While Russian President Dimitri Medvedev was eating cheeseburgers in Arlington, Va., with President Obama, the FBI was closing in on the biggest Russian spy ring roundup in a generation.

Ten Russian “illegals” were burrowed deep into our society, hoping to interact with Americans in “policymaking circles.”

Their covers were ingeniously normal. One couple bought a house in New Jersey. The neighbors still rave about the couple’s hydrangeas.

Their undoing also was mundane. They were trapped by an American agent posing as a Russian government official who was offering technical support for a balky laptop.

This kind of story would have sent shock waves through the country during the Cold War. Alarmed suburbanites would have started taking a harder look at their neighbor’s heavy curtains.

But now, even with Russian nuclear missiles still aimed our way, something seems quaint about an international spy ring operating in the suburbs of post 9/11 America.

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For one thing, it’s almost comforting to be spied on by Russia, a real country with a professional intelligence apparatus that uses codes, microfilm and invisible ink.

It’s much less frightening than being infiltrated by a sleeper cell or even a lone-wolf terrorist, armed with little more than some radical indoctrination and a few rudimentary bomb-building skills.

And these spies just wanted to steal information. Yes, they wanted to use that information to get an economic edge on us, but the other guys want to kill us, so this is almost a relief.

This disclosure was not the way Medvedev wanted to follow up his U.S. tour, but it’s a nice reminder for Americans about how much you can miss your old enemies.

 


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