The war in Ukraine: the United States, “hotbed” of Russian spies

Russia has been spying on the US for decades. with agents who have been living and behaving like Americans for years and with cyber tactics, in surveillance that has now reached industrial levels.

Washington DC has always had a reputation for be a hotbed of spies and it appears that this reputation is real, at least as far as Russian espionage is concerned.

Former intelligence agent Chris Costa, executive director of the International Spy Museum in the US capital, he explained to Efe that Moscow has been spying on his country since the Cold War.

Now, “those of us who study espionage value this the Russians are much more aggressive than they have been in their history. They’re spying on an industrial scale, not just in the United States, but they’re trying to do it, especially in Europe.”

Co-opt

Russian spies “may be motivated by ideology, by money or simply because they want to support Russia in its war against Ukraine,” Costa said.

All the experts consulted by EFE agree that there are two types of agents: those acting under the aegis of the Russian embassy, ​​who are easier to detect, and the so-called “illegals”, that come under a false pretext, such as working in a “think tank” or think tank, and pretend to be someone else.

Jack Barsky, German whose real name is Albrecht Dittrich, he was one of those Russian agents sent to the United States in the days when the Soviet Union still existed, between 1978 and 1988. Ten years later, the FBI discovered him and after cooperating with the US authorities he became a US citizen

Barsky was one of a group of 10 “illegal” spies sent by the KGB.

“I was probably the only one who could pretend I was born in the US because of my talent with languages. Usually the ‘illegals’ were smuggled in from another country. Brazil was one of the favourites because it was relatively easy to transfer someone there, obtain Brazilian citizenship and then officially come to the United States as an immigrant,” he explained to EFE.

Barsky, who told about his life in the book “Deep Undercover”, he was trained for five years. The KGB wanted its spies to be safe and not caught: “One of the differences between the Soviet Union and Russia today is that Vladimir Putin doesn’t care if his agents get caught, because he likes to scare the West.” .

Rebekah Koffler’s experience is different: born in Russia, this American worked for the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA.

Intelligence

The author of “Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America” ​​believes that Russian espionage has not changed with the war in Ukraine. Moscow has always had “a very strong intelligence gathering program“, assured EFE.

For her, the big difference between Russia and the United States is that the Russians are “very good” when it comes to “throwing bodies on the battlefield,” as they are doing in Ukraine or in the intelligence arena. That is, they opt for quantity, while Americans work more on priorities.

“Almost all of our intelligence resources have been focused on the war on terror, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and all of these things, often at the expense of Russia and China“, for which attention was paid to the United States, said the expert.

Even so, his country also polices Russia with agents on the ground, but less so than his opponent, as “it is very easy to infiltrate an agent into the United States from Canada”.

“They go incognito, pretend to be someone else, with papers, there is a whole process that takes years: training a spy, getting him to get his papers… What Russians do is literally go to cemeteries and take the names of dead children,” Koffler said.

In his view, there is a Russian “cultural predisposition” to send agents to the United States, because “it is easy” for them to enter the North American country, unlike the Americans, for whom access to Russia is “extremely difficult” because of the language

“Americans simply cannot learn Russian, to the same level that Russians speak English,” summed up Koffler, who stressed that “the United States is a good place to be, nobody wants to go and live in Russia for a long time.” “.

Conversely, Washington is more inclined to use the collection of “technical” information. and IT activities.

According to retired Colonel Robert Hamilton, an expert on Eurasia at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) think tank, the United States is “very good at signals and images and measuring things on the electromagnetic spectrum” and at understanding where do they come from and what do they mean.

“In general, I think the United States does not like human intelligenceHe doesn’t like the idea of ​​recruiting people against his own country, though that doesn’t mean he doesn’t; we do and we have a robust human intelligence program,” Hamilton recalled in statements to EFE.

Indeed, Americans they are trying to recruit Russiansunderlined Costa, through messages on social media and in the press, taking advantage of the invasion of Ukraine.

“If you don’t like what Russia is doing in Ukraine, come talk to us” is the message from the FBI and CIA to the Russians.

In the United States, it is up to the FBI to investigate possible Russian spies. The easiest to intercept are those linked to the embassy, ​​with the old-fashioned detective work, but things get more complicated with the “illegals”.

There the FBI conducts outreach activities with expert groups to explain to them the risks of infiltration by a Russian spyas well as depending on “suggestions” and collaboration with EFE international partners