Intelligence Services Russia

President Boris N. Yeltsin has broadened the powers of the successor agency of the KGB to allow searches without warrants, legalize electronic surveillance and revive gathering of foreign intelligence, it was disclosed Thursday. Yeltsin's move, which brings into law another sweeping revision of the Communist-era spy agency, was branded by human rights activists and democratic reformers as an effort to bring the hated KGB to life again.

President Boris N. Yeltsin has broadened the powers of the successor agency of the KGB to allow searches without warrants, legalize electronic surveillance and revive gathering of foreign intelligence, it was disclosed Thursday. Yeltsin's move, which brings into law another sweeping revision of the Communist-era spy agency, was branded by human rights activists and democratic reformers as an effort to bring the hated KGB to life again.

As the American intelligence community tallies the damage done by the Aldrich Ames espionage affair, it also will try to answer another question: Just how good is the new, "reformed" KGB? Allegations that the Kremlin had a high-level "mole" inside the CIA--and that Russian counterintelligence has rooted out a Russian defense plant executive spying for Britain--are certain to raise new fears about the reach and activities of Russian intelligence.

As the American intelligence community tallies the damage done by the Aldrich Ames espionage affair, it also will try to answer another question: Just how good is the new, "reformed" KGB? Allegations that the Kremlin had a high-level "mole" inside the CIA--and that Russian counterintelligence has rooted out a Russian defense plant executive spying for Britain--are certain to raise new fears about the reach and activities of Russian intelligence.

The military and intelligence services of Russia and China are conducting a sustained campaign to steal American commercial and military secrets through cyber espionage, according to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and he warned that sophisticated computer hacking poses a major danger to U.S. interests. "Nation states are investing huge amounts of time, personnel and money to steal our data," Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said Friday in a speech to an association of retired U.S. intelligence officers.

Alger Hiss is frail now, at age 87, and his eyesight is failing. But in a quivering voice he expressed "extreme elation and delight" Thursday after a top Russian general said that Hiss never spied for the Soviet Union. The report, which once again raises one of the most bitter controversies of the Cold War, came from Gen. Dmitri A. Volkogonov, chairman of the Russian government's military intelligence archives.