The CIA pulled its top agent in Russia out of the country in 2017 because the agency feared authorities there might uncover the source at any moment. CNN and the New York Times say those fears stemmed at least in part from President Trump’s loose lips. So who was our man (or woman) in Moscow and why did the since retired agent turn up at the center of yet another political feud over the 2016 election?
Welcome to Rabbit Hole.
Who can it be? The New York Times reported late Monday that the source in the CNN story was the same source that the Times had previously hinted at—a Russian official who wasn’t among Putin’s intimates but was close enough to his decision-making to offer the U.S. a rare glimpse into what the most senior levels of the Kremlin were thinking. After the source had served as a U.S. agent for decades, the CIA offered to extract them. The informant, not wanting to flee home, initially refused, leading to fears that the informant might have been a double agent.
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Early hints: In July 2018, the Times reported that the intelligence community briefed Trump on the existence of “a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the CIA how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation” during the 2016 elections.
In a subsequent story, the Times revealed that the source was “long nurtured by the C.I.A.,” had “[risen] to a position that enabled the informant to provide key information in 2016 about the Russian leadership’s role in the interference campaign,” and that intelligence from his reports was closely guarded by the Obama administration.
At the time, former national security officials expressed shock and concern that such sensitive information was leaked to the media, fearing for the fate of the unnamed source. The publication of the initial Times story in July 2018—well after the apparent exfiltration operation kicked off in May 2017—suggests that the Russian source may have long been out of reach of Russian officials by the time his existence as an American recruit was leaked.
Going concern: The Mueller report is long since published, the Russia investigation looks like a distant blip in the Trump administration’s rearview mirror, and as far as we know the CIA’s man in Moscow made it out ok. So all’s well that ends well, right?
Maybe not. The issue of protecting CIA human sources has new legs because of Attorney General William Barr’s new investigation of the Russia investigation. Barr appointed former U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate whether the intelligence community should ever have investigated Trump and Russian collusion in the first place. Trump also delegated broad declassification authority to Barr, raising fears in the intelligence community that Barr could access information about intelligence community sources and expose them as part of the continued political wrangling over the 2016 election.
Who cares about a former Russian spy? Trump supporters like former House intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes have long bristled at the intelligence community’s conclusion that the Russian government was trying to help Trump win the election rather than sow broad bipartisan chaos. In a report issued by Nunes last year, House intelligence committee Republicans concluded that the 2017 intelligence community assessment suffered from “significant intelligence tradecraft failings” when it said Putin was pulling for Trump. House Republicans complained that some particularly “sensitive” intelligence which underpinned analysts’ judgement on the point “presented a significant challenge for classification downgrade“ and promised that the committee was working on “additional action regarding this information.”
Nunes and co may have found an ally in Attorney General Barr. The Times reported that as part of his investigation, Barr is hoping he can access information on a Russian source who helped the intelligence community conclude that Putin was trying to help Trump in 2016. In the U.S., the president is the ultimate arbiter of what’s classified, what’s not, and who can access it, meaning that if Barr wants access to the CIA’s human source information, the president has complete authority to give it to him.
Given that the Times reported the Russian source was instrumental in leading to the CIA’s conclusion that Putin was trying to help Trump, it seems likely that Barr’s investigation will want to learn more about him.
Uncomfortable exile: By all accounts, the source mentioned in the CNN and Times stories seems to have made it out of Russia safely. If history is any guide, though, that doesn’t necessarily mean the agent is out of trouble entirely. Russia has a nasty habit of going after defectors, even ones who’ve made it to the west.
Last year, former commandos working for Russian military intelligence (GRU) tried to poison a former GRU officer whom Russia had swapped to the U.K. with a top secret nerve agent. The failed attempt led to the outing of a number of GRU operatives, the expulsion of several Russian diplomats around the western world, and the closure of Russian consulates in San Francisco and Seattle. Even after the failed operation’s blowback, there are signs that Russia still hasn’t gotten out of the business of bumping off its enemies on western soil. In late August, a former Chechen insurgent who had fled to Germany was shot and killed in Berlin by an assailant with a silenced pistol. The passport of the lead suspect, a Russian national, has characteristics associated with known GRU passports.
There are also signs that U.S. territory might not be off-limits for Russian operations against defectors. Newsweek’s Jeff Stein reported last year that American spies saw suspected Russian intelligence operatives casing the neighborhoods of Russian defectors in the United States, raising fears that Moscow might try to assassinate one.
Bad for business: Regardless of who the source is and whether the recruit’s information helps or hurts Trump’s image, the fact that an apparent Russian intelligence recruit is at the center of America’s domestic political wrangling isn’t great for the spying business.
The CNN story alleges that intelligence officials pulled their spy out of Russia because they were concerned Trump would blurt something out about it after he shared sensitive intelligence about an ISIS plot with Russian officials. If true, that might make the next senior level Russian with access to valuable intelligence think twice about putting their life on the line and their fate in America’s hands.
But even if that’s not true, it still means that a defector who’s under a very plausible threat of assassination and who likely wanted to lie low is now at least partially out of the shadows and into the white hot spotlight of partisanship. It may not stop others from wanting to spy for America, but it might make them at least think twice about it.
