When the FBI arrested real Russian spies, Clinton, Holder, and Mueller released them
Remember When Mueller let Russian spies walk?
For ten years, the FBI conducted Operation Ghost Stories to track and exploit a network of deep-cover Russian spies ("illegals"). This was one of the FBI's most complex and effective counterintelligence operations. On June 27-28, 2010, the FBI arrested 10 spies.
The next day, Bill Clinton was scheduled to deliver a speech in Moscow, for which he was paid a $500,000 fee. At the same time, the Clintons were helping Russia buy Uranium One, one of the major companies mining uranium in the US. This deal would not only allow Russia to control 10-20% of U.S. uranium but would also give Russian intelligence access to America’s nuclear industry. In exchange, the Clinton Foundation received $145 million from related parties.
The Ghost Stories' achievement had to quickly disappear to protect these deals involving Russia and the Clintons. Therefore, Attorney General Eric Holder got the arrested spies a sweet plea deal, in which they pled to a failure to register as an agent of a foreign government. They were flown to Vienna and released on July 9, less than two weeks later. Of course, there was insufficient time and leverage to make them cooperate. They preserved all the recruited assets and brought back to Moscow all the fresh operative information they possessed, plus the knowledge about the sources and methods used to detect and track them. Eric Holder unintentionally acknowledged that when he claimed they had not stolen any secrets. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted to return the spies to Russia as soon as possible. FBI Director Robert Mueller agreed to return the spies to Putin immediately. Together, they turned this huge counter-intelligence victory into a grave defeat for the US. Putin openly celebrated the victory.
To improve relations with Russia or implement a “reset,” there was no need to return the arrested spies. Keeping them detained provided additional leverage to the US in any negotiations.
It is a fair guess that after this corrupt situation, the FBI was discouraged from vigorously pursuing Russian government activities in the US. Eric Holder’s defense of Snowden's espionage, not affected by Russia’s annexation of Crimea, confirms that.
In exchange for the release of 10 Russian spies, Russia released 4 of its prisoners. Some publications called that a spies’ swap, but this is incorrect. First, the US released the Russian spies immediately, without punishment, and with all the operative information they had. Second, only one of the 4 prisoners released by Russia could be an American citizen. The other three were an ex-KGB officer cleared of espionage accusations in the Soviet Union and convicted lately of ordinary crimes, an open-source researcher, and a man sentenced for espionage for Britain.
