Russian Spy Swap: How It's Done

We've got ourselves a spy swap! The Justice Department announced today the United States will exchange the 10 Russians agents captured last month in a spy ring for four Russian prisoners accused of spying for the U.S.

So how does a spy swap work, exactly? For that information, we contacted Mark Stout, Historian at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

First question: How will this spy swap rank among prior spy swaps?

Mark Stout: I think it’ll be interesting if for no other reason than this is really the first -- at least publicly known -- spy swap of the post-Cold War era. And I think that’ll be what’s interesting about it.

SLIDE SHOW: Take a look at some of the most notorious spies who snooped on the United States for Russia and other nations.

So exactly how does a spy swap work? When nations swap spies, do they exchange them at exactly the same time so there aren’t any "take-backs"?

Stout: There’s a lot of different ways of doing this. In 1986, for example, the FBI arrested a Russian intelligence officer who was spying in New York. The Soviets in retaliation set up and then arrested Nicholas Daniloff, an American reporter who was working for U.S. News and World Report.

In that particular case, when they arranged the swap of these two guys for each other, what (the Soviet and the U.S.) did was simultaneously (the spies) were put on planes -- one in New York and in Moscow -- and the planes took off at the same time.

In the Cold War, a lot of times the swaps would happen at a bridge in Berlin that separated East Berlin from West Berlin, and it would happen simultaneously. But on other occasions they’ve been done non-simultaneously, staggered by hours or days. It just really depends on the circumstances.

It doesn’t seem to me in this case that there’s any burning need to have them exactly simultaneously down to the minute because frankly, U.S.-Russian relations are fairly good. The symbolism behind doing it timed exactly to the minute is: "We don’t trust each other." And I don’t think that’s the message that either government wants to send at the moment.

So when they do spy swaps, is it kind of like a football trade?

Stout [laughing]: That’s not a bad analogy, actually.

Who decides what a spy is worth? Do they barter?

Stout: Historically what we’ve seen is that one or the other intelligence service will directly -- either from service to service or through some sort of intermediary -- will say, “We’re interested in a swap. We’d be willing to give up this guy, and here’s our shopping list."

SLIDE SHOW: The world is espionage is not divorced from the world, which is why spies living among us need everyday objects to carry out their secret duties.

What makes a spy more valuable than another? If we’re going to do a two-for-one deal, what makes my guy worth two of theirs?

Stout: There’s no hard and fast rule on this. And I think the important thing to remember here is a lot of times the value is not so much in “what did these people do as spies” or “what did these people do as intelligence officers." And more often it's in the political symbolism of the whole thing. OK, so that’s number one.

Number two, of course both the U.S. and Russia -- like most countries -- have a tradition of wanting to bring their people home. So the value of somebody who is...a Russian intelligence officer, as opposed to somebody they recruited, or an actual member of the CIA, say, the value of that person is very high. ... None of these countries like to send people over on government business and then abandon them if they don’t have to.

Stout says that when the CIA or FBI wants to make a swap, they can either work through intermediaries or simply pick up the phone and call their counterparts in Russia. Both surely have each other’s phone numbers, he added.

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Photo credit: AP