Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (AFP/Getty Images)
DOUBLE CROSSED: The government of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is calling for the head of the former spy master, who also exposed top Russian mole Mikhail Anatolyevich Vasenkov, a k a “Juan Lazaro,” (above) and wife Vicky Pelaez. (
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Sexy Russian spy Anna Chapman’s boss was working for us.
The head of Russia’s spy operations in America defected just before he betrayed Chapman and her nine fellow sleeper agents last summer — and the Kremlin has ordered a hit team to kill him as revenge, according to a bombshell report yesterday.
Senior officials in Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s government said the double agent — identified only as “Colonel Shcherbakov” — was a devastating blow to Russia’s SVR intelligence agency and touched off a probe.
Shcherbakov was the head of the American section of SVR’s “Directorate S,” which runs deep-cover spy operations around the world, the newspaper Kommersant reported yesterday.
He fled to the United States in June, a few days before the FBI arrested Chapman and her nine accomplices.
Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB agent and deputy chairman of the Russian Parliament’s security committee, confirmed the report.
“There has never been a failure of this kind in our US department,” Gudkov said, calling it “the holy of the holies in the intelligence business.”
“It takes decades to train such agents,” he said.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, also a former KGB agent, hinted at Shcherbakov’s existence shortly after the scandal broke in June.
“This is the result of betrayal, and traitors always end up badly. They end up, as a rule, on booze, drugs or in the gutter,” he warned.
A highly placed Kremlin official told Kommersant that Shcherbakov’s death warrant had been signed.
“We know who he is and where he is,” he said.
“Don’t doubt that a Mercader has already been sent after him,” he said — referring to Ramon Mercader, a Russian assassin who tracked down Leon Trotsky in Mexico and killed him with an ax in 1940.
“Every day he will fear retribution,” the Kremlin official said of Shcherbakov. “The fate of such a person is unenviable.
“He will carry this with him all his life and will fear retribution every day.”
Another Russian newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, noted that two other defectors — unrelated to the Chapman ring — died in the US recently under mysterious circumstances.
Sergei Tretyakov, who was deputy head of SVR’s New York operations when he defected in 2000, was said to have choked to death on a piece of meat in Florida in June. Another former spook, Evgeny Toropov, supposedly electrocuted himself in his bathtub by touching power tools, it said.
“Quite a coincidence,” the newspaper added.
Shcherbakov’s role was crucial in breaking down Mikhail Anatolyevich Vasenkov, the “most valuable and experienced” of the moles, according to Kommersant.
Vasenkov posed as the Peruvian husband of El Diario columnist — and fellow spy — Vicky Pelaez and lived with her in Yonkers, even while he was being promoted to the rank of general.
After his arrest, Vasenkov was visited in his jail cell by Shcherbakov. But Vasenkov — who apparently had never met his boss — didn’t recognize him.
“Mikhail Anatolyevich, you have to confess and give it up,” Shcherbakov told him in Russian. Vasenkov responded that he didn’t speak the questioner’s language.
Shcherbakov switched to English. Vasenkov, 65, replied: “I am Juan Lazaro. This is all a stupid mistake. I don’t understand what I’m accused of.”
He continued to stonewall until Shcherbakov placed a folder in front of him. It was Vasenkov’s internal SVR file, which Shcherbakov had brought with him from Moscow. Only then did Vasenkov admit who he was.
Vasenkov, Chapman and eight other alleged agents were sent home on July 9 in a swap for four Russians who were spying for the United States. But Vasenkov told his superiors he didn’t want to live in Russia.
One SVR official said his reaction was “understandable” because it was an unprecedented betrayal. “To turn over an illegal’s dossier to the enemy is a clear f- -k-up,” he said.
The newspaper said SVR’s headquarters in Moscow, nicknamed “The Forest,” is still reeling. Several senior officials will be fired or demoted, possibly including the agency’s chief, Mikhail Fradkov, one-time Russian prime minister under President Putin.
In addition, the SVR may be folded into Russia’s internal intelligence service. That would be like making the CIA a subdivision of the FBI.
But Russian officials said stern measures are necessary because SVR brass missed several clues to Shcherbakov’s double game, beginning with his daughter, who has lived for years in the United States.
“It’s strange that no one was taken aback by a man in such a post having relatives abroad,” one official told Kommersant.
He noted that another senior security agent was fired just because his cousin married a foreigner.
“This is one of many questions which are under investigation,” he said.
Another red flag popped up more than a year ago when Shcherbakov refused a promotion. Investigators in “The Forest” believe he was already working for the United States and was afraid of taking the required lie-detector test for a promotion.
Furthermore, no one in SVR sounded the alarm when Shcherbakov’s son, an officer in Russia’s drug-control agency, “hastily left Russia and flew to America” not long before the spy scandal broke, Kommersant said.