Ten Russian agents posing as Americans and living in the suburbs of DC, New York, and Boston for a decade to glean valuable intelligence have been arrested by the FBI.
My initial take, detailed in my New Atlanticist post “Russian Spy Ring Arrested in USA,” is that this was a Keystone Kops operation.
My initial thought upon reading that is that the Russians could have saved themselves a lot of trouble and simply attended these meetings or checked the various think tank websites for transcripts of these events, most of which are open to the public.
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While there’s doubtless some minor intelligence value to developing relationships with these people, this information is, again, so readily available as to make using surreptitious methods to uncover it farcical. Read the blogs and op-ed pages!
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In terms of what it says about the intelligence capabilities of the two countries, I’m not sure offhand who should be more embarrassed: the Russians for engaging in such an elaborate scheme to access information easily available in open sources or the United States for taking so long to put an end to the farce.
More at the link.
