Ian Williams: The Cold War is so over
[Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, Nation Books, New York.]
It's not quite James Bond. The Murphy couple in their New Jersey Home with cans of coke, Bud Lite, and bottles of ketchup in front of them definitely made to be shaken not stirred. As for deep undercover, a Russian accent from someone with an archetypal Irish name like Murphy had even the friendly neighbors wondering what the deal was.
Now with the arrest of the Murphys and the rest of their, well, "unregistered agents of foreign governments ring", everyone is wondering what the deal was. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been watching them for a decade, either as puzzled as everybody else, or collaborating in an elaborate implicit job-creation scheme between the Russian and American agencies.
The Murphys and three other couples were among 10 individuals suspected of acting as undeclared agents of a foreign country who the United States Department of Justice announced on June 28 had been arrested the previous day as a result of an FBI counter-intelligence investigation. Nine of the suspects were given fake identities and cover stories to establish themselves in the US, the FBI said.
When I came to the United States before the end of the Cold War, a stalwart of the foreign press corps was the only Russian journalist who did not live in their own walled compound. He had his own mid-town apartment, his own big American car, went to every reception and was clearly on another payroll apart from his newspaper for whom he never wrote. Did he collect information on the US, on journalists? He appeared on prime-time television, where he explained Soviet policy in flawless colloquial American English.
He would have made a good sleeper. Why send someone with an accent and a totally inappropriate name? Many of these 10 had notable Russian accents completely at odds with their assumed identities, and ironically, if they had used Russian names no one would have noticed with the massive post-Soviet immigration to the US.
It was the anomalies people noticed. Several of the couples had children whom the prosecutors alleged were to provide cover. The thought of James Bond pushing a baby buggy for deep cover seems unconvincing. There seems to be no evidence that they passed on serious secret information, and much of what they did allegedly seek, like information on administration personnel's attitudes to Russia, could have been obtained by journalists or even by trawling the web.
That is why they are charged only with being unregistered agents of foreign governments - an accusation frequently made against lobbyists - rather than with espionage...
Read entire article at Asia Times
It's not quite James Bond. The Murphy couple in their New Jersey Home with cans of coke, Bud Lite, and bottles of ketchup in front of them definitely made to be shaken not stirred. As for deep undercover, a Russian accent from someone with an archetypal Irish name like Murphy had even the friendly neighbors wondering what the deal was.
Now with the arrest of the Murphys and the rest of their, well, "unregistered agents of foreign governments ring", everyone is wondering what the deal was. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been watching them for a decade, either as puzzled as everybody else, or collaborating in an elaborate implicit job-creation scheme between the Russian and American agencies.
The Murphys and three other couples were among 10 individuals suspected of acting as undeclared agents of a foreign country who the United States Department of Justice announced on June 28 had been arrested the previous day as a result of an FBI counter-intelligence investigation. Nine of the suspects were given fake identities and cover stories to establish themselves in the US, the FBI said.
When I came to the United States before the end of the Cold War, a stalwart of the foreign press corps was the only Russian journalist who did not live in their own walled compound. He had his own mid-town apartment, his own big American car, went to every reception and was clearly on another payroll apart from his newspaper for whom he never wrote. Did he collect information on the US, on journalists? He appeared on prime-time television, where he explained Soviet policy in flawless colloquial American English.
He would have made a good sleeper. Why send someone with an accent and a totally inappropriate name? Many of these 10 had notable Russian accents completely at odds with their assumed identities, and ironically, if they had used Russian names no one would have noticed with the massive post-Soviet immigration to the US.
It was the anomalies people noticed. Several of the couples had children whom the prosecutors alleged were to provide cover. The thought of James Bond pushing a baby buggy for deep cover seems unconvincing. There seems to be no evidence that they passed on serious secret information, and much of what they did allegedly seek, like information on administration personnel's attitudes to Russia, could have been obtained by journalists or even by trawling the web.
That is why they are charged only with being unregistered agents of foreign governments - an accusation frequently made against lobbyists - rather than with espionage...