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Montclair couple Richard and Cynthia Murphy admit to being foreign agents
Spy swap set in motion when 10 people accused of spying in suburban America pleaded guilty to conspiracy Thursday and were ordered deported to Russia in exchange for the release of four Russian spies. This marked the largest spy swap between the United States and Russia since the Cold War.
The defendants pleaded guilty in a Manhattan courtroom, were immediately sentenced to time served and were ordered deported. The 10 were to be sent to Russia within hours, according to a report on Yahoo.com. And U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood announced that the Russian government would release four people to the United States in exchange.
The defendants each announced their pleas to conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign country.
Defendant Richard Murphy, who had been living in Montclair, New Jersey, acknowledged that from the mid-1990s to the present, he had lived in the U.S. under an assumed name and took directions from the Russian Federation.Igor Sutyagin, a Russian arms control analyst convicted of spying for the United States, was reportedly taken from a Moscow prison and flown to Vienna earlier Thursday.
The defendants provided almost no information about what kind of spying they actually had been doing for Russia.
When asked to describe their crimes, each acknowledged having worked for Russia secretly, sometimes under an assumed identity, without registering as a foreign agent.
The arrests occurred more than a week ago, capping a decade-plus investigation. The spy swap carries significant consequences for repairing relations between Washington and Moscow chilled by deepening suspicions.
— BOB HOLT, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
