The FBI has arrested nearly a dozen Russian spies, with more arrests to come. Echoing the spirit of today's media, the headline of the Christian Science Monitor asked the following question: "The cold war is over, so why the fascination with Russian spies?" But the Cold War is not over. The Communists merely told us it was over, and we believed them. As for our supposed fascination with Russian spies, the subject is merely an entertaining human interest story. It is a story that almost nobody understands. That is to say, we have been conditioned, over many years, to dismiss the threat of thousands of Russian agents working day and night to compromise our government, our national security, our economy, our unity, and our political process.
The United States is not invincible, but Americans act as though it is. We are so spoiled, so oblivious and comfortable, so distracted by entertainment, that the harsher realties of our time have utterly escaped us. In the days after 9/11 we briefly came to our senses. Unfortunately, President Bush told the American people to buy airline tickets and live as though 9/11 had not occurred, because he was afraid our economy would collapse if we weren't shopping and having fun.
Since 1991 we have been indoctrinated with the idea that there is no Communist threat, no boogeyman hiding under the bed. How could we remain in our present hedonistic stupor if we thought there was a boogeyman? So we find a nest of Russian spies. No skyscrapers fell. No multitude was slaughtered, and we find no connection between the work of these Russian spies and international terrorism. What if we had found a nest of Brazilian spies? Would anyone be frightened? It is irrelevant, you see, because Communism is dead.
Of course, it was the Communists who told us they were dead. Soon thereafter, they entered into partnership with our leaders, our corporations, and many of our universities. They even claimed to be our allies in the war against terror. Of course, it is not always possible to maintain such a façade. Did you hear what top media bosses from Red China did while visiting Washington on September 11, 2001? Columnist John Derbyshire tells us that they were "in a room together with some State Department minders, receiving some kind of cultural acclimatization, when the World Trade Center was hit. There was a TV set in the room, and everyone got to see the second plane hit. When this happened," wrote Derbyshire, "some of the Chinese party stood up and cheered." The Americans in the room got very angry. There was a shouting match, and these top Communist media bosses were sent back to China.
Do you really think such people are actually friends of America? Surely, all the Communists on the planet have become democrats. They believe in capitalism. That nice KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, wears a cross around his neck. And George W. Bush calls Putin a friend. He even saw into Putin's soul. All these former Communists and spies are nice people now. They would never cheer the collapse of the World Trade Center. Never!
Well, hardly ever.
There can be no alarm at the discovery of Russian spies in our midst. Communism is dead, though the Communist Party is bustling from East to West. Dead is dead. They'd better be dead! Ronald Reagan killed them with a speech, with an arms race, with arms to Afghanistan. But tell me, who is fighting the Afghan rebels now? And how did this reversal occur? Of course, we rarely consider the Big Picture. As these words are written, the underground structures of the Communist Party Soviet Union are consolidating their hold over Ukraine. The Soviet Union is being put back together, piece by piece. Consider the testimony of retired KGB Lt. Col. Victor Kalashnikov, in an article he wrote for the Strategic Crisis Center.
We refuse to notice that the pro-Western president of Poland died in a mysterious plane crash last April, and the Russians are covering up the circumstances of that crash. There is no threat, you understand. Spying is "basic human nature." As long as there are secrets, there will be spies. Go back to shopping and amusing yourselves. There is nothing whatever to worry about. Never mind the fact that a hidden army of Russian agents has been penetrating your political parties, your corporations, and your government. Infiltration, sabotage, disinformation and deception -- all on a vast scale -- is not going to kill you, or destroy your economy. Don't worry, you are invincible. Why be alarmed? Anyone who feels alarm can be medicated, or self-medicated.
America can no longer feel alarm, because America has taken a pill. The ball game is on, the beer is flowing, and Americans don't want to think about Russian spies. It is no big deal if Russian agents are attempting to penetrate U.S. policymaking circles, or seeking out potential college graduates headed for jobs at the CIA, or seeking pathways leading to the financial center of American politics.
In the mainstream press there is an effort, across the board, to downplay the significance of Russia's intensive subversion operations against America. It may be said, in this regard, that the effectiveness of Russian subversion is hardly debatable. Earlier in the week I spoke with a retired KGB officer, Lt. Col. Victor Kalashnikov. For him, the Russian spy story is hardly news. The West, he said, is easily penetrated. The implications of this fact are carefully avoided in the media. There is an effort, across the board, to downplay the significance of Russian espionage. One cannot help smiling because the effectiveness of Russian subversion. We are so oblivious, we cannot see the impact they have had on our political system, our media, our universities, and our children. It is a piece of trivia, alleged by experts, that between 1970 and 1980 the number of Soviet officials operating in the United States doubled. According to the late John Barron, there were as many as 50,000 Communist Bloc agents operating in the United States thirty years ago. Surely, it is not a question of spying.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union the United States has been flooded with people from the Communist Bloc on an unprecedented scale. A certain percentage of these people are agents of Moscow, or agents of Moscow's "former" satellites where the espionage services and military intelligence branches still report -- albeit secretly -- to Moscow. Evidence for this has been suggested, for example, in the report of Antoni Macierewicz "on the actions of soldiers and employees of the former Military Intelligence Services (WSI)" of Poland. According to this report, Polish military intelligence remained under Communist domination after the supposed fall of Communism, "maintaining basic structures and the old cadre of the special services...." Protocols for the destruction of intelligence files, and the hiding of such files from non-Communist politicians, was in place. The Communist espionage apparatus of the "former" people's republic was free to operate against the United States and other Western powers while appearing to become a democratic member of NATO.
The mechanisms of mass espionage, where millions of individuals are recruited and deployed through hidden structures, is a new form of warfare pioneered by the Soviet Union in the 20th century. These same pioneers trumpeted their own defeat in 1991. People in possession of great resources do not simply give up, give over, and quit their life's work. Yet the West was naive enough to accept a so-called victory in the Cold War merely because streets and cities changed their names, countries adopted new leaders and new constitutions, and neo-Stalinist economic practices were dispensed with. Nearly everyone in the West misunderstood Communism, thinking it was an alternative economic system to capitalism. Therefore, when certain economic ideas were embraced by Moscow and Beijing, it was assumed that they were no longer Communist. But Communism is not an economic system. It is a system of power, subversion, and conquest. Changing the economic system of the Soviet Union or China did not effectively eliminate Communism. No Communists were vaporized. Neither were they converted into saints. After all, have the leftists or Communists in America changed their beliefs? Why should they do so in Russia or in China, where Communism has had total power over society? In political terms, our belief in the collapse of Communism was an example of somebody taking advantage of our own tendency to wishful thinking. Today, the former Soviet republics are slowly being rolled back into the Soviet Union, which is gradually reappearing -- and will be reconstituted.
Our present moves toward disarmament coincide with Russia and China's continued rearmament. The discovery of Russian spies in our midst should be a wakeup call. But we are not taking it to heart. The work of the FBI, in this regard, has been neutralized by the work of Russian spies and the Communist fifth column that freely operates in the West.
J.R. Nyquist
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