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According to court documents relating to the spies' arrest, Murphy had been in contact with a fundraiser and "personal friend" of Hillary Clinton, who took the office of Secretary of State in January 2009. The fundraiser, Alan Patricof, said in a statement in 2010 had retained Murphy's financial services firm more than two years before, had met with her a few times and spoke with her on the phone frequently. Patricof said they "never" spoke about politics, the government or world affairs.
A spokesperson for Clinton told ABC News in 2010 that at the time there was "no reason to think the Secretary was a target of this spy ring."
The linchpin in the case was Col. Alexander Poteyev, a highly placed U.S. mole in Russian foreign intelligence, who betrayed the spy ring even as he ran it. He abruptly fled Moscow just days before the FBI rolled up the deep cover operation on June 27, 2010. Poteyev's role in exposing the illegals program only emerged last June when a Russian military court convicted him in absentia for high treason and desertion.
The U.S. swapped the 10 deep cover agents for four Russians imprisoned for spying for the West at a remote corner of a Vienna airport on July 9, in a scene reminiscent of the carefully-choreographed exchange of spies at Berlin's Glienicke Bridge during the Cold War.
While freed Soviet spies typically kept a low profile after their return to Moscow, Chapman became a lingerie model, corporate spokeswoman and television personality. Donald Heathfield, whose real name is Andrey Bezrukov, lists himself as an adviser to the president of a major Russian oil company on his LinkedIn account. President Dmitry Medvedev awarded all 10 of the freed deep-cover operatives Russia's highest honors at a Kremlin ceremony.
The swap was Washington's idea, raised when U.S. law enforcement officials told President Barack Obama it was time to start planning the arrests. Agents launched a series of raids across the northeast after a decade of intensive surveillance of the ring, which officials say never managed to steal any secrets.
The case was brought to a swift conclusion before it could complicate the president's campaign to "reset" U.S. relations with Russia, strained by years of tensions over U.S. foreign policy and the 2008 Russian-Georgian war. All 10 of the captured spies were charged with failing to register as foreign agents.
An 11th defendant, Christopher Metsos, who claimed to be a Canadian citizen and delivered money and equipment to the sleeper agents, vanished after a court in Cyprus freed him on bail.
Attorney General Eric Holder said the FBI decided to arrest the illegals because one of the spies was preparing to leave the U.S. and there was concern that "we would not be able to get him back." Despite the ring's failure to gather any intelligence, Holder said they still posed a potential threat to the U.S.
Read more: www.foxnews.com...
"In my view this whole operation was a waste of human resources, money and just put Russia in a ridiculous situation," said Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB major general who spied against the U.S. during the Soviet era, in an interview earlier this year. He now lives near Washington.
Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB officer and journalist who has written extensively about Soviet spying in America, said the illegals were supposed to act as talent spotters and scouts, identifying Americans in positions of power who might be recruited to spill secrets for financial reasons or through blackmail. Spies with the protection of diplomatic credentials would handle the more delicate task of recruiting and handling the agents.
Read more: www.foxnews.com...
The 10 Russian illegals included:
-- Chapman, the daughter of a Russian diplomat, who worked as a real estate agent in New York City. After she was caught, photos of the redhead's social life and travels were splashed all over the tabloids. Following her return to Russia, Chapman worked as a model, became the celebrity face of a Moscow bank and joined the leadership of the youth wing of the main pro-Kremlin party.
-- Vicky Pelaez and Juan Lazaro, of Yonkers, New York. He briefly taught a class on Latin American and Caribbean politics at Baruch College. She wrote pieces highly critical of U.S. policy in Latin America as a columnist for one of the United States' best-known Spanish-language newspapers, El Diario La Prensa.
-- Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills of Arlington, Virginia. He had worked at a telecommunications firm. The couple raised a young son and toddler in their high-rise apartment.
-- Richard and Cynthia Murphy of Montclair, New Jersey. He mostly stayed home with their two pre-teen children while she worked for a lower Manhattan-based accounting firm that offered tax advice. As part of her job, she provided financial planning for a venture capitalist with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
-- Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He worked in sales for an international management consulting firm and peddled strategic planning software to U.S. corporations. She was a real estate agent.
--Mikhail Semenko of Arlington, Virginia, who spoke Russian, English, Spanish, Chinese and Portuguese. He worked at the Travel All Russia travel agency, where co-workers described him as "clumsy" and "quirky."
In return for the return of the illegals, Moscow freed four Russians after they signed statements admitting to spying for the U.S. or Britain.
The U.S. spies included Alexander Zaporozhsky, a former colonel and deputy chief of Russian foreign intelligence's American section, who had retired in 1997 and moved to suburban Baltimore in 2001. He was arrested after he returned to Moscow for what he thought was a reunion with KGB colleagues and was sentenced in 2003 to 18 years in prison for espionage.
Zaporozhsky may have provided information leading to the capture of Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, two of the most damaging spies ever caught in the U.S.
Gennady Vasilenko, a former KGB officer who worked in Washington and Latin America, was accused by Hansen of spying for the U.S. He was arrested in Havana in 1988, but released from Moscow's notorious Lefortovo prison after six months for lack of evidence. But suspicions lingered, and Vasilenko was arrested again in 2006 in Moscow and sentenced to three years in prison for illegal weapons possession and resistance to authorities.
Vasilenko now has a home in Leesburg, Virginia. He declined the Associated Press' request for an interview.
Arms control researcher Igor Sutyagin worked for what may have been a British-based CIA front, and he denies being a spy, saying he didn't pass along any information that wasn't available through open sources. He told reporters he signed a confession out of concern he would otherwise ruin the swap for the others -- and for fear of abuse and misery in the three years remaining in his prison term.
The fourth was Sergei Skripal, a former colonel for Russian military intelligence, the GRU. He was sentenced in 2006 to 13 years in prison for passing the names of other Russian agents to British intelligence. Skripal, now about 60, is said to be suffering from diabetes. Both Skripal and Sutyagin went to Britain following their release.
U.S. officials have not commented on the Poteyev case.
Read more: www.foxnews.com...
On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.
From: "Anya Alfano"
To: "TACTICAL"
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:15:35 AM
Subject: Russian spy ring - Update - Russian double agent 'helped crack'
US spy ring
Filling in a few blanks of the story--if true, doesn't sound like Comrade
J was actually a trigger, or possibly even involved at all.
12th person detained in Russian spy case deported
Updated 5:26 p.m. CT, Tues., July 13, 2010
A Russian man who became the 12th person taken into custody in the recent spy ring investigation has been deported from the United States, the Homeland Security Department said Tuesday.
And there are a few interesting details about it. Here’s a timeline I put together:
June 9: Chapman’s laptop chats with Russian Official #1 surveilled
June 11: Obama briefed about Russian spy swap
June 16: Chapman’s laptop chats with Russian Official #1 surveilled
June 18: Obama chairs NSC meeting on Russian spy swap
June 24: Obama and Dmitri Medvedev go to Ray’s Hell Burger
June 25: Complaint against 9 spies dated
June 26: FBI collects evidence against last two remaining spies; FBI agent says to Chapman, “I know you are going back to Moscow in two weeks.”
June 27: Spies arrested
June 29: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov complains about timing of arrest; Obama reported to be miffed about timing of arrest; DOJ attributes timing to pending travel–presumably Chapman’s
Week of July 5: White House almost cancels spy swap because names of proposed spies in Russia leaked
July 10: Two weeks after FBI Agent said Chapman would be traveling to Russian in two weeks
Of particular note is the June 18 NSC meeting. Most key cabinet members that would make interesting targets for Russian spies are members of the NSC. Director of OMB attends NSC meetings that pertain to its area of responsibility. They all learned–at least in the abstract–of the looming spy trade on June 18, 2010, a week before the FBI started rolling up the spies.
Now consider the excuse for the timing of the spy arrests DOJ gave at the time.
As we previously reported, charges issued so far against the alleged “illegal” long-term Russian penetration agents do not accuse them directly of espionage—stealing or attempting to steal U.S. intelligence or defense secrets. Instead, court documents portray them as talent spotters, alleging that they were assigned to identify and ingratiate themselves with influential Americans who had access to U.S. policymakers or government secrets, the idea being that those individuals could then be targeted for more aggressive recruitment by other Russian spies.
As the timeline above makes clear, Chapman was the one about to leave the country. Also note that DOJ admitted one of the spies was targeting “a personal friend” of a “current cabinet official.”
According to court papers, the individuals who were targeted included a former high-ranking U.S. national-security official; an American working on nuclear-weapons research; and someone described by the FBI as a “prominent New York–based financier” who was “prominent in politics,” “an active fundraiser” for a U.S. political party, and “a personal friend” of a person described as “a current cabinet official.”
So the info on a cabinet official was out there–though now the FBI has revealed that the apparent intent was to set a honey trap.
Finally, look how squeamish Rahm got when asked whether Obama had triggered the timing of the arrests.
Now, on Thursday, Rahm pushed back against any indication that Obama might have been involved in the decision to roll up the spies. First, Rahm claims that the decision to arrest the spies now was entirely that of law enforcement and intelligence.
Originally posted by thehoneycomb
reply to post by longjohnbritches
Your link, the 2nd one is not working for me.
Now I had a thought. From my earlier posts, some of these Russian spies were using dead peoples names. Oldest trick in the book right? Also considering the lefts stance on immigration and voting?
Originally posted by longjohnbritches
reply to post by Afterthought
Hi aft,
Was that guy with the spot on his head USSR dude or a Russian man???
Do you know the difference??
thanks ljb
Born in the agricultural region of Stavropol (1931), Gorbachev studied law at Moscow University and in 1953 married a philosophy student, Raisa Maksimovna Titorenko. Returning to Stavropol, he moved gradually upward in the local Communist party. In 1970, he became Stavropol party leader and was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Regarded as a skilled technocrat and a reformer, Gorbachev joined (1978) the Communist party secretariat as agriculture secretary, and in 1980 he joined the Politburo as the protég?of Yuri Andropov. After Andropov's ascension to party leadership, Gorbachev assumed (1983) full responsibility for the economy.
Following the death of Chernenko in 1985, Gorbachev was appointed General Secretary of the party despite being the youngest member of the Politburo. He embarked on a comprehensive program of political, economic, and social liberalization under the slogans of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The nuclear disaster at Chernobyl (1986) forced Gorbachev to allow even greater freedom of expression. The government released political prisoners, allowed increased emigration, attacked corruption, and encouraged the critical reexamination of Soviet history.