Deep deep cover Russian agents

On the surface this seem an insanely expensed and not at all likely to be all that fruitful program to be spending funds on.



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/world/europe/29spy.html

U.S. Charges 11 With Acting as Agents for Russia
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: June 28, 2010
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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. -- one of the successors to the Soviet-era K.G.B.

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Times Topic: EspionageCriminal 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,” an S.V.R. effort to plant Russian spies in the United States to gather information and recruit people able to infiltrate government policy-making circles.

The “Illegals Program” extended to other countries around the world, the charging documents said.

Using fraudulent documents, the complaint said, the spies would “assume identities as citizens or legal residents of the countries to which they are deployed, including the United States. Illegals will sometimes pursue degrees at target-country universities, obtain employment, and join relevant professional associations” to deepen their false identities.

It added: “Illegals often operate in pairs – being placed together by Moscow Center” – the S.V.R. headquarters – “while in Russia, so that they can live together and work together in a host country, under the guise of a married couple. Illegals who are placed together and co-habit in the country to which they are assigned will often have children together,” further establishing their cover.

According the the charges, the agents would communicate back to Moscow using such techniques as stenography – including secret encrypted data in an image that could be posted on a publicly available website but would appear unremarkable to the naked eye; radiograms – coded bursts of data sent by a short-wave radio transmitter; and setting up wireless laptop computer networks in public places.

It was far not clear what their intelligence reports were about and whether it succeeded in stealing any state secrets of major value. The defendants were charged with crimes like failing to register as an agent of a foreign government and money laundering – not the more serious offense of espionage. There is no allegation in the court documents that any of the defendants obtained classified materials.

Still, the court documents painted a vivid portrait of the sophisticated mechanisms allegedly used by the defendants and the lengths to which the network was willing to go to establish and maintain their cover.

Once planted in their host country, the agents’ entire lives – “education, bank accounts, car, house, etc.,” the complaint quoted on Moscow message as saying -- would be secretly financed by the Russian government in order to fulfill their mission, which was to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in the United States and send intelligence reports back.

As the years went by, that arrangement sometimes led to friction, the complaint said, citing an acrimonious exchange of encrypted messages between a pair of alleged agents living under the names Richard and Cynthia Murphy. The couple, who have allegedly operated in the United States since the mid-1990s, decided in 2008 to move from an apartment in Hoboken to a house in Montclair, N.J. – leading to an argument over whether they or the S.V.R. would own it.

The agents eventually dropped the argument, writing: “We are under the impression that C. views our ownership of the house as a deviation from the original purpose of our mission here. We’d like to assure you that we do remember what it is. From our perspective, purchase of the house was solely a natural progression of our prolonged stay here. It was a convenient way to solve the housing issue, plus to ‘do as the Romans do’ in a society that values home ownership.”

The complaints were filled with such richly detailed narratives, saying it was based on years of covert surveillance – including monitoring phones and e-mails, placing secret microphones in the alleged agents’ homes, and numerous surreptitious searches dating back years.

Agents also tracked another set of suspected agents – who were based in Yonkers – on trips to an unidentified South American country, where officials said they were videotaped receiving bags of cash and passing messages written in “invisible” ink on blank pages to Russian handlers in a public park.


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