‘American spies’ in heart of the Kremlin leaked details of Russia’s hacking of the US election ahead of Trump-Putin chat
The four accused - all 'employed' by Russia's secret service - have been arrested after a surveillance operation
SPIES 'working for America in the heart of the Kremlin' are accused of leaking information which revealed Russia DID try and rig the US Presidential election.
News of the shocking breach broke within security circles just before Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump were due to hold their historic telephone chat at the weekend.
Reports within Russia, claim the country's Premier was fuming that so many of his senior officials were apparently'working for the other side.'
The accused, all said to be employed by Russia's FSB (secret service), have now reportedly been rounded up and charged with treason.
Russian officials have been forced to publicly admit the four high-ranking Russian cyber-security FSB officers are currently being held in a Moscow's Lefortovo prison.
The Lefortovo Four -as they have been dubbed in the press - are facing charges including the 'Betrayal of the Fatherland'.
They allegedly include a deputy director of the FSB’s Office for Information Security, one of the heads of cybercrime investigations and a master-hacker.
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According , one of the men was arrested, dragged out of a meeting with a bag over his head, and has not been seen or heard from since.
The New York Times states that if reports are accurate, they may be among the “the highest-profile detentions for treason within the FSB since the breakup of the Soviet Union.”
The Moscow Times reports the incident as a “bombshell accusation that, if true, would mean Washington had at least one CIA spy in the heart of Russia’s national defence infrastructure.”
The arrests came after it was claimed someone from within the FSB leaked information to the US security services about a 'cyber-attack' on the voting systems of Arizona and Illinois.
The FBI and CIA claimed that it traced these attacks to six of the servers used by the highly-secretive FSB.
Suspecting a leak to the US, FSB investigators reportedly placed the suspects under observation.
The FSB also mounted an investigation, which, not surprisingly, did not find a Russian connection to the Arizona and Illinois attacks.
The arrests of these “hackers in uniform” actually began back in December, but news of the incident only surfaced at the end of last week, with more details coming out over the weekend.