US charges 10 Russian 'agents' with spying
The US Government claimed last night to have broken up a spy ring of mainly Russian "illegals" – deep-cover agents whose job it was to make political contacts in America and send back information to Moscow.
According to the Justice Department, 10 people living in the north-east of the country were arrested in the swoop – an operation with echoes of Cold War espionage carried out by the former rival superpowers.
Eight of the suspects were detained on Sunday for allegedly carrying out long-term, deep-cover assignments for the Russian intelligence agencies. Two others were arrested in connection with the alleged spying scheme. According to court papers released yesterday, their job was "to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in the United States".
All 10, plus another member of the ring who is still at large, were charged in a federal court in southern New York state with conspiracy to act as agents of a foreign government.
Although all the accused listed in the indictment have American-sounding names, officials said most of them appeared to be of Russian origin and may have infiltrated into the US, assumed American identities and blended into society. Outwardly, they seemed to have no links with Russia whatsoever.
It was not immediately clear what information was allegedly passed to Moscow, and no one was available for comment at the Russian embassy last night. However, the fact that none of those arrested were charged with espionage, and that the maximum penalty for their alleged offence is only five years, suggests that little damage was done.
By contrast, major Soviet or Russian spies such as Aldrich Ames, a mole within the CIA who was arrested in 1994, or Robert Hanssen, a rogue FBI agent who was caught in 2001, have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Russian diplomats or trade officials accused of spying have routinely been expelled. As "illegals", those arrested in the latest operation were working without any such cover.
According to US officials, the arrests followed a two-year investigation focused on Boston, New York, New Jersey and Virginia, which involved wire-tapping and the installation of bugging devices in the homes of the accused.
The break in the case appears to have come when the FBI intercepted and decoded a message sent from the Moscow headquarters of Russia's primary external intelligence agency, the SVR, to two of those charged, named as Richard and Cynthia Murphy.
"You were sent to US for long-term service trip," the message said. "Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc – all these serve one goal: fulfil your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and sent intels."
One member of the ring still being sought was named as Christopher Metsos. According to the court papers, he received money from the Russians and made payments to the others. He is said to have collected the money during a "brush-pass" with a Russian official who worked with Moscow's delegation to the United Nations at its headquarters in New York.
Nine of the 10 individuals arrested were also accused of money laundering – an offence which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in jail. Under US law, it is a crime to act as an agent of a foreign government without registering as such with American authorities.
Even though the case seems to have caused no great harm to US interests, it is a sign that even though the Cold War is over and Russian-American relations are on the mend, Moscow's appetite for Western – and, in particular, American – secrets is undiminished.
In Ordinary Lives, U.S. Sees the Work of Russian Agents
MONTCLAIR, N.J. F.B.I. agents arrested Richard and Cynthia Murphy at their suburban home on Sunday night.
By SCOTT SHANE and CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: June 28, 2010
WASHINGTON — They had lived for more than a decade in American cities and suburbs from Seattle to New York, where they seemed to be ordinary couples working ordinary jobs, chatting to the neighbors about schools and apologizing for noisy teenagers.
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Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press
ARLINGTON, VA. Two suspects, Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills, were arrested at the high-rise complex where they lived.
But on Monday, federal prosecutors accused 11 people of being part of a Russian espionage ring, living under false names and deep cover in a patient scheme to penetrate what one coded message called American “policy making circles.”
An F.B.I. investigation that began at least seven years ago culminated with the arrest on Sunday of 10 people in Yonkers, Boston and northern Virginia. The documents detailed what the authorities called the “Illegals Program,” an ambitious, long-term effort by the S.V.R., the successor to the Soviet K.G.B., to plant Russian spies in the United States to gather information and recruit more agents.
The alleged agents were directed to gather information on nuclear weapons, American policy toward Iran, C.I.A. leadership, Congressional politics and many other topics, prosecutors say. The Russian spies made contact with a former high-ranking American national security official and a nuclear weapons researcher, among others. But the charges did not include espionage, and it was unclear what secrets the suspected spy ring — which included five couples — actually managed to collect.
After years of F.B.I. surveillance, investigators decided to make the arrests last weekend, just after an upbeat visit to President Obama by the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said one administration official. Mr. Obama was not happy about the timing, but investigators feared some of their targets might flee, the official said.
Criminal complaints filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Monday read like an old-fashioned cold war thriller: Spies swapping identical orange bags as they brushed past one another in a train station stairway. An identity borrowed from a dead Canadian, forged passports, messages sent by shortwave burst transmission or in invisible ink. A money cache buried for years in a field in upstate New York.
But the network of so-called illegals — spies operating under false names outside of diplomatic cover — also used cyber-age technology, according to the charges. They embedded coded texts in ordinary-looking images posted on the Internet, and they communicated by having two agents with laptops containing special software pass casually as messages flashed between them.
Neighbors in Montclair, N.J., of the couple who called themselves Richard and Cynthia Murphy were flabbergasted when a team of F.B.I. agents turned up Sunday night and led the couple away in handcuffs. One person who lives nearby called them “suburbia personified,” saying that they had asked people for advice about the local schools. Others worried about the Murphys’ elementary-age daughters.
Jessie Gugig, 15, said she could not believe the charges, especially against Mrs. Murphy. “They couldn’t have been spies,” she said jokingly. “Look what she did with the hydrangeas.”
Experts on Russian intelligence expressed astonishment at the scale, longevity and dedication of the program. They noted that Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian prime minister and former president and spy chief, had worked to restore the prestige and funding of Russian espionage after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dark image of the K.G.B.
“The magnitude, and the fact that so many illegals were involved, was a shock to me,” said Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who was a Soviet spy in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s under “legal” cover as a diplomat and Radio Moscow correspondent. “It’s a return to the old days, but even in the worst years of the cold war, I think there were no more than 10 illegals in the U.S., probably fewer.”
Mr. Kalugin, now an American citizen living outside Washington, said he was impressed with the F.B.I.’s penetration of the spy ring. The criminal complaints are packed with vivid details gathered in years of covert surveillance — including monitoring phones and e-mail, placing secret microphones in the alleged Russian agents’ homes, and numerous surreptitious searches.
Prosecutors said the “Illegals Program” extended to other countries around the world. Using fraudulent documents, the charges said, the spies would “assume identities as citizens or legal residents of the countries to which they are deployed, including the United States.
Rich Schultz/Associated Press
MONTCLAIR, N.J. Neighbors of Richard and Cynthia Murphy, who lived on Marquette Road, were surprised at their arrest.
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Charles Krupa/Associated Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley lived on a street where some Harvard professors and students live.
Illegals will sometimes pursue degrees at target-country universities, obtain employment, and join relevant professional associations” to deepen false identities.
One message from bosses in Moscow, in awkward English, gave the most revealing account of the agents’ assignment. “You were sent to USA for long-term service trip,” it said. “Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. — all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles and send intels [intelligence reports] to C[enter].”
It was not clear what the intelligence reports were about, though one agent was described as meeting an American government employee working in a nuclear program. The defendants were charged with conspiracy, not to commit espionage, but to fail to register as agents of a foreign government, which carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison; 9 were also charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years. They are not accused of obtaining classified materials.
There were also hints that Russian spy bosses feared their agents, ordered to go native in prosperous America, might be losing track of their official purpose. Agents in Boston submitted an expense report with such vague items as “trip to meeting” for $1,125 and “education,” $3,600.
In Montclair, when the Murphys wanted to buy a house under their names, “Moscow Center,” or “C.,” the S.V.R. headquarters, objected.
“We are under an impression that C. views our ownership of the house as a deviation from the original purpose of our mission here,” the New Jersey couple wrote in a coded message. “From our perspective purchase of the house was solely a natural progression of our prolonged stay here. It was a convenient way to solving the housing issue, plus ‘to do as the Romans do’ in a society that values home ownership.”
Much of the ring’s activity — and the F.B.I. investigators’ surveillance — took place in and around New York. The alleged agents were spotted in a bookstore in Lower Manhattan, a bench near the entrance to Central Park and a restaurant in Sunnyside, Queens.
Secret exchanges were made at busy locations like the Long Island Rail Road’s station in Forest Hills, where F.B.I. watchers in 2004 spotted one defendant who is not in custody, Christopher R. Metsos, the charging papers say.
The arrests made a splash in neighborhoods around the country, as F.B.I. teams spent all Sunday night hunting through houses and cars, shining flashlights and carting away evidence.
In Cambridge, Mass., the couple known as Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley, who appeared to be in their 40s and had two teenage sons, lived in an apartment building on a residential street where some Harvard professors and students live.
“She was very courteous; she was very nice,” Montse Monne-Corbero, who lives next door, said of Ms. Foley. The sons shoveled snow for her in the winter, Ms. Monne-Corbero said, but they also had “very loud” parties.
Lila Hexner, who lives in the building next door, said Ms. Foley told her she was in the real estate business. “She said they were from Canada,” Ms. Hexner said.
Another of those charged, Mikhail Semenko, was a stylish man in his late 20s who drove a Mercedes S-500, said Tatyana Day, who lives across the street from him in Arlington, Va. He had a brunette girlfriend and the young couple spoke to one another in Russian and “kept to themselves,” Ms. Day said.
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