This sentence by Cliff Kincaid gives us hope that the truth about the Russian Agents will eventually come out in spite of what we consider a cover-up by the Obama Administration.

"Fortunately, some people are paying critical attention to what has transpired."

The first question of ours is why were they not charged with espionage by the Obama Administration? The FBI follows them for ten years, in June 2010 they arrest them but don't charge them with espionage, and in July the Obama Administration swaps these ten Russian spies for four political prisoners held by the Russians? That makes zero sense.

In all the Security Briefings we had quarterly while working for the Air Force, the one that has stayed with me the longest was the video of the American city which was constructed in Russia for their spies to learn about American life so when they came here, they would blend in and no would notice them. Can remember when the Russian Mission at the UN wanted some of their people who were visiting from Moscow to come to Wright-Patterson AFB to tour the AF Museum. Their request was turned down at that time because it was considered off-limits to the Russians because of spying. Today the Obama Administration would probably open up the Museum after hours so the Russians could visit.

Will never forget when Bush 41 exchanged visits with the Russians at some of our Air Force facilities including Strategic Air Command (SAC) and Secretary of Defense Cheney stating he would NEVER trust the Russians. We agree with Cheney's comments today as much as we did in the early 90's. Never could figure out Bush 41's bending over backwards to the Russians but that was nothing compared to the Clinton's. Then we had Bush 43 looking into the eyes of Putin, former KGB, and thinking he could see in his heart. Wanted to throw up. All of this cannot compare to what we are seeing out of Obama and his people.

The Talbott case is consistently ignored by the major media because he is respected and trusted by his colleagues in the press. He is also trusted by Senator Richard Lugar, who served as Obama’s mentor when Obama was in the U.S. Senate and traveled to Russia, only to be detained and have his passport examined by Russian authorities. Obama joked about the detention, saying he wasn’t in the Gulag.

Talbott being the go to person with the Russians shouldn't come as a shock to anyone following his career. He should have been the first thought when they said someone from the Clinton Administration was involved with the Russians.

But what blew us away is the comment we highlighted about Obama and his passport. Why would the Russians detain Senator Obama and have his passport examined by Russian authorities? What do the Russians know that we don't? What are the Russians holding over Obama? Did Obama, as alleged in some places, attend college in a foreign country as part of a Columbia University exchange program as a foreign student at Columbia? So many questions and so few answers as Obama continues to keep all of his records off limits and our lapdog Obama media goes right along.

Please visit Accuracy in Media (AIM) to read this entire article. There are a handful of writers today who have the background and expertise to write an article that analyzes the Russian Spy swap and Cliff Kincaid is one of them.

July 9, 2010

The Russian Agents, Obama, and the Cover-up
By Cliff Kincaid
July 16, 2010

Fortunately, some people are paying critical attention to what has transpired.
Our media do not seem to be interested in the curious matter of why the Russian agents accused of trying to acquire sensitive nuclear information from the U.S. Government were so quickly released. Why were they were sent back to Moscow less than two weeks after they were arrested?

It is certainly the case that a continuing spy scandal threatened to undermine U.S.-Russia business “opportunities” and “cooperation.” It is also true that there is evidence that the Russian agents targeted the Obama Administration and former Clinton Administration officials.

Just before the scandal broke, a $4 billion deal had been announced between Boeing and a Russian firm. During the visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to the U.S., Cisco Systems had announced it was going to spend $1 billion in Russia, in part to develop a Moscow version of Silicon Valley. The United States Export-Import Bank had also announced a new deal to underwrite, with U.S. taxpayer dollars, U.S. business exports to Russia.

Plus, Obama had submitted a U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation agreement, backed by powerful business interests, to the U.S. Congress.

All of this was clearly in jeopardy if the Russian spy scandal led to additional revelations of Russian spying on the American government and businesses. So the scandal had to go away—and quickly.

The exchange was hammered out so quickly and was so advantageous to the Kremlin, however, that it should have become apparent to some journalist somewhere that there was much more to the story. But the issue was just as quickly dropped by the media, liberal and conservative alike.

(snip)

Writing on the website of World Affairs, Vladimir Kara-Murza says that Yelena Bonner, the widow of academician Andrei Sakharov and a prominent advocate of human rights in Russia, “called the swap a missed opportunity and denounced the Obama administration not only for agreeing to an unequal exchange (ten for four) but, more importantly, for not requesting the freeing of more political prisoners, of whom there are scores in today’s Russia.”

One of those released by Russia in exchange for its agents was a political prisoner, historian and researcher Igor Sutyagin.

(snip)

Has the possible penetration of the U.S. Government by foreign spies become a laughing matter for the Obama Administration? Are they fearful that a realistic review of what the Russian agents were doing would lead to the conclusion that Obama’s foreign policy plays into the hands of the Russian government and has in fact been manipulated by the Kremlin?

Documents in the scandal demonstrate, as we have reported, that the Russian intelligence service, the SVR, was interested in penetrating “think tanks” with influence over U.S. foreign policy. The SVR, the successor to the KGB, was especially interested in nuclear weapons-related information.

What we do know, based on public reports, is that one Russian agent had a job at Microsoft, another had been trying to cultivate a fundraiser for and friend of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and another had claimed contacts with a Clinton Administration official by the name of Leon Fuerth, who had been Vice President Al Gore’s top national security aide.

So we quickly found out that top Obama and Democratic Party officials had been targeted in this intelligence operation. Is this why the scandal had to go away?

(snip)

Scratching the surface of the scandal, Walter Pincus of The Washington Post wonders if all of the Russian agents have been rounded up.

He writes, “The best public indication of the extent of Moscow’s efforts comes from the late Sergei Tretyakov, the former Russian intelligence officer who under the guise of a press officer at the U.N. Mission ran espionage operations in New York City from 1995 to 2000. He served the last three of those years as a double agent for the FBI until he defected to the United States. As Tretyakov told author Pete Earley in the book ‘Comrade J,’ at one time he had more than 60 SVR officers working inside the United Nations and more than 160 contacts made up of illegals, outright spies, and other people who knowingly or unknowingly could supply information useful to Russia.”

According to Earley, Tretyakov died “unexpectedly” on June 13. The circumstances were so suspicious that an autopsy was performed under the supervision of the FBI.

(snip)

The Strobe Talbott Case

But there is something else that Pincus did not mention. It has to do with those “other people” targeted and used by Tretyakov and the Russians.

The book, Comrade J, identifies Strobe Talbott, a former high-ranking Clinton State Department official and the current president of the Brookings Institution, a major liberal think tank, as having been a trusted contact of the Russian intelligence service. Talbott has denied serving as a Russian agent, but when he was up for his State Department job in the Clinton Administration, he admitted a relationship with Soviet “journalist” and KGB agent Victor Louis.

(snip)

Pincus asked, “What will the Russians do now?” He noted that Tretyakov had said that when the Cold War was over, “the United States asked Russia to stop the KGB’s covert propaganda activities that portrayed Washington in foreign media as carrying out terrible activities, such as saying the United States was spreading HIV in Africa.”

In response, Pincus noted that Tretyakov said that the KGB closed down “Department A,” which ran the propaganda and disinformation operations, but then established another program which did the same thing. “Nothing changed,” Tretyakov said.

So the propaganda and disinformation activities continue. Indeed, that is what the Kremlin-financed global Russia Today television channel is all about. It has a major presence in the U.S.

But wait. Didn’t the Reverend Jeremiah Wright repeat the KGB disinformation that the U.S. was spreading AIDS? Indeed he did. In fact, Wright, who was Barack Obama’s pastor for 20 years, actually claimed at a National Press Club appearance during the 2008 presidential campaign that the U.S. Government had manufactured the AIDS virus to kill black people.

So we have one identified channel of influence whereby Soviet propaganda and disinformation was spewing from the mouth of someone with direct influence over the President of the United States. But few in the major media were interested then—or now—as to whether or not Obama believed any of that nonsense.

Holder’s Absurd Claims

One possible reason for quickly deporting the spies, from the point of view of the Obama Administration, is that they had explosive information about Russian influence over the U.S. Government that would have been too incriminating to reveal in a public court case. “Russia considered these people very important to their intelligence-gathering activities,” Attorney General Eric Holder admitted. “They didn’t pass any classified information,” Holder insisted.

Are we supposed to take his word for it? This is one of the most political appointees that Obama has put in power. He is the official suing Arizona over its immigration policy and letting the Black Panthers off the hook for making threats at a polling station. When he was in the Clinton Justice Department, he helped orchestrate pardons for members of terrorist groups.

It is widely assumed, since they were not charged with espionage, that the Russians were agents of influence who were trying to affect or obtain information about U.S. foreign policy. But this doesn’t mean that they did not do significant damage. The documents in the case cite secret money drops and secret messages to “Moscow Center.”

“We did actually make contact with certain people and did obtain certain information from people who were unwitting in their interaction with these people,” Holder acknowledged. Who were these “unwitting” people? Were they dupes of Moscow? Were they in the Obama Administration? Were they in the think tanks that we know the Russians targeted?

Holder had no real answer to CBS “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer’s question of why, after spending so many years following these agents, they were not prosecuted. Holder could only claim that the 10 were somehow not as valuable as the four we got. In terms of math alone, it just doesn’t add up.

Read more of Cliff Kincaid's analysis at AIM.org