But US support for democracy and economic reform became support for Yeltsin. His agenda became the American agenda.
America certified that reform was taking place in Russia where it was not, continuing to disburse money from the International Monetary Fund in the absence of any evidence of serious change.
Thus, some curious privatization methods were hailed as economic liberalization; the looting of the country’s assets by powerful people either went unnoticed or was ignored. The realities in Russia simply did not accord with the administration’s script about Russian economic reform.
On top of that, Rice knew there were tough times ahead because Bush was planning to press much harder than Clinton ever did to pursue the goal of building a missile defence shield. She recalled in an interview: ‘Bush had been very clear that a reorientation in the offence-defence relationship in arms control was going to be very important to him, and that the ABM treaty was an impediment to missile defence.’5
Still, for Putin the change of occupancy in the White House augured well, and the Russians looked forward to getting on with building a new relationship with George W. Bush after his inauguration in January 2001.
The Russians were in for a nasty shock. In March the Americans announced they were expelling 50 Russian diplomats who were working undercover as spies in Washington and New York. What the Russians did not realise – and to this day (judging from our interviews) apparently still do not realise – is that the expulsions also came as a nasty surprise to the incoming Bush administration! The Russians assumed Bush had decided to send a tough signal right from the start of his presidency. But in fact, he was merely clearing out a problem inherited from his predecessor.
The FBI chief, Louis Freeh, had identified the 50 diplomats some time earlier, but the Clinton administration had declined to expel them for fear of spoiling the special relationship with Yeltsin, just at the end of Clinton’s term. So now, with a new man in the White House, and knowing that he himself would soon be leaving his job, Freeh decided to get this last piece of business out of the way.
Stephen Hadley, deputy national security adviser to the new president, recalled in an interview: ‘Freeh was very strong about the need to take action against this Russian network in the United States. My sense was that it’s something he had wanted to do for a long time, but for a lot of reasons in their last year of office, the Clinton administration felt the timing was not right, which meant it was an issue that the new president had to confront. Our judgement was that it could not be ignored. Action needed to be taken and it needed to be swift and early. These were real spies. They were not just diplomats. This was not being done for political purposes, or to send a signal. The decision was made. It was not going to get any easier by kicking a can down the road.’6
The task of telling the Russians fell to Bush’s secretary of state, Colin Powell. He called in the Russian ambassador, Yuri Ushakov, ostensibly for a courtesy call, a chance to meet the new secretary of state. Powell opened with some banter: ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’
‘Good things are for dessert,’ replied Ushakov.
Powell served the hors d’oeuvre. He politely explained that while there was a gentleman’s agreement that each side could have a certain number of spies in its embassies, the Russians had gone way over the score. ‘We’ve identified about 50 of them. And you will get notice tomorrow of who they are and they will be asked to leave the country within the next few days. So I need you to go back to the embassy, crank up your fax machine and let Moscow know about this right away.’7
Ushakov at once informed his foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, who hit the roof. ‘It was completely unprecedented,’ he recalls. ‘It was a politically motivated action. That was our assessment. And we thought it was done to show who rules the world.’8
When the news reached the Kremlin, it could not have hit a sorer spot. This was the job that Putin himself had done for 16 years; these were his fellow Chekists. He called a meeting of his Security Council – the ministers in charge of military, foreign and security matters. They decided to mirror exactly what the Americans had done – but make it worse for them. The head of the Security Council, Sergei Ivanov (also a former Soviet foreign spy), called the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and told her: ‘Our reply will be very cynical. We will expel 50 of your diplomats, but we will not do it immediately. We will spin it out over a period, and we will be very careful to choose not only real spies but “clean” diplomats as well. We will cause chaos in your embassy.’9
The tit-for-tat expulsions began. But the Bush team was anxious to move on. This had not been their initiative. Powell called his counterpart, foreign minister Igor Ivanov, to suggest that it was time to close the matter.
‘It’s not something we can just close,’ replied Ivanov. ‘We will expel 50. And if you expel more, so will we, soon we’ll have no diplomats left and it’ll just be you and me handling our bilateral relations.’
They agreed to call a halt. Ivanov flew to Washington on 18 May bearing a letter from Putin. The Russian leader was looking beyond the current tiff, stressing the same things he had spoken of with NATO’s Robertson: he wanted to restart the relationship, with a new type of partnership. Powell and Ivanov agreed that the two presidents had to meet. They chose a neutral venue – Slovenia – and a date – 16 June 2001.
It was here, in the sixteenth-century Brdo Castle, just north of the capital Ljubljana, that Bush and Putin had their blind date. Putin has a tremendous ability to mimic his interlocutor and win their confidence – the facility that made him a good KGB ‘mingler’. A well-connected Kremlin journalist, Yelena Tregubova, for whom Putin had a soft spot, described being taken out to a sushi restaurant by him when he was director of the FSB: ‘He is a brilliant communicator… a virtuoso… able to reflect like a mirror the person he is with, to make them believe he is just like them. He does this so cleverly that his counterpart apparently doesn’t notice it but just feels great.’10
In Brdo Castle Putin worked his magic on Bush. The American brought up an incident in Putin’s life that he had been briefed on, concerning a Christian cross which his mother had given him, and he had had blessed in Israel. Putin quickly understood that this resonated with Bush. ‘It’s true,’ he replied, according to Bush’s own account to the American journalist Bob Woodward.11
Bush says he told Putin he was amazed that a communist, a KGB operative, was willing to wear a cross. (Putin was not wearing the cross at this meeting, though he did bring it to show Bush at Genoa a month later.) ‘That speaks volumes to me, Mr President,’ Bush said. ‘May I call you Vladimir?’
Putin then described how his family dacha had burned down and the only thing he wanted to recover from the ashes was the cross. ‘I remember the workman’s hand opening, and there was the cross that my mother had given me, as if it was meant to be.’ He had Bush hooked.
The two presidents’ aides, waiting outside, were getting nervous as the private talks continued. Colin Powell, Bush’s secretary of state, chatted with his opposite number Igor Ivanov. Powell recalled later: ‘Igor and I and the rest of the delegations were busy sitting round pretending to have a conference and discussing vital issues, but we were all just sitting there tapping our thumbs and our fingers on the table wondering what these fellows were doing.’12