Spies exchanged in Vienna

A  flashback to the cold war, Russian and American officials exchanged prisoners in the bright sunlight on the tarmac of Vienna’s international airport on Friday, bringing to a quick end an episode that had threatened to disrupt relations between the countries.

Planes carrying 10 convicted Russian sleeper agents and 4 men accused by Moscow of spying for the West swooped into the Austrian capital, once a hub of clandestine East-West maneuvering, and the men and women were transferred, the Justice Department said. The planes soon took off again in a coda fitting of an espionage novel.

The first sign that the exchange — one of the biggest in over two decades — was under way came as a Vision Airlines jet carrying the Russian agents deported from the United States touched down and taxied to park only a matter of yards from the Russian plane from Moscow’s Emergencies Ministry.

People disembarked, and a black van shuttled between the two planes. Then, more than an hour later, with little fanfare and no formal announcement from either side, the Russian-flagged plane took off into clear blue skies, followed less than 10 minutes later by the American airplane. News reports on Friday said that the American plane had landed at a British military base in central England and later that the Russian plane had arrived in Moscow.

Franz Lang, head of the Austrian Federal Criminal Office, broke the official silence by the Austrian government on the swap in an interview with state television. Mr. Lang said that Austrian authorities had of course been informed, but that “it is very important not to mention it, to handle it quietly and in isolation,” in particular for safety reasons. The entire process took place “totally in accordance with the law,” Mr. Lang added.

The swift conclusion to the case just 12 days after the arrest of the Russian agents evoked memories of that time, but it also underscored the new-era relationship between Washington and Moscow. President Obama has made the “reset” of Russian-American relations a top foreign policy priority, and the quiet collaboration over the spy scandal indicates that the Kremlin likewise values the warmer ties.

Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, told the PBS program “NewsHour” that the president was fully briefed on the decision and that the case showed that the United States was still watchful even as relations improved. The 10 sleeper agents had pleaded guilty to conspiracy before a federal judge in Manhattan after revealing their true identities. All 10 were sentenced to time served and ordered deported.

A lawyer for one of four prisoners freed by the Russian government called it “a historic moment” and said she believed her client, a former Russian intelligence agent named Aleksandr Zaporozhsky, would be reunited with members of his family, who live in the United States.

Within hours of the New York court hearing, the Kremlin announced that the Russian President had signed pardons for the four men considered as spies after each of them signed statements admitting guilt.

The Kremlin identified them as Sutaygin an arms control researcher held for 11 years; Sergei Skripal, a colonel in Russia’s military intelligence service sentenced in 2006 to 13 years for spying for Britain; Mr. Zaporozhsky, a former agent with Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service who has served 7 years of an 18-year sentence; and Gennadi Vasilenko, a former K.G.B. major who was arrested in 1998 for contacts with a CIA officer but eventually released only to be arrested again in 2005 and later convicted on illegal weapons charges

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