THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2010


KLMNO U.S., Russia negotiating spy suspect swaps swap from A1 The legal negotiations over a


guilty plea for the suspects were being conducted separately from discussions between the State Department and Russia over a possible swap. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William J. Burns, the department’s third- ranking official, met Wednesday with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s am- bassador to the United States. The arrests, announced just


days after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited the White House, have been an un- welcome interruption in the Oba- ma administration’s efforts to keep relations with Russia on a steadily improving trajectory. They have also revived Cold


War memories that, until recent- ly, seemed like ancient history. Past spy swaps were the stuff of high drama, from the 1962 re- lease of Soviet spy Rudolf Ivanov- ich Abel in exchange for U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers to the 1986 release of dissident Anatoly Shcharansky and three others for five Soviet agents. Federal prosecutors have not


accused the 10 suspects indicted Wednesday of carrying out espio- nage; the allegations centered largely on their concealed identi- ties and receipt of relatively small amounts of money provided by Moscow Center, as U.S. officials have referred to the Russian in- telligence headquarters.


on washingtonpost.com Video from Moscow


A Russian accused of spying for the West is part


of a swap being worked out for Russians facing spy charges in the U.S., his brother says.


Most of the suspects had been living undercover in the suburbs. According to initial charges and a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday, eight had been under surveillance for at least four years; some of them had been watched since 2000. It remained unclear why the FBI had not moved against them sooner and why it arrested them when it did. On a day of fast-moving devel- opments, officials across the gov- ernment declined to discuss the possibility of a plea arrangement followed by a swap, with the Jus- tice and State departments re- ferring all questions to each oth- er. The Justice Department is- sued a brief statement saying that the defendants were “being transported to the Southern Dis- trict of New York to face the charges against them” and that the unsealed indictment was “the next step in that process.” But the issuance of the in-


dictment — without any new charges — the sudden transfers and the possibility that all 10 de-


fendants might plead guilty to- gether were highly unusual in a federal criminal case. Only one of the suspects, Vicky


Pelaez, arrested in New York, is a naturalized American citizen; the others are Russian citizens. They include Pelaez’s husband, Juan Lazaro, also arrested in New York. The others are Natalia Pere- verzeva and Mikhail Kutsik, who were living together in Alexan- dria as a married couple under the names Patricia Mills and Mi- chael Zottoli. Mikhail Semenko was also arrested in Alexandria. In


Boston, the defendants


known as Donald Heathfield and his wife, Tracey Lee Ann Foley, identified themselves as Russians but waived their rights to identity and detention hearings. Five of the suspects, including two cou- ples, were arrested in New York. The 11th person named in the in- dictment, Christopher Metsos, was arrested on the Mediterra- nean island of Cyprus but fled af- ter being released on bail. Several of the spy suspects


have children, although their na- tionalities and futures are un- certain. Tim Foley, 20, is a stu- dent at George Washington Uni- versity who was featured in a November article in The Wash- ington Post about budding entre- preneurs. He said he was born in Toronto, attended high school in Boston, and wanted to live in Asia and work in the banking in- dustry.


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2004 PHOTO BY GLEB SHCHELKUNOV/REUTERS


Igor Sutyagin was convicted of selling information to a British firm that Russian prosecutors contend was a CIA front.


In spy swap negotiations, a Russian bargaining chip


by Walter Pincus


Igor Sutyagin, a Russian dis- armament researcher, is one of Moscow’s biggest bargaining chips in a possible spy swap with the United States. Sutyagin was working for the


Institute for the Study of the Unit- ed States and Canada in Moscow 11 years ago when he was jailed for allegedly selling information about nuclear submarines and missile warning systems to a Brit- ish firm. Russian prosecutors al- leged that the firm, Alternative Futures, was a front for the CIA. At the time, Sutyagin, then 39, denied the charges, saying that he was a consultant to the firm and that the only information he had collected was from public docu- ments, newspapers and other open sources. He also said he was not aware of any ties between Al- ternative Futures and the CIA. Sutyagin’s lawyer, Anna Stavit-


skaya, said in an interview Wednesday that her client had been forced to sign a document this week that included an admis- sion of guilt. But she said he in- sisted to his parents, who relayed the account to Stavitskaya, “that he is absolutely innocent” of the charges against him. “He has never been a spy, and he had to sign the paper because he did not have any other choice,” Stavitskaya said. “He thinks that if they exchange him for the so- called spies, everyone will think that he is a spy also, and he is not.” Even before Sutyagin’s convic-


tion, Russian and international human rights groups had urged Moscow to release him. Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Euro- pean Union governments seeking their help in raising the issue with the government of Vladimir Pu- tin. After his conviction, the State Department mentioned the case


in its 2007 human rights report. The first court to hear Sutya-


gin’s case, in 2001, refused to con- vict the researcher because of in- adequate evidence. But the court sent the case back to the FSB, the domestic successor to the KGB, for further investigation. After he was found guilty in 2004 — and sentenced to 15 years in prison — commentators and analysts de- cried the verdict and said an over- zealous government in Moscow was simply seeking to discourage others from sharing sensitive in- formation with other countries. In an op-ed piece in The Wash-


ington Post, Masha Lipman, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center, described Sutya- gin’s conviction as offering “more evidence of how Russia’s judicial system is falling under the control of the executive branch.” She said it showed how “even the jury trial can be turned into a mock institu- tion when superior political will and ‘accusatory bias’ substitute for justice.” After the trial, Sutyagin’s boss


at the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada, Sergei Rogov, said his researcher never disclosed before his arrest that he worked for the British firm. He said Sutyagin sometimes left the country to meet with com- pany officials in Warsaw, Buda- pest and elsewhere without tell- ing him. “He was doing it outside the normal rules, behind my back, and that’s why he invited trouble,” Rogov said in a 2004 interview. In the intervening years, Sutya- gin has appealed unsuccessfully to Russia’s Supreme Court. Putin declined to pardon him because he had not admitted his guilt. pincusw@washpost.com


Special correspondent Natasha Abbakumova in Moscow contributed to this report.


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Sutyagin, a 45-year-old re- searcher of arms control and nu- clear weapons, was hastily moved from a prison colony in Kholmo- gory in the Arkhangelsk region Monday and taken to Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, where author- ities allowed relatives to visit him. “This morning, his parents called me and said that they’d talked to Igor and he said that he is being exchanged for Russian alleged spies detained in the U.S.,” his attorney, Anna Stavit- skaya, said in a telephone inter- view. She said he asked his family to make his story public because he was told that if he did not sign papers, he was confessing to the crime he had always denied com- mitting. He was also warned that his family would be in danger and that the prisoner exchange would be scuttled. The lawyer said that upon ar-


rival at the Moscow prison, Su- tyagin was taken into a room where unidentified Americans and Russian officers were pre- sent. “He doesn’t know who they were or whom they represented,” she said, adding that the Amer- icans “did not talk much,” accord- ing to her client. She said a Rus- sian officer told him that “we want to exchange you” for the Russians held in the United States. “I’ve been in prison for 11 years, and I know what it’s like,” Stavitskaya quoted her client as


S


Russia Spy Case Notable Cold War spy swaps


Preparations are apparently underway for an exchange of accused spies in Russia and the United States. During the Cold War, the West and the Soviet Union frequently traded spies, or at least those accused of espionage. A look at some notable cases:


1962 The United States frees


Soviet spy Rudolf Ivanovich Abel in exchange for pilot Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 spy plane had been shot down over the Soviet Union two years earlier.


1969 Heinz Felfe, a German


national who worked as a mole for the Soviets in West Germany, is traded for three West German students who had been imprisoned on charges of spying on the Soviets for the CIA.


In the largest-ever Cold War spy swap, 23 Westerners imprisoned for espionage in East Germany and Poland are released to the United States in exchange for four Eastern Bloc spies, including Marian Zacharski, Poland’s most famous spy.


1985 1986 Soviet dissident Anatoly


Shcharansky (later Natan Sharansky) is freed along with three other men accused of being spies. The United States turns over five people, including Soviet spies Karl Koecher and Hana Koecher. As part of the swap, West Germany releases three alleged agents.


telling his relatives, “and I don’t want others to be in prison, so if I can save someone, fine, I’ll do that.”


pincusw@washpost.com deyoungk@washpost.com


ASSOCIATED PRESS


Francis Gary Powers poses in front of a U-2 spy plane.


A9


JUSTICE DEPARTMENT


Anatoly Sharansky being released to West Berlin.


Special correspondent Natasha Abbakamova in Moscow and staff writer Jerry Markon and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.


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