Intel wars

After Soviet Union’s breakup CIA hoped to paralyze Russian intelligence, says veteran

In the wake of the Soviet Union’s breakup US secret services hoped that the Russian intelligence would be at least paralyzed, the former director of the foreign intelligence service SVR in 1996-2000, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, said when asked what was behind CIA Director Robert Gate’s statement made in 1992 there had been "little real change" in the activity of Russian special services following August 1991.

"I believe that the CIA was aiming to at least paralyze the Russian intelligence service, and at the most to downgrade our intelligence to the level of its counterparts in the former Warsaw Treaty countries by applying to the SVR the same package of measures that had been used in relation to East Germany’s Stasi [lustration, etc.]," Trubnikov said.