[THS] Justin Raimondo: Are the Russians Really Coming?

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/06/29/are-the-russians-really-coming/

Are the Russians Really Coming?

It's just like old times again
by Justin Raimondo, June 30, 2010


It’s like taking a trip in a time machine, going all the way back to the darkest days of
the cold war era, as headlines scream: Russian spy cabal arrested! Glamorous
Russian Mata Hari – “worthy of a 007 movie” – was sending secret messages! Eleven
seemingly ordinary – incredibly ordinary – people have been arrested so far, in a
case that seems as bizarre as it is unbelievable. A message supposedly decrypted and
sent to the cabal read as follows:

“You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car,
house etc. – all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and
develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels (intelligence reports) to
C[enter].”

It sounds like Boris Badenov – or a very bad Ian Fleming knock-off. Apparently, the
cabal – numbering eleven spies, at least so far as we know now – was told to
infiltrate the US and blend into America just as if they were ordinary people. They
would go about their ordinary jobs – consultant, real estate agent, housewife and
mother, whatever – take out mortgages, have children, go to PTA meeting, and all
the while they were really sinister Russian agents, plotting god-knows-what heinous
schemes designed to steal our secrets, influence government policy, and undermine
the very fabric of American life. No kidding
.

Take Cynthia Murphy: the woman “neighbors thought they knew was a mom of two
young girls who loved to garden and made sure to water her plants.” They thought
“Richard Murphy was the dad at the bus stop. The couple even had dogs and owned
a Honda.” Yes, but what did they do to actually compromise US national security?

Well, let’s see: Cynthia “allegedly used contacts she had met in New York to convey
information to the Center about prospects for a global gold market.” Oh no!

Furthermore, “the couple were cautious about seeking employment in the U.S.
government, fearing their ‘legends’ weren’t strong enough to withstand a
background check.” So, they didn’t infiltrate the US government, or even try to do
so. A typical Russian spy trick!

Alleged Russian spy Anna Chapman

And then there’s this sinister note: “The FBI also documents Cynthia’s meetings with
a prominent New York- based financier, whose name is omitted from the complaint.
Superiors in Moscow instructed Cynthia to develop the relationship and try to gain
information on foreign policy and access to political events.” How perfectly, awfully
insidious! The next thing you know, they’ll be reading blogs! Cynthia was “a well-
dressed Mom working in a New York bank,” we’re told, and her husband a “stay at
home Dad.” Yet, according to our news media and the cops (or do I repeat myself?):
“In spring 2009, Moscow asked them about President Barack Obama’s views before
an international summit in July.”

Really? But what would a mom working in a New York bank, and a stay at home
Dad, know about that? Something doesn’t smell right about this whole affair: my BS-
ometer is clanging pretty loudly, and yours should be, too.

The indictments read like a very bad movie scenario, complete with machinations
involving invisible ink, hi-tech hijinks, and secret messages – but what, one wonders,
was the point? What did they steal? What damage did they cause? The indictments
mention nothing of the sort, and it’s apparently not at all clear what these “deep
cover” “spies”  accomplished, if anything.

It’s quite a disparate crew our Keystone Kops have supposedly uncovered, including
one Vicky Pelaez, a former Peruvian television reporter and a columnist for El Diario-
La Prensa, whose forte was fiery denunciations of US foreign policy in Latin America,
and her husband Juan Lazaro, a former professor at Baruch College who “taught a
course in politics in Latin America and the Caribbean” and, according to the New
York Times,

“His students said he was a professor like none other. The reason? His passionate
denunciation of American foreign policy. He maintained that the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan were a money-making ploy for corporate America. He praised President
Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and disparaged President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia as a
pawn for paramilitary groups that have broad control over drug trafficking.

“’He challenged us intellectually,’ said one student who graduated in May. ‘He
criticized a lot about what happens in the United States, and that’s what I think got
some people upset.’ Someone was so upset that he or she complained about Mr.
Lazaro, students said, adding that Mr. Lazaro had been let go at the end of the
semester. Some students signed a petition seeking his reinstatement, but they said it
had had no effect.”

Oh god, I’m sooooo glad the FBI is guarding our free society from those horrible
authoritarian commies – aren’t you? Why, if not, college professors would be kicked
out of their positions due to their unpopular political opinions, and we’d be living in a
police state where the government can spy on you in your own home.

Oh, wait


Leave it to Fleet Street to come up with headlines like “Flame-haired beauty Anna
Chapman allegedly part of bizarre Russian spy ring.” Where else but the Daily Mail
would you read a headline like that? (Well, actually, the New York Post would
probably run it, but would call her a “red-headed beauty” instead.) Therein, we learn
“Glamorous Anna Chapman, 28, appeared in court on espionage charges as the
Home Office urgently probed claims one of the suspects used a fake British passport
to travel to Moscow.”

Actually, not a single one of those arrested is being charged with espionage: the
charges are failing to register as a foreign agent, money laundering in some
instances, and using forged passports.

Chapman’s “crime”? Talking to an alleged Russian governmental official on a closed
internet network whilst sitting in Starbucks. Throw the book at her!

While headlines scream “The Glamorous Spy Next Door” and inscribe a narrative on
the public consciousness that there are Russian pod-people possibly living next door
to you, the actual facts tell a far different story. Which is this: probably every country
in the world employs a certain number of people to monitor events in the US while
they live here, sending periodic reports to the “home office,” and Russia’s is probably
the least obtrusive – and, given what we’ve uncovered so far, and the piddling
charges filed against the “spy cabal,” not very good at what they’re supposed to be
doing. However, other nations which do exactly the same thing – and worse – are
somehow exempt from arrest.

And of course it’s just a “coincidence” that this bust comes shortly after Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Washington, which was supposed to herald the
“reset” of Russo-American relations.

This Russian “spy” story is so flaky, so Bizarro World-ish, so obviously a con job that,
really, no commentary is required: all one has to do is report the facts of the “case”
to see that there is no case, or, as Gertrude Stein said of her home town of Oakland,
“no there there.”

So what’s the point? Who knows? There are plenty of people in the US government
who would look favorably on a souring of US-Russian relations. Perhaps the Obama
administration is retaliating for Moscow’s lack of cooperation with the Iranian
sanctions. Or maybe the idea is to divert attention away from the spy networks that
really matter 
.

Day in and day out we are told that al-Qaeda and its allies are relentlessly trying to
penetrate the US so they can blow up a few cities with suitcase nukes, or whatever
horrific weapon they’ve gotten their hands on, and yet what does the FBI come up
with: a dozen or so Russian “moles” left over from the cold war, happily ripping off
their bosses for all kinds of goodies (the Murphys got a $400,000 house paid for by
Russian taxpayers, and put in their name), and having a good old time in America.

The more we learn about the cabal that didn’t steal a single secret, the louder the
alarm on your BS-ometer will ring – that is, if you’re paying attention to the upshot of
this case at all. Most people won’t, of course; they’ll just remember the headlines
about “Russian spies” and retain a general impression of Russian malevolence – and
that’s the whole point. That’s what propaganda – good propaganda – accomplishes.
So we can say, with this little operation: Mission accomplished!