Why were the Russian “illegal” spies repatriated so quickly ? They were exchanged for American agents but why so quickly ? Why not interrogate them for a longer period to be sure we knew what they had been doing. Many newspapers and other one-party media have ridiculed the spies’ accomplishments. Maybe they just weren’t very good and there wasn’t much to learn.
There is, however, another theory.
The speed with which the Obama administration exchanged the recently-arrested Russian “illegals” was astonishing and has led to speculation that the illegals ring may have had potentially embarrassing relationships to current or former US government officials. As a former “illegal” myself, I believe this is plausible.
The cushiest assignment in the world for a Russian intelligence officer would be to the United States, with its clean air and water, excellent medical care, and with none of the anarchy and danger that are common in so much of the world. Ambitious Russian officers would push hard to get these assignments.
For their choice of cover, they’d prefer commercial covers to diplomatic covers. Just as terrorists and nuclear proliferators are wary of meeting our diplomats overseas, American government officials in the US will be wary of meeting a Russian diplomat – they’d suspect he’s a spy. There is no diplomatic immunity for intelligence officers posing as business people, but as we have seen, a captured Russian officer is treated gently and the most likely outcome is exchange.
This is analysis from a former CIA deep cover agent whose workname was “Ishmael Jones.” There is more from this strategic thinker about intelligence.
Why were we in such a hurry to exchange the Russians ? And who were they exchanged for ?
Though one Russian website dubbed today’s transfer “Russia 10 USA 4”, western intelligence sources were claiming tonight that Britain and the US got more out of the spy swap than Russia. They said the four men released by Moscow were more serious individuals than the 10 agents handed over by the US. The four had been in jail and poorly treated.
Britain has a direct interest in Skripal, a former Russian army colonel convicted of passing the identities of Russian agents working undercover in Europe to MI6.
Skripal was sentenced in August 2006 to 13 years in jail for spying for Britain. Russian prosecutors said he had been paid $100,000 by MI6 for the information, which he had been supplying since the 1990s when he was a serving officer.
Two others, Alexander Zaporozhsky and Igor Sutyagin, were convicted of spying for the US. The fourth, Gennady Vasilenko, was sentenced to three years on murky charges of illegal weapons possession. Reasons for his involvement in the swap were not immediately clear.
Well-placed British sources said the exchange was also significant because Russia rarely gives up its citizens, as opposed to Americans or other foreigners, whom it has jailed on spying charges.
One reason given for the extreme reticence among British security and intelligence agencies to talk about the exchanges is fear the Russians would make fresh arrests to use more people as potential collateral. It is possible they were already placing potentially vulnerable people under surveillance now, the sources said, and possible targets may have been warned to lie low.
Hmmm. So the people exchanged were not Americans but Russian double agents. The whole story is peculiar.
It is unusual. Nothing moves this fast in intelligence so it must have been the Administration’s decision, which makes me think it’s political.