US intelligence reevaluates safety of Russian defectors in light of Skripal poisoning
September 18, 2018 Leave a comment
Intelligence officials in the United States are feverishly reassessing the physical safety of dozens of Russian defectors, in light of the case of Russian double spy Sergei Skripal, who was poisoned in England last March. Skripal, a former military intelligence officer who spied for Britain, was resettled in the English town of Salisbury in 2010 by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). But he and his daughter Yulia made international headlines in March, after they were poisoned by a powerful nerve agent that nearly killed them. The attack has been widely blamed on the Russian government, though the Kremlin denies that it had a role in it.
Like MI6, the US Central Intelligence Agency also has a protection program for foreign nationals whose life may be at risk because they spied for the US. The CIA’s protection division, called the National Resettlement Operations Center, helps resettle and sometimes hide and protect dozens of foreign agents, or assets, as they are known in CIA lingo. But following the Skripal case, some CIA resettlement officials have expressed concern that protection levels for some foreign assets may need to be significantly raised. The New York Times, which published the story last week, said that it spoke to “current and former American intelligence officials”, which it did not name. In light of those concerns, US counterintelligence officials have been carrying out what The Times described as “a wide-reaching review” of every Russian asset who has been resettled in the US. The purpose of the review is to assess the ease with which these former assets can be traced through their digital footprint on social media and other publicly available information.
According to the paper, several Russians who defected to the US after working for the CIA and other US intelligence agencies were tracked down by the Kremlin in recent years. In the mid-1990s, says The Times, the CIA actually found an explosive device placed under the car of a Russian defector living in the US. More recently, US intelligence traced the movements of a suspected Russian assassin who visited the neighborhood of a resettled Russian defector in Florida. In the past, Russian CIA assets who have been resettled in the US have voluntarily revealed their whereabouts by reaching out to relatives back in Russia out of homesickness. In some cases, they have left the US in order to meet a lover who may have been planted by the Russian spy services —with sometimes fatal consequences.
In addition to the US, at least one more country has initiated a thorough review of the way it protects former Russian assets living in its territory in light of the Skripal case. As intelNews reported in March, the British secret services tightened the physical security of dozens of Russian defectors living in Britain only a week after the attempted murder of Skripal. Britain’s security services reportedly viewed the attack on Skripal as an intelligence failure and launched a comprehensive review of the risk to British-based Russian double spies and defectors from “unconventional threats”. The latter included attacks with chemical and radiological weapons.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 18 September 2018 | Permalink
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Russian intelligence planned to assassinate SVR defector living in the United States
June 21, 2023 by Joseph Fitsanakis 1 Comment
According to Dr. Walton, Russian intelligence targeted Aleksandr Poteyev, who served as Deputy Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) from 2000 until 2010. Poteyev was reportedly in charge of the SVR’s Directorate “S”, which oversees the work of illegals —a term that refers to SVR operations officers who work in without official cover around the world. It is believed that Poteyev began working for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1999, as an agent-in-place.
By 2010, when he openly defected to the United States, Poteyev had provided the CIA with information that led to the high-profile arrest of 10 Russian illegals by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Some believe that the SVR defector was also responsible for the arrests of Russian spies in Germany and Holland. In 2011, a Russian court tried Poteyev in absentia and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. Poteyev remains at large and is believed to be living in the United States under the protection of the CIA’s National Resettlement Operations Center.
On Monday, The New York Times reported that it had independently confirmed Dr. Walton’s claims, with the help of “three former senior American officials who spoke” to the paper “on the condition of anonymity”. According to The Times, a 2016 report by the Moscow-based Interfax news agency, which claimed that Poteyev had died in the United States, was part of a deliberate disinformation operation by the SVR, which was aimed at enticing the defector to emerge from his hideout.
When that attempt failed, the SVR allegedly recruited a Mexican scientist who lived in Singapore, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, to travel to Miami, Florida, in 2020, in order to locate Poteyev. But Fuentes attracted the attention of the authorities while driving around in Miami and was subsequently detained by US Customs and Border Protection agents as he was trying to board a flight to Mexico City. Fuentes then provided details of his mission to the FBI. The Bureau eventually determined that the goal of the SVR had been to assassinate Poteyev.
According to The New York Times, the realization that the SVR had planned to carry out an assassination operation on American soil “spiraled into a tit-for-tat retaliation by the United States and Russia”, which included cascading sanctions and diplomatic expulsions on both sides. The paper reports that, in April 2021, the White House ordered the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats from the United States, including the SVR’s chief of station, who had two years left on his Washington, DC, tour. The Kremlin responded by expelling an equal number of American diplomats from Russia, including the CIA station chief in Moscow.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 21 June 2023 | Permalink
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Aleksandr Poteyev, Alexander Poteyev, assassinations, book news and reviews, Calder Walton, CIA, CIA National Resettlement Operations Center, FBI, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, Hector Fuentes, Miami (Florida), News, Russia, SVR (Russia), United States