CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR, MOSCOW, JANUARY 1997: THE FORMER WAYS
From Russia with Love…and Concern
By Rebecca Taylor, Washington Post Moscow Bureau
Moscow, Friday, January 10th, 1997.
Some symbols are very simple. Others are very complicated. Olivia Tolchin is a very complicated symbol and we would all do well to understand what she symbolizes. For unless we come to terms with what she represents, only disaster awaits.
Yesterday, January 9th, I reported that a US national, Olivia Tolchin, had been arrested in Moscow on suspicion of spying for the CIA and was being held in the infamous Lubyanka Prison. The facts of the case can be summarized. Tolchin, an electronics engineer with a Ph.D. from MIT, worked on classified Defense Department projects for more than ten years before coming to Russia in 1994. She came because Russia offered her a chance to develop a family of inexpensive, reasonably reliable tactical ground sensors for use in urban combat. These sensors worked well in Chechnya. They show that urban warfare, which will likely be the predominant form of combat these next few decades, need no longer be conducted the in the old manner of savage house-to-house fighting and mass slaughter. I covered Chechnya for nearly a year and can attest to the value of these sensors.
So why is she in prison?
The answer is that, before she came to Russia, she contacted the CIA and offered her services, but not as a spy. She wanted her hoped-for accomplishments to be some kind of bridge between Russia and America. She did this because she felt strongly that the United States and Russia have interests and enemies in common. The CIA spurned her offer. Then, perhaps a few days ago, a CIA memo recounting her offer and rejection found its way to Russia’s FSB, the Federal Security Service, successor to the dreaded KGB and NKVD of Soviet years. The Russians had no choice but to arrest her until the matter was clarified. As of this writing, Tolchin is still in prison. Neither government has issued any official statement.
Is Tolchin a traitor? Not in the sense that the Constitution defines the term, as levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to our enemies. The Cold War is over. If anything, Tolchin’s work advanced American interests by hurting the Islamists who are currently fighting in Chechnya and whom, if recent history is any guide, we will soon enough be fighting on our own. Nor is she a defector. She has neither renounced her citizenship nor applied for Russian citizenship. Should she ever return to America, she could well end up in prison for violating laws and policies pertaining to her previous classified work. But there is no evidence and no one is suggesting that she has ever revealed classified information to the Russians. She came here as a free woman to do work she believed in, work she hoped would ultimately benefit all of civilization. So far, she has been much more right than wrong.
But why did she have to come here in the first place? If her work is so vital, why didn’t she just stay at home and do it there?
To answer that, a bit of full disclosure. I first met Tolchin over a year ago. We became, if not friends, then certainly drawn to each other as two American women in a foreign country. As I learned about her activities, I also learned about the two reasons that combined to drive her from America.
The first was that the Defense Department consistently rejected what she offered. In the corrupt and wasteful world of defense contracting, her work just didn’t cost enough. Not enough power players were involved. And she was too intent on doing it quickly and doing it right. Tolchin came to Russia because Russia offered her the intellectual and creative freedom, autonomy, and the resources to do it. If it comes as a shock that a brilliant scientist and engineer might have to come to Russia in order to think and succeed in a vital endeavor, then let it be a shock.
The second reason may be less shocking, but only because of what we Americans have become, what we are letting ourselves become, as a people. I love America and would never leave permanently or give up my citizenship. I would never do what Tolchin has done. But we share a common disgust with the sloth, the torpor, the passivity, the arrogant mediocrity that is settling over our country. Whenever I return to America from foreign assignments, I am thrilled to be home. But home is growing ugly and cheap and, more and more, I find myself a stranger in my own home. In Tolchin’s case, it literally drove her out of the country. She could no more abide the sloth of the customers at McDonald’s than the sloth of the Los Alamos National Laboratory or the sloth—the mendacious, avaricious sloth—of Washington DC.
Olivia Tolchin is sitting in the Lubyanka, enduring God knows what, awaiting God knows what. Her personal fate is a matter of direct concern to only a few people. As an international incident, she barely registers. But as a symbol of the world we’re moving into, the world we’re creating, as a symbol of what should be and a reproach to what is, this woman matters.
Governments move slowly, but they move. In two capitals, phones started ringing; emails and other, more old-fashioned technologies were employed. Conferences were held. Inter-governmental contacts followed. In Falls Church, Virginia, an officer of the CIA was arrested at his home. He had not tried to flee; indeed, he seemed almost relieved that his treachery was finally over. At a CIA office in Rosslyn, Virginia, another officer was given to understand that, although he had done nothing to deserve termination or official reprimand, his career prospects were now rather limited. In Moscow, as Thursday gave way to Friday, Olivia’s interrogation continued. With predictable results.
Raduyev stood behind the one-way window, watching Natasha with two of the Borises. He was very tired and the only thing keeping him going was the sheer absurdity of it all. He knew he would never see a show like this again. The five of them had spent over fifty hours with her; Raduyev alone had spent nearly ten. Lately, they had begun to discuss the operational and strategic implications of her work in Chechnya. He was learning a great deal about urban counterinsurgency from a woman whose expertise derived entirely from her own observations and experiences. She made sense.
“Thank you,” he’d said at the end of their last session. “What would you like in return?”
She looked at him through her fatigue for a long time. “Pardon?” she finally asked.
“When the source co-operates, you reward. That’s a fundamental tenet of interrogation.”
Again, her ghostly smile. “This has nothing to do with co-operation. But if you’re serious, guarantee that no innocent person who knows me will ever be punished for my idiocy, then return me to my work.”
“I wish I could, Doctor. There are people who have the power to release you. I am not among them.”
“Too bad. Then I will settle for an early lunch. What I am able to eat of it. It is important to keep my strength up. And I’m sure you’re hungry.”
“You will eat properly this time?”
“I will try.”
Raduyev sent out for tea and food and encouraged her to stand and stretch, her body making hideous sounds as the ligaments and tendons popped and released tension. He realized how hard the forced inactivity was for her.
That had been in the late morning. Lunch never arrived. Now he was watching and listening when talk turned to women. The Borises, Borises Numbers One and Two, actually, were having trouble satisfying their girlfriends. Raduyev found himself drawn to the conversation in the way one might watch a building suddenly start to collapse. “The problem, isn’t, ahh, potency,” said Boris Number One.
“But someone’s keeping secrets from us,” said Boris Number Two.
“We think it must be so,” Boris Number One agreed.
“True enough,” she said. “The problem is technique. There’s nothing secret about it. But neither is technique enough. Simple praxis rarely avails.”
“Praxis? What’s that?”
“A fancy way of saying practice. The point is, there are many, many techniques, alternative techniques, variations of techniques, combinations of techniques…”
“Doctor, can you help us or not?”
“You understand that my degre
e is not in medicine, psychiatry, or psychology.”
“Doctor, we don’t care if your degree is from some cooking school. What should we do?”
“Have you considered simply asking your girlfriends what they might enjoy?”
“Is that acceptable?”
“It is certainly more acceptable than continuing to bumble-fuck around.”
“Bumble…what?”
“It’s an American thing. Do your girlfriends communicate with you on these matters?”
“They say we’re not pigs,” Boris Number Two replied firmly, trying not to blush.
“But do you take steps to determine their desires?”
“We’re not pigs,” Boris Number One repeated, starting to blush. “Even our girlfriends say that.”
Weary beyond tact, she said simply, “Very well. We now begin our instruction in technique. Boris.”
“Yes?”
“And Boris.”
“Yes?”
“Stick out your tongues.”
Which both of them obediently did. “Now, the important thing is to…”
Raduyev burst into the room. “All stop!” he commanded.
Olivia put her face in her hands, the back of her neck to the tips of her ears scarlet with mortification, muttering, “Oh my goodness gracious.”
Boris Number One and Boris Number Two tried shrinking into invisibility, but remained stubbornly corporeal. “We’re sorry, Colonel.”
“Out, gentlemen.”
“I’m sorry, Colonel,” Olivia, her face now also scarlet, said as the Borises departed. “I hope they don’t get into trouble.”
Raduyev began to laugh quietly. “I must say, this is the first time I’ve ever heard a prisoner express concern for the welfare of interrogators. Are you well?”
“So far,” she confessed. “I have been in worse places. I have to tell you, as little as I eat, I like the food here better than I did in hospital.” She looked down at her prison uniform. “Also the clothing.”
A guard knocked on the door of the interrogation booth. “Comrade Colonel, the general needs you, most immediately.”
“On my way. Take care of our good doctor here. The usual. Find out whatever happened to lunch. Latrine, tea, some decent food.” Maybe she’d eat it, he thought. She didn’t refuse to eat, she just barely ate.