John Montgomery Presents This Week's	March 24, 2001	Creep Logo by Alan Fraser
	The Spy vs Spy Guys
	Hot Words From Cold Warriors

Remember the drama of the cold war? It was real-life cloak and dagger stuff, designed to give anyone nightmares. We had fallout shelters, air raid drills, space races and star wars. Overweight, bald-headed Soviet premiers would bang their shoes on the table like madmen and threaten to bury us under mounds of radioactive rubble. The American leaders would take advantage of those events to fire up the troops, like when Ronald Reagan decried the "evil empire." Nothing brings a country together faster than the urge to kick a common enemy's red commie ass straight to hell and back.

Yes, it's easy to get nostalgic for the good old days of the cold war. And it's been even easier for the past few weeks because we're suddenly deep inside a cold war time warp. The faces are different but the words sound pretty damn familiar.

This latest spat began a month ago when FBI agent Robert Hanssen got caught spying for the Russians. Among other secrets, he revealed the existence of a surveillance tunnel we built under the Russian embassy. Robert will be locked up for good and may even get fried for his treasonous behavior, but Snippy and his Spy Guys decided they better clean house over at the evil empire's embassy. This week, they ordered four Russian diplomats, who have been working in Washington, to get their hammer-and-sickle tattooed butts out of the country right now. Those four were charged with being directly involved in Hanssen's spy activities. Another 46 Russians will have to leave before July 1. They have been officially declared "persona non grata", a latin phrase meaning "vodka-chugging, caviar-snorting, balalaika-plucking, communist pigs."

Of course, Russian president Vladimir Putin and his Spy Guys weren't about to take this action lying on their muskrat coats. The foreign policy adviser, Sergei Prikhodko, described the US move as "a relapse into the Cold War era." Gennady Seleznyov, speaker of the lower house of parliament, warned, "We'll find reasons for finding exactly that number of (American) diplomats who should not be working in Moscow." Sergei Ivanov, chief of Russia's Security Council, ratcheted up the rhetoric even more ominously. He vowed to kick out the American diplomats "in a more painful form to the U.S. than it was in our case." Ouch! Bring on the thumb screws, Sergei.

And Sadistic Sergei turned out to be a man of his word. Within days, the Russians announced that four US diplomats working in Moscow were to be expelled pronto, with another 46 to follow later. That kind of retaliation is known in spy circles as tit-for-tat. Tit-for-tat! Sounds like a delightful and erotic phrase, doesn't it? It may seem fair to you, but don't fall for an old Russian trick like that. If I had 50 tits, I'd want a lot more than a mere 50 tats before I'd trade.

All this brings up a fundamental question: Why the hell are we spying on a backwoods banana republic like Russia in the first place? What information are we looking for? The technology that makes their submarines explode and their space stations fall out of the sky? Russia's a third-rate, has-been country with starving citizens and schizophrenic leaders. What are we afraid of? Mad cow disease is more dangerous right now than anything the Russians can throw at us.

So what's next? More Spy vs. Spy escapades. More harsh words between Washington and Moscow. More tunnels under embassies. More saber rattling. More expulsions.

In short, more tit-for-tat.

Speaking of which, here's another fundamental question: If we end up tossing all Russians out of the country, can we keep Anna Kournikova?