The Journal. - Inside Russia’s Spy Unit Targeting Americans

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

Slashed tires, moved bookcases, a dead dog. For years, U.S. diplomats posted to Russia have experienced some strange things. WSJ’s Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw report on the little-known spy unit, which U.S. officials believe is responsible for the surveillance and harassment of Americans in Russia, including WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich. Further Reading: - Inside the Secretive Russian Security Force That Targets Americans  - Putin, Isolated and Distrustful, Leans on Handful of Hard-Line Advisers  Further Listening: - A WSJ Reporter Arrested in Russia  - Russian Court Upholds WSJ Reporter’s Detention  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Peter Zwock, retired U.S. Army Brigadier General. I was in Moscow serving as our senior U.S. defense attache. Peter served in Moscow from 2012 to 2014. And during that time, he noticed some strange things. Like the time he was driving and saw someone tailing his car from above. We had a helicopter just there, hovering for a while as we were driving along. Sometimes his family would come home and just sense that something was off. There would just be strange signs that somebody had been in your apartment.

My son lost his watch or thought his watch was moving. Then one day, a week or two later, And then one day, a week or two later, the watcher sitting there on the floor. Just odd. Clothing moved. And it's kind of a tap on the shoulder that we know you're here. A tap on the shoulder from Russia's spy network. You have to make the assumption when you're in Moscow that you are under surveillance. And you're being followed one way or the other. Peter is one of many Americans who said they've experienced unsettling things in Russia. Americans, including our colleague Evan Gershkovich,

who was followed by several Russian security officers. Earlier this year, Evan was arrested on espionage charges, charges that he and The Wall Street Journal vehemently deny. Now, after months of reporting, The Journal has uncovered that one secret unit in Russia's powerful spy agency is behind it all. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Linebaugh. It's Monday, July 17th.

Coming up on the show, the secretive Russian security force targeting Americans. Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show?

We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card and other conditions apply. On March 29th, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was on a reporting trip outside of Moscow when he was arrested. When they first heard the news, our colleagues Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw had a lot of questions. Almost immediately after,e and i started to

think about well who who took him and that's a very simple question but it led us on this very very complicated transnational journey where the simple question actually revealed this much bigger truth about not just one of the most opaque corners of the Russian security services, but also the power that this particular unit has inside Putin's Russia today. Joe and Drew's reporting journey took them across Europe and the U.S.

They interviewed dozens of senior diplomats and security officials, former Russian intelligence officers, Americans who'd previously been jailed in Russia and their families, as well as independent Russian journalists and security analysts who fled the country. They also drew information from public court proceedings as well as reviewed leaked Russian intelligence memos.

And we spoke with former American officials and current American officials who had the unpleasant life of being based in Moscow or traveling to Moscow and being subject to spycraft and harassment. They heard stories

about intimidation tactics that at times sounded like juvenile pranks, like the kind Peter described. The bookcases have been moved around. People will come home, the car keys are missing, the kind Peter described. The bookcases have been moved around. People will come home, the car keys are missing, the jewelry is missing.

Another thing they do is leave a calling card, which is a lit cigarette or a stubbed-out cigarette, on a toilet seat. Other times, these calling cards were nasty. An American official visiting Moscow came back to his hotel room and found someone had defecated in his suitcase. Ew. Some were unsettling. They also like to slash the tires of cars that are parked around the embassy or the residences of diplomats.

They've followed an ambassador's young children to things like soccer practice and into a McDonald's. And sometimes the stories were downright scary. Someone working in the defense officer's office came home and found his dog dead in what appeared to be a poisoning. Joe and Drew suspected that behind many of these antics was Russia's main security service, the FSB, which had replaced the old Soviet-era KGB. So they started to talk with their sources about what exactly was going on inside the agency. As we were plunging into this huge, opaque, deliberately secretive institution, which is the FSB, secretive institution, which is the FSB, we tried, first of all, to map what the different directorates were. Because the FSB is very, very complicated, structured into these directorates. Inside these directorates are all these smaller subdivisions.

And then they got a tip, a potential name for the unit. And one of the former U.S. ambassadors that we spoke to said, well, the subdivision of the unit that's responsible for following Americans has always been DECRO. DECRO, or the D-K-R-O, for the Department for Counterintelligence Operations. Joe and Drew now had something to go on. The problem was they could scarcely find anything about it. I think at one point I Googled them, and there's like 35 Google results, and most of them were just sort of random.

You know, if you Google four random letters, some weird stuff comes up. Do you know that the Wikipedia page for DECRO was created after our story was written? I did not know that. So what is DECRO was created after our story was written. I did not know that. So what is DECRO? DECRO is the counterintelligence arm of the FSB. They're responsible for monitoring foreigners in Russia. So if you visit Russia, there's a good chance they would be monitoring you. And its first section, DECRO-1, is the subdivision responsible for following Americans and Canadians.

is the subdivision responsible for following Americans and Canadians. Those slashed tires, the dead dog, Peter's car being trailed by a low-flying helicopter, U.S. officials have chalked it up to DECRO. Though it's impossible to know whether DECRO is behind every such incident, the unit makes no public statements. And in the course of your reporting, you spoke with so many people.

What did they tell you was the goal of all of this? They said the goal is to stifle any American diplomats' movements in Russia, to keep them inside the embassy walls, have them put their heads down and do nothing during the two or three years they're based there. You know, many people who worked in that embassy over the last 10 years did say that the Russians' tactics were incredibly effective.

Neither the FSB nor the Kremlin responded to written questions. The State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow declined to comment, as did Evans' lawyers in Russia. The modern-day FSB traces its roots to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Every pillar of Soviet society

collapsed. But there was one thing that survived, and that was the spy agencies. Out of the ashes of the KGB came the FSB, and its expanding role in Russian life was helped by one person in particular, Vladimir Putin. This is a man who wanted to join the KGB since he was a teenager. He famously walked into the KGB office in St. Petersburg through the front door and asked if he could join, which is a very unusual way of being recruited.

They told him to go off to university and study, and maybe then he could be hired. The young Putin did return after graduating, and he had big ambitions. Around this time, Drew says a new Russia was emerging. There's this huge 1990s influx of American investors, reporters, visitors. There's a McDonald's in Moscow.

Russia is now open. In 1998, Putin became the head of the FSB, and then in 2000, he became president of Russia. Under his leadership, the security service's role has expanded. Some security analysts now call Russia a counterintelligence state, with the FSB controlling many aspects of Russian life. And one arm of the FSB that's grown is DECRO. of the FSB that's grown is Dekro.

People that we spoke to said that Dekro's operations essentially kind of ebb and flow with the policy inside the Kremlin. However, as Russia and Putin's Russia has become more and more insular, you know, in the last 20 years, as Putin himself has become more paranoid, Dikro has become an expression of that. Isn't this just what countries do?

Like, everybody's spying on everybody? It's definitely the case that intelligence services exist for a reason. Countries are spying on each other. Enemies, friends, all of these institutions are trying to gather information. But there is something

everyone who has served in Moscow says, and that is that it is qualitatively different. It is much, much more hostile. And this more hostile posturing would have big consequences for foreign journalists. Journalists like Evan Gershkovich. That's next.

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Drink responsibly. Copyright 2024. Bacardi. It's trade dress and the bat device are trademarks of Bacardi. Do what moves you. Live passionately. Drink responsibly. Copyright 2024. Bacardi. It's trade dress and the bat device are trademarks of Bacardi and Company Limited. Rum 40% alcohol by volume. Drew says Evan's detention in March doesn't seem to have been his first brush with DECRO agents. Evan had had these bizarre experiences where on one assignment, Evan was followed by several Russian security officers, at least one of whom kind of had his camera out and was recording his movements.

After the invasion of Ukraine, Evan began investigating the expanding role the security services played in Russia. He and some colleagues reported that the FSB had mainly planned the invasion, not the military. But as the war dragged on and began to flounder, the FSB came under pressure from President Putin. He publicly berated his spy agencies several times, saying that they needed to kick up their work.

At one point he says, quote, you need to significantly improve your work. Soon after, U.S. officials noticed an uptick in aggressive actions toward the few Americans still in Russia. And around that time, Evan, among many other reporters, started to notice that they were being followed by what we now understand to be DECRO. While awaiting trial, Evan is being held in Russia's Lefortovo prison, the same prison where former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan was once held. Whelan is now serving a 16-year sentence on spying charges.

The U.S. State Department has deemed Whelan and Evan as wrongfully detained. Since Evan's arrest, another American has been picked up by security services in Russia. Last month, a former U.S. paratrooper and musician named Michael Travis Leak was detained on drug charges, which he denies. In recent years, Russia and the U.S. have engaged in several prisoner swaps, including for Brittany Griner. And last week, President Biden said he is, quote, serious about a prisoner exchange for Evan. So clearly this continues. Evan is neither the first nor the last attempt by Russia

to use human beings as bargaining chips in this conflict with America. Joe and Drew say that their reporting showed Putin knew about the operation to arrest Evan. While we don't know and we perhaps will never know whether Putin himself ordered Evan to be arrested, we do know a proposal for this operation reached his desk before March 29th, when Evan was taken.

We do know, from speaking to people who are familiar with the situation, that after the arrest, Putin was briefed by Vladislav Menshikov, who is in charge of counterintelligence at the FSB. And we do know that he asked how the operation went. He wanted details on the operation. What does this ramp up of surveillance of Westerners in Russia tell us about Putin? The thing I was struck with is just how much Russia is a country run by the spy chief. Putin was the FSB director and he runs the country exactly the way you would imagine an FSB director surrounded by paranoid former and current spies would. Yes, it's a mentality that's paranoid. Yes, it's a mentality that is very, very suspicious of the West. But it also shows that

he's still very interested in operations that you would think someone like him perhaps wouldn't have the time or the inclination to be following on a granular level. So it really is someone who's still following the minutiae and someone who's still running the entire country, not just as if he's the president, but as if he's also head of the security services. That's all for today, Monday, July 17th. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal. Also, if you haven't listened

to our recent series, With Great Power, The Rise of Superhero Cinema, go back and check it out. It's in your feed. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.