Prisoner swap with Russia was a success

OPINION:

Earlier this month, the U.S. and Russia completed their largest prisoner swap ever involving 24 people. Among the eight who were released back to Russia in return for unlawfully detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and 15 others, were two deep undercover Russian intelligence officers, who had been posing as an Argentinian family living in Slovenia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed their young children in Spanish as he welcomed them back to the motherland because they had been unwittingly living their parents cover story, totally oblivious to the fact that they were actually Russian citizens. The couple reportedly arrived in Argentina in 2012, where they were married and had their two children.

Their true names are Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva but they used Argentinian alias names and operated an IT start up as well as an online art gallery to enhance their cover for status. Russia’s foreign intelligence agency (SVR) chose to deploy them to European Union member state Slovenia in 2017 to facilitate their operational travel, necessary for spying across the continent.

That is until the Slovene Intelligence and Security Agency (SOVA) began investigating them a couple of years ago and uncovered enough incriminating evidence of their SVR affiliation to put them in prison.

How SOVA learned of the Duntsev spy family is of course a secret and will likely remain so. The SVR heavily compartmentalizes its sensitive illegals network, which are considered the service’s Crown Jewels. Hunting for them would have been like searching for a needle in a stack of needles.

An “Illegal” is a Russian intelligence officer sometimes known as a “sleeper” agent operating under nonofficial rather than traditional diplomatic cover. That’s why the Duntsevs could not claim immunity from prosecution after they were arrested. Illegals are meant to serve as stay-behind spies if intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover are expelled, as has so often been the case while Mr. Putin has controlled the Kremlin.

The SVR often uses Illegals to run its most sensitive operations. In 2008, the Estonian Security Police (KAPO) arrested Herman Simm for spying on Russia’s behalf. Simm turned out to be Russia’s highest profile NATO spy. One of his SVR handlers included SVR Illegal Sergey Yakovlev, who had adopted an alias Portuguese identity.

Playing to his KGB past, Mr. Putin has relentlessly dialed back the Soviet Union’s spy playbook, which relied on Illegals to steal our nuclear secrets in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Having served as an illegal support officer in East Germany, Mr. Putin set his sights on revitalizing the SVR’s illegal program after he became president in 2000. Under Mr. Putin’s direction, 10 SVR illegals set up shop in the U.S. but they were exposed in the FBI’s “Ghost Stories” operation, which culminated in the 2010 spy swap involving notorious SVR Illegal Anna Chapman, to whom the misogynist Russian media referred as “agent 90-60-90” because those were her body measurements in centimeters.

This poisoner swap was a success first and foremost because we brought American citizens home from behind the Kremlin’s enemy lines. But there are three additional bright spots for U.S. national security.

First, Mr. Putin must be seething over another SVR intelligence flap, which led to the Duntsev family’s arrest and exposed whatever secret spy work they were doing. After the 2010 “Spy Swap,” Mr. Putin allowed then SVR Director Mikhail Fradkov to hang on for a few years but then dispatched him out of government to be Director of an inconsequential think tank. Current SVR Director Sergey Naryshkin, who replaced Mr. Fradkov, must be wondering whether his head is on the chopping block, maybe not literally but at least figuratively. Expect the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to take advantage of this bit of leverage against its rival service.

Second, Slovenia reportedly relied on assistance from other NATO member intelligence services to uncloak the Duntsev Illegals. This is a model for collaboration among our closest allies to defeat a sophisticated adversary, which is increasingly engaging in sabotage, propaganda, and spying across international boundaries.

Third, the U.S. and Russia demonstrated that even when our bilateral relations are arguably at their lowest point since the Cuban Missile Crisis, the two sides can still find some common ground and settle a complex and acrimonious issue of mutual interest at the negotiating table. Negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine might be a bridge too far in the near term, especially while Mr. Putin is occupying the Kremlin, but perhaps there might be a sliver of opportunity for more robust counterterrorism exchanges and strategic arms control talks.

• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018.