THIS COULD BE THE START OF SOMETHING BIG – AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  Please note that there is no offical confirmation of this story, but The New York Times is reporting a prisoner swap between the U.S. and Moscow that includes the "star" of the group of Russian spies arrested last week:

MOSCOW — An advocate for an imprisoned Russian scientist, Igor V. Sutyagin, said on Thursday that he had evidently been released in return for the Russian suspect Anna Chapman, in a prisoner exchange redolent of the Cold War.

The advocate, Ernst Chyorny, said Mr. Sutyagin – who has served 10 years of a 14-year sentence for espionage — had called his father from Vienna, where he was met by a British officer. Family members who met with Mr. Sutyagin this week in Moscow said he had been informed he would be transported through Vienna to Britain, where he would be freed. Mr. Sutyagin’s mother, a chemical engineer in a scientific community outside Moscow, rushed home from work when she heard the news.

“So far I don’t know what happened,” said the mother, Svetlana Y. Sutyagina. “I am in a state of suspense.”

The reported exchange was not confirmed by Russian or American officials on Thursday, though anticipation had built throughout the day.

COMMENT:  Well, it's not quite redolent of the Cold War.  Spies were usually held for a much longer time before being exchanged.  This is probably the beginning of other swaps, but I'm a bit uneasy.  The spies caught last week should have had to face some justice in this country.  Instead, we can't wait to get rid of them, sweeping the whole matter under the rug.

I get the distinct feeling that the Obama administration would just like to get the spy scandal behind it to continue its "reset" with Russia, even though we're the only side doing the resetting.  The Russians forge ahead with espionage, a super new jet fighter, and troublesome policies.

It may well be that the whole matter will be over within a few weeks, and the Obamans will say they saw nothing, absolutely nothing.  I'm not sure some of the leftist ideologues around Obama even think Russian spying is any big deal.  Hey, everyone does it.  We don't want to bring back "McCarthyism," do we?

July 8, 2010