This US/Russia Spy thing is so 'Old School'

[SouthernJet]

Pretty cool also..

You just know its gonna be a movie

Cold War redux: US, Russia swap 14 spies in Vienna

Posted: 9:04 a.m. today

Updated: 2:19 p.m. today

MOSCOW

[jgb]

4 american spies worth 10 ruskie spies... sounds about right.

also love how we care about russians who help us out but the russians don't give a sh*t about hanssen and other americans who help them.

[SouthernJet]

4 american spies worth 10 ruskie spies... sounds about right.

main catch for us was getting back the rooskie agent who WE turned and served American turncoats Robert Hansen and Aldrich Ames over to us on a silver platter. Sadly, Rooskies found out and imprisoned him in Russia for being a US double agent..This guy should get a parade and be honored for the secrets he helped save by exposing these American traitors..

from paper:

At least one of the four Russians — ex-colonel Alexander Zaporozhsky — may have exposed information leading to the capture of Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, two of the most damaging spies ever caught in the United States.

While seeming like a throwback to past generations, this most recent Russian spy swap was by no means an unprecedented event. Back in 2001, FBI agent Robert Hansen was arrested for selling secrets to the Russians. Hansen would later be convicted of spying and sentenced to life in prison. His story was popularized in the film Breach, starring Ryan Phillippe, Chris Cooper, and Laura Linney.

[Bruce Banner]

I'm glad the good guys got out of jail.

And for the bad guys, going back to Russia prolly feels like a punishment.

[DMaynard]

Boris Badenough and Natashia are still on the loose.

[JerryK]

It's interesting, but without the whole communism thing it seems kind of administrative.

[Bob]

It's interesting, but without the whole communism thing it seems kind of administrative.

It almost seems friendly.

[SouthernJet]

It almost seems friendly.

I was thinkin same thing Bob..

Some headed to Russia were crying, some were laughing, the paper said.

Maybe there is a cool news article in there someewhere for you about the whole 'ho hum' attitude of this.

[SouthernJet]

[slats]

White House Envisioned Spy Case Swap Even Before Arrests

By PETER BAKER, CHARLIE SAVAGE and BENJAMIN WEISER

This article was reported by Peter Baker, Charlie Savage and Benjamin Weiser and written by Mr. Baker.

WASHINGTON

[SenorGato]

It was fake. A nice little Summer storyline built around a hot little redhead for the masses.

[Bugg]

I read Nelson DeMille's "The Charm School" years ago. While he researches his books' subjects thoughly, was surprised how true to life it seems to have been.

The Truth About Illegals

By Ion Mihai Pacepa on 7.9.10 @ 6:08AM

The recent arrest of ten Russian illegal officers targeted against us -- a superb performance on the part of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies -- proves that the Kremlin still looks upon the United States as the main enemy. Most of the details about these new cases are still classified by the FBI. One thing is clear, however; this is not just business as usual -- "we spy, they spy." The Kremlin's illegal officers have traditionally been dispatched to enemy countries to form an alternative presence there, should war break out and force the legal embassies to close; and to constitute a "homegrown" skeleton of the pro-Moscow governments that the Kremlin dreamed of setting up in those countries at the end of the war. In other words, vitally important assignments.

Today, most of the American media seem to find the notion of illegal officers a joke, calling them spy-novel fantasies, hilariously funny characters or do-nothing sleepers. No wonder. There are no books on the subject. The true nature of illegal operations, unique to the Russian intelligence community, has been an extremely tightly held secret. In 1964 I became a deputy chief of the Romanian foreign intelligence service, the DIE, but it was only eight years later that I realized now little I had actually known -- that was when my former KGB adviser, General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, by then the Soviet Union's spy chief, gave me supervisory authority over Romania's illegal operations.

The term "illegal" has nothing to do with the idea of law breaking. Every spy breaks the law. In Russian intelligence terminology, a legal officer is one who is assigned abroad to a Russian embassy or other official government representation. An illegal assumes a non-Russian identity and appears abroad as someone who has no connection whatsoever with Russia. In any Western country, an illegal looks and acts just like your next-door neighbor.

An illegal never set foot in the intelligence service's headquarters. His training was conducted on an individual basis in safe houses, where the trainee was continuously monitored through concealed microphones. The DIE had some 150 safe houses only for illegal officers. The general rule was that an illegal operating in a Western country should not be known to the official, or "legal," intelligence station in that country, and that communications with him should be conducted through illegal couriers specially trained for such duties. Another rule was that the contact with an illegal should always be maintained through impersonal means in his country of assignment, and that personal meetings with him should take place only in safe third countries. While an illegal was assigned abroad, his parents -- and wife, if he had left one behind -- would understand that he had been sent to work in a remote country, such as Mongolia, where he could not be reached by phone. Letters from his family back home were always pulled out of the mails by the intelligence service, and some of them were shown to the illegal whenever he returned back to his country to "recharge his batteries" -- i.e., to be further indoctrinated and trained.

"Johann," a DIE illegal documented as a native German, was a typical example of the contemporary illegal. He had been secretly recruited as a future illegal when he was sixteen, and at the top of his school class in Bucharest. When "Johann" graduated as a mechanical engineer, again at the head of his class, he was secretly promoted to captain in the DIE. For the next eight years, the captain did nothing but train. "Johann" perfected his French, a language he would need to back up his legend, as well as his German, the language of his target country. He became a good tennis and bridge player, and he was coached in the latest KGB communications techniques. After he had been trained up to his eyeballs, he was given his new identity: the son of a German Protestant missionary who had spent most of his life in what had been a part of German East Africa and had since become the French-speaking country of Burundi. There had, of course, been a real German minister whose name "Johann" had taken. The minister and his wife had, however, died there of yellow fever some thirty years earlier, along with their newborn baby boy. It had been no problem for the DIE and the KGB, which worked together on the case, to "revive" that dead baby boy in the chaotic records of the city of Bujumbura. The minister's wife had had a sister, who was still living in Munich. By then she was old and almost senile, but quite wealthy. When "Johann" wrote his first letter to her, which was mailed from Rwanda, the old lady was thrilled to learn that her only nephew was still alive, and soon she invited him to come visit her. When "Johann" arrived in Munich, he seemed to be a scared young man on his first trip outside of Burundi, and the old lady burst into tears at the sight of him. A few years later, "Johann" had earned a doctor's degree in engineering from the Ludwig-Maximilians Universit

[Bruce Banner]

In 1978, a few days after Moscow figured out that President Carter had granted me political asylum, "Johan" and dozens of my other DIE illegal officers emplaced throughout the West abruptly dropped out of sight, never to be heard from again.

Now we know what happened to Elvis.