As part of our special coverage of Foreign Influence, Domestic Division: Russia, the 2016 Election, and Trump’s Rebuke of the U.S. Intelligence Community, The Cipher Brief’s Executive Editor Fionnuala Sweeney speaks to Rob Richer, former CIA Associate Deputy Director for Operations and formerly chief of Russian Operations. She asked him for his opinion on Russia’s objectives and how it conducts itself in the field of espionage.
The Cipher Brief: What is your reaction to what appears to be a rift between the President-elect and the CIA?
Rob Richer: We’ve had that in the past. I experienced a rift between the Agency and the Bush Administration and the Pentagon in terms of the insurrection starting in Iraq. We reported in the summer of 2003 that an insurgency was starting. It leaked in a similar manner to how this report on the Russian interference leaked. The Administration got very, very upset that we were trying to undermine them, and there were others in the community who disagreed with our explanation that there was an insurgency starting in Iraq. We were proven right. So this has happened before. It happens in just about every Administration, particularly in the early days, on critical issues where there’s a political or policy issue which sometimes doesn’t jive with the intelligence on hand.
TCB: Let me ask you about Russia. Where do you think Russia is positioned right now? Are they rubbing their hands in glee? Do they anticipate easier times?
RR: Going back to the Soviet Union era, for the KGB, the predecessor to the SVR, the FSB – the organizations Putin rose up through – the U.S. is the main enemy. We’ve been the main enemy since World War Two, and we continued to be the main enemy through the Cold War and into today. We’ve seen it in the ‘90s and the 2000s. We’re the main enemy and we’re the greatest rival they have for world influence. None of what has happened is unexpected.
TCB: Alex Finley, former CIA officer, says that Russia is extremely patient, perhaps more so than their American counterparts, when it comes to espionage. Do you agree? What do you believe is their mindset when it comes to information gathering on the U.S.?
RR: I was chief of Russia operations from 1995 to 1998 at a time when we were catching their long term penetrations of the CIA, of the FBI, of NSA, and of the U.S. military. Some of those people were developed over time. They have no problem looking five, ten years down the road. The U.S. government tends to look at things in two to three year windows.
I’ll give you an example. A case officer arrives at a new station. His job is to recruit spies; he recruits them. That’s where he gets his credit. He turns them over to someone else. The handler doesn’t get as much credit as the person who has recruited the spy. We’re continually turning people over and looking for short-term gains. Whereas the Russians will have someone handle a guy for 10, 12, 15 years. We’ll keep bumping into him. We’ve got documented evidence where an American target officer of the SVR, the former KGB, will bump into the same American diplomat, official, case officer for 10 to 15 to 20 years, hoping something will change. They don’t think in two to three year rotations. They think of the end game. And that end game may take 20, 25 years.
TCB: And is that something then that is an apparent weakness? Should that be reviewed?
RR: Americans live in political cycles and in assignment cycles. Every four to eight years, we have a new presidency. If you look at Congress, you look at the Senate, you look at Oversight, there’s a high rate of turnover. And in the Agency, we get a new director every administration. Each time, they have a different agenda.
The Russians put someone in charge of an intelligence service for more than a decade. We, unfortunately, always look at “how do I change things, obviously for good, but also so I look different than my predecessor?” The process that we have in politics and assignments and career rotations makes us different from the Russians. It’s just a different mindset. It’s the American mindset: constant change, constant turnover.
TCB: If this was a plan purportedly put in place maybe 10 years ago, what do you think the plan might be for the next 10 years, in the broader sense?
RR: First of all, I don’t think they had a plan 10 years ago. Technology and the ability to manipulate the web and develop hacking skills – that’s modern history of the last three, four years.
They want to be an equal world power, if not the world power. Putin in many ways thinks like a Czar. He wants that authority. He wants that control. So they set a goal to be able to influence things in the United States, whether politically, using firms to lobby or through business deals.
Look at Syria. Does Putin really care about Syria? No. Does he care about being a main player in the Middle East and showing that he has the clout to push the U.S. back? Yes, and that’s what he’s done. Look at Ukraine. This is more about the politics of presence and influence, than about the politics of actually what happens.
TCB: If you were back in charge of looking after Russia at the Agency, what would you be doing now?
RR: For one – and I’m sure they’re looking at it and doing it – we accelerate our intelligence gathering on Russian intentions. That is the hardest intelligence to collect. Number two, we actively recruit target officers, who have understanding of intent against America.
Now, let’s be very fair to the intelligence community. Since 9/11, the focus has been on combatting terrorism. We flooded Afghanistan with officers; we still have them there. We’re flooding Iraq with officers; that’s a necessity. We’re looking at what’s happening across the Middle East. Russia has been a distant concern, particularly for this current administration, because they didn’t have strong relations with Moscow. They didn’t have a political dialogue. So they kind of thrust it aside and worried about the things that would kill Americans. And the thing that will kill Americans is terrorism.
The hope is that this CIA report will generate interest in the Oversight Committee, and hopefully the incoming administration will say, “Hey guys, we have to re-invigorate that.” I hope that’s the case. I just haven’t seen any signals that it will be the case in the incoming administration at this time.
TCB: A final question about the autonomy of the CIA. Could the White House turn to the CIA and say leave Russia alone?
RR: No. First of all, particularly since the WMD issue – again, you can debate how wrong intelligence was on that – since that assessment there’s been a lot of heat on the intelligence community. We were going to war in Iraq no matter what; that was a Bush administration priority. But moving beyond that, since then, the independence of the Agency has been pretty strong.
(CIA Director) John Brennan is a former analyst. He served in the field. In fact, I think he’s probably been the least political director I can remember because of the way things have changed. Think about how often you see his name in the press. You don’t. He defers to the Director of National Intelligence to handle political dialogues in Washington. He just does his job, and he’s re-invigorating the analytical core of the Agency. So I think the Agency reported what they had on Russia interfering in the election.
TCB: Are you optimistic about the CIA’s fortunes in the incoming administration?
RR: Yes, and no. General John Kelly (the Department of Homeland Security nominee) and General James Mattis (the Secretary of Defense nominee), if they are confirmed, have had exceptional relationships with the Agency; the most cordial and productive relationships, and they understand the importance of intelligence. I think that’s very, very important. At the strategic level, at the tactical level, that’s not going to change. We need each other. I think at the top level, the presidential level, it could be a process of education.
Let me give you an example. That report I mentioned to you earlier, about an insurgency breaking out in Iraq, was something I had to defend to President George W. Bush, and he went through a period of time – about a year – where he blamed CIA Director George Tenet and the rest of the organization for trying to undermine his re-election. I saw Mr. Bush in 2013, a number of years after he left office. We were bicycling across the country to raise money for the CIA Memorial Fund and he graciously offered to host us. He spent an hour with us, and during that hour – which was just Mr. Bush, myself, my former secretary and our wives – he talked about his appreciation for the Agency and how intelligence sometimes gets politicized.
I think Vice President-elect Mike Pence gets it. He’s got a good reputation in the intelligence community. But I think Mr. Trump is going to have to reach out to the Agency and understand how they do their job – something to which he has had no exposure. His National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, has had a good relationship with the Agency when he was at DIA. I think quite frankly, within six months or so, if the President devotes time to understanding how intelligence works, it will be a productive relationship. He is known, from what I understand of Mr. Trump, to be a delegator. If he thinks they’re doing their job, he’ll let them do their job. If he doesn’t, well that’s going to be a problem.
