U.S. Spies Rush to Protect Defectors After Skripal Poisoning

Obviously one of the key aspects to the story is the sub-text, though not so 'sub' in the last paragraph, that the US will look after and protect any informants. It is certainly an important message for potential informants in response to Putin's threats towards them. And good. We need as much info about Putin and his Russia as possible.

Let's not forget the mysterious and unsolved shooting of Paul M. Joyal, a former U.S. government employee and Russia critic. Mr. Joyal had professional associations with "enemies" of the Russian state. The crime was committed in March 2007 about 8 miles north of our Capital.

The C.I.A. appears to be using its informant resettling program in part as an excuse to carry out surveillance operations within the US; an activity expressly stated at the time of its establishment to be beyond the agency's mandate, and thus absolutely verboten.

Putin is in the NYTs mind Satan. Its hard to imagine the mystical powers that Putin has to over throw American democracy and assassinate people at will with no regard to hide his tracks. They messed up the assassination. But Putin is relentless.

The question not answered here is how the hit man knew the locations of the CIA informants. It could be an ill timed outreach through social media but, what isn’t posited here is that the source could be a rogue actor in the CIA. It’s no wonder that, as recently reported, the Russian assets of the CIA have gone dark. That uncertainty — how is Putin finding defectors— has a chilling affect.

I'm sure Traitor Trump, given the opportunity would provide names and addresses of all Russian informants living in the U.S. to his soulmate. The sociopath is the one the FBI and CIA need to watch out for.

I'll bet Putin spends part of his day bent over laughing so hard it must hurt. Comrades ,Comrades tourist! tourists!!!!!!

'...began tracking him and discussed whether to stop and question him. But detaining a Russian who arrived in the country legally is difficult,.. " It should be no problem to authorize the CIA to just grab them when they approach a resettled spy's residence and send them to Guantanamo for interrogation and disposal. The Russians are never squeamish about these things.

Wow, an informative article, but I had to ask myself whether this material should disclosed in the news. Doesn't this information also inform Putin how much the CIA/FBI knows about their nefarious pursuit of spies so that Russia can better craft attacks? I assume NYT considered such risks, as when the article says certain information is withheld. Still, I hope the desire for "increased readership" does not bias decisions of what to disclose. It is newsworthy to learn about Russia's diligence in entering other countries, but is this news worth the risks to defending against such attacks?

Maybe it is time to put tracking collars on all Russians entering the U.S.

It all fits. Penchant for Florida? Check. Using assumed names, like "John Bannon?" Check. Fearful of Putin? Check. Undermined by use of social media? Check. Honey trap with an Eastern European? Check. Is there any way that Trump DOESN'T fit the model of a mole?

"The possibility of them doing the same thing here cannot be discounted" Suggest that Russia doing the same in the U.S. can be expected, that Russian "hit men" or Russian Mafia, essentially the same, if identified be taken out or placed in GTMO to rot! It is time to recognize Russia for what it is, a criminalized Kleptocracy of violence and corruption.

I have to laugh: “They are given American citizenship and asked where they want to live. Many, a former senior C.I.A. officer said, prefer Florida.” After the climate in the bulk of Russia, I imagine that Florida looks mighty good. It’s too bad that we’re still in a Cold War, but those who have studied arcane Russian history know about it’s famous xenophobia; there’s a deep reason why a “democratized” Russia wouldn’t trust the U.S. Yet, legislators here somehow invented the notion of a “peace dividend” from the collapse of the Soviet Union. I never bought that. Well, a good result from all this is that we’ll still have those exciting spy novels. Plots abound.

Russia was described as "murder incorporated" by Ronald Reagan July 8th 1985. I always thought communism was the reason for the Russians immoral or rather amoral behaviour. Apparently this is not so.

The principle problem with these 'spy vs. spy' games is that an innocent person can get caught in the figurative crossfire, as apparently happened in England this year. The threat of that ought to be the benchmark for deciding when to actively intervene with a suspected Russian or foreign agent in the U.S., and the FBI should tell the CIA to forget about protecting its methods when it comes to that. Let's not forget that the CIA's reluctance to cooperate with the FBI was a major reason why the 9/11 plot was not discovered.

Bloomberg reported yesterday of anther possible poisoning victim: Pyotr Verzilov, an anti-Putin activist and producer of the political punk band Pussy Riot, was hospitalized in Moscow with suspicious symptoms. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-13/pussy-riot-activist-s...

How lucky are those resettled Russian spies that our current President is not into the habit of reading, otherwise he would have cancelled the funding for the spy resettle program long time ago. Gotta love the tale of the two Salisbury Russian poisoning thugs, sorry, tourists, who went twice by the house of ex-spy Skripal. "The first day (In Southern England, in March...) was too cold so we decided to return the next day"..

Mr Manafort must be awake late at night.

If you had the choice of living in a beach house in California or Florida or living in a Moscow apartment, which would you choose? Now that this story has made into the NYT more Russian operatives may be opting to reveal information to the FBI and CIA for the chance of escaping Putin's grasp.

If the UK's accusation is verifed by a neutral international panel, the perpetrators must be brought to justice. Period. However, one must question this demonisation of Russia and Putin by the UK and the US. This holier-than-thou attitude does not hold. Who was responsible for the coup d'etat and death of Mosaddegh in Iran and Allende in Chile - the UK and the US. How many innocent civilians were killed due to the patently illegal war on Iraq in 2003 by the US and the UK - over 100,000. How many Vietnamese were killed in the Vietnam war by the French and the US - over half a million. We are not even talking about the killing of hundreds of thousands of people by European nations during their empire building days - the French in Algeria, the Belgians in the Congo, the Germans in South West Africa and the British everywhere. How many people have been brought to justice for these crimes? Churchill was directly responsible for the death of millions of people in the 1943 famine in Bengal and he is treated as some kind of a hero. Don't Western nations spy on Russia? Hasn't NATO expanded to the border of Russia? Don't Western intelligence agencies hack into Russian networks? In order to restore balance, I look forward to the Times publishing articles detailing the work of Western Governments and intelligence agencies in undermining nations and Governments around the world since WWII.

Another interesting point I haven't seen discussed is that apparently there were no flights from Moscow to Gatwick by Aeroflot. Obviously, they boarded a plane by Rossia Airlines (Aeroflot subsidiary) in St. Petersburg, but returned to Moscow.

So let me get this straight, Russian Hit-men travel to the United States to murder somebody on American soil and the FBI/CIA don't immediately arrest them and charge them with conspiracy to commit murder? Shouldn't they be charged, convicted and imprisoned for the rest of their lives? I think that would send a message to Putin that such shenanigans won't be tolerated by the United States.

That the known Russian Intelligence Officer "entered the United States on a valid visa" means there's a whole lot more to this story.

Bayesian logic fails in the face of this complexity. The base case for the government version is no better than 50-50. A thousand Russian tourist come and go every day in the UK. Maybe give us a random sample of the others. There are tons of other organs-phosphate poisons around Salisbury farms, not even mentioning the chemical weapons center. So trying to up date the odds, with new information, the Clintons, the dossier, Spanish spys, Russian mobsters, it's too much. As Adam Smith noted, conspiracy is the default mode. So a conspiracy is involved it is just not clear whose. Cui Bono?

Look at the ratio of Russians moving to the United States legally or in most cases illegally, and Americans moving to Russia. Ten thousand to one? Trump promises to fix immigration which is why most of his supporters voted for him, then he does nothing but whines about everything. Russian agents act with impunity here and will continue to do so. When will this country start fighting this new Cold War? Maybe we already lost? Trump the double agent man.

I do not believe that the US should have imposed sanctions to help the UK. The UK can take care of itself and its spies without involving the US. By getting involved the US has just made is harder to deal with Russia. The Skripal case was a UK case and it should stay in the UK. We have not business interfering. Look at Vostok 2018 if you want to know how powerful the RUssians are getting.

How did Mikhail Lesin, a former Gazprom executive who died in a DC hotel room of “blunt force trauma”, not get a mention in this article? Although not said to be a former spy, this had all the earmarks of a Russian hit within our borders. It does not appear that a full investigation has yet been done.

If the British want to get serious, they will stop allowing Russians from entering the country.

Nerve agent assassinations? Well, I'm sure there are very good people on both sides of this issue. Plus, Putin very strongly stated that his people weren't involved, and I believe him.

Several hours of round trip air travel from Russia: $1000. Two round trip train trips and three nights at a London hotel: $1200. 10 minutes at Salisbury Cathedral: Priceless!

Assassination on American soil is intolerable. We are a country that sends SEALs to rescue a single trapped American in a hostile area. And the amount of harm to Americans over the Internet is many times as much. It is technically simple to protect Americans from attacks over the Internet from non-allied nations without invading anyone's privacy (increasingly effective over time), but nothing that will be effective is being done. It's not as simple to protect people from assassination, but it sounds like the government took the threat seriously, at least. The real issue is, how much are the American people willing to sacrifice for greater protection?

Never underestimate the power of human instincts. Despite the risk of being discovered, it’s so hard to let go of connection to family and friends. It’s really fascinating.

I just wonder if the Russian people actually believe that the UK is making up lies - as the Russian media affirm quite vehemently. What does the average Russian believe? It seems to me that the UK investigation is far more watertight than any other counter-arguments so far presented. Here is a quote from a British website which is pro-Russian: "...............And the rare poison allegedly used, not kept anywhere in Russia today and the product of a country that ceased to exist 27 years ago, is kept just 8 miles from Salisbury at Porton Down. .......... Also professional assassins would not then have thrown away the bottle used for the poison into a litter bin in a park in Salisbury!.... In any case, why would Russia want to kill a retired British spy, who had already served a jail term in Russia and then ...........lived safely in Moscow? That is why a very large number of British people do not believe a single word of the Establishment about the Skripal case." from http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk

I like the way these two guy’s facts of Salisbury are all in the opening paragraph of the Salisbury Cathedral’s Wikipedia page. Height? Check. Clock? Check. Okay we’re experts now! Oh, and two Russian guys supposedly put off by a light bit of slush? If it didn’t involve military-grade nerve-gas and loss of life, this would qualify as ‘epic trolling’.

The interview with both the Russian suspects is fascinating. It makes no sense. They went to Salisbury from London and back by train (about 90 miles) on 2 consecutive days. They knew nothing about Salisbury. It has a big Cathedral.....hmmmm. I have just finished reading a book on Kim Philby, the British spy, who betrayed the British and the Americans. Understanding that spies like working in the dark it is highly embarrassing for the Russians that they got caught. Putin asked that they reveal themselves.....so they went on Russia Today......not such a good move........they hadn’t even gone to the effort to get their cover story straight.....

Sounds like Russian turncoats get good incentives. A beach house in CA, a BMW. I wonder if a less swanky location and, say, a Volkswagen would have been sufficient. (And easier on the taxpayer's pocket.) After all, where else they would go to hide from Vlad? Surely not to Bulgaria.