It will be interesting to learn what initially tipped off the FBI to their presence in the country, as well as what precipitated their arrest last week.
What precipitated their arrests was politics and timing. This administration is wholly and totally political and has only one goal in mind. The consolidation of power and they use smokescreens to focus our attention elsewhere while they dismantle the constitution and shave away what few freedoms we have left to ourselves.
Keystone Cops alert!
FBI and Counter Intelligence. Two terms meant to go together! Great. Probally at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to learn what a computer nerd could learn surfing the net!
Putin and the Russian FSB are now convinced that they have a pliable socialist in the White House and that pliable socialists run Congress. Why have a covert program to influence American policy when you can do so directly?
The “nearly a decade” is as interesting as why they were arrested when they were.
The investigation would have started around the time GW Bush was sworn in. Was there evidence of this ring operating during the Clinton administration that was ignored? Had FBI counter-intelligence been prevented from acting?
Back to today... Was the DOJ or State trying to get the FBI operation shut down? Did someone in the administration do something that led the FBI to fear the investigation was compromised?
No one on the outside will notice if a covert operation is shut down, but once there are charges, it’s much more difficult for politicians to make the whole thing go away. Arrests and prosecutions are the one way to make the operation public without leaking damaging info.
Big *PING*
I was quite surprised when I read this. I'm NOT a trained spy, but were I living in a foreign country as an unregistered illegal agent, I'd sure find a way to have my premises 'swept' for the detection of these types of devices.
You know?
Also... aren't most spies a bit PARANOID that they might be observed, that they may end up being watched, followed, monitored?
For goodness sakes, it's like all these folks were direct descendants of Mata Hari.
Did the FBI allow Obama to be voted in as POTUS knowing full well that he failed to qualify, had a ghostly faint past with known radicals all in the hopes of gaining just more intelligence?
A Judas goat?
Ping.