Russians in Spy Exchange Include Hanssen Case Figure

(July 9) -- A former Russian intelligence officer who may have provided information that helped uncover two of the worst spies in U.S. history -- Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames -- is among the four Russians swapped for 10 sleeper agents in an elaborate Cold War-style spy swap today.

Alexander Zaporozhsky, a decorated former KGB officer who, according to Reuters, may have helped expose the American turncoats, had served seven years of an 18-year sentence on charges of spying for the United States. He was released with three others and flown to Vienna.

The Washington Post reported that Zaporozhsky, a former colonel in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, abruptly retired from the KGB in 1997 and a year later turned up in Washington with his wife and two children. Russian news reports said he defected as a reward for helping the CIA, but Zaporozhsky told neighbors he ran an international consulting business. In 2001, he inexplicably returned to Moscow for what his wife thought was a KGB reunion and was arrested at the airport. He was tried and convicted of treason in 2003 amid rumors he had passed information leading to the capture of Hanssen and Ames.

The two were among the most damaging spies in U.S. history. Hanssen, a former FBI agent, leaked secrets for 22 years in what the Justice Department called "potentially the worst intelligence disaster in the history of the U.S." Ames infiltrated the CIA, where over nine years he revealed the identity of every U.S. agent in the Soviet Union -- leading to the death of 10 of them -- in exchange for more than $4.6 million, a sum that made him the highest-paid spy in U.S. history.

The three others released in a swap hastily arranged because some of those held were reported to be in ill health:

-- Sergei Skripal, a retired KGB colonel, was sentenced in 2006 to 13 years for spying for Britain and for exposing the names of dozens of Russian agents in Europe. The Washington Post reported that Skripal began working for the British Secret Intelligence Service in the late 1990s and was paid through an account at a Spanish bank about $100,000 over that time. It quoted the Russian newspaper Izvestia as saying he revealed the identities of "dozens of his former colleagues operating in Europe under cover, in particular, their secret meeting venues, addresses and passwords." Reported in poor health, Skripal confessed to reduce his sentence from 15 years as originally sought by prosecutors.

-- Igor Sutyagin, 45, a weapons researcher at a Moscow think tank, was the only one of the four who apparently was not a professional spy. A military analyst at the respected USA and Canada Institute, he was found guilty of treason in 2004 and sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges he passed sensitive information on Russia's nuclear submarines to a British company suspected of being a CIA front. Until his pro forma confession to win release, Sutyagin had maintained his innocence, insisting he lacked the necessary security clearances to gain access to secrets and provided nothing more than was available from open sources.

-- Gennady Vasilenko, an elderly former KGB recruiter who worked in Washington in the 1970s and '80s, was a security officer at Russia's NTC television when he was arrested in 1985 and sentenced to three years on murky illegal weapons charges. According to The Washington Post, he was arrested in 1988 in Havana and sent back to Moscow for questioning about his relationship with a CIA officer, Jack Platt. He was imprisoned and interrogated for six months before being released without charges and fired from the spy service. Vasilenko and Platt reportedly had tried to recruit the other as double agents but failing that became friends and eventually went into the security business together.

The four were required to sign confessions before they were allowed to board the plane to Vienna.

It was the biggest prisoner swap since 1986, when Soviet dissident Anatoly Sharansky -- now Natan Sharansky, a prominent Israeli politician -- was released in exchange for eight imprisoned spies in Berlin.