Ex-FBI Agent Says Secret Russian Facility in NY Infiltrated by Intelligence

WASHINGTON, January 28 (Sputnik) — The FBI infiltrated into Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) facility in New York while investigating an alleged spy ring broken up this week and intentionally made it public, a former FBI counter-intelligence official told Sputnik after reviewing documents related to the case.

“The remarkable detail contained in the document indicates the FBI had some kind of microphone or someone with a body recorder right inside the SVR’s super-duper secret space in their facility in New York,” 25-year veteran of the FBI’s counterintelligence unit Raymond Batvinis told Sputnik on Tuesday. “This has got to send chills up and down the lines of the SVR.”

The FBI on Monday charged three Russian nationals over a conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. The FBI documents for the case include transcripts of conversations between the agents inside the SVR building in New York that includes the agents complaining about their assignments and the SVR.

The FBI didn’t need to provide such a high level of detail and information in the documents, Batvinis, currently a professor at George Washington University said, suggesting that the United States is trying to send a message to Russia and embarrass the agents and the SVR.

“When you read the transcript, some of what they (FBI) put in there is embarrassing to the intelligence officers. It’s personally embarrassing to them… they are bad mouthing their own organization; they are discussing things which really should not be discussed,” Batvinis said, adding the three Russian agents might have bigger problems when they go back to Moscow and report to their own organization.

Evgeny Buryakov was charged with a conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government.

Two other defendants are Igor Sporyshev, a former trade representative of Russia in New York and Viktor Podobny, a former attache to the Russian mission to the UN.

Sporyshev and Podobny are no longer in the United States and were registered in the United States as Russian officials with diplomatic immunity and protected from arrest, according to court documents.

The two suspects are charged with taking part in a conspiracy to aid Buryakov to act as an agent of a foreign government in the United States without notifying the US Attorney General. Buryakov is charged with acting in the United States as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the US Attorney General, the court said. Under US law, foreign officials are required to notify the attorney general that they are foreign agents or representatives.

Alexander Lukashevich, the spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on Tuesday the United States had not provided any evidence to support the charges against three Russian nationals. The foreign ministry suggested US authorities were trying to create a spy scandal at a time of already tense US-Russia relations.