Back in the Shadows

By Kevin Fedarko

Late last Tuesday evening, a plane departed from Washington with an unusual passenger list: two high-level officials from the CIA bound for Moscow. The delegation's mission was straightforward if somewhat naive: give Russian authorities a chance to limit the diplomatic fallout caused by the arrest of Aldrich Ames, the American accused of spying for Moscow. To do that, the CIA officials insisted, the Russians must honor a previous promise to cut the number of their spies operating in the U.S. by half and identify their top intelligence officers in New York City and San Francisco. Most important, Moscow would have to recall Alexander Lysenko, its chief spook in Washington, voluntarily.

When the delegation returned with word that the Russians had absolutely no intention of cooperating, the Clinton Administration's response was equally straightforward. Sometime this week, another plane will leave Washington with an unusual addition to its passenger list: Lysenko, who was declared persona non grata last Friday and told he had seven days to leave the country.

If such a diplomatic dance seems familiar, that is because last week's theatrics evoked the old mutual acrimony, suspicion and rivalry that divided Russia and America for nearly 45 years. The dispute illustrates how fragile relations still remain between the cold-war rivals -- and how simple it would be for those relations to devolve into an equally cold peace. To the extent that it has dramatically underscored the delicacy of the new relationship, the Ames scandal could probably not have come at a worse time for the Clinton Administration: the furor has galvanized opposition to the President's unstinting support for Russian reform at a moment when there are disturbing signs that the bulwark behind that reform, Boris Yeltsin, may be buckling under pressure from hard-line forces.

Wary of inflicting collateral damage on his relationship with the man he feels is Russia's best bet for nurturing a stable, peaceful democracy, Clinton opted last week for a two-stroke response to Moscow's recalcitrance. The dramatic gesture of Lysenko's expulsion -- too little and too late satisfy congressional critics -- was combined with a strongly worded statement affirming that support remains unchanged. "I do not think," declared Clinton, "that the facts of this case undermine in any way, shape or form the policy we have followed the last year toward President Yeltsin and the forces of change in Russia."

The Ames scandal catches Yeltsin at a particularly fragile time in his ) presidency. Faced with continued opposition from ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his conservative and communist followers in parliament, Yeltsin has been forced to retreat from the grand promises of reform he made to Clinton in January. Last week the parliament voted overwhelmingly to grant amnesty to Ruslan Khasbulatov and Alexander Rutskoi, two leaders of the failed 1993 uprising against Yeltsin's government, as well as to the men who plotted the aborted 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. Though Yeltsin's aides insisted that the parliament had overstepped its authority, hard-liners Khasbulatov and Rutskoi were released from prison on Saturday. It was the first sign that Russia's new legislature is prepared to launch a full frontal assault on the President.

The spy scandal, say some in Washington, serves as an overdue wake-up call for the U.S. government -- a notice that the benign esteem in which the Clinton foreign policy team holds Russia is dangerously myopic. The Ames scandal "ends the simpleminded optimism that we could have a relationship with Russia that would be without clouds," says Paul Goble, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The simpleminded confidence that Yeltsin is a good guy is naive."

Such objections were shared by a growing number of American lawmakers who seized upon the spy scandal as an opportunity to peel themselves farther away from the Administration's foreign policy and begin sniping at the President. In the Senate, Republican leader Bob Dole declared that the affair "threatens the foundation of our relationship with the new republic of Russia." Adding that the U.S. has "moved perhaps too far, too fast in assuming that changes in Russia have permanently altered the international landscape," he called for the Russian government to condemn its efforts to penetrate U.S. intelligence and, if evidence of any further Russian espionage surfaces, even suggested dropping the $900 million in aid that the Clinton Administration is proposing for next year.

Statements like Dole's, echoed by a number of other Republicans, come across as ill advised to those who believe that however scandalous the Ames case may now seem, its significance is eclipsed by the infinitely greater importance of supporting Russian democracy. "The rush to judgment of the last couple of days, primarily here on Capitol Hill," said Kansas Representative Dan Glickman, chairman of the House intelligence committee, "to suspend aid to * Russia because of this case is misguided. That would have far more profound and damaging ramifications on this critical relationship -- and thus on ourselves -- than the damage done by Mr. Ames."

Glickman's statement seemed mild compared with the reaction in Moscow, where Russian intelligence officials could only roll their eyes at America's holier- than-thou hypocrisy. Some interpreted the timing of Ames' arrest as a jealous rejoinder to Moscow's recent diplomatic triumph in Bosnia. To others the American anger about the Russians' paying Ames to reveal the names of double agents seemed baffling because, in exposing the fact that the U.S. is continuing to spy on Russia, Ames' arrest proves that America is no innocent bystander when it comes to espionage. Yeltsin's chief spokesman, Vyacheslav Kostikov, warned Washington against "returning to the psychology of the cold war and whipping up distrust and a new wave of spy mania."

The public relations fallout from the Ames case will probably dissipate fairly swiftly. But what will not go away and will, in the next several months, have far more significant consequences for U.S.-Russian relations is the disturbing question of whether Yeltsin's power base is slowly eroding. Despite a newly forged constitution that was supposed to strengthen his powers, the President seems to find himself circumscribed more narrowly with each passing week.

That weakness, and his need to accommodate his hard-line opponents, was underscored during his first annual state-of-the-union address last Thursday. Reflecting the Kremlin's increasingly conservative and nationalistic mood, Yeltsin shifted from themes of democracy and human rights to a pitch for more assertiveness abroad and a softer approach to economic reform. He also made repeated calls for a "strong state apparatus" that directly contradict attempts by reformers to diminish central control.

So conservative was the speech that several communists outside the Kremlin's Marble Hall were heard joking that Yeltsin had stolen much of his speech from their party platform. But if the embarrassingly lukewarm applause was anything to judge by, even those concessions will not be sufficient to win him breathing space. Yeltsin's bow to the right -- so reminiscent of Gorbachev's failed attempts to straddle the Soviet Union's political crosscurrents -- seems only to have raised anxiety in the West and undermined Clinton's ability to continue supporting him. That may turn out to be a high price to * pay for placating opponents who are interested not in compromise but in wrenching Russia from the rails of reform.

With reporting by James Carney, Ann M. Simmons and Mark Thompson/Washington and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow