Class 5. The Active Measures Long Game

Putin is a former KGB officer and he's drawing from the same old playbook. We should understand it.

Yuri Bezmenov is a kooky cat. His story is fascinating and a bit tragic: Leaving behind a wife and child, Bezmenov defected from the Soviet Union while he was posted as a KGB officer in India, where he posed as a journalist for Novosti, a Soviet propaganda outlet. With the help of the CIA, Bezmenov initially settled in Canada under the alias “Tomas Schuman.” He then spent several years working for Radio-Canada International (which broadcast into to the Soviet Union), until he was dismissed — either (depending on which story you believe) because of his excessive drinking and inability to get along with his coworkers or because the Soviets had blown his cover and had complained to then-Prime Minister Elliot Trudeau.

By the time Bezmenov made his way to the U.S. in the early 80s, he had remarried and had two children — though he eventually divorced, had a strained relationship with his daughter, and continued to struggle with alcoholism until his death in 1994. During his time in the U.S., became a lecturer on Soviet active measures for the ultra-conservative John Birch Society, which is the origin of the video posted for this week.

Needless to say, this helps explain why many of his right-wing views permeate his lecture — from his disdain for the liberal media and homosexuality to his belief that religion (and specifically Christian religion) was the prophylactic against Soviet influence. Bezmenov’s political leanings and personal biases are clearly shaped by his contempt for Soviet ideology and who he perceived were the most receptive audiences for its messaging at that time, i.e., those who he believed had an interest in subverting the existing system. Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss Bezmenov’s explanation of Soviet subversion theory on this basis: When we adjust his perspective to account for the most receptive audience for Russia’s messaging now, we can see that the same strategy, tactics, and goals are not only in full swing, but more effective than ever — just among different groups than those Bezmenov had imagined as the “threat.” Even more alarmingly, the goals of Russia’s active measures operations align with those of a subset of domestic and political actors in the U.S., making them even harder to combat.

Below, I highlight some aspects of Bezmenov’s lecture which remain relevant to our current moment, and in particular how the Soviet approach differs from our own. I also suggest that a “religion” of sorts may be the answer — but not the kind that Bezmenov had in mind. Read on to see what I mean.

Collection v. Subversion

A key point that Bezmenov repeats in his lectures is that the KGB spent only 15% of its efforts on intelligence collection, and the other 85% on subversion. This distinction is important, and one that is worth contrasting with our own intelligence approach.

The American counterpart to the KGB (which is now comprised of the Russian FSB (domestic security), SVR (foreign intelligence), and GRU (military intelligence)) is the CIA, an entity created by the National Security Act of 1947. The CIA is, by structure and mandate, primarily an intelligence collection agency. Its bread and butter are human sources, who gather information based on foreign intelligence priorities determined by the current administration. This intelligence is used to inform and execute the executive branch’s foreign policy objectives. This process, known as the “intelligence cycle,” envisions the CIA as an agency that exists mainly to steal secrets, not to engage in subversion. (Just as a PSA, CIA sources are known as “agents,” and clandestine CIA employees are “officers” — most people, including Hollywood, get this wrong, but now you know the difference.)

The CIA can and does engage in covert actions, which is probably the closest thing we have to the concept of “active measures.” When I teach my National Security Law class, we look at the covert action “ladder,” which incorporates the following activities:

Still, there are some important differences between active measures as described by Bezmenov and American covert actions. One is that unlike the ongoing, open-ended nature of Soviet/Russian active measures (think back to Operation Infection), CIA covert actions are more surgical: They are intended to have a specific political, military, or economic outcome. Particularly with increased congressional oversight following the Church/Pike hearings in the 70s, and statutory constraints following Iran Contra in the 80s, presidents who engage in covert actions have additional political accountability, making concrete and measurable results that much more important. In short, the idea of engage in ongoing subversion of a foreign adversary during peacetime — a central function of the KGB and Russia’s current intelligence services — is not the intelligence model we operate on.

It’s (Usually) Not a Crime

Another important point made by Bezmenov is that most of their efforts at subversion are often overt, and completely legal. This is a really difficult concept for Americans to get their head around, because we have been conditioned to believe that the criminal code is the ultimately yardstick for measuring behavior. This mindset was a major obstacle in getting the American public to understand the gravity of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, as I, along with former CIA officers Alex Finley and John Sipher, wrote in 2017:

During the hearing with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Wednesday, some members of the House Judiciary Committee did not try to conceal their attempt to discredit and derail Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. The way that the Russia investigation has been framed has made it easy for them to do that: Its legitimacy appears to rest on finding a smoking gun of criminality – a simple yes or no on whether any of the cast of characters in this saga committed a serious federal offence.

But making this merely about the bright line between illegality (criminality) and legality means that most Americans are missing what is right under our noses. To wit, there is no question that Russia made multiple, unprecedented attempts to penetrate a U.S. presidential campaign, that its approaches were not rebuffed, and that its contacts were sensitive enough that everyone, to a person, has concealed them. These facts might never be adjudicated inside a courtroom – they may not even be illegal – but they present a clear and present national security threat that we cannot ignore.

Indeed, in bringing an indictment against three Russian companies and thirteen Russian nationals for their disinformation operations in the 2016 election, Special Counsel Mueller utilized a novel legal theory — that these actions constituted a conspiracy to defraud the United States — that may not have held up in court had it been put to the test. (Attorney General Bill Barr later dropped the charges.)

We also saw Russia’s overt activity in the dalliances of the mediocre Russian spy Maria Butina. If you don’t remember her, she was the woman who was making the rounds among the Republican elite at NRA conventions and posed with guns a lot. You’ll probably recognize her picture:

Butina was ultimately charged with 18 U.S.C. 951, a FARA-related statute known as “espionage lite.” She pleaded guilty to acting at the direction of the Russian Federation to “establish unofficial lines of communication with Americans having power and influence over American politics.” So, barely a crime…and it’s unclear whether the U.S. would have been willing to publicly disclose the intelligence to back up these charges had it ended up in trial (Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison but was deported back to Russia in 2019 — she’s now a member of the Russian Duma). In fact, as I’ve written previously, part of the reason that it’s hard to bring charges against foreign spies is the tension between national security secrets and the disclosure requirements of our criminal process (a tension that is undoubtedly a consideration in the Trump Mar-a-Lago case, as well). To sum up, don’t count on our criminal laws being a barrier to Russia’s efforts.

Know Your Enemy

Bezmenov describes the process of subversion as a “two-way street”; the target must be receptive to efforts to divide and weaken it. Because this process relies on exploiting your adversary’s existing weaknesses, having a granular knowledge of the specific political, economic, social, ethnic, and religious fissures of your target is essential…and Russia, like the Soviet Union, is willing to put in the work. For example, the criminal indictment cited above observes that beginning as early as 2014, Russia sent individuals to collect on-the-ground intelligence in advance of its 2016 disinformation efforts, likely to understand precisely the hot-button issues that would prove the most divisive and where its efforts would have the greatest impact:

[F]rom approximately June 4, 2014 through June 26, 2014, KRYLOVA and BOGACHEVA traveled in and around the United States, including stops in Nevada, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas, and New York to gather intelligence. After the trip, KRYLOVA and BURCHIK exchanged an intelligence report regarding the trip….In order to collect additional intelligence, Defendants and their co-conspirators posed as U.S. persons and contacted U.S. political and social activists. For example, starting in or around June 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, posing online as U.S. persons, communicated with a real U.S. person affiliated with a Texas-based grassroots organization. During the exchange, Defendants and their co-conspirators learned from the real U.S. person that they should focus their activities on ‘purple states like Colorado, Virginia & Florida.’ After that exchange, Defendants and their co-conspirators commonly referred to targeting ‘purple states’ in directing their efforts.

Likewise, in her book How to Lose the Information War, Nina Jankowicz details how Russia understands and uses the specific fissure points ranging from Poland to Great Britain to develop custom narratives that resonate with those local audiences. By contrast, the U.S. has historically been very bad at understanding the on-the-ground reality in other countries. In her book Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, Yale Law Professor Amy Chua details how America’s blind spots to particular cultural, ethnic, and religious nuances has led to disastrous foreign policy decisions. The New York Times book review summarizes some of Chua’s argument here:

Chua shows how a combination of racism and obsessive anti-communism made for terrible strategy in Vietnam, where Americans underestimated Vietnamese nationalism, including resentment of an economically dominant Chinese minority. Our policies in Afghanistan and Iraq were similarly obtuse. The push for de-Baathification of the Iraqi Army created a pool of “unemployed, frustrated Sunni men who owned weapons and had no marketable skills other than their military training” — and happened to be ripe for recruitment by the insurgency and eventually the Islamic State.

The American approach isn’t surprising, considering our (sometimes misplaced) confidence in hard power being able to produce the outcomes we desire. But it does mean that while we’re often busy with a hammer, Russia is using a scalpel.

Convergence is the Goal

In describing the second stage of subversion, “destabilization,” Bezmenov notes that the goal is to confuse the target to the point where “your adversary does not see you as an enemy, but sees you as an alternative.” What Bezmenov is describing is convergence, or, defined by former CIA officer John Sipher as “distinct groups doing the same things for different reasons, or as a unity of interests evolving from separate starting points.” This is where we see external evidence that Russia’s active measures are succeeding, and have been since Trump was elected in 2016. Loyalty to Trump has, since the start of his presidency, required downplaying or denying Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. As a result, Russia has in effect coopted a major political party into facilitating its efforts.

We’ll discuss the opportunities for disinformation created by the political polarization (and specifically, the asymmetric political polarization) later in the course. For now, the main takeaway is that Russia has been successful in exploiting this particular cleavage to the point where Democrats are enough of an enemy that furthering Russia’s interests in order to “own the libs” has been normalized. Darryl and Darryl here (shown at a 2016 Trump rally) sum it up in their t-shirts:

A Common Religion

Where Are We Now?