29 June 2010
Sleepers
(Presidents Medvedev and Obama at Ray’s Hellburger in Arlington. AP photo by Charles Dharapak)
It is not a gig I would choose now, but it is a pretty good one, and I might have been attracted to it in my youth, about the time I graduated and had no particular future.
Of course I am referring to the ten Russians who had identities manufactured for them a decade ago, and came to America to become sleeper agents.
The FBI had the grace to wait to arrest them until the recent upbeat meeting with the Russian leadership was over. Like the President, I am a little mystified at why they felt they had to step in and act now. After all, it is not like they had actually done anything.
It is a little baffling unless you understand investment and Russians. I don’t have time to go back and outline the investment that Uncle Joe Stalin’s NKVD put into the English Public Schools, nor the systematic penetration of every significant branch of the American national security apparatus.
The President apparently could not dissuade the Bureau, even after his trip to Ray’s Hellburger with President Dmitry Medvedev, where the leaders of the bipolar world shared an order of fries. The President likes the place, and I do have to share his admiration for the quality of the hamburgers, even if they do come with fruit on the side if you are not careful.
The "burger diplomacy" and photo-op was the most significant encounter between our nations since that moment at the barbeque in Crawford, Texas, when George W. looked into the glacial blue lakes of Vladmir Putin’s eyes and declared that he had seen a good man’s soul.
It was nonsense, of course, but a good photo op. That would have been about the time the FSB handlers decided to resurrect the concept of deep penetration of the Main Enemy’s institutions.
It was at Arlingotn Hall Station, right across the street from Big Pink, that the secrets of the last generation of Russian sleeper agents were revealed. That was the VENONA project that penetrated the Soviet codes to reveal the sleepers at State and the War Department. The Commies-under-the-beds thing was all quite true, and all quite matter of fact.
The Soviet recruited people to go about their normal lives, joining the government bureaus and offices and rising, over time, to become senior and influential people.
They were not spies, per se, any more than this latest crew. They were intended to be agents of influence. I am pleased the FBI got onto them, and a bit surprised, since it means the FSB tradecraft has suffered in the transition from the KGB. The agents lived among us for more than a decade, in towns and suburbs from Seattle to New York, where the Times said “they seemed to be ordinary couples working ordinary jobs, chatting to the neighbors about schools and apologizing for noisy teenagers.”
The Sleepers were supposed to gather information on nuclear weapons <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/atomic_weapons/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> , American policy toward Iran, C.I.A. <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org> leadership, Congressional politics and other pressing matters. While they may have approached former high-ranking officials and nuclear researchers, there was no evidence that they got any classified information, nor that they were actually supposed to.
With so much on the table with the Russians at the moment, it is indeed strange that the President could not tell the Bureau to just let the agents go about their lives. They were known, and could have been monitored in place, or even turned into doubles.
But it occurs to me that the President was in an awkward position. He could not be perceived to be soft on sleeper agents of a great power, for a perfectly rational reason, even if it jeopardizes relations with the Russians. There is something that underlies the decision to arrest the Sleepers.
I get the e-mail about the President’s past all the time. I enjoy the nutcase Right just like I get stuff from the Looney Left.. Truth in my experience is usually somewhere in the middle, even if some secrets have to be kept a long time, like the VENONA papers.
But I have to confess that the refusal of Mr. Mr. Obama to open perfectly pedestrian records like college transcripts has contributed to a distinct paranoia by those on the right, and spawned the Birther movement that refuses to believe the President is a natural-born citizen. It has got to the point where there is a significant component of the electorate that believes that the sleeper agent to be most concerned about is the President himself.
Absurd, right?
Anyway, I am hoping that the recent publicity has died down enough that I might get a burger at Ray’s this week. It is the beef, you know?
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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