June 28th 2010 - Russian Spy Ring Arrested in U.S.

With Obama recently telling Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, that after he's re-elected he will have more flexibility to cooperate (concerning arms treaties), I was reminded of this 2010 story. Below is a version from CBS that was posted at that time. Notice that the headline of the article combines the warm and friendly notion of "Burger Diplomacy" with "Russian Spy Arrests". Indeed, the arrests of 10 Russian spies isn't mentioned until 57 words into the short article - and then, only after comparing the warm hamburger diplomacy of Obama to the adversarial nature of high level talks during the
cold war days. So, in re-posting this article at RandomAmmo I hope to illustrate the cozy relationship that Obama apparently has with our good buddies the Russians and how the mainstream media thinks that's just great. No matter what the Russians are really up to - which I think is no good.

From Russian Spy Arrests to Obama-Medvedev Burger Diplomacy

Originally reported June 28, 2010 5:19 PM Dan Farber (CBS NEWS) 

Last week President Obama and his Russian counterpart President Dmitry Medvedev had burgers at a local diner outside Washington, D.C..

The friendly "burger diplomacy" meeting was in sharp contrast to the Cold War summits of the past. The two leaders even shared an order of fries.

Mr. Obama declared that the two had succeeded in resetting the relationship between the countries after years of distrust.

The resetting may have become a bit unsettled as 10 alleged Russian spies were arrested by the FBI in the U.S. after a lengthy investigation.

 The alleged "deep-cover" spies are accused of working for the SVR, the Russian Federation version of the CIA. Mikhail Fradkov, director of the SVR, reports directly to Mr. Medvedev.

The complaint alleges that some of those charged had a long-term goal to become "sufficiently Americanized" in order to gather intelligence in the U.S. and to "recruit sources who are in, or are able to infiltrate, United States policy-making circles."  The complaint says that the "agents" were trained in "foreign languages; agent-to-agent communications, including the use of brush-passes; short-wave radio operation and invisible writing; the use of codes and ciphers, including the use of encrypted Morse code messages; the creation and use of a cover profession; counter-surveillance measures" and more.