Washington Post Wonders About FBI and Russian Spies

Meanwhile the NY Times is being very solicitous. Can anyone remember the NY Times being more so? Why has the liberal US media been so excited about this story?

Perhaps Obama wasn't resting until he rid the US of Russian spies.

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Did Russian spies fool the FBI?

Washington Post

Two longtime veterans of the intelligence wars between Russia and the West say it’s inconceivable that the spies deported to Moscow Friday didn’t detect FBI surveillance years ago.

And that, they say, could explain why the FBI never produced evidence in court that the “illegals” had obtained any classified information: They stopped spying as soon as they discovered they were being watched -- but stayed just busy enough to distract the FBI, potentially, from more important operations.

“If you’re under surveillance, you don’t do anything -- you’re burnt,” said Victor Ostrovsky, a prominent former Mossad operative who said the lsraelis taught trainees about surveillance by studying real Russian spies at work. “You might as well pack yourself up slowly and go home.”

An American counterintelligence veteran said: "It does boggle the mind that they never allegedly picked up on any of the watchers nor learned of any of the technical ops run against them. It really is amazing."

"If this is true, was the FBI that good or the Illegals just that bad? If they did pick up surveillance towards the end, perhaps that is what triggered the alleged plans to depart the country by some of them, which supposedly triggered the arrests. It's purely speculation on my part, but a lot of this does not pass the smell test."

U.S. authorities have said they were watching, bugging and breaking into the houses of at least some of the Russians for as long as a decade. Theoretically, Ostrovsky said, the spies could have aborted any attempts to recruit Americans or gather classified documents as long ago as that.

"Illegals,” sometimes called “sleepers,” are handled differently by their bosses than the spies who are pretending to be diplomats, Ostrovsky noted. They must remain undetected to be useful.

“When you’re a diplomat, you have your official cover, you’re expected to be out and meeting people, officials,” he said. And you know the FBI has its eyes on you, he said.

“But when you’re an illegal and they find you, that’s it, you’re over,” Ostrovsky added.

The Mossad recruited Ostrovsky out of the Israeli navy in 1982. Disenchanted by its methods, he quit after four years and in the 1990s he wrote two highly critical, first-person books about the agency.

Today he lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., and owns a literary Web site, bookpatch.com.

“As a former officer in an intelligence agency, Mossad, I had been trained extensively in counter surveillance,” he said. “Being able to detect surveillance is the cornerstone of any covert action.”

“The techniques we learned were for the most part gleaned from watching Soviet operatives and from information received from KGB and other Eastern Bloc defectors,” he said.

“Over the years we had perfected the methods but were always aware that the leaders in that field were the Soviets,” he said. “The current Russian intelligence service the SVR evolved out of the KGB it is therefore logical to assume they are as good in counter surveillance as their predecessors were.”

Which raises a number of questions, he said.

Such as: Were the Russian spies under orders from Moscow to pretend they didn’t know the FBI was watching, in order to divert its attention from other operations?

“Is there another ring they preferred to steer the U.S. counter espionage community from?” Ostrovsky asked.

“Were they causing the FBI to assume they were no longer as good as their predecessors were? Were they providing false information and making the FBI believe they had no assets in certain places while they actually had, and they were run by another ring?”

When the spies were arrested, prosecutors said the criminal complaint was just "the tip of an iceberg."

The Phony Russian Spy Scare Epilogue

The New York Times is in awe of the brilliance of the move.
Breath-taking.
Outstanding.
I believe it.
Hooray for Hollywood.



July 9, 2010
White House Envisioned Spy Case Swap Even Before Arrests
By PETER BAKER, CHARLIE SAVAGE and BENJAMIN WEISER NY Times
This article was reported by Peter Baker, Charlie Savage and Benjamin Weiser and written by Mr. Baker.

WASHINGTON — On a Friday afternoon in mid-June, President Obama sat down with advisers in the Oval Office and learned that the F.B.I. planned to round up the largest ring of Russian sleeper agents since the cold war. After discussion about what the agents had done, the conversation turned to the fallout: what to do after the arrests?

In that moment was born a back-to-the-future plan that would play out four weeks later, a prisoner exchange with surreal and even cinematic overtones as Russian and American airplanes met on a sunny tarmac in the heart of Europe on Friday to trade agents and spies much as had been done during a more hostile era.

From the first time the president was told about the case on June 11 — 16 days before the Russian agents were actually arrested — a swap emerged as an option that could resolve a potentially volatile situation without undercutting Mr. Obama’s effort to rebuild Russian-American relations. The Russian spy ring would be broken, the Americans would secure the release of four Russian prisoners and both sides could then put the episode behind them.

Administration officials said Friday that the arrests were not made for the purpose of making a deal and that no decision about a swap was made until after the agents were in custody. But they described a fast-moving sequence of events after the arrests in which both sides scrambled to reach an agreement, even to the point of Russian officials’ offering money and other benefits to encourage one of their sleeper agents to consider the deal.

The officials described the episode as perhaps the most serious test yet of the new relationship, as well as a sign of its enduring complexity.

By Friday afternoon, the 10 Russian sleeper agents arrested in American cities and suburbs were flown back to Moscow, while four men released from Russian prisons were taken from the transfer point in Vienna to London. Two of them, Igor V. Sutyagin and Sergei Skripal, got off there, and the remaining two, Aleksandr Zaporozhsky and Gennadi Vasilenko, flew on to Dulles International Airport just outside Washington. The children of the sleeper agents all left with their parents or were preparing to join them, officials said.

The lawyer for one of the freed Russians called it “a historic moment” that she had long suspected would come. “It has to do with the relations between the two countries, and with political games going on at the top,” said the lawyer, Maria A. Veselova, who represented Mr. Zaporozhsky, a former Russian intelligence agent. “It is always connected with these chess games.”

The games have been played for years, and this one was no exception. The F.B.I. had been monitoring the Russian sleeper agents as far back as a decade, and along with the C.I.A. and the Justice Department, gave the first detailed briefing to the White House in February, American officials said.

By late May and early June, counterespionage officials grew concerned that several of the agents were planning to leave the country this summer and concluded that they would have to arrest them.

At the Southern District of New York, prosecutors pulled out files on the case and completed a 37-page complaint, describing the agents’ activities, the sophisticated intelligence technology they used, and the F.B.I.’s extensive and long-term surveillance in unusual detail. A version of the document sat for years in a classified safe in New York, updated and rewritten by Michael Farbiarz, the lead prosecutor, as new evidence was developed, ready to be used whenever necessary.

“The value of a complaint like that is that you show immediately that you’ve got them dead to rights,” said David S. Kris, assistant attorney general for national security. “It showed the defendants and the Russians that we’ve got the goods. We’re not bluffing here. We’ve had you under investigation for quite a while. We’ve been in your houses, we’ve done surveillance and we have got plenty. That obviously helps things move quickly.”

Before they moved on the arrests, though, they had to tell the president. Mr. Obama was preparing to host the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, at the White House on June 24, so any arrests were bound to be politically explosive. The president’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, led the June 11 Oval Office briefing, at which officials described who the agents were, what would be in the complaint and what they would be charged with.

“There was a full discussion about what was going to happen on the day after,” said one senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. Mr. Obama then had a meeting on the case with his National Security Council on June 18, just six days before Mr. Medvedev’s visit.

The visit went off without any discussion of the case, White House officials said, but three days later, the F.B.I. arrested 10 agents, a sweep that made headlines as a relic of the cold war. The administration moved quickly to keep the arrests from provoking the traditional volley of angry denunciations and retaliations, contacting Moscow to indicate the depth of the evidence and its willingness to resolve the situation.

Russian officials responded by removing an initial statement calling the charges “baseless” from the Foreign Ministry Web site and issuing a new one acknowledging that some of those arrested were Russian citizens. American officials were struck by the tempered remarks by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, a former K.G.B. colonel, during a meeting with former President Bill Clinton.

Led by Mr. Brennan, the White House held daily 7:30 a.m. teleconferences with various agencies and quickly agreed to a swap. Officials came up with a list of four Russians who had been convicted of illegal contacts with the West and whom they wanted freed: Mr. Zaporozhsky and two other former Russian intelligence officers, Mr. Skripal and Mr. Vasilenko, as well as an arms control researcher, Mr. Sutyagin.

It helped that after years of American surveillance there was little indication that the Russian agents had actually done any serious damage. Even the Justice Department did not complain about a deal because spy cases are often handled this way.

The C.I.A. was assigned to make the approach to the S.V.R., the Russian foreign intelligence agency, on June 30, less than three days after the arrests, according to an administration official. The same day, Under Secretary of State William J. Burns met with the Russian ambassador, Sergei I. Kislyak, and discussed the spy case.

The Russians considered the swap for two days and then agreed to negotiate. Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, negotiated the details with his S.V.R. counterpart, Mikhail Y. Fradkov, in three phone calls, sealing the deal on July 3. As part of the deal, Moscow agreed there would be no retaliatory action against Americans living in Russia.

Nikita V. Petrov, a historian of Russian security services, said Moscow agreed to the deal “to save face” after the embarrassment of the arrests. The episode showed the contemporary Russian intelligence service’s weakness, he said. “This was anachronistic Soviet methods.” And Russia could say American interest in the four imprisoned Russians confirmed their convictions.

But there was still the matter of convincing the prisoners who were to be exchanged. Mr. Sutyagin, for one, had long maintained his innocence and was reluctant to sign the confession that the Russian government required for his release. Even after he did, he said he was not guilty.

Likewise, the Russian agents in the United States had been trained not to admit they were spies or even Russians. But that facade soon crumbled after the Russian government acknowledged their citizenship. Soon afterward, the Russian Consulate requested meetings with them.

Not all of them were eager to make a deal, particularly those with children. Vicky Peláez, a journalist in New York, was promised that she could go to her native Peru or anywhere else in the world and would be given free housing and a monthly $2,000 stipend for life. She signed on, the last to do so, just hours before the court hearing on Thursday that completed the deal.

“Her biggest concerns were: ‘What’s going to happen to me? What are my children’s lives going to be like? Are they going to be able to come see me?’ ” said her lawyer, John M. Rodriguez. He said the Russian promises helped to “cushion the circumstances,” but were not what induced her to accept the deal.

Hours later, she and the others were whisked to La Guardia Airport and flown aboard a chartered Vision Airlines jet to Vienna. Within minutes of each other, about 11:15 a.m. local time, first the Russian plane and then the American plane landed. The prisoners switched planes and the Russian jet took off at 12:38 p.m. The American plane was in the air less than 10 minutes later.

The Spy Fix is In

A few posts back, a comment came up that I was not interested enough in the big knock-down of the Russian spy ring. That was correct then. It did not make sense to me and I said as much. They were never really charged with anything. Now we learn they are being deported and have served enough time for their crimes.

Enough time? Lindsay Lohan is getting more time for her crimes. Can't we throw her into the deal and send her to Russia. She will find all the alcohol and drugs she needs to launch her into an early haghood fast enough.

Big spy scandal indeed.

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Spy suspects could plead guilty, be deported soon
By the CNN Wire Staff
July 8, 2010 10:47 a.m. EDT

New York (CNN) -- Ten suspected Russian spies in the United States could enter guilty pleas Thursday and be swiftly deported, possibly as soon as Thursday night, a source with detailed knowledge of the investigation told CNN.

The source said the suspects are expected to plead guilty in federal court in New York to one of the current charges against them -- failing to register as a foreign agent -- and will likely be sentenced to time already served since they were arrested at the end of June.

The development comes amid reports of a possible exchange of the accused Russian spies in the United States for convicted Russian spies in Russia. One of those convicted spies possibly on a list for the swap left Russia earlier Thursday and arrived in Vienna, Austria, Russia's state-run news agency RIA-Novosti reported. The scientist's family told CNN he was part of the exchange.

A lawyer involved in the plea deal negotiations for the suspects in the United States said that the legal case involving the accused Russian spies is expected to be resolved by Thursday afternoon.

The hearing will combine the five suspects arrested in New York with five others picked up out of state.

Wednesday, a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, ordered that suspects Mikhail Semenko, Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills be moved to New York "promptly," according to court documents.

Suspects Donald Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley, who were being held in Boston, Massachusetts, also were to be moved to New York, a federal judge there ruled.

All five were being transferred to New York by the U.S. Marshals Service, a senior law enforcement official said.
Zottoli and Mills have admitted that they are Russian citizens and have been living as a couple under false identities in Virginia, investigators say. Prosecutors said that they made the admissions soon after being arrested and authorities have found evidence to support that information.

Semenko is accused of aiding the plot by allegedly conducting private wireless computer links to communicate with a Russian government official, court documents said.

In all, 10 suspects were arrested in the United States in connection with the alleged spy plot. An 11th suspect was detained in Cyprus and released on bail. His whereabouts are unknown.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for Igor Sutyagin, who was convicted in Russia in 2004 for spying for U.S. intelligence services, said Sutyagin arrived in Vienna Thursday, RIA-Novosti reported.

Attorney Anna Stavitskaya said her client could be part of a swap involving the suspected Russian spies detained in the United States in late June.

"Igor's father received a phone call at approximately 16:30 Moscow time (8:30 a.m. ET), and he was told that he [Sutyagin] was seen getting off a plane in Vienna," the news agency quoted her as saying.

Sutyagin's mother and brother also have raised the possibility that he could be exchanged for one of the spy suspects in the United States. They talked to him on Wednesday at a prison in Moscow.

Svetlana Sutyagina confirmed to CNN Wednesday that her son said he will be released from jail and sent to London, England, by way of Vienna on Thursday.

According to Sutyagina, her son was on a list of 11 names submitted by the United States for the exchange of the Russians detained in the United States the alleged spy ring. She said her son remembers just one other name on this list -- Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer sentenced for spying.

Igor Sutyagin was convicted in 2004 of passing secret data to members of U.S. intelligence services acting as employees of a British company called Alternative Futures, in exchange for monetary rewards in 1998-1999.