An FBI mole may have been the one to plant a listening device in Russia’s United Nations mission in Manhattan that lead directly or indirectly to the arrest of three SVR spies targeting the US financial system.
The FBI recently arrested a deep cover Russian intelligence officer and identified in the public indictment two other agents from Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, SVR, accusing them of collecting “economic intelligence and building clandestine espionage networks in New York.”
According to reports the spies were specifically targeting the US Financial System.
See video: Nightly Business Report: Spies on Wall Street? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjmoRvl-YJw
There is all sorts of speculation as to how the SVR spies were uncovered in the first place.
Here is what we know so far.
The US indictment is based on evidence from physical and electronic surveillance of Russian operatives who exhibited sloppy tradecraft. However it also makes clear that the most compromising evidence came from a listening device that the FBI somehow implanted within the secure perimeter of the SVR station at Russia’s United Nations mission in Manhattan.
Which basically means that the FBI had a mole within the SVR station who installed the transmitter.
In espionage jargon, a mole (also called a penetration agent, deep cover agent, or sleeper agent) is a long-term spy (espionage agent) who is recruited before he or she has access to secret intelligence, and subsequently works his or her way into the target organization. If that make sense?
However it is popularly used to mean any long-term clandestine spy or informant within an organization, whether government or private.
If this is true in this case, then the entire SVR station is compromised.
Those spies compromised were: Evgeny Buryakov, 39, Igor Sporyshev, 40, and Victor Podobnyy, 27, who prosecutors say are agents of the Russian Federation’s Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR.
See related video: Documentary on Spy Tactics, Secrets and Espionage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvqojPY8Qo4