Russia Hunts Double Agent Who Betrayed U.S. Cell
November 11th, 2010Via: MSNBC:
The head of Moscow’s deep cover spying operations in the United States was a double agent who had betrayed at least 10 compatriots in a major blow to Russian intelligence, a Russian newspaper said on Thursday.
Kommersant reported that Colonel Shcherbakov, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service’s department for “illegal” spying operations in the United States, had been working for Washington.
The article listed red flags that the newspaper’s sources said should have been investigated, including that he had a daughter living in the United States and a son who left his government anti-narcotics job shortly before the spy scandal broke. Additionally, Shcherbakov turned down a promotion, which might have involved taking a lie detector test, about a year before the spy ring’s discovery.
The newspaper said Shcherbakov — it did not give his first name — had been spirited out of Moscow to the United States days before the FBI announced in June that it had arrested the members of a Russian spy ring.
