WASHINGTON _ A former Special Forces soldier was arrested and accused of conspiring with the Russian intelligence services and leaking classified national defense information in a decades-long spying operation.
U.S. prosecutors in Virginia said on Friday that Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins, an ex-Green Beret, turned over information to Russian spies, describing the activities of his elite military unit and offering the names of Special Forces colleagues he thought the Russians might be able to recruit. Debbins, 45, was charged with violating espionage laws.
"He considered himself pro-Russian and a loyal son of Russia," the indictment said. "Debbins thought that the United States was too dominant in the world and needed to be cut down to size."
The complaint provides an extraordinary level of detail about his decades-long relationship with the Russian intelligence services. Debbins began meeting with Russian agents as early as 1996, according to prosecutors, and was given the code name "Ikar Lesnikov." In 2003, he allegedly went to a hotel in Chelyabinsk and met two Russian intelligence officers. They gave him a bottle of Cognac and a Russian military uniform, and offered him training in how to deceive polygraph tests, according to prosecutors.
Over the years, prosecutors said, Debbins sought to conceal his contacts with the Russians by failing to report those communications on government disclosure forms.
"Debbins violated his oath as a U.S. Army officer, betrayed the Special Forces and endangered our county's national security," John Demers, the assistant U.S. attorney for national security, said in a statement.
It wasn't immediately clear who would be representing Debbins in court.
Debbins' arrest marks the second time this week that U.S. authorities have charged a government employee with espionage. On Monday, a former CIA officer, Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, was accused of giving classified information to the Chinese government.
