Russian Spy Master Helped Expose Spy Ring in U.S.

MOSCOW, Nov. 11, 2010 -- A colonel in Russia's SVR, the foreign intelligence service, helped the United States expose the spy ring that was part of July's spy swap, the biggest since the Cold War, according to a leading Russian newspaper.

The long-time SVR officer, identified only as Col. Shcherbakov, was head of the U.S. section in charge of planting moles in the United States, Kommersant reported.

He fled to the United States three days before President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Washington in June.

"After this, the Americans, afraid that we might suspect betrayal and would start pulling out Russian illegals from the U.S., started to arrest them," an intelligence source told Kommersant. "This put the White House into a very awkward position as no one wanted to complicate Medvedev's first visit to the States."

Questions have been raised about why Shcherbakov's activities weren't detected sooner. His daughter has lived in the United States for many years and his son hurriedly left his job in Russia's State Drug Control Unit and went to the United States shortly before the story broke.

Shcherbakov turned down a promotion last year that would have required him to take a lie detector test.

An anonymous senior Kremlin official told Kommersant that authorities are aware of Shcherbakov's location and an agent has been sent to deal him. He used the word "Mercader" to describe such a visit, referring to Ramon Mercader, the assassin who killed revolutionary Leon Trotsky with an ice pick to the skull in 1940.

"The fate of such a person is unenviable," the official said of Shcherbakov. "He will carry this with him all his life and will fear retribution every day."

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in late July that he knew the agents had been betrayed. "[The betrayers] always end up badly, taking to drink or drugs, in a gutter," he said, adding that he knew the traitors' names.

Asked how they would be punished, Putin responded, "Secret services live by their own laws and these laws are very well known to anyone who works for a secret service."

Gennady Gudkov, a member of the Russian parliament's national security committee, told the Interfax news agency today, "Shcherbakov turned over our agents in the U.S.A. ... I knew of this long before the publication today in Kommersant."

One of the sleeper agents, Mikhail Vasenkov, also known as Juan Lazaro, had been undercover for so long that his denials might have worked until Shcherbakov one day showed up in his U.S. jail cell, according to reports.