Russia is interrogating 10 of its sleeper agents deported from the US at a secret facility, reports in Moscow said. Intelligence officers want to be sure that a double agent did not betray the team to the FBI.
The 10 flew to Moscow on Friday in a tense “spy swap” with four spies accused of spying for the West, but nothing has been heard of them since they were whisked away from the capital’s Domodedovo airport in a convoy.
Quoting a source in the security services, Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper reported the agents were first taken to the headquarters of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in Yasenevo on the outskirts of Moscow, but are now at an unspecified location.
“Specialists are working with the agents,” an unnamed source was quoted as saying. “They are trying to find out which intelligence officers [who handled the agents] may have made a blunder. They are talking to them and carrying out various tests, including with lie detectors.”
The source added that an “enormous amount of work” was being done to establish whether there was a traitor in the SVR who had betrayed the agents. High-ranking SVR officers are thought to have been aware of the agent network since it became active in 2001.
The deported agents are staying in hotels at a closed SVR facility. Their relatives can visit them but they will not be allowed to leave the territory for two weeks or more while the “work on mistakes” is conducted, the source added. If it transpires the “illegals,” as FBI officers dubbed the agents, committed no mistakes they will be released.
The capture of the agents, who used a farcical mix of high and low technology including invisible ink and odd code phrases in ungrammatical English to communicate with their handlers, has caused some discomfit in Moscow.
Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB colonel, said: “Now we know that not only our court system and law enforcement agencies are bad, the last bulwark of the image of our legendary special services has also crumbled.”
Opinion is divided over the future of the agents. Some commentators have predicted Anna Chapman — dubbed “Agent 90-60-90” — could become a chatshow host or model.
But Andrei Soldatov, an espionage expert and editor of agentura.ru, said it was likely they would stay under wraps.
“They will probably go to be instructors at the SVR academy, which is a kind of cemetery of agents expelled from other countries,” he said.
Meanwhile, Britain has stripped Chapman of her British citizenship, Britain’s home office said on Tuesday.
Chapman lived in Britain for several years after marrying an Englishman in 2002.
“The Home Secretary [Theresa May] has the right to deprive dual nationals of their British citizenship and, once deprived, to exclude them from the UK where she considers that to do so would be conducive to the public good,” a ministry official said.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
ON THE LAM: The Brazilian Supreme Court said that the former president tried to burn his ankle monitor off as part of an attempt to orchestrate his escape from Brazil Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro — under house arrest while he appeals a conviction for a foiled coup attempt — was taken into custody on Saturday after the Brazilian Supreme Court deemed him a high flight risk. The court said the far-right firebrand — who was sentenced to 27 years in prison over a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 elections — had attempted to disable his ankle monitor to flee. Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes said Bolsonaro’s detention was a preventive measure as final appeals play out. In a video made
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
SHOW OF FORCE: The US has held nine multilateral drills near Guam in the past four months, which Australia said was important to deter coercion in the region Five Chinese research vessels, including ships used for space and missile tracking and underwater mapping, were active in the northwest Pacific last month, as the US stepped up military exercises, data compiled by a Guam-based group shows. Rapid militarization in the northern Pacific gets insufficient attention, the Pacific Center for Island Security said, adding that it makes island populations a potential target in any great-power conflict. “If you look at the number of US and bilateral and multilateral exercises, there is a lot of activity,” Leland Bettis, the director of the group that seeks to flag regional security risks, said in an
RSS