In Defense of Spying
Walzer, Michael
Before World War II arms control agreements never involved national or international inspection systems; the great powers relied upon their own intelligence agencies to detect violations....
...Given any two countries of unequal strength, with divergent strategies and different political systems, the dispatches of the inspectors would never constitute a perfect exchange...
...but the decadence of an old order has often served the interests of the new...
...We must work with what we have and here at least we seem to have something worth working with...
...he is a man who takes risks in this age of security...
...But what was technically possible in either form was in practice possible only in one, only as espionage...
...he experiments continually in human relations...
...Times, July 12, 1963...
...The accusation is probably true...
...The reason is quite simple: the individual spy has a private purpose which often supercedes his assigned task, and that is to profit by the discovery or retention of secrets...
...But right now, surely, disarmament agreements with espionage—and especially that characteristically modern espionage which discovers secrets but cannot or will not keep them—seem infinitely better than inspection schemes which make any significant agreements impossible...
...an international espionage system which continually undercuts the efforts of particular powers to win advantages through secrecy...
...The Keeler-Profumo-Ivanov affair suggests the way in which the cold war may be ignored or forgotten in this underworld, as does the espionage of the Swedish diplomat Stig Winnrestrom which so shocked his colleagues because it had no ideological reason, or the conscientious work of the West German double agent, or of the Russian Oleg Penkovsky...
...This is all to the good, especially when it is accompanied by the occasional defection of important Russian spies (with secrets to "discover") to the West...
...And so diplomats debating the precise form inspection might take are struggling in time-honored fashion for bits of advantage, gains in safety or strength for their own country...
...In a sense, the very idea of a mere double agent comes to seem anachronistic to this international underworld...
...They preferred to take their chances with secrecy...
...the great powers relied upon their own intelligence agencies to detect violations...
...The nation-states who seek spies among its members have little call upon the loyalty of the men they hire: these men are mercenaries without patriotism or ideology—and precisely for this reason they seem more likely than spies recruited from loyal citizens of particular nations to serve the public good by facilitating the flow of information...
...To spy may be more human than not to spy...
...Inspection presumably generates trust, spying distrust...
...The two seem hardly capable of serving the same purposes...
...Inspection seems always to involve an unequal exchange of information...
...Consequently, the flow of information appears to be beneficial whether the particular secrets which are exchanged are real or invented...
...British Laborites, then, are certainly mistaken when they emphasize the "security aspects" of the Profumo affair or attack the Macmillan government because of other cases involving actual "leaks" to the Russians...
...The apparent inability of the great powers to agree on inspection reinforces this romantic appeal...
...Whatever inspection system results is hardly likely to lead to that rapid collapse of distrust between the powers which many Americans appear to anticipate...
...This extraordinary situation is symbolized beautifully by the simultaneous awarding of a German plaque and a Soviet commendation to Heinz Felfe, director of the East Division of the West German intelligence agency (N.Y...
...We ought not to have been overly disturbed by this, for secrets are very difficult to keep...
...Perhaps we would be safer—as well as happier—cif we forgot about elaborate inspection and signed agreements relying entirely on spies...
...A former Nazi official, Felfe seems to have been carrying out for the past ten years the very task which men of peace still only dream of—the sharing of military secrets...
...Nevertheless, there might be times when a more openly cooperative arrangement would be preferable...
...And Allen Dulles has recently assured us, in the midst of the Profumo affair, that despite continued reliance upon the lure of sex, espionage is a profession only for the high-minded —he offered himself as an example...
...it hardly seems possible, since the inspection schemes proposed thus far go nowhere near so far as Felfe went...
...Confidence is built up on both sides—surely a primary function of the exchange...
...But then, neither side ever knows how many double agents there are and how much of the false information is believed...
...The it might be helpful to transform them from spies into observers (unless it turns out that the observers too have to be watched...
...Moreover, false information may be "fed" to a double agent in the hope of confusing an opponent...
...that is why it is so difficult for the great powers to agree upon a particular inspection system...
...Perhaps international society—if it ever comes into being—will be free of such people and of the distrust upon which they thrive (but which they also do a little to alleviate...
...The advanced technology which makes inspection so much easier and safer does the same for espionage...
...This, at least, is the conclusion which seems to follow from recent disclosures about double agents in the West German, British and Russian intelligence agencies...
...At the present time, for example, any practical plan would apparently provide considerably more information for the United States than it would for the Soviet Union...
...the Russians had perfectly good strategic and perhaps political reasons for refusing to accept the flights...
...The function of all spies is twofold: to discover one sort of secret and prevent the discovery of another sort...
...There is no necessary or compelling reason, then, to replace a man like Heinze Felfe with an inspector...
...and this espionage seems to achieve equally well...
...Before World War II arms control agreements never involved national or international inspection systems...
...This may be true...
...Still, the spy seems more interesting than almost any other government employee, and more fallible...
...Since, however, not all spies are double agents, the flow of information is not entirely reliable...
...Espionage is revealed to be one of the most important forms of cold war cooperation and its actual function is precisely the exchange of information...
...In his book On War, John Strachey speculates that there is growing up a kind of international allegiance, and with it a new class of international civil servants...
...Premier Khrushchev's recent proposal to station observers in major transportation centers (reducing thereby the risks of surprise attack) is a good example of the limits of inspection...
...In an older literature people like Christine Keeler and Heinz Felfe would have been called products of bourgeois decadence...
...the purpose of espionage to ensure a one-way flow...
...but it is equally likely that there is growing up a new kind of international underworld, its members not necessarily criminals, but men free of national and ideological loyalties, if also less idealistic than the UN officials whom Strachey presumably had in mind...
...And he is more likely to profit by discovery than by retention...
...And if this is so, no substantial agreement is likely to be reached until one or another of the powers finds itself forced by external circumstances to accept some disadvantage...
...In fact, however, there are certain defects built into each which lessen the differences between them...
...Inspection at best would ensure only an imperfect exchange of information...
...One would wish to maintain the intelligence agencies not because of their efficiency—how absurd is the idea which the Laborites seem to suggest: an intelligence agency improved because it is run by socialists)—but precisely because of the inefficient low-mindedness which seems to characterize the world of the spy...
...The purpose of inspection is to guarantee an exchange of information...
...After the exposure of the U-2 flights, President Eisenhower offered his "open skies" plan, which was intended to legitimize as inspection the espionage we had already been engaged in for several years...
...indeed, the technologies of the two are at times identical...
...But it is in the nature of the trade that the first of these is easier than the second...
...That old method has a certain appeal: spies instead of inspectors...
Vol. 10 • September 1963 • No. 4
