Complaint_1 –
It’s the stuff thrillers are made of: our old friends the Soviets are back, this time calling themselves Russians, but up to their same old tricks: infiltrating the United States with “illegals” — sleeper agents who can pass for native but are in reality working for the home country. Here’s the bust, as reported by CBS News:
Ten alleged Russian spies have been arrested in the United States, the result of a multi-year investigation in four states, the FBI said Monday.
Eight of the 10 arrested were “carrying out long-term, ‘deep-cover’ assignments” the FBI said, while two had lesser roles in the Russian intelligence program. The arrests took place Sunday in Montclair, N.J., Yonkers, N.Y., Manhattan, Boston, and Arlington, Va.
Their job, according to the court papers in the case, was “to search and develop ties in policymaking circles” in the United States.
George Koval
Well, surprise, surprise. One of the great under-reported media stories for at least the past half century has been the Soviet “illegals” program, a continuous attempt to undermine the U.S. by seeding deep-cover agents and helping them rise to significant posts in academe, journalism and, of course, governmental circles. I wrote about one such agent at length in the May 2009 issue of Smithsonian magazine — George Koval, who was born in Iowa to radical communist parents, returned to the Soviet Union to settle in Birobizhan (Stalin’s “Jewish autonomous region” in Siberia), studied in Moscow, was recruited by the GRU — Soviet military intelligence — and sent back to the U.S., where he wormed his way into the Manhattan Project and become perhaps the foremost atomic spy, surpassing even Klaus Fuchs and the Rosenbergs.
When I was researching my first novel, Exchange Alley, I got to know a prominent — indeed legendary — KGB colonel named Oleg Nechiporenko, who had debriefed Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City in the fall of 1963 as Oswald attempted to re-defect to the USSR, via Cuba. (Mexico City was and is the Russian spying hub in the Western Hemisphere.) The Soviets put Oswald back on a bus to the U.S. and a few weeks later, he shot and killed President Kennedy.
Here’s a look at Col. Nechiporenko:
[youtube di83pIrBfkU nolink]
In 1993, Nechiporenko and I had several long conversations about the KGB’s work against the “principal enemy” — that would be us — and one of the things we talked about was the illegals program. At that time, the highest rank a Soviet illegal had ever achieved was to become a major U.S. ambassador, but despite the fall of the Soviet Union and the reorganization of the KGB as the FSB, the program has continued unabated.
Complaint_2 –
Read the complaints to get an idea of ongoing war between the U.S. and Russia, even as President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev kick back and enjoy a couple of cheeseburgers at Ray’s Hell Burger in suburban Virginia:
Do you think they discussed the Soviet illegals program? The Cold War might have ended with the fall of the Wall and the disappearance of the Soviet Union two decades ago, but the shadow war continues, more earnest than ever — and with even higher stakes.
Love the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari touch — somebody in the White House (David Axelrod?) has some sense of humor.
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