Russian assassination attempt of CIA asset on US soil shows major security shift: 'This is a game changer'A 2020 attempt by Russian agents to target and kill a CIA asset on U.S. soil signals a major shift in how the U.S. intelligence community assesses the threat faced by foreign informants who are vital to U.S. intelligence gathering.
Earlier this week, The New York Times revealed an unprecedented attempt by Moscow to pursue Aleksandr Poteyev, a former high-ranking Russian intelligence officer turned informant for the CIA who was living in Miami.
According to information set to be released in a book later this month by Calder Walton, a scholar of national security and intelligence at Harvard University, titled "Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West," an operation was put into motion in a "modern-day Mercader" — a reference to Ramón Mercader, a secret agent of the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin who assassinated Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940.
Russia has a long and notorious reputation for targeting informants at home and abroad, including in Western nations. In one well-documented case from 2018, Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury, England.
But according to Rebekah Koffler, a Russian-born former DIA intelligence officer who worked with the CIA’s National Clandestine Service on operational projects involving defectors and author of "Putin’s Playbook," Moscow going after a U.S. asset on American soil is "a game changer."
"We have many people working for us who risk their lives… in Russia providing really highly sensitive information. In certain cases, we exfiltrate them when their life is in danger when their cover is blown," she told Fox News Digital. "This is a game changer.".............
https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-assassination-attempt-cia-asset-us-soil-shows-major-security-shift-game-changer
