Russians Among Us

by Gordon Corera

  IT WAS DURING the 2005 Hoboken search that the FBI team hit pay dirt thanks to the boxes of photos in the TV cabinet. When the FBI first got onto the trail of the illegals, they could not see inside their covert communications. All they could see was that they were using code pads and encryption techniques that made messages unbreakable. Unlike Lazaro, the Murphys had been in the United States since the 1990s and so were able to update their covert communications to take into account new technology and particularly the emergence of the World Wide Web. From 2000, they started using a new technique, one that it would take the FBI five years to understand. When they did, it would prove to be one of the great breakthroughs in the entire case.

  Inside the shoe box were floppy disks and notebooks. This looked interesting, but when you were searching a suspected spy’s house, everything looked potentially interesting and you never knew what would turn out to be some kind of hidden piece of spy equipment. But the instincts in this case were right. The box would be pivotal to the investigation. But it would not yield its secrets easily or quickly.

  The contents of the box were taken away to be analyzed. An initial forensic computer analysis of the floppy disks found them to be blank. But that did not seem right. So they carried out another check. Again they came up blank. Next the team asked the FBI’s computer experts to copy the disks onto other disks—to re-create them so they could play around with them a bit more. Among the papers in the shoe box was one page that had “alt-control-e” written on it along with twenty-seven seemingly random characters. Was it a password? It was time to experiment a little. They put in one of the floppy disks and pressed alt-control-e. Nothing. They tried a different disk. Same process. Nothing. But just when it looked like a dead end, they tried another disk. This time the seemingly empty disk sprang to life. There was a prompt for a password. There was elation for the team. But it was short-lived. They put in the twenty-seven characters from the piece of paper. Nothing. They tried again. Same response. Maybe it had been written down backward? They tried the combination every which way. Nothing. But then another member of the team walked by the agents sitting huddled over the computer. He looked over their shoulder at what they were doing and then at a digit on the piece of paper and said, “You know that’s a one, right?” It had looked like a seven because of the way the Murphys had written it, but in Russian it was the way they wrote the number one. “No—we did not know that was a one,” they replied sheepishly and quickly went back to the screen. This time as the last character went in, the screen suddenly changed. A prompt appeared. “Please insert picture disc.” They were inside the illegals’ covert communications system.

  Imagine a picture on any normal website. It is made up of data—ones and zeroes—that when downloaded tell a computer how to reconstitute the image on-screen. What if hidden among that data are ones and zeroes that have nothing to do with the image but actually make up a secret message? Thousands of people could visit that website. But only if they had the right software would the message be downloaded. And even if it were spotted by an unintended recipient, it is encrypted, so it cannot be read. This is steganography—the trick of hiding a message inside an image.

  Hiding messages has been around for some time. One story from a couple of thousand years ago involves a courier’s head being shaved and a message being tattooed on his scalp. The hair is allowed to grow back and anyone intercepting the courier on route will not see anything. But the person whom the courier arrives to see knows that all they have to do is shave his head again to reveal the message. Another example from the twentieth century was the microdot. This was so small as to be invisible and could be put on a stamp or postcard but contained a message that could be read if you knew it was there. By the twenty-first century and the illegals, a new world of digital steganography had arrived.

  The FBI team realized you had to insert a disk that had six pictures on it and then another disk with the message you wanted to send. The computer would analyze the pictures to work out which picture was best suited to hiding the message. Once it had done so, it would say something like “number six” to indicate the best one and then encrypt—or scramble—the message. Each time it would be encrypted differently, so you needed a program to be able to decrypt it each time. Moscow Center had created its own bespoke software. In order to extract and then decrypt and read the data, you needed the same SVR-supplied software. Without it the message was unbreakable.

  There was also a list of public blog sites on the Web where people could upload their pictures. Richard Murphy loved taking pictures of flowers, and often these pictures would have the message hidden inside them. They would be uploaded to the Web and then at the other end Moscow Center could download and decrypt them. The FBI also copied the hard drive of a computer. On it they found an electronic address book with links to website addresses along with a history of which sites the computer had accessed. They downloaded images from the site that looked entirely innocent—including some of colorful flowers. But when the steganography program was applied, readable text files magically appeared. The FBI team asked their tech expert to create their own version of the encryption program that had every different encryption key on it. They were able to go back and decrypt some earlier messages, as well as new ones that arrived.

  The shoe box had been the key to understanding the illegals’ communications and would transform the investigation. This item would become known to grateful FBI officers as the “tradecraft box.” There was one moment, though, when they feared they might lose their access. One winter Maria Ricci was going back into the Murphys’ house just before New Year’s Eve. You always did a search for a reason and this time it was because there were indications that there was a change in the communications system—most likely new disks. This was a night search. These are more stressful. Neighbors are likely to be sleeping but if you are discovered there are fewer ways to explain why you are in someone else’s house. Ricci was being as quiet as she could with her small team as they hunted for new disks. They found them quickly. But what about the new password to go with them? They were not in the shoe box. Nor any other obvious place. So they started looking anywhere and everywhere else. Still nothing. Minutes turned into hours and the tension was rising. In the end they had to give up. The team made their way back deeply discouraged, assuming they had blown it—without the password they could no longer be able to read the messages. After all that worry when they returned to base and inserted the new disks, it turned out the password had not been changed.

  Because of his computer skills, Murphy would later lecture Moscow Center on the technical limitations of the communication system and how hard it was to encode a message. This was gold dust for the FBI, since it helped them further understand the workings of the SVR’s top secret system. At one point he explained to Moscow that if the FBI were ever to get hold of the material the illegals had been given, they would have both the instructions and the passwords in one fell swoop. Which of course they had already done. His complaint was absolutely correct, and it was fortunate for the FBI that the SVR did not listen.

  When the FBI’s Boston team went into the Heathfield and Foley house in 2006, they now knew what to look for. One of the computer disks looked similar to the New Jersey find and it too required a twenty-seven-character password. Traces of deleted electronic messages were found that FBI technicians were able to recover. These were drafts of messages sent to Moscow using steganography. Other illegals would also use the technique. The break into the communications was critical for the case. “For us, that was a gamechanger,” Tony Rogers of the Boston FBI field office later said.

  The FBI could not only read the messages going back and forth between the illegals and Moscow Center but—thanks to the bugs in the house—they could even hear the illegals sometimes discussing what they thought of what Moscow Center was telling them to do and how it made them feel. That was something even their SVR controllers would not know. “That’s everything,” says Alan Kohler. �
��There’s nothing going on with this cell that we don’t know about.”

  This allowed the FBI to stay one step ahead of the illegals. If they were planning a covert meeting, then there was no need to follow the spies to find out where it was and risk being spotted. Since you knew exactly where and when the meeting would take place, you could simply stake out the location ready for them to arrive. But even more important, it provided an insight into what orders they were being sent from Moscow and what intelligence they were sending back. Their overall mission was set out in a message sent to the Murphys: “The only goal and task of our Service and of us is security of our country. All our activities are subjected to this goal. Only for reaching this goal you were dispatched to US, settled down there, gained legal status and were expected to start striking up usefull [sic] acquaintances, broadening circle of your well placed connections, gaining information and eventually recruiting sources.”

  This was the mission of the illegals. To pose as Americans, bury themselves deep, and then identify people who could help Russia. And in Moscow, there was a new master for Russia’s spies. He was one of their own and a man for whom the importance of spying—and catching your enemy’s spies—was utmost in his mind.

  9

  Putin’s Spy Fever

  ON DECEMBER 20, 1999, hundreds of Russia’s spies took refuge from the bitter cold outside as they gathered inside the Lubyanka and Yasenevo, the headquarters of the FSB and SVR. They were there to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the Cheka—Russia’s revolutionary secret service—which for convenience’s sake had also been made the birthday of both new services. Champagne glasses were raised in a toast to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the man whose statue had been toppled outside just eight years earlier. The birthday party took place every year. But this time it was different. It had been a hard decade for the spies, as they lost their place as the elite after the end of the Soviet Union and as their old adversary seemed to take the upper hand. But the atmosphere that night was more optimistic than many could remember. In the Lubyanka, the special guest was the country’s new prime minister. Only a few months earlier he had been running the FSB. “Dear Comrades,” Vladimir Putin began, “I would like to announce to you that the group of FSB agents that you sent to work undercover in the government has accomplished the first part of its mission.” It was meant as a joke. But it was also true. “There are no former agents,” Putin told the crowd, adding another twist to the old joke about there being no such thing as an ex-KGB officer. A veteran of the KGB and FSB was now Russia’s leader. Russia’s new prime minister had risen from nowhere with a promise to lay to rest the ghosts of a turbulent past decade.

  Putin had risen out of the chaos of the 1990s and it defined him. He would describe the end of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” This was because of what he saw had come after—a weakened Russia and a more dangerous world with no one to balance American power. Growing up a KGB officer in the dying days of the Soviet Union had given him a conspiratorial view of the world in which Russia’s enemies had constantly been fueling division to keep his country down. A great country had been humiliated. Yeltsin had appeared drunk when meeting President Bill Clinton, another source of shame. Only a former KGB man, in his eyes, could restore the strength of the state, which in turn protected the motherland. Restoring Russia would require dealing with two groups who had exploited its weakness—oligarchs and foreign spies. First to be dealt with was an old mentor, an oligarch whose power was closely linked to Putin’s rise.

  When Alexander Litvinenko had returned to Moscow after his time in Chechnya, he found the FSB embroiled in not just corruption but murder, carrying out vendettas for politicians and criminals. Working in the economic crime directorate, he was now asked to look into assassinating the man he had once kept an eye on—the deputy head of the national security council, Boris Berezovsky. The oligarch had negotiated a peace deal with Chechen rebels that hard-liners perceived as a sellout. Litvinenko instead told Berezovsky about the plot. As a result, the then head of the FSB was sacked. His replacement in the summer of 1998 was a surprise—a midranking blank-faced colonel named Vladimir Putin. Berezovsky had known Putin since the start of the 1990s and even vacationed with him. He thought Putin would be his man and he arranged a meeting for Litvinenko with his new boss.

  As Litvinenko entered Putin’s office in the Lubyanka, the new FSB director came out from behind his desk to greet him. There were no pleasantries. “We operatives have a special style of behaviour,” Litvinenko later wrote. “Just look into each other’s eyes and it becomes clear, do you trust the person or not. And I immediately had the impression that he is not sincere.” Putin was not a tall man and took up martial arts at school so he could stand up for himself. He liked to intimidate. The two spoke for forty minutes. Litvinenko outlined his knowledge of corruption in the FSB and its links to organized crime. But when Litvinenko offered to hand over his written summary, Putin declined. “You keep it, it’s your work,” he told him. Litvinenko later claimed Putin invited him to join his “team” but he refused. As soon as he left the room, Putin ordered an investigation against him.

  A few days later, on November 17, 1998, Litvinenko went public in his criticism of the FSB. He and a group of colleagues organized a dramatic press conference. The other FSB officers wore masks to hide their faces but Litvinenko did not. The media attention was huge but hopes that it would lead to change were dashed. Instead it marked Litvinenko out as a man who had betrayed his colleagues in the eyes of Putin. The FSB head gave some public remarks soon after and singled out Litvinenko in a strangely personal way, talking about his marriage, among other things. This was a sign of just how personally Putin took betrayal. He was a man who kept grudges. Litvinenko was arrested in March 1999. When he was acquitted in his first trial, FSB officers stormed into the courtroom and arrested him again.

  Yeltsin was now ill and his priority was to find a way out that protected his family from corruption charges. He and his allies, like Berezovsky, needed an empty vessel they could fill. FSB director Putin was their choice. After all, a former KGB man was perfect thanks to the cult of the spy built up over the decades. He was made prime minister in August 1999. A series of devastating bomb blasts hit apartment buildings in Moscow in September. It seemed to confirm the need for a strong man to take on the Chechen insurgents paving the way for a new war. Yeltsin resigned suddenly on New Year’s Eve in 1999 and Putin—from almost nowhere—was acting president. He would be formally elected in March. He was chosen because he was thought to be a blank slate without his own politics. But the vessel was not as empty as it looked. This former spy had his own views. Russia had been humiliated. Now it was time to push back.

  In July 2000, Putin summoned the oligarchs to a barbecue and delivered a blunt message—if they wanted to survive they would have to bend the knee. They would serve the state and not the other way around. Stay out of politics and you could keep your wealth. Or face the consequences.

  Berezovsky soon learned he had underestimated the man he had sponsored. His TV stations criticized the new president when the Kursk submarine sank, with the loss of 118 lives, in August 2000. Putin was lacerated for vacationing while the sailors perished. Putin summoned Berezovsky to the Kremlin and told him to hand over his TV channel. Berezovsky refused. He fled to the United Kingdom and claimed asylum. From there he began to plot. He soon helped Litvinenko also flee to London. Once there, the former FSB officer received a phone call saying “Remember Trotsky”—the exile killed by an assassin sent by Moscow. Back in Russia, the oligarchs would fall into two categories. Those who accepted the new reality of Putin and the state as their master and those who tried to fight it. The latter ended up in jail, in exile, or dead.

  Spies—the threat of foreign ones and successes of Russia’s own—would be a defining theme for Vladimir Putin. He may not have been a first-rank KGB officer in his own time (which may have only added to his infatuat
ion with the world of espionage), but he both believed in the cult of the spy and understood its power among the public. The new leader breathed life into his own decaying spy services, turbocharging them with more resources and a renewed sense of purpose. Just as he would build a cult of personality around himself, so Putin would build one around his spies. They would once again become heroes and the source of pride—and that particularly applied to illegals. Russia may not be an economic giant, but one area where it was still a first-class power was espionage, and Putin would double down on his intelligence services as a means to wield power and influence around the world. But equally important was the focus on the villainous, subversive work of enemy spies operating in Russia and those treacherous individuals who agreed to work with them. In May 1999, when still running the FSB, Putin in a newspaper interview had identified foreign espionage as the nation’s biggest threat. Those spies were not just using diplomatic cover, he warned, but also using businesses, charities, even ecological organizations. “Spy fever” would be introduced into the body politic and periodically stoked up. It would be a powerful tool for establishing a pervasive sense of threat—that Western countries and particularly the United States and United Kingdom were intent on undermining Russia and preventing her from returning to her rightful position. And, of course, the complaints about foreign spies were sometimes true. Western spy services had been busy. Just because you are paranoid, it does not mean they are not out to get you. The unrelenting Western espionage campaign had fed the paranoia of the Russian leadership and now would provide a justification for a crackdown.

  Spy fever came in bouts, with different symptoms each time. As Putin moved from FSB to the premiership, there was a particular fear that Western secret services were stealing Russian defense technology—the one area where the level of sophistication rivaled that of the West. The openness of the 1990s had created all sorts of contacts and partnerships that could be exploited. One case would yield another of the four men who would be swapped for the illegals in 2010.