The story of ten Russian agents being staked out and caught could not have been written more credibly by the great spy novelist, but it is worth looking at the details of the story,  as there is a lesson to be learned from it. Not one of the elements of a spy novel is missing from the episode. Not even the female spy who plays the role of a tempting beauty in any spy novel worthy of the name: moreover, the allegedly "quite sexy" Anna Chapman with her flaming red hair, whose original name is Anna Kushchenko, was the most active of the ten unmasked agents. She made no attempt to hide her Russian background: on her Facebook page she wrote about how much easier it is to make contacts in America with the "successful people of the world" than in Russia. According to Chapman, in Moscow the only way to be in is if you are also a member of the club, whereas in Wall Street all you have to do is bump into people and you can go off to dinner with them.

Chapman was the key the FBI needed to uncover the whole network. She was approached by an FBI agent working under cover as an employee of the Russian consul using the alias of Roman, who asked her to forward a forged passport to another agent. However, this aroused the Russian spy's suspicions and so she purchased a prepaid Motorola mobile telephone to call Vasili Kushchenko, her father, who also works for the Russian secret service.

From the carefully created false identities to the invisible ink, every element of a spy novel is present here, yet this is a true story: all ten people had regular contact with Russian intelligence.

Many people have incredulously asked if such things still go on these days. The Cold War ended long ago and the many spy stories it engendered are a thing of the past. But this incredulity was not generally shared in America, and the discovery of the spy network prompted an entirely different reaction. If Russia is still devoting such recourses to maintaining sleepers in America for decades and despite this they fail to obtain any sensitive information - then this is truly a cause for satisfaction. The news set American politicians at ease: there's nothing new under the sun, intelligence agencies are operating in just the same way as they always have done.

At the same time, the story focussed attention upon a significant change: former Russian agents were prompted by the affair to criticise the falling standards of Russian intelligence. The critics claimed that the problem was not that the agents had been unmasked but that their work was clumsy, weak and of a poor standard. It is no coincidence that the Russians had sought a quick end to the affair: the shorter the news was news, the better.

The decision the Americans made also invited criticism: they only requested four of their own agents in exchange for the ten they had caught. However, while the ten Russian agents had not been pursuing such useful activities from a professional point of view, the opposite was true of the four people they requested from Moscow, who had been held in Russian prisons for years, and according to sources were in a poor state of heath. Unfortunately, this comes as no surprise...


The spy swap did not take place according to the usual practise of the Cold War on the Glienicke Bridge, or so-called "bridge of spies" that once linked East to West Germany, but rather in Vienna, although it was carried out in a 21^st century version of Cold War practise. In its essentials the swap was exactly the same as in the 20^th century. And following from this the main message of this summer story is that none of it is a holiday novel but rather a true story. Washington should keep this in mind when managing its international relations, and so should Europe, which in this sense is somewhat more naïve. Even if Vice President Joe Biden's expressed his regret that America had had to pay a steep price: having to part with such a beautiful, female spy...