Spy Games

If you enjoy spy novels from the Cold War era, then this document (SEE HERE) from the U.S. Department of Justice can appear to be an interesting read. They contain charges against 10 people arrested in the United States under suspicion of practicing espionage for Russia, and the material is enough for at least several books from Ian Fleming, Andrei Guliashki or Bogomil Rainov.

According to the U.S. authorities, breaking the alleged spy network came after several years of investigation from FBI agents who disguised themselves as Russian liasons and gathered information from two of the suspects. This seems like the biggest discovery of Russian spies in the United States after the fall of Communism, and it also comes several days after Barack Obama praised Dmitry Medvedev for being a “solid and reliable” partner.

Maneuvers At The Pacific Front

FBI data shows that the 10 detainees in several East Coast cities in the U.S. are actually undercover agents sent as early as the ‘90s by the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia, which is the successor of the KGB. Another man, who was the last suspect of the network, was arrested today at the international airport in Larnaca, Cyprus. According to U.S. authorities, the spies’ mission was revealed in a coded message from headquarters in Moscow sent to one of the detainees that stated: “You were sent to USA with long-term task. Your education, bank accounts, cars, houses, etc. — all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search for and develop ties in policymaking circles in U.S. and send intels [intelligence reports] to [Center].”

The operation, given the name “Nelegali” by U.S. investigators, was aimed at gathering information on topics such as nuclear weapons, the line from Washington to Iran, the changes in the CIA and U.S. policy and even casual talks in Congress. For this purpose, agents lived for years under disguise deep in the United States — some of them as couples, with children born in the United States. They used false identities — some were from real, but dead, people — and false documents.

“Excuse Me, Didn’t We Meet In California Last Summer?”

The spyware arsenal of the prisoners is like that of a movie. It includes secret meetings with Russian officials, participation in U.N. delegations, suitcases of cash left in secret places, encrypted messages, messages written with invisible ink, the use of new techniques such as communication within closed computer networks and seemingly innocent posts of pictures on the Internet that contain hidden text. In meetings with contacts they used signals, like holding a Time magazine in a certain way or password phrases like “Excuse me, didn’t we meet in California last summer?” And answers like: “No, I think it was in the Hamptons.”

As the BBC notes, however, the most entertaining aspect of the career of the alleged spies is how ridiculously they have acted and how they do not seem to have achieved anything — even though some of them were on a mission in the U.S. for nearly two decades. They are not even being accused of espionage but only of not being registered as agents or representatives of another country, and of money laundering.

They’ve lived quite comfortably in the U.S. and, according to the U.S. authorities, were not doing anything significant. One example is the couple of Richard and Cynthia Murphy (or, as already known, the New Jersey conspirators), who were very concerned about how to buy their house. And they communicated frequently on the issue with the center in Moscow, arguing that the United States is a society that “values home ownership” and that it would be wise to “do as the Romans do.” However, their arguments were received quite coldly in Moscow, and they were suspected of trying to take advantage of their position. So it was necessary for them to make it clear that it was not “a deviation from the original purpose of our mission here.”

Another couple, Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley — or the Boston conspirators, as they are alternatively known — also had a good time. They reported $1250 spent on meals and gifts, $3600 for education, $4900 for business expenses, etc.

The impressive number of discovered messages attests to both how professionally they were encoded and how secretly they were sent. In Richard and Cynthia Murphy’s home, investigators discovered the 27-character password, recorded on…a computer disk. It gives access to a program through which a message can be stored on a photo on a website and then encoded by the recipient.

From Burger-Diplomacy Back To The Cold War

The scandal comes just days after Barack Obama and Medvedev were eating hamburgers in a friendly fashion, and optimism for a restart between the U.S. and Russia was growing. Indeed, the Kremlin even suspected conspiracy to terminate the relationship. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the timing of the arrests was “very cleverly chosen,” and the Deputy Chairman of the Security Committee in the Russian Duma, Vladimir Kolesnikov, defined the incident as a “provocation” and “a blow aimed at Obama.” Former Federal Security Service Director Nikolai Kovalev expressed himself more metaphorically when he told Interfax that “someone is trying to put a virus in the reset program.”

Leaving conspiracy stories aside, the scandal must certainly damage — at least slightly — the image of Moscow. And it must give hamburgers a slightly bitter aftertaste.