NEWTON'S LAW: ERA OF SOVIET GLASNOST BRINGS SOME ARDUOUS TIMES FOR SPIES

A lot of males of my generation had their outlook on life shaped at an adolescent stage by some common pieces of writing.

One was Boy's Life, which taught you generally to be prepared, to persevere, to be adventurous (as long as you didn't worry your parents) and to be a good Boy Scout no matter what your age.

The flip side of this philosophy could be found in Mad magazine, which also molded a lot of thinking in those formative years. Besides the "What, me worry?" philosophy it espoused, Mad offered drawings of bosomy women, mildly suggestive humor and the general outlook that a life of satire would be a life well-spent.

One of the memorable features of that magazine was an ongoing comic called "Spy vs. Spy." Any resemblance to the real-life intelligence community was probably intentional.

The adversarial spies of this comic were nondescript ideologically. One was merely dressed in a white trench coat and fedora, while the other was dressed the same way in black. They would trick and badger one another to outrageous degrees, but their victories were just temporary. It was a constant tug of war.

In my youth, the comic was merely funny. As I grew older, I got the joke; neither of the spies could get the upper hand on the other for long, and that was the point.

The theme of futile endeavor and vain oneupsmanship occurred to me this week when I read that Soviet snooping isn't what it used to be. As the Cold War has warmed, esprit de corps has cooled in the ranks of the Kremlin's intelligence agents.

The bottom line is this: being a spook in the service of Mikhail Gorbachev isn't an attractive line of work. In fact, espionage in the age of glasnost is plain hell.

That is the opinion of Vadim Kirpichnikov, deputy chief of the Soviet KGB. In an interview published Monday, he said the American CIA now has an easier time spying in his homeland than the KGB does in the United States.

One reason for this, the spymaster says, is that the Gorbachev-supported policy on openness has turned Soviet citizens once a breed fearful of midnight visits from the KGB into a rather loose-lipped bunch.

On the other side of the ocean, Kirpichnikov complains, the U.S. government organizes "spy-mania campaigns" that make it difficult for Soviet agents to effectively gather information in America.

(Isn't it just like those feisty American officials to steer their citizens away from befriending Soviet spies.)

Openness is a tough trait for the intelligence community to accept. The KGB and CIA are secretive by nature; theirs is not what you'd call a "people" business. Ask Robert Gates what being a spy in the public eye is like. He'll tell you that democratic principles can make life hard in the espionage game.

So, Gates might say, don't come whining around here about how tough things are in the KGB.

The Soviet people have an emerging interesting in baseball so the outspoken Mr. Kirpichnikov should identify with this.

It was once said that the arrival of artificial turf in major league stadiums would kill the art of bunting. After all these years, though, players still bunt. The reason the art wasn't lost: players got better at it.

So take heart, Soviet spies, wherever you are. Though those you are sworn to serve seem content to give away the store to cagey American agents, openness is not the death of your own snooping. You just need to improve your technique ... at least until the next Cold War intercedes on your ~behalf.