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Did fugitive spy Metsos lead to Russian spy arrests?

July 28, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

C.R. Metsos

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Soon after the June 27 arrests of 10 Russian non-official-cover (NOC) spies in several US cities, one name came to the attention of intelligence observers: Sergei Tretyakov. Tretyakov was a senior Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) officer who defected to the US in 2000, while second-in-command at the SVR station in Russia’s United Nations mission in New York –the same outfit that run the deep-cover operatives arrested in June by the FBI. The Bureau’s own admission that it began monitoring the operatives around 2001, has caused many to believe that Tretyakov, who died suddenly on June 13, at age 53, may have tipped off the FBI about the NOCs. But Russian investigative journalist Yulia Latynina has raised a second possibility, no less intriguing than the first. Namely that it was not Tretyakov who betrayed the deep-cover operatives to the FBI, but rather the mysterious so-called 11^th spy, Christopher R. Metsos, a seasoned SVR operative who is said to have acted as a go-between and financier for all 10 Russian spies. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #401

July 27, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Ex-CIA chief Hayden predicts war with Iran. General Michael Hayden, a CIA Director under President George W. Bush, says US-led military action against Iran now “seems inexorable”.
Venezuela warns of US oil cut in Colombia dispute. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday that his government would cut oil supplies to the United States in case of a military attack from Colombia, as a dispute escalated over charges his country harbors Colombian rebels. Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with Colombia last week.
Canada revokes passport of Russian spy who fled to Cyprus. Canada has canceled the passport of Christopher Metsos, a suspected Russian spy who is wanted by Interpol after fleeing following his release on bail in Cyprus last month.

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Russian ‘spy’ breaks silence, wants to leave UK for Russia

July 23, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Igor Sutyagin

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
One of the four Russian alleged spies that were handed over to the West in return for 11 Russian intelligence officers arrested in the US last month, has issued a public statement for the first time since his July 9 release from prison. At the time of his release, Dr. Igor Sutyagin, a nuclear expert who headed the Russian Academy of Sciences’ USA and Canada Institute, had served 11 years of a 15-year sentence, for allegedly passing state secrets to Alternative Futures, a British company alleged to be a CIA front by the Russian government. Once Washington included his name on the top-secret exchange list, Sutyagin was transferred from his prison cell in Kholmogory prison, near Arkhangelsk in northern Russia, to the Lefortovo high-security jail in Moscow. It was there that, following a meeting with this family, he was told that he would receive a Presidential pardon in exchange for his unconditional admission of guilt. Minutes after he agreed to the deal, the Russian scientist was flown to London, still in his prison uniform. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #398

July 22, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Britain’s first spy chief ordered Rasputin’s murder. Mansfield Cumming, or ‘C’ as he became known, was the first chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). In December 1916, he sent three agents in Russia to eliminate Grigori Rasputin, an influential Orthodox Russian priest who had a positive view of Germany.
Russian spy network moved money to Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwean company called Southern Union is alleged to have been used by exposed Russian spy Anna Chapman in a money smuggling operation involving a syndicate linked to the Robert Mugabe regime.
Iran says nuclear scientist gave valuable info on CIA. Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency says that Iranian nuclear scientist Dr. Shahram Amiri, who resurfaced and returned home last week from the United States, after having disappeared during a 2009 religious pilgrimage to Mecca, has provided Iran with “valuable information” on the CIA.

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News you may have missed #396 (Russian spy ring edition V)

July 19, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

12th Russian spy network member deported from US. Alexey Karetnikov, a 23-year-old Russian citizen living in Seattle, has been deported to his home country, apparently in connection with the Russian illegals spy network uncovered by the FBI last month. A photograph of Karetnikov is available here.
Returned spies look to changed identities. Several of the Russian agents detained in the United States in June and handed over to Russia last week will change their identities under a witness protection program, a Russian intelligence official said last week. All but three of the agents were using false names when they were arrested by the FBI on June 27.
Russian spy Chapman stripped of UK citizenship. Anna Chapman, also known as Anya Kushchenko, one of the Russian spies deported from the United States, has been deprived of her British citizenship, and exclusion is expected to follow, meaning she cannot travel to the UK. She has a UK passport through a previous marriage.

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Fate of 11th Russian spy suspect remains a mystery

July 19, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

C.R. Metsos

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
As the world’s media attention is focused firmly on last week’s 14-member spy swap between Russia and the United States, the fate of the 11th member of the Russian deep-cover intelligence network remains unknown. The operative, known as Christopher R. Metsos, was listed as “defendant No. 1” in the FBI criminal complaint against the now infamous Russian illegals network. Like his co-defendants, he was not charged with espionage, but with “acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government”. He was also charged with money laundering, and was described as the main financier of his ten co-defendants. However, Metsos escaped arrest in the US, because during the FBI raids he was in Cyprus, where he had arrived on June 17. He was arrested on June 29 at the island’s Larnaca International Airport, while trying to board a flight for Budapest, Hungary. A much younger woman traveling with him was allowed to leave on the flight, according to Cypriot media. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #395 (Russia-US spy swap edition IV)

July 18, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

All children of Russian spies repatriated. All the children of the 10 Russian spies freed by the US in a dramatic swap with Moscow have been sent to Russia to rejoin their parents, US attorney general Eric Holder has said.
Moscow relieved that spy scandal is over. A sense of relief seemed to pervade the halls of the Russian government over the weekend that a potentially embarrassing spy scandal with the United States was over. But few Russian officials showed any enthusiasm about discussing the two-week affair.
Russia ‘gave spies hundreds of thousands of dollars’. US Attorney General Eric Holder says 10 Russian secret agents deported by US authorities as part of a spy swap had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Moscow.

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News you may have missed #394 (Russia-US spy swap edition III)

July 17, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Russian spy’s call to father triggered arrests. A telephone call from Russian spy Anna Chapman to her father in Moscow led US counterintelligence services to hasten the arrests of her and nine Russian agents in the United States, claims The Washington Post.
Non-Russian spy Pelaez to return to Peru in month. Vicky Pelaez, a journalist with dual US-Peruvian citizenship, who was deported from the United States to Russia on a spy swap, will return to Peru no sooner than in a month, Pelaez’s lawyer, Carlos Moreno, said on Monday.
Alleged CIA spy Sutyagin may return to Russia. Igor Sutyagin, a Russian arms expert convicted of espionage in 2004, may return home after he was deported to England in a spy swap with the US, according to his former colleague Pavel Podvig. “He has Russian citizenship, his wife and daughters are in Russia and he has been pardoned by the President”, said Podvig.

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News you may have missed #391 (Russia-US spy swap edition II)

July 13, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Expelled spies to experience life in changed Russia. Like those before them, the sleeper spies who were deported to Russia last week in one of the biggest espionage exchanges in decades will probably miss the United States, picket fences and all. But what perhaps most distinguishes this affair from its cold war precursors is what awaits these Russians in their motherland.
Past Russian spies have found post-swap life gets a bit sticky. While life in Moscow may be duller than New York, Boston, New Jersey, Seattle and Washington, DC, where the 11 Russians charged last week allegedly lived as long-term, deep-penetration agents, it won’t be too bad, either, if their predecessors’ experience is any guide.
Life a nightmare for spies returning to Russia, says Soviet dissident. Vladimir Bukovsky, 67, a Soviet dissident exiled to Europe in a 1976 prisoner swap, says the Russian spies expelled from America to Russia last week “will go from living affluent lives with real freedom, to living under constant surveillance by the Russian secret services”.

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Russia-US spy swap plan was almost shelved, say Russian media

July 13, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Igor Sutyagin

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The unprecedented spy exchange between Russia and the United States nearly failed, after American and Russian planners came across several unforeseen problems during the run-up to the swap. Moscow-based daily newspaper Moskovsky Komzomolez cited a confidential source in Russian intelligence, who said that Washington almost cancelled the exchange deal in the early hours of July 9. This was after Russian media published the names of the four jailed Russian citizens who were to be given up by Moscow, in exchange for the ten Russian deep-cover spies arrested by the FBI in several US cities in June. The agreement almost came to a standstill again a few hours later, after Russian nuclear weapons expert Igor Sutyagin refused to officially admit guilt, a step that was required for the planned exchange to take place. The Russian scientist, who chaired a division in the Russian Academy of Sciences’ USA and Canada Institute, was serving a 15-year sentence for allegedly passing state secrets to a foreign company that was a front for the CIA. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #390 (Russia-US spy swap edition I)

July 12, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

In spy swap, agents were pawns in a practiced game. The US arrests were not made to facilitate a swap, said a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Rather, they were precipitated, at least partly, by the plans of several of the Russians to leave this country this summer.
Russian spies get tepid reception in Moscow. The 10 spies who pleaded guilty to acting as foreign agents in the United States, including one Peruvian, were given a tepid, uneasy reception in Russia on Friday. State-controlled national television channels reported their return briefly, with no patriotic fervor. No national TV channels carried live coverage of the plane’s landing, even though it was available from international news agencies.
Russian, US spies start new lives but mystery swirls. The 14 spies swapped by Moscow and Washington were starting new lives in Russia and the West last weekend, but mystery shrouded their precise whereabouts. In one case, Igor Sutyagin, a Russian nuclear arms expert who allegedly spied for the US, found himself at a hotel somewhere in Britain, without a visa and still wearing his Russian prison clothes.

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Dead defector not connected to Russian spies, insists friend

July 12, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Sergei Tretyakov

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
On July 2, based on an excellent analysis by Stratfor of the 10 Russian deep-cover agents arrested in the US in June, we entertained the possibility that Sergei Tretyakov, a senior Russian SVR agent who defected to the US in 2000, may have helped the FBI identify the Russian spy ring. Last Friday, it emerged that 53-year-old Tretyakov had died at his home in Florida. When he defected to the US, along with his wife and daughter, Tretyakov was second-in-command at the SVR (Russian external intelligence) station operating out of Russia’s United Nations mission in New York. This is the same outfit that coordinated the 10 Russian deep-cover agents arrested by the FBI in June. Tretyakov’s death was announced by the late Russian spy’s friend and confidante Pete Earley, who in 2008 wrote a book about the defector. It is worth noting that Tretyakov actually died on June 13, but his wife, Helen Tretyakov, requested that his death not be publicly announced until the precise cause of death was determined. Read more of this post

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Russia, US, in largest spy swap since World War II

July 9, 2010 by intelNews 3 Comments

Igor Sutyagin

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Russian and American governments have agreed to conduct one of history’s largest spy exchanges, as ten Russian agents captured in the US last month have been swapped for four Russian citizens imprisoned by Moscow for spying for the US and Britain. The ten Russians arrested by the FBI in June were non-official-cover (NOC) operatives, otherwise known as ‘illegals’, a term used to identify deep-cover intelligence operatives not associated with a country’s diplomatic representation. According to reports, they were all instructed by the SVR, Russia’s equivalent of MI6, which is responsible for all foreign intelligence operations abroad, to plead guilty to “acting as unregistered foreign agents” a charge not equivalent to espionage in either seriousness or repercussions. They were then legally forbidden from ever returning to the United States and summarily expelled. They were taken from the courtroom directly to the airport, where they boarded a plane to Vienna, Austria. In return, Russian government sources have confirmed that four Russian citizens, arrested in recent years for spying on behalf of the US or Britain, will be released from prison and delivered to US authorities. Read more of this post

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Austrian probe finds Chechen president behind Vienna killing

July 5, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Ramzan Kadyrov

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A report by Austrian government officials has found that the Moscow-appointed President of Chechnya ordered the 2009 assassination in Vienna of a Chechen dissident, who had been given political asylum by Austrian authorities. In 2009, Umar Israilov, who was once a bodyguard of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, alleged in Vienna and in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that Kadyrov had “personally participated in the torture of detainees”. But on January 13, 2009, Israilov was shot dead by two men in broad daylight outside a grocery store located less than two miles from Vienna’s historic city center. Now the Vienna Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism has said in a detailed report that Israilov’s murder was a political assassination ordered personally by Chechen President Kadyrov, who is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #384

July 3, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

India arrests Russian woman in connection with alleged German spy. Police in the Indian state of Punjab have arrested Olga Timoshik, a Russian woman accused of assisting Thomas Kuehn, a suspected German spy who was arrested in Punjab in early June.
UK Prime Minister raises ex-spy’s death with Russian President. British leader David Cameron raised the contentious issue of the 2006 assassination of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko in London, in his first meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last weekend. Litvinenko’s death triggered the worst dispute between the UK and Russia in recent years.
BP hires ex-CIA counsel as lobbyist. Stanley Sporkin, who was General Counsel for the CIA for five years under William Casey during the Iran-Contra years, has been hired by British Petroleum as ombudsman “to hear worker complaints from Alaska and elsewhere in the US”.