Chief of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service condemns traitors

Chief of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service /SVR/ Sergei Lebedev has condemned "Judases" of the secret service. He was also betrayed. He made such a confession in an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta devoted to the Day of Security Agencies.

He also said that unlike movies, secret services lack any special structure responsible for punishing traitors. "Neither our service nor other Russian secret services have such a department," Lebedev said. He went on to say that we are trying to return traitors to Russia to bring them to justice here.

He admitted that they could hardly do it as every secret service protects its intelligence agents. He believes that these people are nevertheless punished in a different way as they have to live in fear. "I can say this as I know what happened with traitors who remained in the USA and Great Britain. Even if it is unnecessary, they change their address, appearance, they can't live in peace." When replying to a question on whether he was ever betrayed, he admitted that it happened. "It is really hard to realise that a man with whom you work, whom you trust, betrayed you," was his sad experience. "If a poet or a dentist makes his mind to leave the country, he merely changes his address and place of work, but when a state servant decides to do it, he should be treated in another way - his motherland took him into his confidence." Lebedev thinks "we can speak about treason when state secrets are revealed." "I was present at the trial of a traitor who told foreign secret services the names of 152 officers of the then First Main Department of the USSR KGB," he said. "Big money was spent on their training, great efforts were made to turn them into secret agents." "But this is not the worst thing. When he revealed our foreign sources, they and their families were sent to prison. This was terrible. He ruined lives of hundreds of people." As for the possibility of exposing traitors with the help of a lie detector, Sergei Lebedev said that neither in Russia nor overseas, a lie detector can tell whether he is a traitor or not. Nevertheless, "it can help understand whether a man is honest or not as emotions can't be suppressed."