Strongman, The

behalf of the new administration to Putin. Rice was a Russian-speaker and Soviet specialist, who would be central to Bush’s Russia policy over the coming years. Her message held out the prospect of good, friendly relations – but certainly not of a reprise of the Bill ’n’ Boris Show. Rice’s view was that Clinton’s cosy relationship with Yeltsin had become too personalised, and far too soft when it came to calling the Russians to book for their behaviour in Chechnya. In an article that appeared in The Chicago Tribune on 31 December 2000 she delivered a scathing denunciation of the Clinton policy:
    The problem for US policy is that the Clinton administration’s ongoing embrace of Yeltsin and those who were thought to be reformers around him quite simply failed. Clearly the United States was obliged to deal with the head of state, and Yeltsin was Russia’s president.
    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