On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that ten people have been arrested for being alleged undercover Russian spies. They were charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government, as well as for money laundering. While not yet charged with espionage, nevertheless, they walked liked spies and talked like spies.
The eleventh man escaped, only to be apprehended in Cyprus. These were not the usual suspects acting under diplomatic cover and trying to recruit Americans at cocktail parties. The ten seem to be long term, deep cover agents (so-called “illegals”), most of them Russians.
The Obama White House and the State Department said that the relations will Russia will continue. However, it would be wrong not to take this matter very seriously. Instead of apologizing for spying, Russia is blaming the United States for protecting its security.
The arrests came shortly after the Obama-Medvedev “Cheeseburger Summit” last week, when Russian President Medvedev visited the United States. Leading Russian experts, the Foreign Ministry and politicians criticized the arrests. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin remarked that “I hope that all the positive gains that have been achieved in our relationship will not be damaged by the recent event.”
By blaming the United States, this criticism is totally missing the point: this long term penetration started in the 1990s, when Russia was a beneficiary of tens of billions of dollars of U.S. and Western aid. Today, espionage, not catching foreign spies, is thwarting Barack Obama’s “reset” with Russia. Furthermore, this begs the question whether the Russian services were undermining their own rulers.
That Russia is continuing to spy on the United States, as other countries which view America as a threat do, should not come as a surprise. In fact, as early as 2007, it was widely reported that Russian (and Chinese) spy operations were “back at cold war levels” in the United States. Moreover, according to then-Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, in the 2007 Annual Threat Assessment to the United States, China and Russia are “among the most aggressive in collecting [intelligence] against sensitive and protected U.S. targets.” The 2010 assessment highlights Russia’s ongoing efforts. Unfortunately, with the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan dominating the intelligence agenda, the U.S. collection on Russia and China is slipping behind.
According to the complaint filed by the Department of Justice, the Russian SVR (foreign intelligence agency) cells utilized both modern and old (and sloppy) tradecraft, some of it looking like a parody on an old Le Carre novel.
This included dead drops, coded communications, burying information in “dots” on websites, known as steganography, 27 character web passwords, and some tweaked laptops, courtesy of the Moscow Center’s tech mavens. Unfortunately for the agents, the laptop crashed repeatedly.
And the Russian agents were easily tracked by the FBI counterintelligence, although their handlers failed to spot it. This has led some old timers from the intelligence community to speculate that the network is a decoy to mask a much more sophisticated espionage operation in the U.S.
Such deception is plausible. If there is one cell, there are bound to be more. Oleg Gordievsky, a famous Cold War defector and former chief of the KGB station in London, said that Russia may have as many as 50 deep-cover couples spying inside the United States.
Moreover, this raises the question, what are other Russian intelligence agencies such as GRU (military intelligence) doing in the United States, and what are the successes of the Russian (and Chinese) online spying, which is executed by a different agency altogether?
The operation was more than a decade-long effort to exploit the weaknesses of a free and open society. The “illegals” network, aimed at penetrating policy making circles, appears to have been established even before the former KGB officer Vladimir Putin became President of the Russian Federation, when foreign espionage got a massive boost in money and manpower.
However, it looks like the Russians used a lot of the 20th century tradecraft for the 21st century America. These days Moscow provides no ideological attraction, and bickering between agents and control over expenses suggests that the Center’s pockets were not as deep as in the past.
It is also unclear why Moscow tolerated a network that seemed to produce so little. One explanation is that their bosses valued tidbits picked up by agents much more than what could be gleaned by sophisticated analysts reading journals or going to conferences. This reflects a cult of intelligence, which outlived its Soviet roots.
“Reset” or not, the current Russian leadership is still committed to the past and continues to view America with fear and suspicion. In Moscow, the US is still an intelligence target, not a “partner” the Obama Administration believes it is.
It will take more than cheeseburgers, fries and ketchup to change that.
Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Policy in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. The author thanks Owen Graham, Research Assistant at the Allison Center for help in preparation of this blog.
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I know! Medvedev recruited Obama and Schwarzenegger!
Beware America! Terminator is on our side! ROFL
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Hmmm, reminiscent of the Cold War. Does anyone think that this will affect the Senate's ratification of New START? I am not sure that this Senate has the political courage to vote down this treaty, which contains dangerous self-imposed Missile Defense restrictions. November elections are just a few short months away…hang in there America! We can right this wrong!
G-Man
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How Soviet illegals have been trained:
http://lib.guru.ua/WSUWOROW/intelligence_engl.txt
Although General Guryenko's organisation is called the Training
Centre', not one Soviet illegal who has defected has ever been able to say
exactly where it is. The name Training Centre seems simply to reflect the
existence of one organisation occupied with one task. Either the
organisation is constantly on the move, or a secluded little place is
selected for each individual trainee, normally in the Moscow area where
there are great numbers of dachas. The dachas for the training of illegals
are well concealed among other governmental buildings, where outsiders are
not to be seen on the streets and unnecessary questions are not asked, but
gentlemen of sporting appearance may be seen walking in pairs in the quiet
shady avenues. The dacha provides an ideally isolated territory for
training. In addition to the candidate and his family, two or three
instructors also live in the dacha where they can immerse him completely and
supervise him very carefully all the time. His wife is also trained but the
children lead normal lives and will be held eventually as hostages. The
internal fittings of the dacha are prepared very thoroughly and carefully.
From the first day the candidate becomes accustomed to the circumstances in
which he will be living and working probably for many long years. In this
connection he wears the clothes and shoes, and eats the food, even smokes
cigarettes and uses razor blades procured from overseas. In each room a tape
recorder is installed which runs twenty-four hours a day while he is
occupying the dacha. These tape recorders continuously broadcast news from
the radio programmes of his target country. From the first day of his
training he is supplied with the majority of papers and magazines. He sees
many films and descriptions on video tapes of television broadcasts. The
instructors, for the most part former illegals, read the same papers and
listen to the same radio programmes and spend their time asking their pupil
the most difficult questions imaginable with regard to what has been read.
It is quite obvious that after a number of years of such training, the
future illegal knows by heart the composition of every football team, the
hours of work of every restaurant and nightclub, the weather forecasts and
everything that is going on in the realm of gossip as well as current
affairs, in a country where he has never been in his life. The instructional
programme is tailor-made for each trainee, giving due consideration to his
knowledge, character and the tasks which he will be called upon to perform
in the future. Attention is obviously paid to the study of the language of
the target country, to working methods and to a cover story.
Often, the illegal's wife also undergoes training. She as a rule works
as the radio operator. The posting of a husband and wife together, leaving
their children behind as hostages, is a very frequent occurrence. It is
considered that maternal feelings are much the stronger and, with the wife
posted, hostages are that much more effective. Perhaps more surprisingly,
the wife also acts as a control for the GRU on her husband. She scrutinises
his behaviour and sometimes may warn the GRU about his excessive interest in
women or alcohol. On their return to the Soviet Union, husband and wife are
subjected to a detailed individual debriefing on all aspects of their life
abroad. If the husband and wife have decided to keep something secret from
the GRU, their stories will eventually differ.
After as much as three or four years of intensive training, the illegal
passes a state commission of top GRU and Central Committee personnel, and
goes abroad. Usually his journey to the target country is effected through a
number of intermediary countries. For example, a journey to the USA would go
from the Soviet Union to Hungary to Yugoslavia to Cyprus, Kuwait, Hong Kong
and Hawaii. At each stage, or most of them, he destroys documents with which
he has entered the country and goes on under new documentation which has
been prepared for him, either by other illegals or by the residencies under
cover. The illegal will find these documents in a reserved hotel or a
steamship cabin or in a letter through the post. At each stage he goes on to
another cover story, becoming another man. He may have to live in one place
for some months and study it so he can use his knowledge of the country in
future cover stories. He does not stop over at all in some of the countries,
only using his visit to cover his tracks. After some months he arrives at
the country where he is to work. The first thing he does is to visit the
city where he is supposed to have been born, gone to school, and married. He
gets a job and works for a time, after which he returns to the Soviet Union,
having finished the second stage of his training – the illegal probationary
period abroad. This probationary period is divided as a rule into one or two
years, after which the third stage begins. On the basis of the experience he
has gained, and the shortcomings which have come to light in the training,
the illegal and his instructors work out a programme of training for a
period which lasts another one or two years. After this he again undergoes
state examinations, at which the head of the GRU or his first deputy have to
be present. Then the illegal is placed at the disposal of one of the heads
of directorates and again commences the operation for his roundabout journey
to the target country. For operational purposes (though not for
instructional purposes) much use is made of Finland as a window to the West.
In the course of his operational journey, the illegal's stay in one of the
intermediate countries may continue for several years. This stage goes by
the name of the 'intermediate legalisation'. To take the case of an illegal
whose target destination is Washington: he might pretend to be a refugee
from Hungary escaped in 1956; this would mean periods of residence in
Hungary to begin with, then Austria and Germany before he arrives finally in
America. An eventual French illegal would be likely to make the journey via
Armenia and Lebanon. Both would consolidate their nationality every step of
the way. In the course of the 'intermediate legalisation', the illegal
endeavours to acquire as many friends as possible, to go to work, to get
hold of genuine papers and character and work references. At the end of
these years of preparation, he at last appears in the country where he is to
spend so many more years endeavouring to do it as much harm as possible.
The minimum age of an illegal clearly cannot be less than twenty-seven
to twenty-nine, but usually he is older, on average about forty. This age
suits the GRU very well for a number of reasons. A man of forty has a
balanced, conservative approach to life. The stormy passions of youth have
disappeared and he is less inclined to take ill-considered decisions,
especially if he ever suffers the dilemma of whether to continue working or
to go to the police. His children are sufficiently old to be able to live
without their parents in the complete care of the GRU, but not old enough to
live independently, and so they are ideal hostages. And in the event of
mobilisation in the target country, he may well be able to avoid being
called up for the army which would mean the breaking-off of relations and an
end to his active working life.
On his arrival at his objective, the illegal sets about basic
legalisation. He has been provided with good papers by the best forgers of
the GRU on genuine blank passports. At the same time he is extremely
vulnerable if he is not registered with the police or the tax departments.
Any check may give him away and for this reason he endeavours to change jobs
and places of work often to get his name onto as many company lists as he
can and to acquire character references signed by real people. The ideal
solution is for him to obtain new documentation from the police department
under some pretext or another. Often he will marry another agent (who may
already be his wife); she will then be given a genuine passport, and he will
'lose' his false one to have it replaced with a real one on the production
of his wife's genuine document. The acquisition of a driving licence, credit
cards, membership documents of clubs and associations are a vital element in
'legalising' the status of an illegal.
A vital role in the lives of illegals is played by cover stories, in
other words concocted life stories. The basic or ground cover story is
created on the basis of real events in the life of the illegal, only
changing a few details. He keeps the date of his birth but of course changes
the place of his birth. The dates of birth of his parents and relatives are
also accurately recorded, usually along with the professions of his parents,
dates of weddings and other details. The illegal is thus not telling an
out-and-out lie but only a half-truth. He will not bat an eyelid when he
tells you that his father served all his life in the army. The only thing is
that he will not tell you in which army he served.
There is also the emergency cover story, which is the last line of
defence of the illegal on having been arrested by the police. As its name
suggests, this cover story is only to be used as a last resort when the
illegal perceives that the police no longer believe his basic cover story.
Designed to be used only when the illegal is in the hands of the police
department, it is concocted in such a way that the details it gives should
be impossible to check. For example, one illegal was arrested by the police
while he was trying to obtain a new driving licence because a mistake had
been found in his old one. He was subjected to questioning, as a result of
which his basic cover story was found to be inaccurate. Then he went over to
his emergency cover story and informed the police that he was a Polish
criminal who had escaped from prison and bought a passport on the black
market. During this time the GRU, not having received from the illegal his
routine communications, informed the Polish authorities about the
'criminal'. The Poles published photographs of the criminal and applied to a
number of countries for his extradition. However strange it may seem, the
police believed the story and handed him over to the Polish Consul. It would
have been easy to break the emergency cover story, if the police had only
thought to invite a real Polish immigrant for a ten-minute chat with his
supposed fellow countryman. Of course he would not have known more than ten
words of the language. But for the police it was sufficient that he spoke
their language and did not object to being handed over to the Polish Consul.
No less important than the cover story is the cover or the place of
work and the type of employment which the illegal takes up in his life
overseas. Soviet propaganda paints a grave picture of the intelligence
officer playing the role of a colonel in the enemy general staff. But this
is pure disinformation. Such a cover is unacceptable to an illegal for a
number of reasons. Firstly, he must keep himself away from
counter-intelligence and the police. He must be a grey, inconspicuous 'man
in the street' such as millions would hurry past without noticing. Any
officer on any Western general staff is continuously under scrutiny.
Secondly, he must be professional in his field. In the general staff he
would be exposed almost immediately. Thirdly, for such a cover his
legalisation would have to be unacceptably protracted. He would certainly be
asked about the military schools and academies where he is supposed to have
been, the regiments in which he has served, and his acquaintances among the
officers and staff. Fourthly, an illegal needs plenty of time and
opportunity to meet whoever he wants to meet. If a colonel on the general
staff consorted with prostitutes, homosexuals, stockbrokers, atomic
submarine workers and bootblacks – all those multifarious people he needs to
cultivate – he would be exposed within forty-eight hours. Finally, and
perhaps most importantly, the requirements of the GRU change with great
rapidity. Today they are interested in documents from a certain department
of the general staff and tomorrow from another. But our illegal is working
in yet another department and all his attempts to have talks with officers
of the first two departments have been met with a blank wall or cold
suspicion. No, the kind of cover offered by such a role is neither feasible
nor a great deal of use.
Much better for him to be an independent journalist like Richard Sorge,
or an independent artist like Rudolph Abel, coming and going as he pleases.
Today he is talking with the Prime Minister, tomorrow with prostitutes, the
next day with professional killers and then with atomic weapon workers. If
he doesn't want to work for three months, there is no problem. If he gets
many thousands of dollars through the post, again no problem. It is part of
his cover. There are better, of course. A garage owner, for example. He
hires his staff and himself goes wherever he wants and for as long as he
wants, or he stands at the window and takes the money. Thousands of people
pass him every day -ballerinas and artists, senators and scientists – and
colonels of the general staff. To one he gives money and instructions
written in secret writing, from another he receives reports. For the basic
task of the illegal is not himself to penetrate secret targets, but to
recruit agents for this purpose. This is his raison d'etre.