The details of the story of the uncovering by the FBI of a ring of alleged “deep-cover” spies in the United States have already been compared in several media reports to vintage Cold War spy thrillers.
This is the story so far: eleven suspects, including three couples married with kids and most living seemingly ordinary suburban lives since the early or mid 1990s, have been accused, after a multi-year investigation by the FBI, of being members of a covert network allegedly run by the SVR, Russia’s successor agency to the KGB. These so-called “illegals,” according to evidence released by the FBI, were charged with the mission of developing ties in US policymaking circles to elicit intelligence for the benefit of “Moscow Centre,” SVR headquarters.
Intercepted communications with Moscow Centre reveal that sources were referred to by rather mundane code names like “Farmer,” “Cat” and “Parrot.” Their “tradecraft,” to borrow from the jargon of the masters of the genre – John Le Carré and Tom Clancy among others – in reference to the techniques and methods of the practice of espionage, apparently included secret meetings and “brush passes,” drop sites, buried money, steganography (using a software program to hide encrypted data in pictures that are placed on public websites), and coded radio bursts.
The FBI’s allegations have been regarded as nothing short of sensational in the USA, even if there is some confusion as to what exactly the alleged ‘moles’ hoped to dig up in their well-tended suburban gardens. Indeed, they appear to have spent much of their time networking, including using Facebook, as part of their modus operandi to cultivate contacts. It remains to be seen however whether their attempts to penetrate high level policy-making circles were successful.
The Russian authorities for their part have tacitly admitted that the suspects were agents, but have argued, rather curiously, that the alleged spies had never acted against US interests and should be allowed to talk to Russian government lawyers and diplomats. The Russian foreign ministry has even issued a statement, calling on the Americans “to display the appropriate understanding in this matter, including taking into account the positive character of the current stage of Russian-American relations.”
So far, there have been no tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomatic personnel from Washington or Moscow, suggesting that even in the post-9/11 world of paranoia and overreaction inhabited by the American security agencies, this case might be a hangover from the Cold War, with little in terms of hard intelligence at stake. There is even a strong feeling in many quarters that much of the information gathered could have been found on Google or Wikipedia, leaving armchair spycatchers to speculate that perhaps the human intelligence aspect was critical – that is, the assessment of agents in the field who could provide insights that analysts at Moscow Centre might not necessarily glean from sifting through impersonal, internet reports.
Indeed, the ordinariness of the lives of the suspects has aroused more bemusement, if not amusement, than fear and outrage. There is even some mild titillation in the case of Anna Chapman, the attractive, socialising 28-year-old, with her somewhat ironically, dyed red hair, who was active on Facebook and who has also had her honeymoon photographs published by a British newspaper, courtesy of her English ex-husband.
Whatever the truth behind the unfolding drama, this spy story appears to be very much one for the social networking age and one thing can safely be said at this stage: it has very little in common with the action-filled capers of James Bond or the clandestine world of conspiracy and assassination of Jason Bourne.
Rather, this is a spy story, lacking in obvious glamour, in spite of the efforts of the tabloids to make more of the Anna Chapman story. It seems more a tale of chameleon-like characters intent on making themselves invisible by blending into their respective social milieus and living lives of almost utter banality. In this regard, the unfinished narrative appears to bear a closer resemblance to the world of Le Carré and Graham Greene, though without the benefit of their stylistic elegance and literary flair. And the full story may well fall short of their treatment of the universal human themes of duplicity, deception and betrayal and their explorations of the psychological impulses that drive men and women to live a lie.
Still, if and when the full facts of the case become public, there is bound to be further human drama in the baring of souls and the conflicts inherent in leading a double life, including the world-shattering impact on the innocent children of the spy families. For the moment, the real interest seems to lie in the blurred space between truth and fiction.
