Like most other experts, DEBKAfile's intelligence sources have no doubt that what the public saw was only a fragment of the full story. For instance, why if the White House was briefed in February about a possible deal to swap 11 Russian agents, was all the hoopla over their capture staged only six months later - or at all?
It would have been more normal for the eleven "moles" to be quietly picked up, tried behind closed doors and sent back to Moscow in a swap before the affair was published.
The Russians must have been sounded out on an exchange deal some time ago and its details negotiated well ahead, such as which agents the FBI would detain, the severity or lenience of the charges against them and, most importantly, which American agents the Russians would release in return. It does not stand to reason that this transaction was put in place as claimed only three or four days before the actual trade.
Our sources believe that hard bargaining was tough and spread over weeks, if not months, because what Moscow really wanted from the deal were not just the 11 semi-dormant moles who had done nothing important except living it up in the US, but two real heavyweights, the two most damaging Russian moles ever to undermine the CIA. Aldrich Ames was finally caught in the mid-1990s after climbing its ranks to become a senior officer and betraying the secrets of most US secret agencies to the KGB; and the FBI's Robert Hanssen, who was believed to have taken over from Ames as Moscow's top illegal agent in America. Both were sentenced to life without parole. Russia has never given up on securing the release of these two master-spies and most probably initiated the swap with the United States for this goal, our intelligence sources believe.
http://www.debka.com/article/8904/
It would have been more normal for the eleven "moles" to be quietly picked up, tried behind closed doors and sent back to Moscow in a swap before the affair was published.
The Russians must have been sounded out on an exchange deal some time ago and its details negotiated well ahead, such as which agents the FBI would detain, the severity or lenience of the charges against them and, most importantly, which American agents the Russians would release in return. It does not stand to reason that this transaction was put in place as claimed only three or four days before the actual trade.
Our sources believe that hard bargaining was tough and spread over weeks, if not months, because what Moscow really wanted from the deal were not just the 11 semi-dormant moles who had done nothing important except living it up in the US, but two real heavyweights, the two most damaging Russian moles ever to undermine the CIA. Aldrich Ames was finally caught in the mid-1990s after climbing its ranks to become a senior officer and betraying the secrets of most US secret agencies to the KGB; and the FBI's Robert Hanssen, who was believed to have taken over from Ames as Moscow's top illegal agent in America. Both were sentenced to life without parole. Russia has never given up on securing the release of these two master-spies and most probably initiated the swap with the United States for this goal, our intelligence sources believe.
http://www.debka.com/article/8904/
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