Nuclear Capone in Russia?

[nobody@jarthur.claremont.edu]

Los Angeles Times, Saturday, Feb. 26, 1994, p.A10

FBI Director Sees Parallels Between Russia Now, Chicago Then

Crime: Louis J. Freeh doesn�t want a Slavic Al Capone to endanger U.S.
investments or undermine the fragile democratic process.  And he is
working to help prevent it.

By Ronald J. Ostrow
Times Staff Writer

Washington - To FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, organized crime in Russia
today bears disturbing similarities to Chicago�s in the 1920s and
1930s - violent but fractionalized, a danger to itself as much as to
the rest of society, and with a potential for much more.

The likes of Al Capone, unchecked by the FBI or any other law
enforcement body, welded the Chicago mob into a unified force that
preyed on the community for decades.

Freeh does not want a Slavic equivalent of Capone to do the same today
in Russia, for fear not only of endangering American Business activity
there but also of undermining that country�s fragile democratic
process.  And he is working to help Russian authorities prevent it.

Already, Freeh said, elements of Russian organized crime are
responsible for everything from "bushwhacking" American businessmen to
dealing in materials that could be used in nuclear weapons.

If authorities do not act soon, he said, organized crime will become
so entrenched throughout the former Soviet Union and its Eastern
European satellites that, like the Mafia in Chicago, it will take
decades to remove it.

"We have to look at it as something that's clearly directed toward the
United States, toward our economy," Freeh said in an interview.  "Even
with decreasing resources, we can't afford to do what the FBI did with
respect to La Cosa Nostra for 30 years, and that was to completely
ignore it."

The situation in Russia today, Freeh acknowledged, is not as dire as
in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s.

But German and Russian law enforcement authorities "are concerned
about the very rapid inroads that these gangs are making into
officialdom, into police and government officials," the FBI director
said.

To help the Russians cope, Freeh wants to station up to three FBI
agents in Moscow by the end of spring to serve as liaisons with
Russian authorities.

Contacts are now handled largely by two agents based in Bonn, who have
responsibilities beyond the former Soviet Union.

Authorities in Russia's Interior Ministry and the Moscow police "are
desperately in need of our help," Freeh said.  "They want our
training, our methodology."

He also wants to bring Russian agents for 11 weeks of training at the
FBI's National Academy in Quantico, VA., where they would learn about
laboratory and computer work and the other technologies that the FBI
uses against organized crime.

For now, Freeh said, the victims of Russia's organized crime are
mostly Russian Entrepreneurs and other business people.  But he warned
that American businesses seeking a foothold in Russia are just as
vulnerable.

"Part of the [Clinton] Administration's program is to give not only
economic aid but to [assist] economic institution-building and to
encourage American and other foreign investments" in the former Soviet
Union, he said.

"If the scouts for leading American corporations are getting
bushwhacked in their hotel rooms in Moscow or, perhaps worse,
establishing a foothold and having to face extortion and economic
criminal activity they are not prepared to do, our economy takes a
serious hit," Freeh said.  "The end product is that the process for
democracy and a free economy in Russia takes a very significant step
backward.

"I guess it's an irony, but it's much harder to police in a democratic
fashion than than to police in a totalitarian fashion," Freeh said. 
"Police work is very hard if you do it according to due process and
democratically."

Authorities in the former Soviet Union "don't have that experience and
haven't had it for 70 years.  So they're having to learn all of the
tools, skills and techniques and, at the same time, deal with a
burgeoning crime crisis," Freeh said.

U.S. authorities are particularly concerned that Russian gangs "are
aggressively looking to buy and sell nuclear materials," the FBI
director said.

The materials so far are less than weapons grade, but they could be
used for designing devices deadly to population centers, according to
FBI intelligence.

"That's a whole different threat than we've faced before," Freeh
said.

He declined to give any more specifics on the threat, but said the
United States under the law now lacks authority to fully deal with
it.

Under the 1950 Atomic Energy Act, the FBI has authority to investigate
the transfer or shipment of nuclear materials only if their origin or
destination is American or they have entered and left the United
States.

Freeh said he has discussed with Atty. Gen Janet Reno and other
Justice Department officials the need for a law broadening the FBI's
authority over such matters.

The FBI is also interested in the criminal activities of Russian
immigrants in the United States, according to Jim Moody, who directs
the FBI's efforts against organized crime.

In the late 1970's and early 1980's, about 200,000 people entered the
United States from the Soviet Union, and Moody estimated that about 1%
of them - 2,000 - were "hard-core criminals."

But he regards them as second-string players who are now being
replaced by more highly skilled, educated lawbreakers.

In one of the more sophisticated conspiracies involving Russian
emigres, a federal grand jury in Philadelphia last June charged 15
people and two corporations with evading federal and state excise
taxes on the sale of more than 51 million gallons of diesel fuel in
Pennsylvania and New Jersey.