The “Americans,” the 1980s TV series which ran for six years, was one of my favorite shows of all time. This drama featured two Russian spies masquerading as northern Virginia travel agents with orders to steal intelligence secrets to send back to Moscow. The agents Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (played by Matthew Rhys and Kerri Russell) were selected, trained, indoctrinated, and paired as young adults by their then-Soviet commanders for careers as married intelligence operatives.

With the end of the Cold War, I assumed that planting Soviet and now Russian “illegals” (spies who operate without diplomatic cover and take on an entirely different national identity) might be a relic of the past. But recently, I learned otherwise.

In a U.S. Justice Department criminal indictment filed March 24, Sergey Cherkasov, a 37 year-old Russian national, was charged with operating as an agent of the Russian Intelligence Service. According to the filing, he fraudulently obtained entry into the United States under the Brazilian alias of Victor Muller Ferreira to attend a university in the District of Columbia and to spy on the United States.

This news got my attention because the university in question turned out to be the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., the school where I was headed to attend my 50th class reunion a week later. Ostensibly with the goal of gaining access to important decision makers, Cherkasov was accepted by the school in 2018 and graduated in 2020.

With its access to the diplomatic, military and intelligence communities in D.C., this is a school that is a natural target for resume building and intelligence gathering. While the School of Advanced International Studies is not unfamiliar with spies (both an American student and professor were convicted of spying for Cuba in the 1980s), this was the first Russian spy (to my knowledge) to graduate from the school.

After graduation,Cherkasov used his degree to land an internship at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Evidently tipped off by FBI officials, he was denied entry to the Netherlands and returned to Brazil, where he was arrested on fraud charges stemming from his use of the fake Ferreira identity. He is now serving a 15-year prison sentence in Brazil.

This spy tale yields both good news and bad news. The good news is that the Russian spy machine in this high-cost adventure (the Russian Intelligence Service had to shell out more than $120,000 just for his education at the school) proved pretty feeble.

Consider, for example, the information that Cherkasov sent back to Moscow ahead of its decision to invade Ukraine. In one message, he reportedly opined that the United States was not going to supply any military support for Ukraine in case of a Russian invasion. Relying supposedly on online discussions and think tank reports, Cherkasov was as far off the mark as other Russian “intelligence” in underestimating the U.S. response, as well as the Ukrainian military’s will and ability to prevail on the battlefield.

Cherkasov also appears to have made some sloppy and serious errors in his spycraft during the time he was preparing to leave Brazil for the United States. Evidence gleaned from his computer and memory drives found buried in a Brazilian forest included his “legend” (a fabricated autobiography that agents are supposed to memorize) and other information that provided clues to the identities of his handlers. Keeping such sensitive information available in electronic form, according to Chris Costa, the director of the Spy Museum in D.C., was “mind-boggling” incompetence.

In terms of bad news, If Cherkasov had not been exposed to the Dutch authorities, he could have been able to gather intelligence, recruit sources, and penetrate the International Criminal Court’s digital systems. Presumably, he then would have been in position to provide a significant contribution to the intelligence that Russia was seeking regarding ongoing criminal investigations of its war crimes against Ukraine.

It is impossible to know how many of Russia’s deep cover operations are going well around the world. While finding someone to switch his or her nationality cannot be an easy task, it appears that Russia’s use of “illegals” to destabilize and spy on Western adversaries will continue to be an important part of their spy playbook in the future. So let’s all keep a sharp eye out for the next Philip and Elizabeth Jennings running a travel agency around town.

Ray Ahearn lives in Holyoke.]]>