By SCOTT SHANE and CHARLIE SAVAGE
c.2010 New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON – They had lived for more than a decade in U.S. cities and suburbs from Seattle to New York, where they seemed to be ordinary couples working ordinary jobs, chatting to the neighbors about gardening and schools, apologizing for noisy teenagers.
On Monday, though, federal prosecutors accused 11 people of being part of a Russian espionage ring, living under false names and deep cover in a patient scheme to penetrate what one coded message called American “policymaking circles.”
An FBI investigation that began at least seven years ago culminated with the arrest Sunday of 10 people in Yonkers, Boston, and northern Virginia. The documents detailed what the authorities called the “Illegals Program,” an ambitious, long-term effort by the SVR, the successor to the Soviet KGB, to plant Russian spies in the United States to gather information and recruit more agents.
The charges did not include espionage, and it was unclear what secrets the suspected spy ring – which included five couples – actually managed to collect or what prompted U.S. authorities to finally shut it down.
Criminal complaints filed in U.S. district court Monday read like an old-fashioned cold war thriller: Spies swapping identical orange bags as they brushed past one another in a train station stairwell; an identity borrowed from a dead Canadian, forged passports of several countries, letters sent by shortwave burst transmission or in invisible ink; a money cache buried for years in a field in upstate New York.
But the network of so-called illegals – spies operating under false names outside of the usual diplomatic cover – also used cyber-age technology, according to the charges. They embedded coded texts in ordinary-looking images posted on the Internet, and they communicated by having two agents with laptops containing special software pass casually as messages flashed between them.
Neighbors in Montclair, N.J., of the couple who called themselves Richard and Cynthia Murphy were flabbergasted when a team of FBI agents turned up Sunday night and led the couple away in handcuffs. One person who lives nearby called them “suburbia personified.” Others worried about the Murphys’ elementary-age daughters, who were driven away by a family friend.
Jessie Gugigi, 15, said she could not believe the charges, especially against Cynthia Murphy, who was an accomplished gardener.
“They couldn’t have been spies,” Gugigi said. “Look what she did with the hydrangeas.”
Experts on Russian intelligence expressed astonishment at the scale, longevity and dedication of the program. They noted that Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian prime minister and former president and spy chief, had worked to restore the prestige and funding of Russian espionage after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dark image of the KGB.
“The magnitude, and the fact that so many illegals were involved, was a shock to me,” said Oleg D. Kalugin, a former KGB general who worked as a Soviet spy in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s under “legal” cover as a diplomat and Radio Moscow correspondent. “It’s a return to the old days, but even in the worst years of the cold war, I think there were no more than 10 illegals in the U.S., probably fewer.”
Kalugin, now a U.S. citizen living outside Washington, said he was impressed with the FBI’s penetration of the spy ring. The criminal complaints are packed with vivid details gathered in years of covert surveillance – including monitoring phones and e-mails, placing secret microphones in the alleged Russian agents’ homes, and numerous surreptitious searches.
The authorities also tracked one set of agents based in Yonkers on trips to an unidentified South American country, where they were videotaped receiving bags of cash and passing messages written in invisible ink to Russian handlers in a public park, according to the charges.
Prosecutors said the “Illegals Program” extended to other countries around the world. Using fraudulent documents, the charges said, the spies would “assume identities as citizens or legal residents of the countries to which they are deployed, including the United States Illegals will sometimes pursue degrees at target-country universities, obtain employment and join relevant professional associations” to deepen their false identities.
One message from bosses in Moscow, in awkward English, gave the most revealing account of the agents’ assignment.
“You were sent to USA for long-term service trip,” it said. “Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. – all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles and send intels intelligence reports to Center.”
It was not clear what the intelligence reports were about, although one agent was described as meeting a U.S. government employee working in a nuclear program. The defendants were charged with conspiracy, not to commit espionage but to launder money and to fail to register as agents of a foreign government, crimes carrying potential sentences of five to 20 years. They are not accused of obtaining classified materials.
There were also hints that Russian spy bosses feared their agents might be losing track of their official purpose. Agents in Boston submitted an expense report with such vague items as “trip to meeting” for $1,125 and “education,” $3,600. In Montclair, when the Murphys wanted to buy a house under their names, “Moscow Center,” or “C.,” the SVR headquarters, objected.
“We are under an impression that C. views our ownership of the house as a deviation from the original purpose of our mission here,” the New Jersey couple wrote in a coded message. “From our perspective purchase of the house was solely a natural progression of our prolonged stay here. It was a convenient way to solving the housing issue, plus ‘to do as the Romans do’ in a society that values home ownership.”
Much of the ring’s activity – and the FBI investigators’ surveillance – took place in and around New York. The alleged agents were spotted in a bookstore in Lower Manhattan, a bench near the entrance to Central Park and a restaurant in Sunnyside, Queens. Secret exchanges were made at busy locations like the Long Island Railroad’s station in Forest Hills, Queens, where FBI watchers in 2004 spotted one defendant who is still not in custody, Christopher R. Metzos, the charging papers say.
The arrests made a splash in neighborhoods around the country, as FBI teams spent all Sunday night hunting through houses and cars, shining flashlights and carting away evidence.
In Cambridge, Mass., the couple known as Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley, who appeared to be in their 40s and had two teenage sons, lived in an apartment building on a residential street where some Harvard professors and students live.
“She was very courteous; she was very nice,” Montse Monne-Corbero, who lives in the apartment next door, said of Tracey Foley, who she said spoke with a foreign accent and was “pretty” with short blond hair.
Lila Hexner, who lives in the building next door, said Tracey Foley told her she was in the real estate business. “She said they were from Canada,” Hexner said.
Another of those charged, Mikhail Semenko, who the authorities said used his real name, was a stylish man in his late 20s who drove a Mercedes S-500, said Tatyana Day, who lives across the street from him in Arlington, Va. He had a brunette girlfriend and the young couple spoke to one another in Russian and “kept to themselves,” Day said.