Former Russian Spy Now Peddles Spy Gear
Thanks to a Russian military court in Moscow, we now know who told the FBI and CIA about ten Russian “illegals,” who were arrested last year in the U.S., including the femme fatale, Anna Chapman.
In case you have forgotten, Chapman and her colleagues where caught in June 2010 and accused of being “sleeper agents” employed by the Russian Federation’s external intelligence agency, the SVR (formerly the KGB.) Illegals are a Russian specialty. Yuri Andropov, who oversaw the KGB from 1967 until 1982, was a huge proponent of dispatching KGB-trained Russians into foreign countries under the guise of being immigrants. Their assignment was to blend into a target country’s society and, if possible, quietly work their way into jobs where they could collect information. In some cases, sleepers were told they might never be called on by Mother Russia unless a war broke out. If that happened, the sleeper agents would be ordered to carry out military assignments, such as blowing up targets.
The idea that your seemingly ordinary next-door neighbor might secretly be a foreign spy is juicy stuff and when Chapman turned out to be both young and sexy, her arrest sparked international headlines. Most foreign intelligence agents conduct their spying activities under the guise of being dipolmats. This gives them immunity from prosecution. But “illegals” don’t have diplomatic immunity, which means they can be arrested, just as Chapman and her co-horts were. They were later returned to Moscow as part of a spy swap. We sent them ten Russians and they gave us four alleged spies from our side.
When Chapman and the others were arrested on June 27th, my phone began ringing. Everyone assumed that Sergei Tretyakov had told the FBI and CIA about the sleeper agents. Tretyakov is the subject of my book, COMRADE J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War. He began working for the U.S. sometime in the mid-1990s and as the deputy rezident of the KGB/SVR’s New York office, common sense dictated that he must have known about Chapman and her pals.
