Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wants to know who outed the country’s beloved spy babe Anna Chapman and her network of sleeper agent coworkers who infiltrated the United States. Oh, and he’s looking in your direction, Mikhail Fradkov, head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service.Medvedev called for an investigation into how a Russian spy ring of sleeper agents hiding in the United States for years were busted by the FBI this summer. Chapman and her fellow Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) spies made headlines after it was revealed that the agents had slipped into the United States to access American policy circles and suck up to political bigwigs in search of information on American foreign policy.
Medvedev’s comments added fuel to a growing controversy over a report from Kommersant, a Kremlin-linked Russian newspaper, that the SVR dropped the ball on rooting out a treasonous employee, a mysterious “Colonel Shcherbakov,” said to have tipped off American intelligence about the network of Russian sleeper agents in the country.
“As for me, it was not the news for me, I learnt about it on that day, when it happened with all the proper features,” Medvedev said. “The proper investigation should be carried out and proper lessons should be drawn.”
Kommersant’s report claims Shcherbakov should have raised alarm bells at the SVR because he had refused a promotion which would have required him to take a polygraph test. His son is also said to have immigrated to the United States – a counterintelligence foul in Russian intelligence agencies – shortly before Shcherbakov himself skipped town and fled to America.
The idea that a Russian double agent betrayed the sleeper network isn’t necessarily a new one. When Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had a singing session with the outed spooks in July, he noted ominously, “traitors always end badly. As a rule, they end up in the gutter as drunks or drug addicts.” But the Shcherbakov name – and more importantly the blame for the SVR – are new aspects to the story.
So is the story true?
It could all just be Russian backroom cabinet politics spilling out into the newspapers. Ace intel reporter Jeff Stein quotes Kommersant’s former editor claiming that the leak might be an attempt to discredit current SVR chief Mikhail Fradkov and pave the way for Medvedev pal and Kremlin chief administrator Sergey Naryshkin to take over the intelligence agency once the president leaves office in 2012. Fradkov’s been getting an earful in Russia’s parliament ever since the story broke and is facing calls for his resignation.
Medvedev could have very easily refused to comment for the story or cited official security, so his decision to give the story legs is curious. Whether there was a mole named Shcherbakov or not in the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence chief might want to be very careful these days.
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