Ooooooh, spies! And not just any old spies but real, live scary-sexy RUSSIAN SPIES right here in the American-as-apple-pie posh neighborhoods of the elitist, arugula-eating Northeast.
Soviet comrades turned latte-sippin' professional yuppies in American suburbia. Welcome to the new Desperate Housewives of New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts, Ruski Spy Edition!
An F.B.I. investigation that began at least seven years ago culminated with the arrest on Sunday of 10 people in Yonkers, Boston and northern Virginia. The documents detailed what the authorities called the “Illegals Program,” an ambitious, long-term effort by the S.V.R., the successor to the Soviet K.G.B., to plant Russian spies in the United States to gather information and recruit more agents.Oh no-zees! All this super secret spy stuff on the heels of Barack Obama and Russian
Things went so well, they even shared an order of fries, proving without a doubt that the two are officially BFF!
Or so we thought! Until DA-DA-DA-DA-DUM, the Justice Department drops an atomic bomb on the world, announcing the break up of a major Russian spy ring operating right near Ray's Hell Burger, as well as cozy, upscale communities in New York, and even along the bustling shores of New Jersey's favoritest export, a glowing orange dwarf named Snooki!
Hooray, the Cold War is back: HOTTTTTT and awesomer than ever!
The AP reports that eight of the ten were arrested for "allegedly carrying out long-term, deep cover assignments in the United States on behalf of Russia," while two others were "allegedly participating in the same Russian intelligence program within the United States."And even though they looked like the hotties and housewives on Wisteria Lane, that doesn't mean these guys didn't act like crazy, hard-ass Russian 007 agents when the neighbors tucked in for the night, promptly after the pots 'n pans were washed and dried, once the cover of darkness was upon them.
One message from bosses in Moscow, in awkward English, gave the most revealing account of the agents’ assignment. “You were sent to USA for long-term service trip,” it said. “Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. — all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles and send intels [intelligence reports] to C[enter].”
Criminal complaints filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Monday read like
Spies swapping identical orange bags as they brushed past one another in a train station stairway. An identity borrowed from a dead Canadian, forged passports, messages sent by shortwave burst transmission or in invisible ink. A money cache buried for years in a field in upstate New York.The spies were so embedded in U.S. culture (and each other!) that they even acted just like regular, boring preppy white suburbanites, pairing off to make whole yuppie families complete with a few kiddies, well-manicured lawns, and a large white picket fence. We're talking, the whole nine yards!
They also used cyber-age technology, embedding coded texts in ordinary-looking images posted on the Internet, and communicated by having two agents with laptops containing special software pass casually as messages flashed between them.
But not even super-secret agent couples are immune to the pitfalls of following the same dreary, chrysanthemum-lined path as so many other young, upwardly mobile professionals who give up their hip city apartments for the perceived American dream of the good life in a hoity-toity, fancy house in the 'burbs:
As the years went by, that arrangement sometimes led to friction, the complaint said, citing an acrimonious exchange of encrypted messages between a pair of alleged agents living under the names Richard and Cynthia Murphy. The couple, who have allegedly operated in the United States since the mid-1990s, decided in 2008 to move from an apartment in Hoboken to a house in Montclair, N.J. — leading to an argument over whether they or the S.V.R. would own it.C'mon Moscow! Did your really expect them to pass up the chance to be an actual U.S. homeowner with fancy-$hmancy mortgages. Does Vlad have any idea how difficult that is to do, in this terrible borrowing climate??
The agents eventually dropped the argument, writing: “We are under the impression that C. views our ownership of the house as a deviation from the original purpose of our mission here. We’d like to assure you that we do remember what it is. From our perspective, purchase of the house was solely a natural progression of our prolonged stay here. It was a convenient way to solve the housing issue, plus to ‘do as the Romans do’ in a society that values home ownership.”
Almost as hard as clandestinely operating Russian spies masquerading as Mr. and Mrs. Smith for the last 15 years!
"The magnitude, and the fact that so many illegals were involved, was a shock to me,” said Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general and ex-Soviet spy who now is an American citizen living in Washington. “It’s a return to the old days, but even in the worst years of the cold war, I think there were no more than 10 illegals in the U.S., probably fewer.”
OMG, and that was like even before Jan Brewer's brilliant 'round up the darkies plan! Quick, someone get the governor on the line, and tell her they need Aryanzona's "Adiós Amigos" law removing the undesirables from their neck of the woods. But, unlike in her parched home state, these illegals aren't typically chocolatey-hued and packed into pickup trucks, wearing sombreros and blasting La Bamba.
But national security stuff aside, what the hell were they actually doing this whole, freakin' time, other than exchanging secret IM's using free wifi at local coffeehouses in their hush hush quest to discover what drives the American elitist power structure, like homeowning?
Hmmm, who knows? But by that token, what the hell have you people been doing these last 15 years, besides letting this beautiful, wondrous country turn into a secret Commie playground for Boris and Natasha?
If only the 11 spies had grown morbidly obese, thrown on ratty, torn Jesus Saves t-shirts, covered themselves in tattoos, run around waving swastika-peppered handmade signs, and constantly threatened to kill the terrible black Socialist president and/or blow up the DEMONcrats in Congress, nobody would have ever been the wiser.
I mean George W. Bush peered into Putin's freakin' soul and he still didn't learn anything.
Lest, of course, they started winning gold medals in figure skating at every Winter Olympics, nuking oil spills in the Gulf, and/or shooting the (Arctic) breeze while shooting wild beasts with Sarah Palin from her famous front porch in Wasilla.
Then maybe people would have started getting suspicious.
Or Nyet.
