How a Green Beret captain sold out his own teammates to Russia
“It sounds crazy and almost unbelievable," one soldier said.
By Paul Szoldra May 18, 2021
Peter Debbins
Peter Debbins claims he was a patriot seeking adventure when he entered U.S. Army officer training in July 1998. But the soldier, who became an elite Green Beret and later applied to the Central Intelligence Agency, lived a double life as a Russian mole and gave Moscow the names of his Special Forces colleagues years later.
“I feel personally betrayed. My Detachment Commander sold me out to Russia,” a subordinate said of Debbins in a sentencing memorandum recently filed in Virginia. “It sounds crazy and almost unbelievable.”
Debbins, 46, was sentenced on Friday to more than 15 years in federal prison after admitting he passed secrets to Moscow for roughly the same amount of time. Yet despite his former teammate’s disbelief, court documents paint a troubling picture of a young, self-described immigrant “son of Russia” who grew up in Minnesota and came to be known by Russia’s GRU military intelligence service by the codename Ikar Lenikov without American intelligence knowing for more than two decades.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/us-army-special-forces-peter-debbins/