Spy vs Spy?

Nah, more like Counterspy vs Spy.

Federal authorities arrested 10 people suspected of carrying out long-term “deep-cover” assignments in the U.S. for Russia that involved integrating into American society as married couples, infiltrating “policy-making circles” in Washington, and recruiting government and business sources.

The arrests occurred after federal agents intercepted messages from intelligence officials in Moscow calling on the defendants to “search and develop” intelligence ties in the United States.

The suspects were taken into custody in New York, New Jersey and Virginia on Sunday as part of a multiyear investigation by the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York and the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

See that? I’d be willing to bet that there are a whole lot of “progressives” out there who would refer to the guys and gals who catch spies for a living as “cold war anacronisms”, paranoids looking for enemy spooks under rocks.

Well, like they say, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

A criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in New York said the deep-cover operation began in the 1990s, and terrorism scholars say the case shows that Cold War-style espionage schemes are not a thing of the past.

The complaint, written by FBI agent Amit Kachhia-Patel, said covert agents working for the SVR, successor to the Soviet-era KGB as the Kremlin’s intelligence organ, assumed false identities and lived in the United States on long-term, deep-cover assignments. It said they hid all connections between themselves and Russia, even while acting at the direction and under the control of the SVR.

Known as “illegals,” the complaint said the undercover Russian agents were told in a message: “You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. 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 in U.S. and send intels [intelligence reports] to [Center].”

Court documents show that at least one message sent back to Moscow from the defendants focused on turnover at the highest levels of the CIA and the 2008 U.S. presidential elections. Numerous messages intercepted by U.S. investigators were listed in the court documents, including what was described as a private conversation involving an unnamed former legislative counsel for Congress.

However, countries, including friendly ones, spy on each other all the time, not so much as a means for being prepared in case they go to war with one another where non-hostile or friendly relations are concerned, but to arm their diplomats with facts and figures, verbal “ammunition” to be utilized in the event that ones friend and ally is running a bluff in trade negotiations and other bargaining table venues.

This doesn’t mean that the spying itself doesn’t have to be complicated.

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’s foreign ministry acknowledged Tuesday that those arrested included Russian citizens but insisted they did nothing to hurt U.S. interests.

The ministry still angrily denounced the 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 Foreign Ministry said in a statement earlier Tuesday. “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.”

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.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin mentioned the arrests during a meeting at his home with former President Bill Clinton, who was in Moscow to speak at a conference.

“I understand that back home police are putting people in prison,” Putin said. “That’s their job. I’m counting on the fact that the positive trend seen in the relationship will not be harmed by these events.”

Intelligence on Obama’s foreign policy, particularly toward Russia, appears to have been a top priority for the Russian agents, prosecutors said. Obama was asked Tuesday about the arrests as he spoke to reporters in Washington about the economy, but he declined to answer.

Dead drops, brush passes, invisible ink, burst transmissions and all that good stuff.

The 38-year-old son of one of the arrested couples, Vicky Pelaez and Juan Lazaro, said Tuesday outside their home in Yonkers that he didn’t believe the allegations.

“This looks like an Alfred Hitchcock movie with all this stuff from the 1960s. This is preposterous,” Waldomar Mariscal said. Of the charges, he said, “They’re all inflated little pieces in the mosaic of unbelievable things.”

The FBI said it had 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 question is, were these guys caught because the SVR is not as good as its predecessor, KGB, or have our counterintelligence skills gotten better?