Russian Spy Ring Leader Defects to US

[Night_stalker]

Top Russian spy defects after unmasking U.S. ring
By Zachary Roth

Remember that Russian spy-ring that authorities rounded up back in June? Right, that one.
Well, it looks like members of the operation were betrayed by their boss. And it turns out he has defected to the United States, throwing Russia's foreign intelligence service into turmoil.

A Moscow newspaper, Kommersant, has reported that a Colonel Shcherbakov, who ran Russia's deep-cover U.S. spying operations, was responsible for the spies' unmasking, and that he left Russia just days before the spy-ring arrests were announced June 28. Gennady Gudkov, a Russian lawmaker who sits on Pariliament's national security committee, has confirmed the Kommersant report.
Shcherbakov, whose first name was not reported, would become one of the most high-ranking turncoats since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990.
An unidentified Kremlin official told the paper--a respected Russian business daily--that Russia is now planning to assassinate Shcherbakov, offering this chilling quote: "Do not doubt that a Mercader has been sent after him already." (Ramon Mercader was a Russian agent who assassinated Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940, after the exiled Bolshevik had fallen out with Stalin's regime.)
The news comes as a major blow to the reputation of Russia's foreign intelligence agency, known as the SVR. According to AFP, Kommersant reports that Russian officials are pressing to find out why SVR brass allowed Shcherbakov to stay in his crucial post even though his daughter was living in the United States--an obvious threat to security even in less sensitive agencies.


"There has never been such a failure by Section S, the American department that Shcherbakov directed," one top Russian lawmaker told the paper.
There's already talk of a special panel being created to probe the reasons for the blunder. The SVR chief, former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, may be fired and the entire unit folded into the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, according to the paper.
The 10 spies arrested in June all pleaded guilty, and were deported back to Russia as part of a spy swap two weeks later -- though not before at least one of them, Anna Chapman, became a tabloid sensation in the United States.
[Related: Ex-CIA officer admits spying for Russia]
Meanwhile, U.S.-Russian relations appear to be clouded by the affair's ongoing fallout. Kommersant reports that Russia's intelligence service reacted so harshly to news of Shcherbakov's defection that it sabotaged recent talks between the two powers on anti-ballistic missiles. "The Foreign Intelligence Service is so enraged that it keeps torpedoing all and any work with the Americans, even including ABM projects," a senior Russian diplomat told the paper.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20 ... g-u-s-ring

Well, this came as a shock.

[Chris OFarrell]

Very shocking in fact.
Wonder if he was flipped by the CIA, or if he just decided to change sides for cash?

The talk about hunting him down is a little worrying, although I'm sure its just pisssed off GOvernment people venting steam. The SVR sure aint dumb enough to walk down THAT road.

[Night_stalker]

Dag Hammarskj and Georgi Markov would like to disagree with your words about whether the SVR would dare walk down that path.

[Pelranius]

It would be very difficult for "Mercader" to get within the good Colonel, who's certainly under CIA protection 24/7. What are they going to do, call in an airstrike on his safehouse?

[Cecelia5578]

Dag Hammarskj and Georgi Markov would like to disagree with your words about whether the SVR would dare walk down that path.

I thought it was the Bulgarians who knocked off Markov

[Pelranius]

Dag Hammarskj and Georgi Markov would like to disagree with your words about whether the SVR would dare walk down that path.

I thought it was the Bulgarians who knocked off Markov

Yup, but the Bulgarians would have probably had to have KGB approval or blessings to do such a high profile hit.

Markov and Hammarsjk (if you believe the KGB was behind his death) weren't nearly as well protected as Shcherbakov is now, though.

[Keevan_Colton]

The SVR sure aint dumb enough to walk down THAT road.

Why not?

Treason is generally one of the few capital offences where such things exist after all. Why wouldn't it be in their interests to punish betrayal in the ultimate fashion?

[Alyeska]

The SVR sure aint dumb enough to walk down THAT road.

Why not?

Treason is generally one of the few capital offences where such things exist after all. Why wouldn't it be in their interests to punish betrayal in the ultimate fashion?

Because going into someone elses country and killing people under their protection is often considered an unfriendly act. It could even be considered an act of war.

[Keevan_Colton]

Because going into someone elses country and killing people under their protection is often considered an unfriendly act. It could even be considered an act of war.

It's hardly prevented America, Britain or Israel to name but three from doing so when it suits them though...and by that reasoning, offering refuge to a traitor could similarly be seen as an unfriendly act.

The question really is, does that outweigh the vested interest that any nation has in making an example of a traitor?
I doubt that there will be anything much that will happen to him anytime in the near future, but he wont be able to live a life outside of protective custody from now on. If the sums for the cost of taking him out work out low enough, then he will die.

[K. A. Pital]

The question is, does this person really exist? The SVR seems to say that the whole legend is bogus and the person is not Sherbakov, but someone else.

[MKSheppard]

Either way, if this is resulting in ABM talks being continually torpedoed; I'm fine with that.

[Alyeska]

It's hardly prevented America, Britain or Israel to name but three from doing so when it suits them though...and by that reasoning, offering refuge to a traitor could similarly be seen as an unfriendly act.

Assassinations between powerful countries is extremely rare. Assassinations most often occur when one nation is powerful and the other significantly less so.

Defections, spying, and harboring "traitors" is an accepted act of international politics. You very rarely see countries condemn each other for spying. But a Predator missile strike into Pakistan? Significant condemnation. Kim Philby was quite well known to have lived in Russia. Its a matter of accepted fact.

If nations start to kill each others defectors, it encourages retaliation. And retaliation gets in the way of the actual business of intelligence gathering. Thats not to say it doesn't happen, but it is exceedingly rare when it does. And for this reason defectors are under protection as insurance.

The question really is, does that outweigh the vested interest that any nation has in making an example of a traitor?
I doubt that there will be anything much that will happen to him anytime in the near future, but he wont be able to live a life outside of protective custody from now on. If the sums for the cost of taking him out work out low enough, then he will die.

He could very well live in hiding. Or he could be living under an assumed identity. The defectors that have been killed are most often publicly visible and living under their original name. This is contrary to what is likely standard protocol when dealing with a defector.

[Pelranius]

There's speculation in the British papers that Shcherbakov is a red herring thrown out by the Russians to 'justify' folding the SVR into the FSB. Make of that what you will.

[fgalkin]

There's already talk of a special panel being created to probe the reasons for the blunder. The SVR chief, former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, may be fired and the entire unit folded into the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, according to the paper.

I think this is the key here. With SVR being merged with the FSB, the agency would once again have all the functions of the old KGB. Obviously, an attractive prospect for them.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[K. A. Pital]

Kim Philby was quite well known to have lived in Russia. Its a matter of accepted fact.

It is also a matter of fact that Philby was often hidden in small towns when the KGB assumed there was a threat of assassination for Philby. And why would it assume that, if there was none?

[MarshalPurnell]

Kim Philby was quite well known to have lived in Russia. Its a matter of accepted fact.

It is also a matter of fact that Philby was often hidden in small towns when the KGB assumed there was a threat of assassination for Philby. And why would it assume that, if there was none?

Mirror-imaging their own tendencies on Western thought processes, most probably. His confederate Anthony Blunt continued to live in Britain for years after the Cambridge Five were known to British intelligence, protected by establishment figures and only publicly outed in the 1980s. There has to my knowledge never been any sign at all that Western intelligence agencies have pursued traitors for assassination like Soviet Union did from time to time.

[Pelranius]

The North Koreans are the only people I can think of off the top of my head who routinely targeted all defectors.

[K. A. Pital]

Kim Philby was quite well known to have lived in Russia. Its a matter of accepted fact.

It is also a matter of fact that Philby was often hidden in small towns when the KGB assumed there was a threat of assassination for Philby. And why would it assume that, if there was none?

Mirror-imaging their own tendencies on Western thought processes, most probably. His confederate Anthony Blunt continued to live in Britain for years after the Cambridge Five were known to British intelligence, protected by establishment figures and only publicly outed in the 1980s. There has to my knowledge never been any sign at all that Western intelligence agencies have pursued traitors for assassination like Soviet Union did from time to time.

The CIA never shied from considering assassination in general. I believe the lack of actual examples of its use against traitors who defected to the USSR was related to the fact that it would be extremely hard to penetrate the USSR and assassinate a person there for Western special services.

[Sarevok]

But was not the CIA barred from conducting assassinations since 1971 ?

[Shroom Man 777]

Uh, then what is it that they do in Pakistan?

[Sarevok]

Ugh you are right. The executive order I was referring to only prohibits the assassination of foreign leaders.

[Shroom Man 777]

And even if the CIA is officially prohibited from assassinating people (non-leaders), SAD has lots of folks who are spec ops, and/or they can just get the military to do the killing for them or getting proxies to fuck people up.