You can classify all the actions of an intelligence operation as fulfilling one of three goals.
1. Intelligence gathering: Finding out stuff you want to know and they dont want you to know
2. Influence: Being able to alter their actions, often through human networks, and political interference
3. Actions: Doing things that help you and hurt them, killing a guy, blowing something up

Your problem is that you focus exclusively on the first goal. But even it that regard, you can not rely solely on electronic information gathering. An analyst works within the realm of probability, not proof. There are certain things that a country would really want to be sure about. For an entity with as many resources as an intelligence agency of a major nation, its actually pretty easy to prevent anything important from being found out over the internet. Human intelligence is probably no less critical than it was 50 years ago. We know there are analysts searching all of our electronic data, so we obsfucate like an SOB. The data you can get on site and right from the horses mouth is much more reliable than that from the tangled webs of electronic systems.

More importantly, intel gathering was obviously not the sole purpose of this ring. This one was mainly focused on influence. The goal was to get spies into American think tanks. There, the agents could have some influence over US actions. The actual agents would not be as important as the networks they would create: this was meant to be a long term operation. A human being can influence other people that are important to the US. He can make them trust him, he can manipulate them, he can "turn" them, he can bribe them, he can blackmail them, he can threaten them. Over a few years, a few agents could have dozens of mid-level US managers, as well as a couple of senior guys in their pockets. Im not talking about some red scare sort of massive infiltration. Having a few friends and a few favors you can call in could be absoltutely vital to later operations.

Finally, when it comes to action, this operation was a door opener. Since they were focused on working for non-government agencies, they thought the infiltration would be easy. This early sucess could have been used to facilitate the work of later Russian spies on more immediately important issues, using the human networks to which I previously alluded.

In short, just because they are called "intelligence" agencies, that doesnt mean they only gather intel. One the spectrum of relations between nations, at one end, we have diplomacy, where they talk to eachother. At the other end, we have war, where they openly fight eachother. There is a huge gap between those two, a gap that has only grown drastically and continously since the end of WW2. That gap is the territory of intelligence agencies.

There's a comment in the NYTimes story suggesting the USSR never had more than 10 illegal agents in the US. Consider the point of view of the KGB--how do you make an impression on your bosses? Boast about the number of illegal agents you're running. You sure as hell can't boast about the productive days you've spent Googling. If your agents aren't doing much, then even if the enemy's counterintelligence agency picks up on them, as the FBI apparently did, you can claim success for several years and maybe even make it to retirement before an arrest is made. After all, the FBI has no particular incentive to make arrests if the intelligence take is as small as it seems to have been.

The above seems to fit the picture of bureaucracy and ineptitude David Hoffman draws of the KGB (and the CIA) in The Dead Hand, which I recommend, although I'm only half-way through.

and don't forget that the Angelina Jolie movie "Salt" will be hitting the movie theaters during the summer... better storyline though!

Lets see how the story develops... so far this makes no sense. What is the government trying to hide from us this time?
Those "spies" have to be the worst spies ever.... LOL

Just something else for Obama to apologize for...

Here you have the ultraorthodox, nationalist FBI cringing at the sight of the two Presidents munching burgers and grabbing the nearest spanner to throw in that one?

"We are under an 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."

Right!

So what is going to happen to these people after they serve their sentences? (which, as far as the news present them, if accurate, do not seem particularly long/heavy)
Are they going to be sent back to Russia? Are they going to switch sides and "do as the Romans do"?

Not particularly connected to this case, but the reality is that even during the Cold War the Russians had a tough time retaining their spies operating in the West.
No matter how indoctrinated, once exposed to the differences between the life style of the average Westerner and the everyday struggles of the average Russian (or Eastern European) - ranging from empty grocery store shelves to limited hours of hot water and electricity per day - it was difficult not to question the system one was supposed to defend.

And nowadays, in spite the presence of electricity and hot water, social divisions are rampant and the split between the "few" and the "many" is just as obvious as during Soviet times, while "Mother Russia" does not have on offer even the old Cold War rhetoric to properly brainwash its spies.

The reality is that when in Rome... life is better.

Eerily similar to the plot of Nelson Demille's novel "The Charm School"

I think this is a holdover from Soviet era practices--indeed, it appears as if the La Prensa woman came in before the USSR imploded. Kinda like the Japanese soldiers on Pacific islands being found in the 1950s and 1960s.

"(I)s there anything that the Russians gathered from this enterprise that a well-trained analyst couldn't have picked up by trolling the interwebs?"

Probably not, but that may well be the point.

That is, it's one thing to find information on the interwebs. It's another thing entirely to verify it.

In fact, given that 80-90% of all intel gathered is "open source intelligence" (ie, gathered from non-secret sources), I think one purpose of this group may have been to establish a control set against the images in the press and in entertainment media. The Russians may have been asking, "How real are those images?" and trying to set up "everyday" people to compare them against.

Come to think of it, that might not be so bad a project for *us*.

"Why were the arrests made now?"

That's a real puzzler, as is any prosecution against spies. Standard practice is, once you ID a spy, you feed them disinformation to then pass along to their controllers. One of the few reasons I can think of (pay attention, this might be tricky):
* We have a source in Russia
* Who told us *they* have a source in the US
* Who's told them we've discovered this ring
* So we had to blow the ring to protect our source in Russia, as prosecution is what we'd be "expected" to do.

"(T)his sounds like a low-rent, more boring version of that movie."

* Movies are intended to look expensive -- life isn't
* Movies are intended to not be boring -- life isn't

You're basically saying that since reality doesn't match a movie plot scenario (see Schneier), it's reality that must be wrong. Er, ah, no. All this points out is how crappy movie plots are vis-a-vis reality. It also points out how dangerous movie plots are when we let them set expectations as to what intel "really" is. (Which is why "24" has probably done more damage to our intel enterprise than any other single thing in the most recent ten years.)

If you wanted to make as realistic a TV series about intel as possible, it'd probably resemble "Dilbert" or "The Thick of It" more than anything else. Or it would be "The Sandbaggers," which was made 30 years ago.

Professor Drezner -

Forget about No Way Out, you should be thinking of Spies Like Us (shout out to my friend Jen who facebooked this). Perhaps these folks were merely the Russian equivalent of GLG-20s seeking to distract us from something far more nefarious afoot.

-Ethan

It sounds like an elaborate money laundering scheme by some FSB guys to me.

I think the FBI arrested the ring because Anna Chapman reported - too late - to Moscow that she must have been exposed and was told to leave the U.S. The charges made thus far are enough to keep the ring at bay until the investigation is completed. I suggest you get more answers from this excellent article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/haggai-carmon/the-russian-sleeper-spy-r_b_630833.html#postComment
The author, Haggai Carmon has an impressive relevant resume.

...I've yet to hear anyone address - did these spies succeed in establishing contacts with anyone within six degrees of Kevin Bacon?

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