what an awesome job. Russia shouldn't be bitching at us, it's her spies that were caught on our soil. Don't send them and this wont happen.

Russia rips spy ring bust as arrests rise to 11 - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK – A shadowy money man for a Russian spy ring whose members were assigned a decade or more ago to infiltrate American society has been captured overseas, authorities said Tuesday. He was the last of 11 suspects named in a huge bust that threatens to tear recently mending relations between the U.S. and Russia.

The 11th suspect, using the name Christopher Metsos and purporting to be a Canadian citizen, was arrested at the Larnaca airport in Cyprus while trying to fly to Budapest, Hungary, police in the Mediterranean island nation said. He was later released on bail.

Metsos, 54, was among those named in complaints unsealed Monday in federal court in Manhattan. Authorities in Cyprus said he will remain there for one month until extradition proceedings begin.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Farbiarz on Monday called the allegations against the other 10 people living in the Northeast "the tip of the iceberg" of a conspiracy of Russia's intelligence service, the SVR, to collect inside U.S. information.

Each of the 10 was charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison upon conviction. Two criminal complaints outlining the charges were filed in U.S. District Court in New York.

Most of the suspects were accused of using fake names and claims of U.S. citizenship while really being Russian. It was unclear how and where they were recruited, but court papers say the operation goes back as far as the 1990s.

Russia angrily denounced the U.S. arrests as an unjustified throwback to the Cold War, and senior lawmakers said some in the U.S. government may be trying to undercut President Barack Obama's warming relations with Moscow.

"These actions are unfounded and pursue unseemly goals," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "We don't understand the reasons which prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to make a public statement in the spirit of Cold War-era spy stories."

Intelligence on Obama's foreign policy, particularly toward Russia, appears to have been a top priority for the Russian agents, prosecutors said.

The FBI said it intercepted a message from SVR's headquarters, Moscow Center, to two of the 10 defendants describing their main mission as "to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US." Intercepted messages showed they were asked to learn about a wide range of topics, including nuclear weapons, U.S. arms control positions, Iran, White House rumors, CIA leadership turnover, the last presidential election, Congress and the political parties, prosecutors said.

The court papers allege some of the ring's members lived as husband and wife; used invisible ink, coded radio transmissions and encrypted data; and employed Hollywood methods like swapping bags in passing at a train station.

The court papers also described a new high-tech spy-to-spy communications system used by the defendants: short-range wireless communications between laptop computers — a modern supplement for the old-style dead drop in a remote area, high-speed burst radio transmission or the hollowed-out nickels used by captured Soviet Col. Rudolf Abel in the 1950s to conceal and deliver microfilm.

Behind the scenes, they were known as "illegals" — short for illegal Russian agents — and were believed to have fake back stories known as "legends."

In spring 2009, court documents say, conspirators Richard and Cynthia Murphy, who lived in New Jersey, were asked for information about Obama's impending trip to Russia that summer, the U.S. negotiating position on the START arms reduction treaty, Afghanistan and the approach Washington would take in dealing with Iran's suspect nuclear program. They also were asked to send background on U.S. officials traveling with Obama or involved in foreign policy, the documents say.

"Try to outline their views and most important Obama's goals (sic) which he expects to achieve during summit in July and how does his team plan to do it (arguments, provisions, means of persuasion to 'lure' (Russia) into cooperation in US interests," Moscow asked, according to the documents.

Moscow wanted reports that "should reflect approaches and ideas of" four unnamed sub-Cabinet U.S. foreign policy officials, they say.

One intercepted message said Cynthia Murphy "had several work-related personal meetings with" a man the court papers describe as a prominent New York-based financier active in politics.

In response, Moscow Center described the man as a very interesting target and urged the defendants to "try to build up little by little relations. ... Maybe he can provide" Murphy "with remarks re US foreign policy, 'roumors' about White house internal 'kitchen,' invite her to venues (to major political party HQ in NYC, for instance. ... In short, consider carefully all options in regard" to the financier.

The Murphys lived as husband and wife in suburban New Jersey, first Hoboken, then Montclair, with Richard Murphy carrying a fake birth certificate saying he was born in Philadelphia, authorities said.

The complaint says Metsos traveled to the United States to pay Richard Murphy and others using clandestine — and sometimes bizarre — methods.

Metsos was surreptitiously handed the money by a Russian official as the two swapped nearly identical orange bags while passing each other on a staircase at a commuter train station in New York, Metsos said.

After giving some of the money to one of the defendants, Metsos drove north and stopped his car near upstate Wurtsboro, N.Y. Using data from a global-positioning system that had been secretly installed in his car, agents went to the site and found a partially buried brown beer bottle. They dug down about five inches and discovered a package wrapped in duct tape, which they photographed and then reburied.

Two years later, video surveillance caught two unnamed secret agents digging up the package.

On Saturday, an undercover FBI agent in New York and another in Washington, both posing as Russian agents, met with two of the defendants, Anna Chapman at a New York restaurant and Mikhail Semenko on a Washington street corner blocks from the White House, prosecutors said. The FBI undercover agents gave each an espionage-related delivery to make. Court papers indicated Semenko made the delivery as instructed but apparently Chapman didn't.

The timing of the arrests was notable, given the efforts by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev to reset U.S.-Russia relations. The two leaders met last week at the White House after Medvedev visited high-tech firms in California's Silicon Valley, and both attended the G-8 and G-20 meetings over the weekend in Canada.

Oleg Gordievsky, a former deputy head of the KGB in London who defected in 1985, said Medvedev would know the number of so-called illegal operatives in each country.

The 71-year-old ex-double agent told The Associated Press that, based on his experience and career in Russian intelligence, he estimates Moscow likely has about 40 to 50 couples operating under deep cover in the U.S.

Aside from the Murphys, three other defendants also appeared in federal court in Manhattan — Vicky Pelaez and Juan Lazaro, who were arrested at their Yonkers, N.Y., residence, and Chapman, arrested in Manhattan on Sunday.

Pelaez was a reporter and editor for a prominent Spanish-language newspaper videotaped by the FBI contacting a Russian official in 2000 in Latin America, prosecutors said.

The Murphys, Lazaro, Pelaez and Chapman were held without bail but didn't enter a plea. Another hearing was set for Thursday.

Pelaez is a Peruvian-born reporter and editor and worked for several years for El Diario/La Prensa, one of the country's best-known Spanish-language newspapers. She is best known for her opinion columns, which often criticize the U.S. government.

Two other defendants, Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills, were arrested at their Arlington, Va., residence. Also arrested at an Arlington residence was Semenko.

Zottoli, Mills and Semenko appeared before U.S. Magistrate Theresa Buchanan on Monday in Alexandria, Va. The hearing was closed because the case had not yet been unsealed in New York. The three did not have attorneys at the hearing, U.S. attorney spokesman Peter Carr said.

Two defendants known as Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley were arrested at their Cambridge, Mass., residence Sunday. They appeared briefly in Boston federal court Monday. A detention hearing was set for Thursday. Lawyers could not be found or did not return calls.

__________________
Give unto Caesar that what is Caesar's, and lie like hell to keep as much of the rest of your shit as you can.

"If you want something said ask a man...if you want something done, ask a woman" Margaret Thatcher

From the Independent

US-Russia spy swap under way after deep-cover agents admit guilt

By Shaun Walker in Moscow and David Usborne in New York
Friday, 9 July 2010


Spies who had been facing years of incarceration in the US and Russia came in from the cold last night as they traveled in opposite directions around the globe, 10 headed eastward to Moscow and four who had been in detention in Russia beginning journeys to new lives in the West.

The extraordinary exchange unfolded last night after all 10 spies, whose deep-cover ring had been blown open by US authorities nearly two weeks ago, pleaded guilty in a court in New York to operating illegally as agents of a foreign country.

It became clear last night that the human bartering had been authorised at the highest levels, amidst reports that the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, had personally pardoned the four Russians being released from his cells. But before seeing the keys turned all four had been obliged to sign documents admitting their guilt.

In a similar flurry in Washington of leaks and intrigue, word came from the office of the White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, that President Barack Obama had been kept abreast of the Le Carré-style theatre from its first inception and that he had made the decision to go forward with the exchange.

As the swap of a kind not seen since the Cold War unfolded, the US Justice Department confirmed in a letter that the 10 deep-cover agents caught within US borders would be dispatched to Russia. At the same time Moscow was releasing four who had been imprisoned for spying for the West. A US official said those who had been in Russia had suffered after being held in "incredibly difficult circumstances".

Among those was Igor Sutyagin, a Russian scientist, who, according to relatives, was being delivered first to Vienna and from there would be flown to Britain accompanied by UK agents.

Mr Sutyagin, a military analyst, was accused of passing information to a British company, Alternative Futures, that Moscow believed to be a CIA front. He has always maintained his innocence, insisting information was drawn from open sources. He was sentenced in 2004 to 15 years in jail.

"The network of unlawful agents operating inside the US has been dismantled," Mark Toner, of the State Department, said. "No significant national security benefit would be gained from the incarceration in the US of these 10 unlawful agents."

The US Attorney General Eric Holder said the "extraordinary" case took years of work, "and the agreement we reached today provides a successful resolution for the US and its interests."

As the courtroom drama unfolded in lower Manhattan, Judge Kimba Wood nodded as all 10 suspects said that they had voluntarily agreed to the plea bargains and sentenced each of them to time served – the eleven days since they were arrested.

Three of the couples, who had been paired up by the Russian intelligence services as part of their covers, had been raising children in the US. It appeared that two of them had already left the US bound for Moscow and two others were to be sent east with their parents – youngsters who until less than two weeks ago had considered themselves as American as their schoolmates and had no notion of their Russian ties.

At Moscow's Lefortovo prison, to where Mr Sutyagin had been moved earlier in the week from a far-northern penal colony, riot police stood guard and a number of vehicles arrived and left throughout the day. In the afternoon, his lawyer said she had information that her client had been seen arriving in Vienna, although the Austrian Foreign Ministry refused to confirm or deny he was in the country.

Mr Sutyagin's relatives said he was shown a list of names of people to be included in the swap, but that the only one he could remember was Sergei Skripal, a former colonel of Russia's military intelligence, the GRU. He was jailed for 13 years in 2006 for passing classified information to Britain.

Yesterday, Russia's Kommersant newspaper suggested two other names, citing Russian intelligence sources. It said that former intelligence operatives Alexander Sypachev and Alexander Zaporozhsky would also be handed over to the US. They are serving eight and 18-year jail terms respectively for passing information to the CIA.

Analysts speculated that an exchange could bring benefits for Moscow and Washington, as it would preclude lengthy trials that could prove an embarrassment for both countries, leaking intelligence secrets and proving an obstacle to the continuence of the recently improved relations between Russia and the US. Since taking office, Barack Obama has overseen a "reset" in relations with Russia, and the spy arrests came just three days after a friendly summit between Mr Obama and the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Spy exchanges were relatively commonplace during the Cold War, but no high-profile swaps have taken place since the Soviet Union collapsed. It is believed a Wednesday meeting between US Under Secretary of State William Burns, a former Ambassador to Moscow, and the Russian Ambassador in Washington, Sergei Kislyak, was key to arranging a deal.

Some Russian sources suggested that Anna Chapman, the femme fatale whose exploits and photographs have excited tabloid readers around the world, could be on her way to Moscow on an overnight flight. But the lawyer for Vicky Pelaez, a columnist for a Spanish-language newspaper in New York and the only defendant who is not believed to be a Russian citizen, said his client would not want to move to Russia.


Cold War prisoner exchanges

February 1962 Gary Powers and Rudolf Ivanovich Abel are released from their prison terms for espionage and are exchanged secretly at the border between West Berlin and East Germany. Powers was the pilot of a US reconnaissance plane shot down two years earlier in central Soviet Union. Abel was reputed to be director of a Soviet spy network in the United States when he was arrested in New York in 1957.

11 October 1963 The State Department announced that two accused Soviet agents held by the United States had been exchanged for two Americans convicted and imprisoned on espionage charges.

22 April 1964 Greville Maynard Wynne, a British businessman jailed in 1963 on charges of spying for Britain and the United States, was exchanged for Konon Trofimovich Molody, a Russian army officer imprisoned by the British in 1961 for masterminding a spy ring that obtained information about British submarines.

30 April 1978 A three-way prisoner exchange among the United States, East Germany and Mozambique. Miron Marcus, an Israeli citizen held since September 1976, was released on the Mozambique-Swaziland border. The United States released Robert G Thompson, a former US Air Force intelligence clerk convicted of passing secrets to the Soviets. East Germany released American Alan Van Norman who had been arrested in East Germany trying to smuggle a family to the West.

27 April 1979 Five political and religious dissidents were released from Soviet prisons and flown to New York in exchange for two Russians convicted of spying in the United States. The group included Alexander Ginzburg, one of the best known Russian dissidents.

11 June 1985 The United States and the Eastern bloc exchanged accused spies in a deal that was to eventually involve 29 people. Four people convicted or indicated for espionage in the United States were exchanged for five Polish prisoners and 20 other alleged spies held in East Germany and Poland. It was described as one of the largest East-West prisoner swaps since the Second World War.

11 February 1986 Soviet Jewish dissident Anatoly B Shcharansky was freed in an exchange that involved a total of nine people either accused or convicted of espionage. Shcharansky was convicted in the USSR. in 1978 of spying for the West. His release came after eight years of imprisonment and forced labour.

September 1986 American journalist Nicholas Daniloff and Gennadiy Zakharov, a worker at the United Nations accused of spying for the Soviet Union, were released a day apart after just three weeks of negotiations by the USSR and the United States.

Too bad. No more Berlin bridges covered in mist, where spies could be told to walk across to the other side. It made for such nice movie scenes.

From the Independent

Vienna plays host to Cold War drama reimagined as farce

By Tony Paterson
Saturday, 10 July 2010


Vienna, the city that formed the backdrop to the classic Cold War film The Third Man and which was once a hotbed of CIA and KGB espionage activity was suddenly being reinvented as the post-Communist world's spy-swap capital yesterday.

But a 90-minute prisoner exchange on the tarmac at Vienna airport involving spies who supplied information to their paymasters that could normally be found on the internet was hardly the stuff of the Cold War.

By pre-1989 standards yesterday's Vienna spy swap was a comedy and one devoid of drama to boot. Where were the stone-faced Kalashnikov-toting border guards, the fat black Soviet limousines, the agents in shabby raincoats slipping out from behind the Iron Curtain? We got 90 minutes of covered aircraft boarding ladders instead.

During the Cold War, Vienna was genuinely a spying centre at the crossroads of communist eastern and capitalist western Europe. But over the years the city has relied more on Graham Greene and Orson Welles to promote this reputation. Real espionage is not often talked about, after all.

John le Carré did the same for Bonn with his novel, A Small Town in Germany and his epic The Spy Who Came in from the Cold almost did it for Berlin, but not quite. In reality, the German capital with its legendary "Bridge of Spies" delivered facts more powerful than fiction. It's spy swap record remains unassailable.

America and the Soviet Union used Berlin's legendary Glienicke bridge three times to swap captured spies during the Cold War. The first took place in early 1962 when the US released the Russian spy, Colonel Rudolf Abel, in exchange for the US pilot Gary Powers who was shot down while flying a plane over the Soviet Union two years earlier. The second happened in 1985, when the Russians swapped 23 American spies for the Pole Marian Zacharski and three other Soviet spies.

The third took place in the full glare of the Western media on 11 February 1986 and I saw it happen. The Glienicke Bridge links what was capitalist West Berlin with the former GDR town of Potsdam. Its heavy Iron Curtain girders span the Havel river that separates the two towns. In February, 24 years ago, it was used to swap the Soviet dissident Anatoly Sharansky and three Western agents for the Soviet spy Karl Koecher and four others.

The build up to the exchange had started weeks beforehand. By 11 February it was at fever pitch. Standing in frost-hardened snow, the world's media lined the road leading to the bridge on the western side. That morning all eyes were glued on the gate in the middle of the bridge bearing the hammer and compass emblem of Communist East Germany. Eventually, a pair of armed guards in Russian-style fur hats and grey greatcoats stomped up to it, arms swinging. It was pure Cold War pantomime.

The gate creaked as it swung open. Suddenly, the gold Mercedes limousine of Wolfgang Vogel, East Germany's top prisoner exchange negotiator, swung into view and pulled up. Buses shot up from east and west and parked on the bridge.

Doors opened and shut, figures shuffled, then one man in a fur hat and grey overcoat emerged. Anatoly Sharansky walked up to a western limousine and sped away. The most publicised spy swap on record lasted about 10 minutes. The only sounds were the slamming of car doors and roaring of engines.

Nobody said a thing.

From the Independent

Uncertain future for children of Russian spies

After spending their lives as unsuspecting Americans, they now face the prospect of being sent to a country they have never known

By David Randall
Sunday, 11 July 2010


As new details emerge of the secret White House manoeuvrings which led to Friday's exchange of spies, a very Russian question remains. The children – what is to be done?

Their parents are now acclimatising in a country some of them have not seen for 15 years or more, and where they are not exactly getting heroes' welcomes. But the really affecting predicament is that of their offspring. Their parents chose to do what they did, but the children were not only unaware of their activities but also of the real identities of their parents. Until the arrests late last month, a life in professional American families was theirs. Suddenly – with the prospect of being transplanted to Russia as the children of sinecured but failed agents – their worlds have been turned inside out.

It will be easiest for the youngest – the one-year-old and three-year-old children of Mikhail Kutzik, alias Michael Zottoli and Natalia Pereverzeva, alias Patricia Mills, known in the court documents as the "Seattle conspirators", who recently moved to Arlington, Virginia. Unconfirmed reports say these two, who have been staying with family friends, will soon be flown to Moscow.

Matters will be more complex for Katie, 11, and Lisa, seven, the daughters of Vladimir and Lydia Guryev, alias Richard and Cynthia Murphy, known as the "New Jersey conspirators". The two girls will probably be taken to Moscow, where home will be an apartment in a strange country.

The older offspring, who are not only able to grasp the deceit practised upon them but also feel betrayed by it, may well remain in the US. Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova, alias Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley, known as the "Boston conspirators", have two sons: one, 20, is at George Washington University, and the other, 16, attends a private high school in Boston. And then there is Juan, the 17-year-old son of Mikhail Vasenkov, alias Juan Lazaro, and Peruvian journalist Vicky Pelaez. He has a stepbrother Waldo Mariscal, 38, an architect who told journalists late Friday that he didn't know where he and his brother would end up living, though he said the teenager wanted to stay in the US.

He acknowledged the family would lose its home, since it was paid for by the Russians, but added: "My parents paid for this house with their sacrifices since 1995." A lawyer for the father noted that the sons had no income. "It's very upsetting. They don't know what to do next," said Genesis Peduto. "Are we going to reunite?" Mr Mariscal said outside the home. "Yes. We have a nice adobe house in Peru that my mother built little by little."

Meanwhile, it emerged in Washington that the spy swap idea was Washington's, first raised with President Barack Obama nearly a month ago by FBI and Justice Department officials who had been watching the 10 Russian agents for more than a decade. They informed the President it was time to start planning their arrests, according to two White House officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

What was known as "the illegals program" had been first brought to the White House's attention in February. The timing of the arrests was deliberated with Mr Obama on 11 June, but, said a separate US official, the arrests were not planned to facilitate such a trade. Thirteen days later, Mr Obama hosted Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the White House. But transparency goes only so far. Though the arrests would take place just three days later, Mr Obama kept quiet.

At that point, White House aides and their counterparts from several agencies, including the CIA, FBI, Justice and the State Department, were meeting every morning via secure video conference. Shortly after the 27 June arrests, CIA director Leon Panetta provided Russia's spy chief, Mikhail Fradkov, with the names of four prisoners being held in Russia that the US wanted to free, the officials said.

By last Saturday, the deal was agreed. Russia required signed confessions from the four to make way for pardons from Mr Medvedev, and plea deals were arranged in the US for the Russians. It was, by any standards, a win for the US – four high-profile characters in exchange for 10 nobodies who, in the words of one intelligence expert, "couldn't shoot straight".

I haven't follow the story. Can someone summarise/post a link as to:

- How they got inserted in American society?

and

- What use these deep-cover agents were meant to be to the Russians?

(They'd been identified and under observation for 10 years! Wow! The administration does move slowly ).

__________________
Unless otherwise specified, I am posting as a regular poster. When I will act as a mod, I'll make sure you're in no doubt.

Quote:

They'd been identified and under observation for 10 years! Wow! The administration does move slowly

Which makes you wonder why they chose now to arrest them. Perhaps in order to do this "spy swap" thing that went on the other day? Maybe one of the americans they got back was not as low profile as they would have us believe.

Or perhaps it was just an attempt to get a positive news story out that made it look like the administration was getting things done. Not that anyone really cares about a cold war era news story when the gulf is still full of oil.. but still :P

From the Guardian

Anna Chapman's call to father led to FBI spy arrests

Former Barclays Bank employee made call when she became suspicious about meeting with undercover FBI officer

By Andrew Clark in New York
The Guardian
Monday 12 July 2010


The youngest and most glamorous of Russia's 10 self-confessed spies, Anna Chapman, triggered the FBI swoop when she made an anxious phone call to her father in Moscow saying she was worried that her cover had been blown.

Chapman's call, together with a planned trip to Moscow by another spy, Richard Murphy, prompted US law enforcement officials to end months of covert surveillance on 27 June by arresting the 10 spies, prompting the biggest international espionage furore since the end of the Cold War.

A red-headed former Barclays Bank employee who holds British citizenship, Chapman became suspicious when an FBI officer, posing as a Russian consular officer named "Roman", summoned her to a meeting on 26 June in New York, gave her a fake passport and asked her to pass it on to another purported spy.

Apparently unconvinced by the FBI officer, Chapman went directly from the meeting to a Verizon telecoms store, where she bought a pay-as-you-go Motorola phone. Her lawyer, Robert Baum, has revealed that she called her father, an intelligence officer in Moscow, who told her to hand the passport to the police – which she did, at a police station prompting the FBI to arrest her.

At about the same time, New Jersey-based Richard Murphy, a father-of-two whose real name is Vladimir Guryev (married to a fellow spy, Lydia Guryev), was due to fly to Russia for a meeting. Speaking on CBS television yesterday, the US attorney-general, Eric Holder, said the FBI moved in because "one of the husbands of one of the couples was in the process ofgoing to France and then on his way to Russia and the concern was that if we let him go, we would not be able to get him back".

Holder also said that all of the spies' children, other than those old enough to decide to stay in the US, had been "repatriated" to join their parents. He said the spies had not succeeded in passing any "classified information" to Moscow and added that the decision to swap them for four people jailed in Russia as western spies was to benefit both the US and Britain.

"These are people, as I said, who have been charged with intelligence activities in Russia and in whom we had a great deal of interest, as well as England, and we have gotten those people back," said Holder.

The international spy exchange between the US and Russia was a good deal – even if America had to wave goodbye to red-haired tabloid favourite Chapman, the US vice-president, Joe Biden, quipped on a late-night television chat show. Holding up a picture of her, comedian Jay Leno asked the vice-president: "Do we have any spies that hot?" Biden jokingly replied: : "Let me be clear. It wasn't my idea to send her back. I thought maybe they'd take [rightwing polemicist] Rush Limbaughor something. That would've been a good move."

That seems to explain it.

Known spies are useful, because you can silently watch to see with whom they meet, and because you can feed them wrong information to check where it ends up. Yet, as soon as a known spy discovers that his of her cover has been blown, it is better to arrest the person, because in this way, at least you can get something in return.

This is rational behavior.