July 11, 2010
UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA SWAP SPIES
In a clandestine exchange of purported spies -- reminiscent of the Cold War distrust of United States and Russia years ago – the two nations met unannounced Friday at a Vienna airport.
Involved were 10 deep-cover Russian agents recently arrested by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, and four people held by Moscow on spy charges.
As the Washington Times reminds us, the spy swap was the largest prisoner transfer of its kind since the 1980s. Then the U.S. and Soviet bloc spies and agents were traded over Berlin’s Glienicker Brücke (Glienicke Bridge) separating the American sector of West Berlin from communist East Germany.
PLANES ARRIVE
In last week’s exchange, a plane from New York’s LaGuardia airport and another from Moscow arrived in Vienna, Austria within minutes of each other.
According to the Associated Press, the planes were parked nose-to-tail at a remote section of the airfield. Then, the American and Russian agents spent about an hour-and-a-half transferring prisoners.
The American plane headed for London, England. The Russian flight was thought to return to Moscow.
FOREIGN AGENTS
The U.S. Justice Department announced the trade in a statement Thursday evening. It stated the 10 Russian agents (all but one a Russian national) had plead guilty in a Manhattan federal court to conspiracy to work as unregistered foreign agents.
They were then ordered by the judge to be expelled from the country. The deal came 12 days after the FBI completed a decade-long investigation by arresting the group of “illegals.” They had posed as Americans and did not work under diplomatic immunity.
Court papers said the agents had been dispatched by Moscow to obtain U.S. secrets --and to influence the U.S. government--while posing as Americans in Washington, New York and Boston.
The spies were working for Russia’s foreign intelligence service – known by its Russian acronym SVR – the successor to the Soviet KGB political and intelligence service.
FORMER SWAPS
The last major spy exchange of this type took place in June 1985. Five Soviet intelligence agents caught spying on behalf of the KGB in the 1980s were traded for a group of 25 U.S. and allied agents.
That exchange was followed by a second swap in February, 1986. This freed human rights activist Nathan Sharansky who was not a spy. Both exchanges took over two years of secret negations in Berlin and Washington.
QUICK?
Prisoners freed by Russia included:
- Igor V. Sutyagin, who had been serving a 14-year sentence for spying for the United States.
- Aleksandr Zaporozhsky – a former agent with Russia’s foreign intelligence service. He was nearing the end of an 18-year sentence for espionage in America.
- Aleksandr Sypachev – nearing the end of an eight-year sentence on charges he was spying for the CIA.
- Sergei Skripal who was serving a 13-year sentence on charges of spying for Britain’s M16 foreign intelligence service.
Critics of the exchange said it was carried out too quickly, likely limiting the ability of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies to learn about SVR operations and activities in the United States.
DON’T KNOW
Congressman Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican and ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said he is concerned that the U.S. side made too many concessions in the spy-swap deal.
“The key here is: did we get all the intelligence we needed to make sure we got better insights into what the Russians are doing -- and trying to do – against us. I don’t know!”
Don’t talk about your troubles. Eighty percent of people who hear them don’t care – and the other 20 percent are glad you’re having trouble.
You get more than you give when you give more than you get.
---- Fred Babcock
Valuable advice from an old carpenter – measure twice, saw once.
Keep your head down when playing golf. That way you can hit the ball and pray at the same time.
A real friend is a person who knows all about you and still likes you.
By Lindsey Wilger Williams, retired newspaper publisher and syndicated columnist
