Posted on July 20, 2010 - by Venik

The Water Boys

The best way to keep a secret is not to concede its existence. Indeed, it would be difficult for your neighbor to poison your dog, if he doesn’t know you have one. Should, nevertheless, the facts escape, your next best defense is wordiness. You shall contribute to the spectacle at every opportunity in the hope of drowning out the truth with profusion of contradictory specifics.

So much has been written about the “Russian spy” scandal in the past weeks, I don’t even know where to begin. I had no particular desire of touching this subject – how can I possibly compete with every tabloid in the world? – but the last straw was Lenta.ru Q&A with Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of “National Defense” – one of Russia’s leading defense periodicals – and member of the Civic Council at the Russian Ministry of Defense. Some say Mr. Korotchenko fancies himself Russian Fred T. Jane, founder of the famous British defense publishing company Jane’s Information Group.

The central line of Mr. Korotchenko’s answers is clear-cut and unswerving: the timing of FBI’s move against the eleven SVR agents was dictated by chance rather than some veiled desire to embarrass Medvedev and undermine Obama’s “reset” policy in relations with Russia. Apparently, it is Mr. Korotchenko’s considered opinion that, after tracking some of the agents in question for more than a decade, during Medvedev’s visit the FBI finally decided to spook one of its targets with a dubious assignment and then arrest the entire group on that basis.

The so-called “second echelon” agents of the SVR can be best described not as sources or gatherers of information, or even recruiters, but as conduits. If in course of digging in your yard you find your much detested neighbor’s phone line, you tap it and listen quietly. You don’t rip it out of the ground and hang it on your door. For ten years the FBI has been covertly monitoring these agents, until suddenly and for no clear purpose the men in black dug up their valuable leads and nailed them to the Bureau’s main entrance, delighting tabloids everywhere. Proceeding with the arrests, the FBI did not even have sufficient evidence to charge any of the operatives with espionage, accusing them instead of what in the world of spies amounts to hooliganism.

The pretext for the arrests was as immature as could be manufactured on such short notice. In brief, an FBI agent called Anna Chapman – SVR’s 28-year old female agent – and, claiming to be an SVR agent himself, told her to deliver a fake passport to someone. Apparently this “assignment” was so well thought-through by the FBI, it immediately aroused profound suspicions in the young woman with no formal training as an intelligence officer. So profound, in fact, as to cause her to dial her daddy on the cell phone and tell him that she was discovered.

Not in one of the numerous outlandish James Bond plots did Double-O Seven ever phoned his parents for a strategic consult. Needless to say, Anna was no super agent, leaving us with two possibilities: either FBI’s counterintelligence is run by baboons, or the idiotic assignment the FBI gave to Ms. Chapman was intended to create a plausible excuse for her urgent arrest. While either option is in the realm of possible, I myself lean toward the latter. It is, therefore, fascinating to me that the spin doctors from the governments and intelligence communities of both former superpowers involved in this conundrum appear to be cooperating in trying to convince us that baboons in the FBI is not as far fetched a prospect as might have initially appeared.

However awkward and contrary to their visible intent, these determined efforts at spinning the facts force us to conclude that the arrests were timed to coincide with a certain meeting in Washington. No other supposition adequately explicates all the published particulars of this case. Allow me to weigh you down with some of these details. From the Washington Post:

The FBI affidavit in the initial spy indictment said that “Russian Government Official #2″ was in May 2004 a second secretary at Moscow’s U.N. Mission. That month, at a Long Island Rail Road train station outside New York City, he was videotaped exchanging an orange bag containing money with Christopher Metsos, the defendant who jumped bail after being arrested in Cyprus. Hours after getting the orange bag, Metsos met with Richard Murphy at a Long Island restaurant. He passed a package to Murphy and discussed, in a conversation the FBI recorded, Murphy’s “cut.”

Just over six years later, on June 5, 2010, the FBI said that same “Russian Government Official #2″ drove the car with a Russian diplomatic license plate that appeared in the parking lot of a District restaurant. The official reportedly made computer contact with Mikhail Semenko, another of the “illegals,” who was inside the restaurant.

(“Fine Print: Despite arrests, Russian ‘illegals’ won’t go away”, by Walter Pincus, Washington Post, July 12, 2010)

The FBI has been closely monitoring every move by Russian diplomats working in the US for nearly as long as the Bureau existed. Let’s consider the likelihood of the events described by the Washington Post. In a public place and in broad daylight a senior Russian diplomat – well-known to the FBI – met with “Christopher Metsos” – the gentleman who recently jumped bail in Cyprus and who now is believed to be an SVR Colonel – for no other purpose but to transfer an orange bag full of cash. With that same bag under his arm Mr. Metsos proceeded from the Long Island train station to a local restaurant, where he met with another “secret” Russian agent to openly discuss SVR’s pay and benefits.

If you accepted the premise of the FBI operated by a species of Papio, then it is rational to presume that the Bureau may have kinsmen in Moscow enriching the SVR with similar enthusiasm and astuteness. On the other hand, in presence of some hope for nominal competence at the two intelligence agencies and with all due respect to Mr. Pincus of the Washington Post, any doubts you may have as to the probability of the aforecited episode would be well-founded.

Suppose, for the sake of an argument, that you operate a network of spies in some distant land. Being well aware of the resourcefulness and ample budget of your enemy, you have no doubt that its agents spend every waking hour searching for your undercover comrades. As a Russian saying goes, one who searches shall always find. This being the case, why not let your enemy find a secret you don’t mind sharing? And what better vehicle exists for such a delicate mission than a black Mercedes sporting diplomatic license plates and carrying a ranking government official with an orange bag full of hard currency in his lap?

How convincing this display would appear to your enemy’s agents is almost beside the point: they get a lead, which they are obligated to follow. And follow they do, discovering Mr. Matsos, who offers a guided tour of New York’s dining establishments culminating in a meeting with Mr. Murphy, who further leads them to very sociable Ms. Chapman and from there the possibilities grow and multiply.

Mr. Korotchenko, whose take on the ins and outs of this spy drama we are discussing, believes that such a scenario is unlikely due to the cost and effort of establishing even the “second echelon” agents. On the other hand, we have to grant that, despite its occasional financial meltdowns, Russia has always been a country of ample resources. Perhaps, sacrificing a few amateur operatives on the altar of FBI’s diligence is a cost-effective way of keeping the heat away from more valuable assets.

Naturally, it would take some sustained stupidity on the part of the Bureau, after tracking these disposable agents for some ten years, not to develop certain suspicions as to their true purpose. And so, when the time comes for the FBI to influence the course of foreign politics to its budgetary advantage in an environment of cut-throat competition against other members of America’s sprawling intelligence community, the Bureau has just the right cards to put on the table. At the very least, this is one theory that does not rely on notions of chance and incompetence at the core of its logic.

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