New book ‘Spies’ chronicles war of espionage between U.S. and Russia

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• Amna Nawaz:

  For decades, the U.S. and Russia have been locked in a war of espionage, and compelling new details about those stealth operations are now coming to light.

  Geoff Bennett recently spoke with author Calder Walton about the revelations in his new book, "Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West."

• Geoff Bennett:

  Calder Walton joins us now.

  Thank you for being with us.

  Calder Walton, Author, "Spies": The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West": Thank you for having me, Geoff. It's great to be with you.

• Geoff Bennett:

  In the book you write about the 100-year intelligence war between Russia and the West.

  Of course, Russia has a long tradition of espionage that dates back to Peter the Great. The question is, why? Why is spycraft such a vital part of Russia's existence?

• Calder Walton:

  Well, it's a great question.

  I think that there are probably lots of different answers. The first and foremost, is there something inherent within Russian DNA that makes — that makes Russians particularly interested and susceptible to espionage? There could well be something in that.

  But I think, more importantly, Geoff, the answer is that, since the early Soviet days after the Bolsheviks seized power in Moscow in 1917, the Soviet state was actually incredibly fragile and weak. And the early Bolsheviks, Lenin and Stalin, used intelligence, foreign espionage, deception, disinformation as ways to punch above their weight on the international stage, particularly against their ideological enemies in the West.

  So, espionage was something inherent within the Bolsheviks, who had been an underground party before seizing power. And then, once in power, they did what they knew best, which was to continue on in the same tradition.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Well, fast forward to the current moment. What should we make of the Wagner rebellion, that aborted mutiny against Vladimir Putin, recently?

  Was that an intelligence failure on the part of the Kremlin? And what does it say about Vladimir Putin's standing within Russia?

• Calder Walton:

  I think we can definitely say that it was a colossal intelligence failure on the part of Putin, his regime and his intelligence services. Why didn't the Russian security service know about this?

  What does it say about Putin's rule himself? Well, first and foremost, there, there was, is a challenger to his rule, it seems. His rule has been dented. For two decades and counting, Putin has ruled Russia with an iron fist, literally often eliminating his rivals. That seems to have been challenged over the last weekend by Prigozhin.

  I'm looking at events with a degree of pessimism, I'm afraid. History shows that a wounded dictator is often a very dangerous dictator. Putin's regime and his rule himself has been wounded. Will he now try to do something dramatic in order to try to prove his strength to the Russian people and the rest of the world?

  I'm afraid that history suggests it's exactly in those situations where dictators lash out and do something — quote, unquote — "bold."

• Geoff Bennett:

  Returning to the book, you write about a clandestine operation in which Russia tried to kill a CIA informant in Miami who had been at a high-ranking Russian intelligence official.

  And that represents quite an escalation, Russia trying to kill a valuable informant for the U.S. government on American soil. Tell us about that.

• Calder Walton:

  It absolutely does represent a dramatic escalation.

  During the Cold War — and we have to remember that Putin is a former KGB officer, so his world view is shaped by his KGB experience. During the Cold War, there was always a bright red line by which Soviet intelligence would not conduct assassinations on U.S. soil. Europe and Britain were different matters.

  And this continued on into the post-Soviet era. And Putin has — until this story came out in my book, has adhered to that bright red line. He challenged that. And, as I showed in the book, Putin was and his intelligence services were in the late-stage planning of an assassination on U.S. soil, a dramatic escalation.

  What does it say about him? It shows that he was prepared to take risks, and that he was emboldened. My big question, which I have not been able to answer, but other investigative journalists, I hope, are on the case, Geoff, is, did this risk calculation on his part, his emboldened behavior, contribute also to Putin's risk calculation about Ukraine?

  This was in 2020. And it all fed into this part of his calculation about what he thought he could get away with on Western soil.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Hmm.

  Let's shift our focus to China. What lessons can the West take away from its experience with Russia and apply to the new superpower conflict with China?

• Calder Walton:

  The first lesson, it seems to me, from the first Cold War in the post-war years is that Western governments can effectively be in a cold war before they know it, before they're prepared for it.

  This was one of the things that came through loud and clear in my research for the book, that in the post-war years, Western governments were thinking about how they could try to continue relations with the Soviet Union in a good way, and, in fact, Stalin and his intelligence services had dramatically different ideas.

  This, it seems to me, is exactly the same position that we're in with China at the moment. In recent years, there's been an attempt by which Western governments thought that, through economic development, China would perhaps democratize.

  When you look at and understand the Chinese intelligence perspective, there was no such understanding that they wanted to be part of the Western club. They wanted to completely upturn the existing rules. And we're seeing that play out.

  The second lesson is that the Chinese intelligence services are like the KGB on steroids. They conduct espionage in a far more sweeping way than even the Soviet intelligence services did. And the third lesson, it seems to me, Geoff, is that, although history is important, and I would argue and I paint a picture in the book about how we are in a new cold war, as far as intelligence is concerned, with China, the answers to this cold war don't lie in the past.

  The future of this cold war and the intelligence and national security challenge for Western countries, including the U.S., from Chinese intelligence lies with commercial, open-source intelligence. I think that we need to set up a new open-source intelligence agency specializing in commercially available intelligence, not clandestine intelligence.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Calder Walton, the book is "Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West."

  Thank you for being with us.

• Calder Walton:

  Thanks for having me on.