Ex-communist Europe
Europe View: Trading in spies
Europe View: The missing links (updated)
Jul 12th 2010, 9:28 by E.L. | LONDON
AMATEUR and professional watchers of the intelligence world are chewing over the details of this week's spy swap. The anonymous but well-informed Democratist blogger says:
the arrests were part of a calculated...US plan to discredit the SVR both at home and abroad, and by extension the Siloviki. And indeed, apparently a hugely successful one: The humiliation and the fury (both public, and more significant private, within the Russian corridors of power) that has followed the arrests, court appearances and ”swap” of the SVR ”illegals” has been palpable, despite the ostensibly highly secretive nature of Russia’s “espiocracy”.
He concludes
The SVR will be already ripping itself apart as they hunt for whoever was responsible for this 20-year long fiasco; the final political implications are likely to be even more spectacular.
Another (to some) welcome effect is renewed attention to the level of Russian intelligence and security activity, such as this amusing account of the way some foreigners in Moscow find themselves the target (perhaps) of fiendish FSB attention, including mysteriously disappearing passports and alarm clocks going off at bestially early hours (in which case a whole team of skilled chekist saboteurs is targeting your columnist)
A good example of the "we know what's really going on" genre comes from Debka in Israel. It rightly notes that the publicly available information is fragmentary at best (and maybe outright misleading) and then asks
For instance, why if the White House was briefed in February about a possible deal to swap 11 Russian agents, was all the hoopla over their capture staged only six months later - or at all?
Debka's theory is that what Russia really wanted was the release of Aldrich Ames and Robert Hansen, their two most successful spies in America (at least of those we know about). Just before the swap Stratfor, a punditry outfit with good spook connections, argued
the arrests were more than likely an effort to shake the trees to find something else. It could be anything from exposing other intelligence operations in the United States, to preventing intelligence gathered by the Russians from going back to Moscow, responding to an espionage event in Russia (such a non-public arrest of a U.S. spy) or gaining a lead in another investigation.
A release of any of the 10 Russians would indicate that the FBI has gained all the intelligence it thinks it can and possibly because there are related cases they do not yet want to expose in a trial.
Another similar theory doing the rounds in London is that the Russians actually caught one or more American spies (possibly living illegally in Russia on "real" Ukrainian or other FSU passports). The FBI rolled up the not-very-important illegals who had been under observation for many years in order to have some bargaining chips. That would explain the odd imbalance in the public side of the swap.
The more one thinks about it, almost everything about this story is odd.
- Russian officials showed Igor Sutyagin a list with ten people who were apparently due to be swapped. He recognised only one, Sergei Skripal. Who were the others? Did they not get out? Or have they left without publicity? Did Americans accept the Russian line that traitors (ie Russians spying for America) count for more than patriots (Russians spying on America). If not, why did not they not ask for more than four? Was there something embarrassing in the activities of the 10 arrested in America which they did not want to come out at the trial. Somehow, Russia had a much stronger hand in the negotiations than, on the face of it, the circumstances warrant.
- What linked the 11 people charged in America? Was the mysterious Mr Metsos the case officer? (If so, that would be a big breach of SVR tradecraft). If not, then what was his role? Why did the FBI move when it did, entrapping Ms Chapman neatly under a false flag in a way that was bound to set alarm bells ringing in Yasenevo?
- How come Mr Metsos (presumably as closely watched as the rest of them) was allowed to get as far as Cyprus? If that was a blunder, it was a bad one. Why did the Cypriot authorities give him bail? And why did American officials in Cyprus (of whom there are more than a handful, to put it mildly) not keep tabs on him. One theory on that is that Mr Metsos was actually "turned" by the Americans and is happily spilling the beans somewhere, and the whole story about his disappearance is just to keep the Russians scratching their heads.
The way in to this story is toask when negotiations about the swap really started. If it was before the arrests, then the big mystery is something that happened in Russia, not in America.
Stratfor also has this neat graphic But the real spy world has plenty more dots, and joining them up is hard.
Eastern approaches deals with the economic, political, security and cultural aspects of the eastern half of the European continent. It incorporates the long-running "Europe.view" weekly column. The blog is named after the wartime memoirs of the British soldier Sir Fitzroy Maclean.
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According to media reports, the first Russian spy caught in the U.S. after the collapse of the USSR, was CIA officer Aldrich Ames who was arrested in 1994 and received a life sentence , his wife - 5 years.
In 1996, the US arrested a National Security Agency ( NSA )officer Robert Lipka. He was sentenced to 18 years after admitting spying for the USSR since 1960s.
Also in 1996 a Navy instructor Kurt Lessentien was caught in contact with the Russian embassy. Sentenced to 27 years.
In 1996, a CIA officer Harold Nicholson was caught and received 23 years.
In December 1996, an FBI agent Earl Edwin Pitts was sentenced to 27 years for his contacts with Soviet spies in the 1982-1992 period.
In 1997 a group of agents were sentenced, including a Pentagon Counsel Teresa Skvillakout (sentenced to 21 years) , her husband Kurt Strand ( 17,5 years ) and a private detective James Clark (12 years).
While specific charges were not made public it is obvious that by and large nobody got by with light sentences. Thus recent expulsions/deportations sound very much unusual. Obviously the full story has not been revealed.