‘Illegals’ Spy Ring Famed in Lore of Russian Spying

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‘Illegals’ Spy Ring Famed in Lore of Russian Spying​

By ELLEN BARRY
Published: June 29, 2010

MOSCOW — In the lore of Soviet spycraft, few figures command as much respect as the “illegals,” steel-jawed agents with the intelligence of a chess grandmaster and the fortitude of a cosmonaut.

Painstakingly trained in the K.G.B.’s Directorate S, the illegals spent years assuming a fake biography, known in Russian as a “legend,” then awaited orders undercover for years or even decades. Unlike their “legal” counterparts, they worked without a diplomatic cover, which would offer them immunity from prosecution. They were rewarded with the kind of adulation Americans reserve for movie stars.

This week’s jaw-dropping arrest of 11 people seems to offer a glimpse into a recent form of the program. Russia has made little comment on the specific accusations, though it called the arrests “baseless” and “unseemly.”

But if prosecutors are correct, two things seem clear: First, that Russia’s network of illegals has survived, and perhaps even grown, since the Soviet Union’s collapse. And second, that the agents’ assignment — collecting information about politics and getting to know policy makers — can now be achieved through more straightforward means.

“It strikes me as a very well-organized, very well-thought-out and very out-of date approach,” said Olga Oliker, a senior policy analyst for the RAND Corporation. “I would lay money on bureaucratic inertia. It’s a terribly ineffective approach, but it’s something that might have made sense in a previous period. ”

After the 1917 October Revolution, the Soviets had good reason to develop a specialty in undercover intelligence-gathering. Few countries formally recognized the Soviet Union, so no diplomatic cover was available.

It was a simple matter to fabricate a foreign identity — the agency mined records of foreign babies who had died, wrote Galina Fedorova in a 1994 memoir about life as an illegal. What followed was grueling training, psychological screening for a life of isolation and stress. The ideal candidate was single; while some agents enjoyed the comfort of deploying as a couple, any offspring they produced were immediately sent back to the Soviet Union, Ms. Fedorova wrote.

Maj. Gen. Yuri I. Drozdov, 85, who ran the illegals program for more than a decade while he was in the K.G.B, called his recruits “wunderkinds,” people who often spoke three or four languages with native fluency. He would say little about the training process, except to call it “very long.”

“We have our process of raising them,” General Drozdov said. “You have your Dr. Spock method; we have our own ways.”

Throughout the Soviet era, such agents were rewarded with adulation. Illegals like Rudolf Abel and Konon Molody became such national heroes that the External Intelligence Service, or S.V.R., still posts their biographies on its Web site. A beloved television serial chronicled the fictional life of one undercover agent, Max Otto von Stirlitz, as he penetrated Hitler’s inner circle. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who served as a K.G.B. officer in East Germany in the 1980s, has said the Stirlitz character helped shape an entire generation of Soviet youth.

Recent arrests have come as a reminder that the tactic is still in use. In 2006, Canadian officials deported a Russian citizen suspected of spying under an assumed Canadian identity, Paul William Hampel. In 2008, Estonian intelligence services said they had unmasked an S.V.R. handler named Sergei Yakovlev, who was recruiting agents under the assumed identity of Antonio de Jesus Amurett Graf, a Portuguese businessman living in Madrid.

Then came this week’s arrests of 11 people accused of gathering information on American policy and politics.

Their assignment, as reported by prosecutors, raises a simple question: Now that United States policy makers routinely visit Russia and engage with foreign lobbyists, much of this information is easily accessible. Why bother with an expensive, high-risk undercover operation?​

Experts on Tuesday pointed to institutional politics. Russia’s intelligence services were thrown into chaos during the early 1990s, when agents left in huge numbers and vast overseas assets went missing. But within a decade they rebounded, rebuilding their networks to the proportions they had at the end of the Soviet era, said Leonid M. Melchin, the author of five books about cold war intelligence services.

Nikolai Zlobin, an analyst at the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, said the network of illegals received support from people intent on “returning to the old system that they were familiar with.”

“It was glorified. It’s a romantic business for several Soviet generations, including Putin’s generation,” he said. “People who work in the central structure, they did everything to rebuild the system. I know some of them, and many of them believe they did the right thing for Russia.”

But he, like other experts interviewed on Tuesday, was scratching his head at the details of the alleged spy ring. To Russians, the term “illegals” suggests discipline and a painstaking effort to hide one’s nationality; traditionally, they worked strictly in isolation, lest they endanger their carefully developed cover. Among the people arrested this week were several who used Russian names, openly spoke Russian or retained Russian accents.

Amy W. Knight, who has written on Soviet intelligence, said the illegals were famous for their ability to remain under deep cover for years and return to Russia without being caught.​

“They had an extensive program and they used illegals a lot,” Ms. Knight said. “This new scandal suggests either the S.V.R is not as professional as its predecessors, or it’s just easier for the F.B.I. to track them down because of the sophisticated technology that they have.”


Anna Tikhomirova contributed reporting.


A version of this article appeared in print on June 30, 2010, on page A10 of the New York edition.

 

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US spying case latest in long line​

By JIM HEINTZ (AP) – 5 hours ago

MOSCOW — A rock in a Moscow square allegedly concealing electronic spy equipment. A Jaguar-driving double agent contacting handlers by leaving chalk marks on a mailbox. A dazed Russian man found on a bench claiming the CIA fed him drugs.

The end of the Cold War may have lulled many into believing that cloak-and-dagger days were long gone, but Russian and Western intelligence operations have stayed active — and the network of "illegals" apparently uncovered in the United States is the latest in a line of spy cases with plot lines evoking airport thrillers.

Driven by decades-old suspicions and new strategic concerns, both sides retain an urge to unearth the other's secrets despite professions of mutual respect and common goals of peace and prosperity.

The alleged ring revealed by U.S. officials Monday seemed straight out of the "red scare" propaganda of the 1950s: Russians disguising themselves as normal couples in quiet neighborhoods and gradually expanding their social and professional networks to rake in secrets.

How much sensitive information they may have passed on remains unclear, though the charges seem to indicate they didn't do serious damage — 10 of the 11 are charged with acting as unregistered foreign agents, which carries a maximum five years in prison.

By contrast, the two most damaging spies for Russia convicted in the United States since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union are in prison for life.

Aldrich Ames, a CIA counterintelligence official, revealed the identities of U.S. operatives to Moscow, information that is believed to have led to the killing of at least nine agents. To request meetings with his contacts, he would make a chalk mark on a mailbox in Washington's cosmopolitan Georgetown neighborhood.

Ames apparently did it for money; he was heavily in debt when he started working for the Soviets in 1985. He wasn't shy about showing off his new wealth, buying a half-million-dollar house with cash and driving a Jaguar that cost almost as much as his CIA annual salary. Yet he remained undetected until his arrest in 1994.

Robert Hanssen was an FBI agent who provided an array of classified information to Moscow in what is sometimes described as America's worst intelligence failure.

Convicted in 2001, he said he also was motivated by money rather than ideology. He was arrested while taping a garbage bag full of secrets to the underside of a footbridge in a park.

Russia in turn has its own list of complaints about Western spycraft both clever and crude.

In 2006, Russia accused four British diplomats of espionage, saying they received secret information from a radio transmitter hidden in a rock.

A few years earlier, Russia said a Defense Ministry employee was found dazed on a bench after visiting the U.S. Embassy in an unspecified former Soviet republic. The man reportedly said he was drugged at the embassy while seeking information about a missing relative and that the CIA tried to recruit him while his brain was addled.

There's much that each side wants to know about the other.

Russia suspects the United States of plotting to seduce former Soviet states into Western alliances and ideologies; the West watches Russia with the wary suspicion that it wants to re-establish its empire, a concern that grew strongly under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, a former director of the KGB's successor agency.

Russia and the West both state publicly that they want Iranian nuclear tensions resolved peacefully, but each clearly suspect the other. Russia is concerned the United States will launch an attack; Washington regards Moscow as often being too lenient with Iran, even obstructive to negotiations.

Russia is consistently edgy and angry about U.S. missile defense plans in Europe. The West wants to know how serious Russia is about threats to aim nuclear missiles at Europe.

But whether legitimate security concerns are addressed by the moles and agents isn't clear.

Russian independent political analyst Yulia Latynina contends her country's intelligence activities in the United States are useless — done to make Russian leaders feel powerful.

"Russia has spies in America as an imitation of imperialism," she said.

"You don't need spies to find out what Obama wants from Russia; it's all on the Internet, PR, press conferences. Do Russia's leaders really think that someone will pull their spies aside and tell them something that Obama didn't say in his briefing?"

But Alexei Zudin of the Center for Political Technologies sees spying as part of any country's national life.

"Nations conduct exploration activities" not only with spies but with diplomats and journalists, he said. "It was so always and it will be so always."

Associated Press Writer Khristina Narizhnaya in Moscow contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
The Associated Press: US spying case latest in long line

 

[Ahmad]

If america's greatest beloved send spies in america, then nobody should be surprised to see russian spies there.