The Daily - Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Episode Date: March 27, 2018

Eight years ago, the United States and Russia agreed to a spy swap that sent a Russian double agent to safety in Britain. That former spy and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent this month, and the Kremlin has been accused of orchestrating the attack. Why did it happen now? Guest: Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, eight years ago, the U.S. and Russia agreed to a spy swap that sent a Russian double agent to safety in the U.K. This month, Russia allegedly poisoned that same spy. What happened in the years between? It's Tuesday, March 27th. Peter, set the scene for us on July 9th, 2010 in Vienna.

Well, it's like a flashback to the old Cold War. You have two airplanes landing at the airport in Vienna, Austria, one Russian and one American within quick succession. And they park near each other, and you can't see who's getting off because they're covered. Obviously, somebody of importance is getting off with a Russian plane and moving over to the American plane and vice versa. And what you have here is kind of an old-fashioned spy swap,

except nothing like this had happened since the end of the Cold War. This is the largest spy swap we've seen since the days of the Soviet Union. Peter Baker covered the spy swap in Vienna. And who is being swapped for whom? Who are these Russians that the U.S. is returning? Ten Russian citizens sent to the U.S. with what are called legends, fabricated birth certificates, Irish and Latino surnames, trained in the use of invisible ink and secret radio transmissions. The Russians being returned by America were sleeper agents who had been in the United States undercover for dozens of years.

There were people living in Montclair, New Jersey. There were folks living in Seattle. They moved to Boston. They seem to be getting along in the suburbs there. We had no idea. They just seemed like a nice, quiet family. They landscaped. They just did nice family stuff.

They had children. They had jobs. Their kids were in schools. They had very elaborate cover stories. Eight of the defendants have been accused of carrying out deep cover assignments in the U.S. on behalf of Russia. And the idea was that someday they might be activated in a way that would be useful for Russian intelligence. It's basically like a real-life version of the Americans without quite as much of the glamour. But as I recall it, it didn't feel all that threatening because the threat from Russia at this point, just eight years ago, was nowhere near as high as it had been in the Cold War.

So it kind of felt almost a little comical, the idea that these people were going to be activated as they would have been during the Cold War. Well, it definitely felt out of touch with the moment, right? as they would have been during the Cold War. Well, it definitely felt out of touch with the moment, right? Well, before he left for the G20 summit, President Obama tried out some burger diplomacy with Russia's president. Mr. Obama and the Russian president both had cheeseburgers, and they shared the fries.

That was nice of them. And Mr. Obama paid. We had relatively good relations with Russia. President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia were declaring their friendship for each other, signing a nuclear arms control treaty. And in fact, both sides just wanted this spy scandal to go away. The president and I agreed that the relationship between Russia and the United States has suffered from a sense of drift. We resolved to reset U.S.-Russian relations so that we can cooperate more effectively in areas of common interest. President Obama and the political team in the White House, their priority was to keep relationships with Russia going on an even keel.

And this was only going to mess that up. So their priority was, let's have a swap. Let's make a deal that is fair to both sides or at least fair to our side. And then we can move on to our higher priorities. And the higher priorities were getting troops to Afghanistan through Russian airspace, getting this arms control deal finalized and so forth. And so the last thing President Obama wanted was, you know, a big rupture in the relationship. So who does the U.S. get in exchange in this spy swap? Well, the U.S., of course, didn't want to just

give over the 10 without getting something in exchange, but they actually couldn't find 10 people equivalent in Russian prisons to ask for. There aren't Americans currently imprisoned in Russia who we would want back. So they came up with a list of four, four Russians who had been accused and put in prison on accusations of being double agents or spies for the West. Not all of them admitted that, not all of them probably were, but because agents or spies for the West. Not all of them admitted that not all of them probably were, but because they were associated with the West, they were punished. And so the Americans asked for these four people who'd been in prison for a long time. And Peter, when you say double agent, I'm assuming that means a Russian spy who has

turned over, who has flipped and is working for the other side, the country where they're supposed to be spying for Russia. Exactly. They're working for the West, even while they're supposedly an intelligence agent for the Russian government. And at least two of them had been associated with British government, and therefore the British asked us

to help get them released, and we did. So when these plans land in Vienna, four Russians get off and head over to the American side. Two of them end up going on to the United States. Two of them end up going on to the United States. Two of them end up going on to London. One of those who went on to London was Sergei Skripal, a colonel in Russia's military intelligence service who had been sentenced in 2006 to 13 years for spying for Britain.

New details emerged today in the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy whom the Kremlin considered a traitor. Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, now both critically ill, were deliberately poisoned, targeted specifically, according to police. Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia have spent another night in a critical condition in hospital after being found unconscious on Sunday. Our role now, of course, is to establish who is behind this and why they carried out this act. So Sergei Skripal, the same guy who was just poisoned in Britain, is the guy who, eight years earlier, was sent to Britain by the Russians in this spy swap.

Exactly right. Sergei Skripal's case was so high profile that Russia's intelligence service, the FSB, which is headquartered right here on Moscow's Lubyanka Square, even made a film about the arrest and the betrayal they say Skripal committed. Putin swore revenge on poisoned Russian spy. Yeah, he said this in 2010. Yeah, he said this in 2010. So what has happened in these past eight years? What has Skripal been doing that might have led to this poisoning? So far as we know, Sergey Skripal had basically lived a retirement, in effect, in Britain,

and what's changed since that tarmac swap in Vienna is the whole nature of our relationship. At that time, Vienna, somewhat friendly, pretty productive productive reset, as they had called it at the time, has degenerated into an active and very, very hostile conflict these days, a hot piece, some people call it, with the rise of Vladimir Putin back to the presidency and the invasion of Ukraine and the meddling in the US elections and so forth. And so Sergei Skripal, living out a quiet life in Britain,

became a target, it seems, of Moscow, which never forgave him for betraying them. Peter, this phrase you just used, hot peace, I've never actually heard it, and I wonder what exactly it means. The idea is we've gone from the period of 40 years of this kind of superpower jousting around the world to this new era where we're obviously not

in a direct conflict, and yet it seems to be more and more heated and more and more contentious as each month goes by, only more so, as we see now, because of this poisoning. So it's not as if Skripal had committed a new batch of sins against Mother Russia. It's that the relationship between the United States and Russia and the United States and its allies in Russia

had just really deteriorated. Right. As far as we know, there's a certain humility that when it comes to the intelligence world, there's a lot we don't know. But as far as we understand, this was not some new active involvement by Sergei Skripal in the spy wars that have gone on for so many decades. This was

carrying out an old grudge. Mystery surrounds what happened. The 66-year-old Sergei Skripal was discovered delirious, with him, his 33-year-old daughter, unconscious. So what do we know about the details of this poisoning? What seems to be this many years delayed act of revenge by Russia? What actually happened? Well, it almost seems like it's coming from a John le Carré novel. Sir Grace Creek Paul and his daughter, Yulia, were having what seemed to be, as far as anyone can tell, a quiet day in Salisbury in southwest England

when they sat down on a park bench and then slumped over. She was sort of lent in on him. It looked like she'd passed out, maybe. He was doing some strange hand movements, looking up to the sky. I felt anxious. I felt like I should step in. But to be honest, they looked so out of it that I thought even if I did step in,

I wasn't sure how I could help. People found them literally almost seemingly frozen. Her eyes were just completely white. They were wide open, but just white, and frothing at the mouth. And then the man went stiff, his arms stopped moving. And they were basically already in a coma there on that park bench that day. And what have the authorities in Britain said

was the cause of this condition they were found in? The prime minister has confirmed that the former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia. Well, the British have done tests and they have narrowed it down to a nerve agent called Novichok. Novichok is the name for a family of nerve agents said to be the most deadly ever created. It was developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 80s. When inhaled or absorbed into the skin,

it causes suffocation and heart failure. The Russians deny it. They say they destroyed all of their declared chemical weapons last year. But one of the chemical weapons they didn't declare was Novichok. And they now deny that they even ever created it. Have you seen the photos of the Skripal in the hospital? Have you seen this? You're saying that... No, no, I'm just, I didn't see this. I doubt. But did you see them?

You doubt that he is still as... I don't know. No proofs. And Peter, this might be a difficult question for anyone, let alone a Westerner, to answer, but how would these two people come to have somehow ingested or been exposed to a nerve agent. It's a good question.

I think in this case, there's a question about whether it might have been inhaled or come through the skin, whether it was aerosolized, if you will, made into an aerosol spray. Up to 500 people in Salisbury who went to the same pub and restaurant as a poisoned Russian spy, former spy, and his daughter are being advised to wash their clothes and clean any possessions they handled whilst they were there. The table used by the Skripals was so contaminated it had to be destroyed. This is a weapon that didn't just endanger the one person they really apparently wanted to kill, Sergei Skripal, it put in danger dozens, potentially hundreds of people who might have come into contact with him or his daughter or just even the very area that they were found in on the park bench. More surreal and extraordinary scenes in Salisbury this afternoon. Wearing gas masks and protective clothing, military personnel loading

potentially contaminated cars onto trucks. Could this be construed as an act of chemical warfare? I mean, it basically is. That's essentially what Theresa May, the Prime Minister of Britain, is saying. I mean, it was an act of war. It was certainly a violent act committed on British territory, a violation of their sovereignty. And she has taken it very, very seriously and treated it that way. Mr. Speaker, this action has happened against a backdrop of a well-established pattern of Russian state aggression. Theresa May got it before Parliament. She announced that she would expel 23 Russian diplomats. This will be the single biggest expulsion for over 30 years, and it reflects the fact that

this is not the first time that the Russian state has acted against our country. Through these expulsions, we will fundamentally degrade Russian intelligence capability in the UK for years to come. And if they seek to rebuild it, we will prevent them from doing so. And she has organized basically the Western allies to follow suit in a coordinated way we have not seen in quite a while. Dozens of Russian diplomats have been expelled from consulates and embassies around the world. Canada's expelling four diplomats, Ukraine, 13, three in Albania and Norway. It's now 16 EU nations following suit.

Germany, France, Poland, one by one they joined Britain in a standoff with the Kremlin. The US retaliates its toughest action yet, expelling 60 Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain. That's the largest expulsion of Russians from American soil going back decades and signaled a pretty striking change in posture by President Trump.

Although even to this moment, as far as we know, he has not yet publicly come out and made a personal condemnation in a visceral way, the way, say, Theresa May has. A sad situation. It certainly looks like the Russians were behind it. Something that should never, ever happen. And we're taking it very seriously, as I think are many others. And Peter, were you surprised

that the Trump administration joined Britain in doing this, and expelling so many Russian diplomats? I would have been surprised if they didn't join Britain. Britain, of course, is our closest ally. What does it mean to have a special relationship if you don't follow suit in this kind of thing? It would have been quite surprising if the United States did not follow the lead of Britain when Britain asked for this kind of action. ask for this kind of action. But having said that, given President Trump's notable desire not to alienate President Putin, given his repeated efforts to not say anything that would be seen as critical of Russia, in that sense, it's surprising. And the number is surprising. 60 is a lot. He didn't have to necessarily do 60. He could have done a smaller amount and say he had

done something. And broadly speaking, who are the 60 people that the U.S. is expelling? Well, 12 of them work at the United Nations, so they are categorized as diplomats. The other 48 work in the United States as diplomats, but at least a dozen of them, I think, are identified, at least by the United States, as being intelligence officers. That's pretty common. Remember, Russia is a different system than ours. There's not really a whole big difference between civilian and intelligence work when it comes to their foreign service. There's a lot of overlap, a lot of, you know, murky lines. And so they may not have the official designation or be on the payroll of the intelligence agency, but they are obviously

working in coordination. Why would we let Russians into this country as diplomats if we understand that there effectively is no line or virtually no line between diplomacy and spying in Russia? Well, we do it because that's just the way it's always been done. And we expect other countries to accept the people we send over with diplomatic credentials, even though sometimes they're not really our diplomats. You know, the CIA officers working in most countries are mostly accredited as diplomats. So there's sort of a wink and a nod that goes among countries and has for many years on this kind of thing. But when an episode like this comes up, it usually is a chance for a country to sort of clean house a little bit. Right. Sounds like it kind of goes both ways. Yeah, it does.

But basically, if we well know that Russians in this country are likely up to some espionage, it sounds like these expulsions are simply kind of a political act. They're largely symbolic rather than a meaningful national security move. Well, look, you know, diplomacy is often about statements. It's often about symbolism. It's often about drawing a line, even if it doesn't necessarily have a tangible impact. Right. And that's why we keep looking to President Trump

and asking him why he's not saying things in a stronger way, because these things matter. They send signals. So to your point, what's the statement that President Trump or the Trump administration, since he's been a little more quiet, what's the statement that the Trump administration is making here with these expulsions? Well, the Trump administration is making the point that we,

A, we stand with our ally, and B, we're not going to tolerate without some sort of response an attack on sovereignty like this. But what we've often seen so far in the last 14 months is this duality of attitude toward Russia when it comes to the Trump administration. You've got, on the one hand, the administration itself, which sometimes takes actions like these or uses strong words of condemnation, sometimes expressed by Rex Tillerson when he was Secretary of State or Nikki Haley as the UN ambassador or others.

And then you've got the President of the United States himself who almost never says anything that would seem to be in conflict with Russia. Just last week, he called President Putin and congratulated him on an election that everybody else considered to be a sham, even though his own staff said, do not congratulate. And he didn't even mention the poisoning

during this phone call. So there is this odd dichotomy between a president and the rest of his administration. Does it seem like only a matter of time until President Trump has to acknowledge that we are in this moment that you described as a kind of a hot piece, and this campaign idea of his,

that we would be friends with Russia, that we would somehow find common ground and work out our differences and manage some kind of a partnership, is just not really possible. It's not unusual for a new president to come in and say, hey, we're going to have a better relationship with Russia. It matters to us to have a better relationship with Russia.

President Clinton came in and said that. President Bush came in and said that. President Obama came in and said that. What's different about President Trump is he seems immune to the sort of pressure points that other presidents responded to, which is to say that even though they wanted good relations, when the Russians didn't respond in a way that was constructive or friendly, they said so. They called him out on it. And President Trump seems very, very determined not to do that. And his argument would be, it's good for us to have a good relationship, and therefore it's good that I, you know, maintain friendship with Vladimir Putin. But it seems so in conflict with the events as

they have been playing out over the last year that people are automatically and not surprisingly suspicious of what it might mean. And that's where the investigation comes in. Is there something there we don't know about or have yet to prove? Right. I mean, that does seem like the inevitable question. How, if at all, does this connect to the Russia investigation? One thought I had, one thing I was kind of wondering about as we've been talking here is whether President Trump's action, these expulsions, is about the poisoning of a Russian spy, or is it actually about President Trump feeling like he now has to act given the special counsel's Russia investigation and the warmth that he has displayed

toward Vladimir Putin? He hasn't seemed that worried about the fact that everybody is asking why he's so close with Vladimir Putin. You would have thought by now any other politician being questioned on that would have said some things that would have, you know, dispelled that impression. And he seems to, in fact, dig in the opposite way. He seems more determined to not publicly condemn Vladimir Putin, even though everybody's other administrations might have taken as well, American administration under Democrats or Republicans.

There is this unusual and very hard to explain duality of policy. And that, again, is why this Russia investigation matters, because people are trying to see, does the one follow the other? Is there a reason why President Trump takes this posture with Russia that goes beyond what the presidents did? Is recognizing that Russia is up to some very nefarious business, in effect, recognizing that the Trump campaign miscalculated in its approach toward Russia before the election, and therefore something that Trump as president would not be quick to want to recognize? That's a good question. And I think that one thing that President Trump doesn't want to do is admit that his judgment about Russia was wrong, right? Is to suggest that somehow he was naive

about Vladimir Putin and way too trusting of him. So the administration takes a harder approach, even as he himself does not. Peter, thank you very much. Thank you. Great talking to you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, one of the nation's largest gun manufacturers filed for bankruptcy protection amid declining sales, heavy debt, and lawsuits stemming from the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Remington manufactures the AR-15-style assault rifle that was used to kill 20 children and six staff members, prompting families of the victims to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the company. The families argued that Remington marketed the gun to the public,

even though it knew it was designed for military use. The case has since reached the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule on it later this year. And the bankruptcy filing is not expected to affect the decision. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.