Alleged Russian Spy Ring
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-06-30/alleged-russian-spy-ring
President Barack Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia ride together to lunch at Ray's Hell Burger in Arlington, Va., June 24, 2010.
Official White House photo by Pete Souza via The White House Flickr stream
Moscow has denounced the arrest of 11 people accused of being part of a Russian spy network operating in the U-S: What's behind the charges and implications for U-S-Russian relations.
Guests
Jessica Golloher
freelance correspondent
Andrei Sitov
Washington bureau chief for Itar-Tass.
Stephen Flanagan
svp and Henry A Kissinger chair,
Center for Strategic & International Studies
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Professor of American Foreign Policy, Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. and former National Security Advisor to President Carter from 1977 to 1981.
Peter Brookes
senior fellow for national security affairs at the Heritage Foundation; former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific affairs in the second Bush administration; author, "A Devil's Triangle: Terrorism, WMD and Rogue States."
Comments
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Why were these people arrested now, right after Obama has made such a public effort to improve relations with Russia? Did hardliners in the FBI pressure the Justice Department to do this now in an attempt to thwart these efforts and embarrass the administration?
The fact that one of the suspects was leaving the country does not seem to be a sufficient reason to move so quickly. Surely some of these people have traveled abroad during the years they have been under surveillance. If they were such a big threat they would have been arrested a long time ago, so why the sudden urgency?
The whole thing seems very odd to me.
Why were these people arrested now, right after Obama has made such a public effort to improve relations with Russia? Did hardliners in the FBI pressure the Justice Department to do this now in an attempt to thwart these efforts and embarrass the administration?
The fact that one of the suspects was leaving the country does not seem to be a sufficient reason to move so quickly. Surely some of these people have traveled abroad during the years they have been under surveillance. If they were such a big threat they would have been arrested a long time ago, so why the sudden urgency?
The whole thing seems very odd to me.
I wonder how many spies we have in Russia.... I bet it is at least 11.
If we found these 11, how many more are out there? How bout the Chinese? or for that matter any other country? I also worry some what about our cyber security.
The 1988 novel by Nelson Demille, THE CHARM SCHOOL, is so close to cold war actuality that many college professors continue to use the book in classes. Premise: Thousands of Russians were schooled by downed American pilot MIAs during and after the Vietnamese War. The pilots were held at the KGB "School" and forced to train their "students" to look, act, talk, and think like an American politician, scientist, housewife, engineer, etc. The goal was to place cells all across the country and gain access to the highest reaches of government.
I just finished reading it (well researched and fascinating,) and then here's the story of the Russian eleven!
Why exclude russians? why not israelis, chinese, british, or germans? what is wrong with people correcting errors of time and location? thanks.
I have worked in Russia since the early 1990's. In those days, US intelligence was worried about Russia using the new openess to get hold of US technology and military know how, which we have freely shared. We also have former Russian citizens working in many positions in our government and military. So this does seem fairly low grade espionage unless they were also coordinating the work of others planted around the US or accomplishing something in terms of compromising people so they would cooperate and give human intelligence not otherwise available in the public domain via reports, internet, etc.
good point! it seems that knowing peson of other nationality is a new crime in us, or fbi is creating flase flag for something new.