Thread: US Arrests 11 on Charges of Being Agents for Russia Illegals

U.S. Arrests 11 on Charges of Being Agents for Russia
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: June 28, 2010


WASHINGTON – In what law enforcements officials portrayed as an extraordinary takedown of a Russian espionage network, the Justice Department on Monday announced charges against 11 people accused of living for years in the United States as part of a deep-cover program by S.V.R. -- the successor agency to the Soviet-era K.G.B.

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Justice Department’s Criminal Complaints
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Times Topic: Espionage

Criminal complaints filed in federal court on Monday read like a thriller novel: Secret Russian agents were assigned to live as married couples in the United States, even having children who were apparently unaware of their parents’ true identities. A spy swapped identical bags with a Russian official as they brushed past each other in a train station stairwell. Messages were written with invisible ink, hidden in the data of digital pictures, and encoded in messages sent over shortwave radio.

The complaints followed a multiyear investigation that culminated with Sunday’s arrest of 10 people in Yonkers, Boston, and northern Virginia. The documents detailed what authorities called the “Illegals Program,â€

Feds arrest 10 accused of being Russian agents
From Terry Frieden, CNN Justice Producer
June 28, 2010 5:41 p.m. EDT
Ten "trained Russian intelligence operatives," were charged with acting as agents of a foreign government, officials say.


STORY HIGHLIGHTS

* NEW: Ten people arrested in U.S. accused of acting as Russian agents
* NEW: Justice Department says the suspects worked as recruiters
* The suspects used identities of dead Americans
* Nine of the suspects charged with money laundering

Washington (CNN) -- Ten individuals have been arrested in the United States on charges of being Russian agents, the Justice Department announced Monday.

The 10 were "trained Russian intelligence operatives," a Justice Department spokesman said.

All were charged with acting as agents of a foreign government, and nine also were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The Justice Department said the 10 arrested and another person not yet in custody were part of an operation aimed at recruiting intelligence agents, but were not directly involved in obtaining U.S. secrets themselves.

Some of the suspects adopted phony identities, including those of dead Americans, officials said.

The 10 who are in custody were scheduled to appear in court Monday in New York, Boston, Massachusetts, and Alexandria, Virginia.

Each of the 11 suspects have been charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, the Justice Department said. Conspiracy to commit money laundering has a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

The case resulted from a "multiyear investigation" conducted by the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the Justice Department's National Security Division, according to a Justice Department statement. The 11 suspects were charged in two separate criminal complaints.

A Russian Embassy spokesman said Monday that he was unaware of the reports of the arrests, and said he is seeking more information from Russian officials.

CNN's Jill Dougherty contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/06/28/ ... ts/?hpt=T1

Russian Spies Met at Fort Greene Coffee Shop, Grumbled About Work Stuff

* 6/28/10 at 5:58 PM
* Comment 00Comment 00Comments

Russian Spies Met at Fort Greene Coffee Shop, Grumbled About Work Stuff

Yesterday, the Justice Department arrested a total of eight people for allegedly carrying out long-term, “deep-coverâ€

I will guarantee you, most of them entered the country illegally or were once issued a visa and are out of status. The Criminal complaint only lists their aliases.

KGB called them Illegal Residentura. This is USSR deniability at it's finest


Dixie

Justice Department Nabs Russian Spy Ring

Mark Whittington
Published June 29, 2010 by:
Mark Whittington

Reminiscent of the Cold War

The Justice Department has broken up a 10-person Russian spy ring in an operation that seems reminiscent of the Cold War. Even though the Russian spies have been in place since the early 1990s, the
incident is a diplomatic black eye for Russia.

The announcement of the Russian spy ring took place barely a week after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited President Obama on a trip that featured lunch at Obama's favorite hamburger joint and talks on a new START arms control treaty. The START treaty is still being mulled by the United States Senate. Some diplomatic sources suggest that the spy incident may push some senators to vote against ratification.

The Russian spy ring appeared to be attempting to infiltrate American policy-making circles in order to ferret out military secrets, including intelligence on missile defense and bunker-busting bombs that could be used to take out Iranian nuclear sites.

One of the spies, a woman named Vicki Peleaz, wrote oped columns for a Spanish-language newspaper, El Diario, in which she inveighed against American immigration policy. Peleaz suggested that American immigration law was the equivalent of Nazi-era legislation.

This suggests that another purpose of the Russian spy ring was to influence American public opinion by spreading disinformation. During the Cold War, the KGB was very active in disinformation operations, particularly seeking to turn public opinion in Europe and the Third World against American defense and foreign policy.

Immigration policy is a source of great political discord in the United States, with Hispanic Americans often feeling affronted at attempts to seal the southern border against illegal immigration, and everyone else angry that the federal government has not been making those attempts with enough vigor. Thus, writing incendiary articles about immigration in a Spanish-language newspaper would seem to be a prime way to sow discord and to destabilize that United States to a certain extent.

The Russians likely see the current Obama government as a prime opportunity to gain an advantage through espionage activities. President Obama is known for his desire to reach out to potential enemies, and to not be overly aggressive in opposing them when they become aggressive.

At the same time, the revelation of the Russian spy ring will likely galvanize the President's many opponents, as it will suggest that the Russians are reverting to their Cold War misbehavior. That being the case, the world has become that much more dangerous, especially with an American President who takes his cue for dealing with America's enemies from Jimmy Carter rather than Ronald Reagan.

Sources:

U.S. Espionage Claims Recall Cold War `Spy Mania,' Russian Government Says, Lucian Kim and Ilya Arkhipov, Bloomberg, June 29th, 2010

Alleged spy's newspaper commentaries pretty much what you'd expect, Patrick Ishmael, Hot Air, June 29th, 2010

http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... html?cat=9

He's gone for good

Russian spy suspect missing, Cyprus police say
Originally arrested in U.S. case while trying to leave for Hungary


LARNACA, Cyprus — One of the 11 suspects accused by the United States of spying for Russia has gone missing after being released on bail in Cyprus, Cypriot police said on Wednesday.

Christopher Robert Metsos, who is 54 or 55, was expected to sign in at a police station in the coastal town of Larnaca on Wednesday but failed to show up, said Michalis Katsounotos, a police spokesman.

A warrant was being prepared for Metsos's arrest for violating the terms of his bail order, Katsounotos added.

Metsos was the only one of the 11 suspects arrested outside the United States. He was freed on bail in Cyprus on Tuesday after being held while attempting to leave the country for Budapest from Larnaca airport, police said.

"The individual should have appeared between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. to police. He did not appear by 8:00. Some additional time was given and until now he has not shown up," Katsounotos said.

Metsos's lawyer, Michalis Papathanasiou, told Reuters he had had no contact with the suspect on Wednesday.

Metsos had purported to be a Canadian citizen. The federal complaint says he traveled to the United States to pay members of the spy ring using clandestine — and sometimes bizarre — methods.

Metsos was surreptitiously handed the money by a Russian official as the two swapped nearly identical orange bags while passing each other on a staircase at a commuter train station in New York, Metsos said.

After giving some of the money to one of the defendants, Metsos drove north and stopped his car near upstate Wurtsboro, N.Y. Using data from a global-positioning system that had been secretly installed in his car, agents went to the site and found a partially buried brown beer bottle. They dug down about five inches and discovered a package wrapped in duct tape, which they photographed and then reburied.

Two years later, video surveillance caught two unnamed secret agents digging up the package.

This report includes information from The Associated Press.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38021957/ns ... ws-europe/

If you are lookin for a new version visit - InvisibleInk

I have read articles by Vicki Peleaz,in fact, I think there may be some in ALIPAC archives.

Her writings are right out the Reconquista's,LaRaza,LULAC,MALDEF playbooks so why are they not investigating these traitors ?