Experts say that there are still Russian ministries that use typewriters; including the Defense Ministry, Emergency Situations Ministry, and the Security Services Ministry. Now the Federal Guard Service, which is responsible for the security and protection of top officials, including the Russian President, has been budgeted $15,000 dollars for the purchase of new typewriters and new ink ribbons for the older machines.

The Moscow Times reports that “tender to purchase 20 electric typewriters for 486,540 rubles was published on the government’s procurement website zakpki.gov on July 3. According to the announcements, the equipment must be delivered to the special agency by Aug. 30”

“The typewriters in question are designed for printing classified documents, in that each machine has unique ‘handwriting’ that can be traced back to the source.” reports Radio Free Europe.

Although hard copies can be difficult to transport securely and easily lost, it is a sign of how hackers and leakers, as well as spies are making government officials wary of computer technology.

Yury Schmidt, the esteemed human rights attorney, cautioned that the efficacious prosecution throughout Russia of scholars and researchers as spies in the last ten years has been coupled with harsher sentences. Four years ago, the former general director of the Central Machinery Construction Research Institution, Moscow scientist Igor Reshetin, was found guilty of handing over technology to the Chinese and received a sentence of eleven and a half years in a penal colony. He had justified his actions, claiming the technology’s nonclassified status permitted its export and international dialogue. Physicist Valentin Danilov in 2003 likewise was convicted of placing classified information in Chinese hands, and drew a similar sentence of 13 years in a penal colony. In fact, the only instance of acquittal in an espionage or treason case in the legal annals of the Soviet Union and modern Russia was that of the aforementioned researcher and ecologist Alexander Nikitin, the skillful defense having been mounted by the already heralded Mr. Schmidt. Nikitin, a onetime naval captain and submarine officer, authored a study on the environmental risks of radioactive waste and decommissioned Russian nuclear submarines, expressly in northern Russia, for the Norwegian ecological organization Bellona, resulting in an accusation of high treason being levelled against him.

As regards the current case, Afanasiev and Bobyshev disavowed any wrongdoing and contended that the Harbin period was devoted solely to teaching and, furthermore, that the contents of the lectures were under the strict supervision of the Military Mechanical University. Schmidt indicated that should convictions of the two men be secured, the prison terms would run from 12 to 20 years. The public will be barred from the proceedings.

The BBC reported the episode marked the first instance of journalists charged with espionage in Georgia. An unconnected spy incident occurred recently there, when nine arrests were made of suspected operatives for Russia, according to a Russian state newspaper. Four of the nine accused were Russian.

Anna Fermanova, born in Latvia but raised in Texas, claims she was just doing a favor for her husband who lives in Moscow and wanted the so-called hunting gear for his friends. Prosecutors believe there’s more to the story; Anna’s husband Alexander was recently deported to Moscow following a conviction on charges of fraud and identity theft. Furthermore, Anna recently received several thousand-dollar wires from her husband, none of them exceeding $10,000, which is the tipping point at which banks must report transactions.

Anna allegedly hid the rifle scopes in a pair of UGG boots in her suitcase (though any good packer knows she could have been doing so just for cushioning protection). The rifle scopes were detected and removed before she left, but she was allowed to make the flight to Moscow. It was assumed she would not return to the U.S., but when she did on July 15, she was arrested.

Law enforcement officials find the hunting line hard to buy. A former NYPD detective Bo Dietl said, “These are used specifically for an assassination. You’re not going to hunt deer with a super scope. That’s crazy. You could take someone out with one of these scopes in the dead of night from up to a mile-and-a-half-away. I have friends in Iraq who use these. These are the real deal.”

Weapons expert Dan Wasserbly confirmed Dietl’s assertion, saying the scopes Fermanova purchased – $7,000 Raptor 4X Night Vision Weapons Sight – are intended for machine guns, not for hunting rifles. If they are indeed “serious military hardware” that even “the average American soldier wouldn’t use,” why exactly are they available for general public consumption in the U.S.?

Anna’s lawyer Scott Palmer says any assertion that his client is in some way linked to terrorism or Russian spies is absurd. She was unaware that she was not allowed to take the gear her husband had requested out of the country, and she had no idea she would be arrested upon her return. (Didn’t she think to ask why the equipment was confiscated?) Apparently, she was simply back in town to celebrate her birthday with her family.

Released on $50,000 bail, Anna is currently under house arrest in Plano, Texas.

The Czech Republic, once a Soviet satellite state and now a member of NATO and the European Union, has noted the rise of Russian operatives in its midst. Indeed, last month the counterintelligence agency BIS reported that Russian spies are ever more active, with a focus on the energy sector, and that many can be found amongst academics and students.

The spy story just written about in the Czech daily Mlada Fronta Dnes, however, involved a state-employed Czech psychologist / Russian agent named Robert R., who, through his friendship with a female army major, succeeded in infiltrating the offices of three army generals, to whom the female army major served as head of staff.

The information came from an unrevealed source, and it is unclear whether the female army major knew Robert was a spy, what information she passed to him and whether her leaks threatened national security. Given that military intelligence agents were on the trail of Robert and his cohort for five years, surprisingly little has been revealed to the public about the spy plot.

The three generals involved held the following positions: Head of the President’s Military Office, the Czech Republic’s NATO Rep and the Deputy General for the Chief of Staff. The positions are senior, and indeed, this is the country’s largest reported case of military infiltration. Josef Sedlak, the NATO Rep, spoke up indignantly: “If some information existed showing one of my colleagues was connected to a spy then the agency should have told me to protect me. And not follow me like some villain.”

One of the other generals quit over internal military changes he disagreed with, and the third was not reachable by the newspaper for comment. Meanwhile, the Russian agent has fled back to mother Russia.

At this very moment, there are growing rumors about plans for a prisoner swap that would return ten suspected Russian spies to Russia, in exchange for an imprisoned Russian military researcher Igor Sutyagin, who was convicted of espionage in 2004. The rumors also suggest that the U.S. has compiled a list of 11 Russian prisoners for the swap, including Sutyagin, Sergei Skripal, a former intelligence officer convicted of espionage, Alexander Zaporozhsky, convicted in 2003 and sentenced to 18 years for espionage, and Alexander Sypachyov, identified as a CIA agent and convicted in 2002.

If the rumors are substantiated, then the swap would be the biggest since the end of the Cold War. There are, however, a few questions that must be asked. First and foremost: What’s the rush?

It has been barely two weeks since the alleged Russian sleeper cell was arrested. The investigation is probably still at its embryonic stage, although the sleepers have been under FBI surveillance for several years. Nonetheless, once 10 of the 11 suspects are in custody, the FBI and other law enforcement agents have a unique opportunity to question the suspects and get answers to tough questions. The most important being: What other Russian spies are working clandestinely in the U.S.?

Given the poor compartmentalization of the sleepers, the FBI should be able to obtain from them investigative leads to find additional spies and “deep cover” Russian agents of influence. Avoiding the risk of facing up to 20 years in a federal prison is a strong enough incentive for the sleepers to sing songs for the FBI. However, if the suspected sleepers find out about Moscow’s rushed activity to conduct a swap with the U.S., their mouths will be permanently sealed.

Why bother to talk or cooperate? Why bother to negotiate a plea bargain if they know that soon the U.S. federal prison’s doors will open, and that they will walk with impunity?

The U.S. has a clear interest in the release of its own spies who are languishing in Russian prisons. However, these spies were already interrogated, tried, convicted and sentenced years ago. They were “peeled like an onion” as per Intel speak; therefore the Russians have no use for them. In contrast, there’s the question about the Russian sleepers. Why are the Russians rushing to swap them? Do they care that their citizens might find the prison’s food inedible? Perhaps they won’t have enough blankets? Or are the Russians concerned that the sleepers will talk and talk and turn in other Russian plants thus far uncovered by the U.S.? Maybe the Russians are concerned that the sleepers will reveal Russian training methods? Names of others trained with them in Russia? Emergency procedures?

These are golden nuggets of information that U.S. investigators are mining as these words are written. And if this is the case, the U.S. should not rush the swap and should definitely keep the sleepers who are currently in custody in isolation without outside contact. A Bedouin proverb says: “The rush is a satanic trait.” There’s a world of truth in these words.

This op-ed was originally published in The Huffington Post on 7/08/2010

This week the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York filed criminal complaints against ten alleged Russian sleeper agents in the U.S. Although the cases concern U.S. national security, the sleepers were not indicted for espionage but rather for lesser charges of money laundering related felonies and for failure to register as foreign agents, under a law primarily intended for lobbyists representing foreign countries. With the indictment arises a natural question: What was the Russian agents’ purpose in the U.S.?

SVR, the Russian intelligence service, successor to the KGB, spelled out their mission in a 2009 message to two of the defendants. The message was intercepted and decrypted by the FBI and reads, in part, as follows: You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. – all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels [intelligence reports] to C[enter].

The sleepers’ assignment was – if the intercepted message is credible and not a Russian disinformation decoy – to become “agents of influence,” serving the interests of a foreign country, as directed by its intelligence services. These agents, directly or indirectly spread propaganda or disinformation to contacts in rival intelligence agencies, to the general public through the media or to an unwitting highly placed – often political – contact, who would then be manipulated to take actions that advance foreign interests.

But were they trained to influence or recruit influencers? Hardly.

According to the FBI, the sleepers were trained to conduct agent-to-agent communications, to use brush-passes (a clandestine, hand-to-hand delivery of money or documents when one person walks past another in a “flash meeting” in a public place), to run short-wave radio operations and to use invisible writing and codes and ciphers. The training also covered Morse code, the creation and use of a cover profession, counter-surveillance measures, concealment and destruction of equipment and materials used in connection with clandestine work and the avoidance of detection. The FBI further asserts that defendants used steganography to hide data in images. Steganographic software that is not commercially available allowed the SVR and sleepers to communicate by embedding encrypted, invisible data in images that are located on publicly accessible websites; the data is of course detectable and decipherable with the right software. The sleepers also used radiograms, coded bursts of data sent by a radio transmitter that can be picked up by a radio receiver set to the proper frequency. As they are being transmitted, radiograms generally sound like the transmission of Morse code.

This is quintessential espionage training. Period.

Indeed, according to the FBI, the sleepers were performing traditional intelligence-gathering work, such as collecting information on small yield, high penetration nuclear warheads and data about Central Intelligence Agency job applicants.

The FBI concedes that the sleepers were under surveillance for several years, but the Department of Justice fell short of accusing them of espionage, which carries a life sentence. Why the lighter charge? Likely the evidence gathered thus far has been deemed insufficient to substantiate espionage.

The discrepancy between the content of the 2009 encrypted message and the alleged activity of the sleepers could mean that their assignment was a mixed bag of espionage and simultaneous preparations to become deeply rooted in American society until they could be effective agents of influence. If this assumption is accurate, the Russians have broken a basic intelligence rule that separates the gatherers from the influencers. Agents of influence are simply more likely to be influential when they assume a purportedly legit, visible and traditionally influential cover/profession, instead of the deeper covers used for intelligence-gathering purposes.

It is also possible that the sleepers – while “sleeping” – were kept busy with intelligence assignments from their Russian handlers, until they became ready to recruit assets for the influence job. There have been cases in which sleepers had little or no contact with their handlers and liked their new country so much, that they decided to remain asleep, living comfortably and hoping that their handlers would ultimately forget about them.

Professionals or amateurs? According to the FBI, at least one of the sleepers was rather clumsy. Anna Chapman believed an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian Consulate employee and agreed to receive operating instructions from him. She even gave him her spy-tooled laptop for repair. The laptop was used, according to the FBI, to radio-exchange data with another laptop carried by a Russian official from a short distance. The FBI does not disclose how the undercover FBI agent managed to gain Chapman’s trust, but it appears that Chapman acted as a complete amateur when she fell for the FBI’s brilliant maneuver. Undercover operatives on a clandestine assignment in a foreign country are trained to avoid unsolicited contacts made by anyone, unless their handler has alerted them to the new contact’s identity, and the contact has confirmed the pre-determined code sentences (usually more than one) or other identification process, to guarantee his legitimacy. According to the FBI, all Chapman said initially was, “I just need to get some more information about you before I can talk.” And when the undercover FBI agent replied, “I work in the same department as you, but I work here in the consulate. Okay. My name is Roman. My name is Roman, I work in the consulate.” This exchange seems to have satisfied Chapman.

Incredibly, Chapman received (and followed) from the same undercover FBI agent instructions to approach another woman for the purpose of delivering a false passport. The instructions were: [The other woman] “will tell you… ‘Excuse me, but haven’t we met in California last summer?’ And you will say to her, ‘No, I think it was the Hamptons.'” Chapman asked, “The Hamptons?” and the FBI agent said, “The Hamptons and that is it. That is how you know and you just exchange, just give her the document [the fraudulent passport].” Didn’t it occur to Chapman that she failed to observe a similar identification procedure, before she exposed herself as a clandestine operative to a complete stranger who turned out to be an FBI agent?

In contrast, another defendant maintained the in-agent contact identification procedure with an undercover FBI agent before he agreed to perform a clandestine job. Neither the FBI affidavits nor the Complaint disclose how the FBI discovered the code sentences that would allow the two to discuss business openly.

In Intel speak, a “legal” operative is often a foreign diplomat stationed in a foreign country, also engaging in an illegal activity such as espionage. If caught, his diplomatic or consular immunity will save him from trial, and all the host country can do is declare him a PNG – persona non grata – and deport him. An “illegal” agent is a spy provided with a new, false identity along with a cover story – a legend. Usually his fraudulent documents give the illegal the identity of a legitimate citizen or legal resident of a country other than the sending country. “Illegals” are instructed to have a normal lifestyle, maintain innocuous employment and join relevant professional associations; sometimes, “illegals” operate in pairs and live and work together in the host country under the guise of a married couple and even have children.

It appears that the Russians have broken a covert work rule: never allow contacts between “legals” and “illegals.” If one of them is under counterintelligence surveillance – most probably the “legal,” then his encounter with the “illegal” would immediately contaminate and expose the “illegal.” Nonetheless, Russian officials in the U.S. met with the sleepers. “Elementary, my dear Watson,” Sherlock Holmes would have probably declared.

Did the sleepers pose a genuine risk to the U.S.’s national security? Sleeper cells tend to wake up when orders are given to carry out a mission. It could be collecting intelligence or recruiting assets, but there are also more ominous and heinous tasks than just gathering information or influencing politicians. Until the sleepers’ full story is revealed, it will be unclear why the Russians spent the effort and money, and took a significant political risk, to place the ring in the U.S.

This op-ed was originally published in The Huffington Post on 06/30/2010