Bill Buckley discusses the curious case of Aleksandr Zaporozhsky - What's up in the spy world?
The Big Bad Russians have pulled a fast one which bears pondering. The victim is one Aleksandr Zaporozhsky, by U.S. lights a hero, by Russian lights, a traitor. We learn that in November, 2001, he was enticed to revisit his homeland, on stepping foot in which he was whisked off, tried, and sentenced to 18 years in prison.Our old pals may have mellowed a tad, but their interests aren't ours.
Several questions immediately arise. True, Zaporozhsky spied against Moscow, but when he did that, he was spying against a Soviet regime ultimately repudiated by the Russian people. It was ten years between the time the Russians shook off Communism and the time the Russian secret police got around to luring Zaporozhsky back to Russia. Why should they be mad at a citizen who turned against the regime finally rejected by everybody, including the Soviet president?
It is conjectured by James Risen, writing in the New York Times, that what the defector had done was cue the FBI onto the trail of Robert P. Hanssen, the FBI traitor who worked for Soviet money for 20 years, betraying Russians who were giving us important information, resulting in mayhem and death. We gave Hanssen a life sentence, and there are those who at his trial were wistful for the gallows when that sentence was passed.
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The link between the two cases could tighten up one step further. What if Moscow were to offer to return Zaporozhsky to the United States, in return for the release of Hanssen to Russia?
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What grabs attention is the trans-ideological nature of the Zaporozhsky ambush. Hanssen did not betray his country because the star of socialism blinded his eye and captured his soul. He wanted more money than the FBI was paying him. Zaporozhsky was, from all accounts, someone who rejected the Communist system and wished to fight against it, as so many sometime Communists did. Was corporate pride at work here? — We Russians may be governed by a different order, serving different gods, but we will not forgive a betrayal even though it was of a predecessor government everywhere rejected. What would we have thought if the government of West Germany, licensed in 1954 by the occupying powers with full authority (excepting defense policy), had lured back to Bonn a German who had defected from Hitler and given secrets to the Allies, sentencing him to imprisonment?
