The setup wasn't working anymore, likely because the batteries were dead: they proposed putting fresh batteries into the setup, it would be a nice catch. Bush turned down the request, instead preferring to 'look into his soul' for answers to outstanding questions.
We all know how well that turned out ...
..............
Yeah but...
What would these nosy electronic eavesdroppers have learned that couldn't have been discerned through taking Moscow's public statements seriously and turning off NPR, CNN, and the voices inside Rice's head?
By which I mean, a lot of information is quite freely available if you're smart enough to look in the right places and get over your info filtering preconceptions.
Bush's talk about souls told one half of the contradictorily two-sided, post USSR collapse Russia fable we like to hear while snugly sleeping in our Western civ jammies: the docile 'friend' who's down for the count (aka, my new beatch -- can I hitch a ride, new beatch, to the ISS? MY shuttles are, um, in the shop.).
In the fullness of time, a few of the usual geopolitical things happened (for ex. oil went totally crazy bringing in oceans of fuck you cash, Saakashvili showed his ass and learned how to cry on camera, etc) and like a frat boy reaching for a beer we lurched right on back towards the bedtime story's 'oh my god! new cold war!' side.
Wouldn't it have been better to leave souls and bugs in need of battery replacement and general douchebaggery out of it to simply say: ' they have their own interests which they'll pursue, just as we do. Shit will inevitably happen but there's no need for melodrama.'
Reading one of Anatol Lieven's essays is probably more instructive (or at least as instructive) than all this spy vs. spy shit combined.
In short, I disagree that the dead batteries -- un-replaced -- were a missed "opportunity". If anything, it was a chance to stop being an ass tunnel and deal. Of course, Bush blew it by going for the fantasy that his soul mate was a sucker ass sucker.
.d.