FBI Bust: Russian Federation's Group of Eleven Espionage Ring Raises Interesting Questions for Analysts

Here are a few ways to look at what I call the 'Group of 11' Russian spy ring without having a clearance to know more.

Positive spin: The FBI did their job well and it spared the Group of 11 tougher charges while preventing more damaging espionage. The spies' handlers had reportedly not received any stolen secrets significant enough to for the agents to be charged with espionage. Prevention beats damage control. From this viewpoint, the publicity of the bust was also a political message to Americans who don't trust the Russian government: the Obama Administration is on the job against all who may undermine US national security, despite the reset with Russia.

Another subtext of the arrest appears to be a chance to tell Americans that the Russians aren't doing anything sinister against U.S. interests and that the US is aware of their activities.

Negative spin: Given the milquetoast mission the Russians were reported to have, one speculation is that the Russian team existed as a decoy to attract US counterintelligence operations while other unknown illegals gathered information on FBI methods and fed that information more securely to the Kremlin. This may explain why the spy ring reportedly did not have much to show for ten years of work trying to infiltrate US policy circles: the counterintelligence teams were its objective.

The other watchers would not have to be Russian. They could be from partner nations and or American citizens disaffected with US government and trained on what to look for. Perhaps the FBI will be checking its surveillance to see if any similar faces showed up where background is visible in the feeds taken of the Group of 11.

Analyst Bluepapers guessed that Russian spy rings would operate in the Northeast and Northwest United States, working to associate with US personnel with security clearances and hob knob with tech company employees. This is not to suggest that they would not migrate to cities whose local economies support national security hubs.

During wartime, I would also expect Russian spies to seek out disaffected former U.S. servicemen who had security clearances. It has worked before, and the government accentuates the risk with ham-handed handling of war veterans' needs by bureaucrats who do not share their experiences.

Russian operatives or 'illegals' may enter the U.S. via remote wildernesses along the Canadian border and would do more than try to steal secrets. I believe they would also study U.S. infrastructures for contingent sabotage operations or facilitated terrorist strikes should hostilities ever break out between Russia and the US over vital interests. Illegals would predictably migrate to security hub cities and counties. Yes, there is a reset, and a nation state can act friendly toward another while preparing for contingent hostilities. It is the norm. The old world 'keep-your-friends-close-but-your-enemies-closer' philosophy applies here.

What is humorous to many Americans about the Russian spy story is the idea that spies would have to spy on an open society in the first place. It seems quirky where they could openly access the information without spending money on a covert operation. This same line of thought casts old Cold War mentalities in America as equally anachronistic.

McCarthyism and Angletonianism were long cited as the great dangers to clear counter-intelligence thinking. In a recent film, U.S. intelligence figure James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's famed counter-intelligence master, had been portrayed as a paranoid personality by Matt Damon, supposedly under consultation with a former CIA consultant. The paranoid narrative fit well with Soviet propaganda about persons hostile to the Soviet system. Extreme caution in the context of aggressive espionage and subversion during the Cold War became a sign of "mental illness" or "paranoia". The stigma of mental illness was an effective way to indirectly discourage painstaking counterintelligence work as symptomatic of craziness.

Yet much of McCarthy's suspicions were later confirmed to be on target as was Angleton's vigilance, albeit he could have dealt with suspected personnel differently than taking personnel action against them. The laxity in counter-intelligence vigilance following this era likely made room for Russian exploitation of a reactionary pendulum effect. They had been cultivating Aldrich Ames, USN Chief Warrant Officer John Walker and FBI Counterintelligence officer, Richard Hanssen while concocting paranoia stories for CIA officers determined to discover their operations.

Regarding the Group of 11, some press interviewees and journalists kept using the term "throw-back to the Cold War" in discussing the story, as if the fall of the USSR had ended Russian intelligence operations. This is a satire approach to discouraging counterintelligence -- it is foolish, or funny. It is a joke. The Russian SVR had continued running Aldrich Ames into the 1990s and had not dismissed him while treating Cold War behaviors as anachronistic jokes.

The notion that the Cold War ended with the disbanded USSR has been promoted by Russian propaganda outlets. Anatoly Golitsyn, the Russian KGB defector whose information motivated James Jesus Angleton in his intensive counter-intelligence efforts at cleansing the CIA of KGB moles, predicted that the USSR would stage a false collapse in a scheme to deceive the US and take it off-guard. While many in the Washington establishment tried to discredit Golitsyn, historian Mark Riebling has carefully reviewed Golitsyn's predictions about the Soviet Union and found an accuracy rate of over 90 percent.

Maybe somebody should contact Edward Lucas, the Economist editor who wrote "The New Cold War," a book advertised on this site via Amazon and tell him this isn't the new Cold War, just the old. Yet some in the American press seem to treat Russian spying as an oddity or cultural activity instead of a threat to national security. These underestimate the seriousness of the Putin regime.

The Group of 11 may be a show. In Russia there are show trials, show investigations, and now perhaps we are seeing the advent of the show spies. In addition to counterintelligence test balloons, they may also be a diversion from other more important operations happening without the knowledge of the responsible FBI Field Office and related counterintelligence units.

The show and tell propaganda surrounding these spies is effective toward Russian ends. The WaPo printed this headline: "Alleged Russian agent Anna Chapman could have warmed up any Cold War night." It's an amusing headline. I laughed at it too. It makes us think of James Bond's girls, and associate the incident with fiction. It's just a movie, really, and an anachronism. The traditional reason for beautiful spies is to use sexuality to obtain leverage and from leverage, secrets. Sexuality would be used against officials with security clearances, not against spies as a sort of competitive game to titillate movie audiences.

After the arrests, the hot-spy Anna Chapman image is used as an illusion designed to get the American public and government to think of the Russians as harmless purveyors of beautiful women who just can't get a proper espionage operation together. Consider the much replicated message "short on secrets."

The hot spy story also advertises Russian brides or singles, doesn't it? The immense Russian bride (and human trafficking) business (is it not advertised on millions of websites?) is likely a conduit for woman spies. Once they marry an American citizen, they're on track for citizenship. Making a showing of devoted family life is important to keep from being deported by immigration authorities, not the FBI. That is why former KGB Col. Oleg Kalugin talks about estimates of how many married couples are active Russian operatives in the U.S.. Becoming a citizen confers instant legitimacy on the agent. Yet Kalugin estimates only 50 or so couples in the face of an historic and internet-upgraded Russian bride phenomenon. Look at this open source timeline by Google, showing the historicicity of Russian brides marrying into other cultures as well as the explosion of the bridal export business from the 1990s on.

What we do not know is how many dormant operatives there are who are seldom caught. May children of such married-in Russians be trained to obey the edicts of a secret national loyalty? Perhaps. The significance should not be overblown, however, cultural pride and devotion should not be underestimated in its resourcefulness in confronting a technologically superior counterforce that the U.S. is. Extreme measures among those threatened or fearful of U.S. power may mirror extreme disadvantage on the technological, military and wealth front. Equalizers would need to be extreme to bring some balance.

Nor should the public forget reports that the Group of 11 spy ring had reportedly sought background information from the investigations of CIA recruits. If they would have succeeded, that would not have been harmless. The damage assessment is not complete. Did the FBI catch everything?

The Putin regime has spoken out of its several mouths to condemn the initial US public announcement of the FBI arrests as somehow askew of the new "thaw" or "reset" of US-Russian relations. He's called US authorities "out of control." Then a Russian official all but sold out the Group of 11.

President Barack Obama is to be praised for allowing the announcement of arrests to boost the morale of the FBI. If the charges are what the FBI usually brings, then they will stick. They deserve credit for the catch.

Any new arrests should be announced if they are more serious in their national security impact. It is important to U.S. foreign policy development for the truth to be known by Americans to counter the lackadaisical attitude toward Russian theft and espionage that Russian propaganda promotes. These kind of busts show the real face of the Putin regime and do much to disabuse the world of the notion that Russia is an honest partner. Not while the current United Russia regime runs the roost, anyway. Demanding a more accountable Russian government is good not only for the West, but for Russians too.

The goal of normalized relations with Russia is a good goal. However, Russia itself has not normalized within the meaning of 20th to 21st century gains against autocracy. Russia has not proven in action a movement toward civilized, free and less corrupt systems with robust checks and balances, free presses, and clean teeth giving a bite to the rule of law over official fiat. This is not just a matter of guarding U.S. national security, but an essential calculus about what sort of nation-states the U.S. ought to be indulging, doing business with, and relying on financially and otherwise.

Cost-benefit analyses must be made regarding how much to rely on the current regime of Putin. Yes, the growth of Islam and its implications for what sort of societies are growing to influence Europe and Russia must factor into the analysis of how much to rely on the current Russian regime. That regime is in need of enhanced traditional population growth as much as in European nations and the United States to maintain plurality, diversity and ethnic balances. Ethnic balance in democratic republics is an indispensable factor in keeping them alive. And yet, Russia is not a democratic republic, is it?

Afghanistan: Mineral Deposits, Fainting Generals, & The Chrystalline Egg of US National Security Under Obama

General David H. Petraeus is said to have fainted from dehydration and over-fatigue before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. Some journalists speculated (as often passes for reporting nowadays) that he wanted to avoid questions on a timetable for ending the Afghan campaign. And so the Obama Administration names him to the job of leading the Afghan campaign, whatever that means.

Others, myself included, see in Gen. Petraeus' faint a sign of the state of the U.S. armed forces: over-extended in the world by politicians with no military experience or understanding of how to lead a military and take care of it. When things look critical for the Afghan mission, rather than take independent action to fix the problem, the Obama Administration has sought help from autocracies who do not at all have US interests in mind, tactically or strategically.

Does anyone know why we are in Afghanistan, depending on the Russians for a supply life line and paying for it by letting go of Cold War gains in Eastern and Central Europe? The Obama Administration denies it, but, Estonia, Ukraine, Georgia, Poland and Kyrgyzstan have all shown measurable compromise to Putin's Russian Federation. Now, Germany and Turkey move closer to Russia. After more resetting, Putin, the real power behind Medvedev's mesmerizing western wardrobe, boasts about Russia's latest plane outdoing the US F-22. Such is the chauvinism of the Russian autocrats.

We do not hear or see any mention of verification by US intelligence agencies that Russian or Chinese covert operations have or have not been aimed at preoccupying and leveraging US forces for political gains elsewhere in the world. Journalists surely don't seem to be touching the story. China had suspended communications with the US military, angry over arms sales to Taiwan. And Russia has lit Kyrgyzstan afire, another US supply point. More leveraging. If the Shanghai Cooperation Organization duopoly wanted the US in Afghanistan for the world's good, Afghanistan's Taliban would be dead along with Osama bin Laden. It would be over.

The US does not have their support. We have something else. And that something else could cost American troops' lives and it already has damaged US national security. Where is the verification that our troops are not sitting ducks for a Taliban covertly supported by China and Russia through Pakistan's insecure security services and tribal ties in-country? The longer China and Russia fuel an anti-American Islamic extremist movement, the longer they use the US and NATO as a buffer and lightening rod against such forces at their borders. Meanwhile, they play to support the US just enough to keep its troops there and degrade its power while Russia and China continue military build-ups.

Russia has added to its buffer zone using covert means to influence elections and an overt war against Georgia. China, I believe, had aided Maoists in Nepal, and now India's Maoists are killing significant numbers of its citizens.

General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of Afghan forces has spoken candidly of his frustration with the Obama Administration's approach to the Afghan campaign. The MSM has cast this as an insubordinate general clashing with his Commander in Chief, President Barack Obama. The NY Times even angled a report to imply that blame for restricted rules of engagement fell on Gen. McChrystal.

Gen. McChrystal's comments were out of line from the chain of command. Yes, but why? Let's get back to the subject of McChrystal's ill-formed candor: that the Obama Administration is setting the military up for failure in Afghanistan and plans to blame the commanders. Is it true or not? If factually based, the allegation could help clean out elements of the Obama cabinet who may be angling at the troops' expense. If not true, the question of how the general came to be so disenchanted with his superiors requires more digging. It was already known he had a flinty personality, and if that were disqualifying trait, he would not have been chosen. President Obama, not to look weak, had to discipline him after Hastings outed the General's feelings.

The journalism coup by the Rolling Stone's Hastings would better have been spent finding out whether McChrystal's allegations about sabotage of the Afghan effort and political targeting of a scapegoat are true.

This is a time when Congress should step in and pressure the President to cut the Afghanistan campaign losses, because it is only serving larger strategic objectives among America's feigned (autocratic) friends, while feeding the Islamic extremists on continued hatred of America. For what? To spend lavishly on a nation building effort that will fall apart in the primal tribal strife that is Afghanistan? Afghanistan has been a black hole that no empire has been able to afford.

The recently found mineral riches under Afghanistan will not flow to America for industrial benefit unless long term occupation secures that route, and that cost will likely cancel the benefit. I don't see America affording Afghanistan. Failing infrastructures and security at home is part of that opportunity cost.

While counterinsurgency doctrine wisely eschews angering locals with collateral damage caused by air strikes, the Afghan insurgents have already adapted to this doctrine. They know that American campaigns are influenced by the press when a Democratic administration is in the White House, so they use collateral damage to the hilt. They induce it. Remember human shields? This is an inherent problem with occupations of foreign cultures in the first place, especially those who would whip, flog and kill their women for stepping out of line by failing to cover some part of their bodies. The same send children into combat all the time, and sometimes strap bombs on them. If they will do that, they will put them in a battle zone to serve as airstrike collateral damage -- a recruiting technique for the extremists.

How much is the Obama Administration is giving up globally to disentangle the troops from Afghanistan? Good journalism will focus on the Obama Administration's actions, not only its stated policies, its word machine, and its personalities. What is next? Apologizing for winning the Cold War? What requires correction is how the US mismanaged its victory in the post-Cold War decade.

While the military industrial complex of the US should run our country, neither do I think foreign governments that do not check their own should run push the buttons of US foreign policy. To retain an independent foreign policy, we need an executive branch that is able to lead the military-industrial elements of this country to maximize US national security first at home, and then reasonably, abroad.

Smolensks 2010: Black Boxes are Modular, Components Interchangeable

Black boxes are modular for easy replacement of individual components without disassembly of the entire unit. This includes the battery pack, solid state or magnetic tape recorder, beacons and so forth. Therefore, it is possible to replace a tape or solid state memory device in a black box with one that has been pre-recorded, or, to remove it and alter or damage it.

Smolensk Crash 2010: Non-Secure Crash Site & Evidence

Those guarding the Polish presidential delegation's crash site were reportedly stealing from it. This reinforces concerns about the authenticity and reliability of the evidence. Perhaps the theft of secrets from electronic and written sources set a precedent.

Smolensk 2010: Questions About Investigation Not Deserving of C-Word

Edward Lucas, journalist and editor at the Economist has posted a piece entitled Smolensk 2010: Tragedy, Not Conspiracy at the Center for European Policy Analysis website.

Lucas seems to lump skeptical, questioning approaches to the Smolensk 2010 crash of the Polish presidential jet in with conspiracy theories. And the c-word is a synonym for mentally ill. The USSR used to label its dissidents this way: declare them mentally ill, drug them, and imprison them in sanitariums. The stigma of being mentally ill destroyed those who protested the state's wrongful actions against innocents.

Without reviewing the Putin regime's track record on investigating political violence against those who have questioned and criticized its record, Lucas really plays softball for the Kremlin. He also offers an odd absolution for the use of a "tragedy" by the Putin regime to steal secrets from the dead. His rationalization: that is just the sort of place Russia is (an insult to Russians).

Now, in developments that support the view that the Smolensk crash site evidence was not professionally secured, those assigned to guard the evidence had apparently been stealing it.

Lucas' piece is also a dismissive retread of plausible deniability arguments designed to proof governments against further inquiry. The replay goes like this: government X would have too much to lose if caught sponsoring or supporting such horrendous political violence. However, such arguments tend to cancel themselves out exactly due to their rich possibilities for plausible deniability.

Smolensk crash: Interstate Russian Aviation Committee Tells of "authenticated copies"

The Russian Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC or MAK) tried to explain itself today using the word "authenticated" while surrendering purported CD copies of the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) and the FDRs (Flight Data Recorders) from the crashed Polish presidential delegation flight. 

"Authenticated" is an issue and term that this website has been using and insisting on for over a month regarding the investigation of the crash. We have used it in the evidentiary sense.

While it seems a backhanded compliment that the IAC/MAK has used the "authentication" terminology to spin what they have given to the Poles, we cannot let it pass.

The IAC (or MAK) seems to have shifted use of the term "authenticated" as it should apply to the purported actual FDRs and the CVR, and used it to describe CD copies of the contents of the originals, according to a FlightGlobal post today.

An authenticated copy of something is sworn to be a true copy of whatever the copying person copied. It doesn't speak to the authenticity of the purported original. The upshot: the Putin regime may turn over an "authentic copy" of an non-authentic original. A true rendering of a damaged, out-of-context, faked or altered original is of little help. If the original cannot be tested for genuineness from a number of angles, we are back to square one. The copies are potentially worthless or worse than worthless: deceptive.

The Putin regime is not accustomed to being held to civilized rules of law. It is not used to a robust, open court system buttressed by free media. On the Smolensk crash, it has been working hard to keep from surrendering the actual black boxes from Kaczynski's plane to the Poles.

Why? If the originals are what the IAC purports them to be, and the results too, why not turn over the originals after keeping true copies? It would be the best protection. Why not let the Poles be present during every step, observing the actual boxes confiscated from the scene; and every step in the chain of custody. Perhaps some of this may still be done and the Putin regime can prove this was an accident rather than an order that said, "make it look like an accident." Past investigations of the deaths of Kremlin critics (as the Polish plane crash was en masse) have lacked professionalism and lawful control.

Putin Regime Cites Chicago Convention to Justify Incomplete Turnover of Black Box Copies While Avoiding Prerequisite Issues

In a layered, issue-shifting move otherwise known as a red-herring, the Putin-led investigation of the Polish presidential plane crash in Smolensk now cites the Chicago Convention as grounds for failing to turn over complete black box transcripts, copies and other modified evidence to the Poles.

Polish officials appear ready to cave to every restriction on full disclosure asserted by Moscow. Whether by signing away Polish rights to full disclosure means the Polish leadership is merely out-leveraged and/or its principals loyal to Moscow begs an answer. Either way, the U.S. government has become a deaf mute. It is clear that Google searches of open sources reporting investigation developments are dominated by Russian state-coerced media.

One thing remains true: without the actual FDRs and CVR, findings derived from them and made into 'copies' or 'transcripts' are tainted as potentially altered. In place of a real investigation there has been an investigation by media, whereby inconclusive conclusions by government press release become headlines. It is assumed that serious analyses of the facts reported so far would be too complicated for readers, however, readers deserve reports on how information is manipulated, not just informed about the results of manipulated information.

The technical pretext against full disclosure of the black boxes' copied contents begs the question of whether the original black boxes (Flight Data Recorders and the Cockpit Voice Recorders) should have been surrendered to Polish investigators for testing, screening and authentication in the first place. It creates a new false issue layer to resolve that the Putin regime may resolve to appear reasonable.

The promise and renegotiation approach was also used with Katyn documents. It was widely trumpeted that the Soviet Katyn documentation would be turned over without stint before scholars noted some missing. Then, in recent days the Putin regime became legalistic again, saying a criminal investigation could not be reopened on Katyn because the statute of limitations had run.

By withholding the actual technology and without a Polish witness to the chain of custody of all evidence, the Russians have cast a pall over all findings so that what remains is speculation. This is sufficient cover for the Putin regime if it has a hand in the crash. What other motive for withholding authentication could the regime have? As it is, the camouflaging issue has now become whether Moscow will release all of the potentially altered contents of the black boxes.

Is this not what happened with the truth about Katyn? Full disclosure was missing. And before that, is that not what happened with the archives of the Soviet Union in the 1990s? Full disclosure was advertised, but selective disclosure given. If the Putin regime were as genuine as the great majority of Russians, there would be full disclosure. However, right or wrong, the Russian majority has been trained to acquiesce to its leaders' fiat and artifice. Such is how common folks survive dictators.

Update on Monday, May 31, 2010 at 12:22PM by ABP Analyst

See our previous posts on the Polish presidential delegation's plane crash short of Smolensk Airport from our April and May posts.