelligence officer, said he doesn't think the battle of expulsions will damage relations between Washington and Moscow, offering that, "I do not think that it will have big consequences."

But another top Russian official, Security Council head Sergei Ivanov, complained the new administration was flexing its muscles and portraying Russia as an evil empire in a return to the rhetoric the eagan era.

"It's hard to call Russian-American relations good. That's a delicate diplomatic way of putting it," Security Council head Ivanov said.

Before the expulsions, Russia complained about Bush administration charges that it was selling dangerous weapons, U.S. plans for a national missile defense and White House support for contact with Chechen rebels.

"After coming to power, one has to show he has biceps and a torso," Ivanov said.

Powell, however, noted the spy flap did not stop the U.S. space command from helping Russia track the final fall of the Mir space station on Thursday.

But he might also have noted that cooperation in space — or anywhere else — is not going to stop the two sides from spying.

Last month's arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen demonstrated that. Two years ago, a Russian diplomat was arrested for listening in on a State Department conference room.

In fact, the number of Russian spies operating under diplomatic cover in the United States has increased since 1997, returning to Cold War levels of about 200.

Officials say the U.S. has less than half that many in Russia, so tit-for-tat expulsions are bound to hurt America more than Russia. However, the officials say something had to be done to reduce the number of Russian spies — there were just too many for the FBI to keep track of.

"There has come a time again for the exchange of moves in the standard game of spying and diplomacy," ITAR-Tass news service commentator Yury Romantsov wrote.

Earlier this week, Bulgaria kicked out three Russians in a spy scandal, and the next day the Russians told three Bulgarians to leave Moscow.

In Russia's parry Friday, the No. 2 diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, deputy chief of mission John Ordway, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, read a "decisive protest," a ministry statement said, and told that four American diplomats must leave, allegedly for spying.

The U.S. State Department said it had been told that 46 more would be kicked out by this summer.

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