June 29 (Reuters) - The United States said that authorities had arrested 10 alleged Russian spies, days after President Dmitry Medvedev met Barack Obama in Washington.
The group was accused of being tasked by Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service to enter the United States, assume false identities and become "deep-cover" agents, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Russia denies the accusation.
* WHAT IS AN ILLEGAL?
— An "illegal" works under deep cover and is infiltrated into a foreign country with the task of setting up his or her own network and gathering intelligence.
— He or she assumes a false identity carefully constructed, often with use of fraudulently obtained documents, for example the birth certificate of a dead man or woman.
— Unlike intelligence officers who work under the cover of legitimate diplomatic or other status, "illegals" do not usually enjoy any form of immunity from arrest.
— Illegals are a longterm investment. They spend many years putting down roots, establishing their fake identity, blending in and making contacts before they can obtain useful information — if they ever do at all.
* SOME WELL KNOWN "ILLEGALS":
— Two of the best known illegals in history were KGB Colonel Rudolf Abel, arrested in the United States in the late 1950s, and Konon Molody, who operated in Britain under the cover name of Gordon Lonsdale in the late 1950s.
— Abel was born in England as William Fischer but his family, devoted communists, lived in Soviet Russia where he was recruited. He was tasked by Soviet intelligence with the reorganisation of the whole "illegal" (without diplomatic or other "cover") spy network in the U.S. and setting up his own system of radio communications with Moscow.
In about 1948 Abel illegally entered the United States and lived for some time as an artist and photographer in a Brooklyn studio apartment, where he concealed shortwave-radio transmitting and receiving equipment.
— Konan Molody served in the Soviet military administration in Berlin after World War Two. In 1954 he was infiltrated into Britain where, posing as Canadian businessman Gordon Arnold Lonsdale, he organized a group that gathered submarine detection secrets from the Underwater Detection Establishment at Portland, Dorset.
He was arrested in 1961, tried for espionage and imprisoned.
Both Abel and Molody were returned to the Soviet Union in spy swaps after only a few years in prison.
