Russian agents infiltrated US society, charges say

By TOM HAYS and PETE YOST Associated Press Writers

NEW YORK (AP) - They sometimes worked in pairs and pretended to be married so they could blend in as the couple next door as they worked as spies in a throwback to the Cold War with fake identities, invisible ink, coded radio transmissions and encrypted data to avoid detection, authorities say.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Farbiarz, speaking Monday in federal court in Manhattan, called the allegations against 10 people living in the Northeast "the tip of the iceberg" of a conspiracy of Russia's intelligence service, the SVR, to collect inside U.S. information, the biggest such bust in recent years.

Each of the 10 was charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison upon conviction. Two criminal complaints outlining the charges were filed in U.S. District Court for the southern district of New York.

Police said Monday that an 11th defendant, a man accused of delivering money to the agents, remained at large. A police spokesman in Cyprus said Tuesday that 54-year-old Christopher Robert Metsos, a Canadian citizen wanted by U.S. authorities on suspicion of espionage and money laundering, was arrested in the morning at Larnaca airport while trying to fly to Budapest, Hungary.

Russia angrily denounced the arrests as an unjustified throwback to the Cold War, and senior lawmakers said some in the U.S. government may be trying to undercut President Barack Obama's warming relations with Moscow.

"These actions are unfounded and pursue unseemly goals," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "We don't understand the reasons which prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to make a public statement in the spirit of Cold War-era spy stories."