“Spies Like Us”: Espionage and the Politics of Distraction

Russian Interrogator: “Every minute you don’t tell us why you are here, I cut off a finger”
Fitz-Hume: “Mine or yours?”
Russian Interrogator: “Yours”
Fitz-Hume: “Damn”

One of my favorite comedies is “Spies Like Us” starring Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd. In the 1985 spy parody, two low-level government workers Fitz-Hume (Chase) and Millbarge (Aykroyd) believe they are being deployed to Russia as spies for the United States but unwittingly serve as decoys for real spies engaged in trading nuclear secrets. Of course, worlds collide and Fitz-Hume and Millbarge are captured by Russians, interrogated for secrets they don’t possess and eventually meet the real U.S. spies, setting off a course of events that make for humorous observations on the absurdity of much of Cold War espionage.

So recently when I followed the serial media reporting of the Russian spy ring in the United States, I kept thinking: “Wow, this is so retro, so 1980s”. The captured ten sleeper agents who served in the relic KGB “Illegals Program” were a cast of characters: The unassuming Montclair New Jersey family, complete with soccer-mom and white-picket fence, placed here to infiltrate “policy circles” and share information on President Obama’s “intentions when he visits Russia”; the beautiful Russian socialite with newly released nude photos sending cryptic email messages on her laptop from a Starbucks in trendy Tribeca section of New York City and, the Yonkers New York based family who were respected community members assigned to find out CIA secrets.

To end the film, I mean, the “threat to national security”, the Russian agents are then swapped for imprisoned Western spies on a sun-filled tarmac in Vienna, Austria, a last ditch effort to preserve U.S.-Russian relations. You can’t write this stuff up.. Well, you can because espionage novels are filled with it. And so is our media coverage.

Its unfortunate the we still believe a series of embedded agents from a program that is a remnant of the KGB, the Soviet secret police (now called the SVR) represent what spying is. This old spy program costs the Russians alot and yield little, and is a less sophisticated version of a time long gone.

For every embedded spy who lives among us, there are thousands of others who are manipulating codes, hacking computer systems from home and abroad and accessing information that is private and supposedly secure. Cyberspying and cyberterrorism pose more of a concern, and are not as salacious as a spy ring.

Let us also not forget that under Patriot Act guidelines (started by President Bush after 9/11 and renewed by the Obama administration) even our government has more information on us, on our goings and comings, what we take out from the library, who we chat with on line, than what any embedded agent ever could garner from a conversation at a pee-wee soccer match.

So while we are now more distracted by catching the spies living in suburban cul-de-sacs, we are continuing to allow the erosion of much of our own civil liberties and privacy for the sake of national security. I do not subscribe to the notion that we have to sacrifice privacy for security, nor should any person who believes in freedom. And media-induced, sexy spy stories should not numb us to this reality.

Dr. Noel S. Anderson is Associate Professor of Political Science and Education at the City University of New York - Brooklyn College. His work focuses on urban politics, human development and education and comparative issues in public policy (U.S. and South Africa).

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