FBI arrests 11 accused of working as Russian spies

Posted by Kendall Harmon

The White House said Tuesday that it does not expect the arrests of 11 accused members of a Russian espionage ring to affect relations between Washington and Moscow, shrugging off Russian denunciations of the busts as a throwback to the Cold War.

The FBI moved to arrest 10 suspects in the United States on Sunday in part because one of them was scheduled to leave the country, a Justice Department spokesman said. He did not specify which of the defendants was planning to leave.

The 11th suspect was arrested at Larnaca airport on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus as he was about to fly to Budapest, Hungary, Cypriot authorities said Tuesday. The man, identified in a U.S. complaint as Christopher Metsos, 54, was later released on bail but was told to remain on Cyprus for a month pending U.S. extradition proceedings. U.S. officials said Metsos acted as a money man for the ring and purported to be a Canadian citizen.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Europe • Russia

5 Comments
Posted June 29, 2010 at 6:32 pm [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. robroy wrote:

I am so glad we threw Georgia, Poland and Hungary under the bus so that we could “reset” Russian American relations.

June 29, 11:07 pm | [comment link]
2. Cennydd wrote:

Given the FBI’s record of detecting, tracking, and apprehending spies over the years, I’d say the Russians got caught with their hands in the cookie jar again.  Our guys are very, very good at what they do.

June 30, 12:40 am | [comment link]
3. St. Jimbob of the Apokalypse wrote:

Is anyone really surprised?  Come on.  Let’s make sure that the international flights are monitored for Polonium-210.

June 30, 11:25 am | [comment link]
4. IchabodKunkleberry wrote:

Good thing the FBI caught up with the spies. However, the American
people need to pay much more attention to those in Washington,
Wall street, and the business community who wreaked such havoc
on our country’s financial institutions, and also exported our
manufacturing base overseas. They’ve done much more damage than
these Cold War “leftovers”. Don’t worry so much about foreign spies
when it’s the “pillars of the community” who have worked so
diligently to sink our nation.

June 30, 11:44 am | [comment link]
5. Cennydd wrote:

Russia has a long history of recruiting and “deep cover” educating individuals to act as agents in the KGB era, and there’s reason to believe they’re still doing it.  They trained people to sound like Americans and other nationalities…..right down to local accents; even to the point of actually living like us in special school campuses built for this purpose, so it’s no wonder that they were able to fool so many people for so long.

June 30, 2:29 pm | [comment link]
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