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Russian Spy Swap May Be Imminent

Probably he will be free today, this is the most important thing,” said Ms. Stavitskaya, who said she had heard nothing from Russian officials. She said Mr. Sutyagin had consistently denied spying for the United States, for which he was sentenced to a 14-year term, but this week signed a document admitting guilt.

“If he is free, the United States could be thanked for one thing, for saving a person,” she said. “I am thankful to the United States, if it was the United States that included him on the list. If at last he is freed — not in the way we wanted, because we wanted him to restore his good name — but it is difficult to do it given our judicial system.”

“At least he will be freed in this way,” she said. “If he leaves today, it will happen quietly.”

Mr. Sutyagin said he was told the exchange would take place in Britain, and that he would be transported through Vienna. In the past, Ms. Stavitskaya said, such exchanges have taken place under such conditions of secrecy that even close relatives were not informed until after the accused had been freed.

Though American officials in Washington were close-mouthed, they confirmed the talks on Wednesday.

“I feel our discussions will probably be resolved by tomorrow one way or another,” said the lawyer, Robert M. Baum. Another defense lawyer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it was possible that many of the 10 defendants, or all of them, would plead guilty in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday, when they are to appear for arraignment. (An 11th defendant fled after being released on bail in Cyprus.)

A senior American diplomat, William J. Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, met on Wednesday with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergei I. Kislyak, but State Department officials would say only that the spy case was discussed.

An exchange would have some advantages for the Obama administration, avoiding costly trials that could be an irritant for months or years in American-Russian relations. But the White House might be reluctant to give up the accused agents, who were the targets of a decade-long F.B.I. investigation, without getting prisoners that the United States valued in return.

The potential exchange could also fuel accusations that the administration was being soft on Russia. Conservatives, including Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and a possible Republican presidential candidate, have urged the Senate to reject the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty agreed to by President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia.

An exchange could prove awkward for both sides in other ways. Mr. Sutyagin’s innocence has been championed by human rights activists, for instance, and his family said he would prefer to remain in Russia. And John M. Rodriguez, a lawyer for one of the federal court defendants, Vicky Peláez, a veteran columnist for a Spanish-language newspaper in New York, said he believed that she would not want to move to Russia.

But a chance to escape prison appeared to be a powerful motivator in both countries. Mr. Sutyagin agreed to sign a confession, his family said, after being told it was necessary to be part of the exchange. And a lawyer for one of the defendants who had lived in Boston, known as Donald Heathfield, said his client’s greatest concern was for his two sons. The man’s wife, Tracey Lee Ann Foley, was also indicted as a member of the ring.

Mr. Heathfield’s lawyer, Peter B. Krupp, said the children had been “the No. 1 one priority and concern for my client and his wife since this whole ordeal started.”

He added, “If this case can be advanced or resolved more quickly and it helps them help their kids, they’re interested.”

08/07/10 · 0 comentarios · Autor: Fbpigisiira ·

New York Knicks are tantalizingly close to landing LeBron James and reviving Madison Square Garden

There has never been an event quite like this, certainly not here. Sonny Werblin, who would later run the Garden, signed Joe Namath for all that money in the '60s, but no one knew that Namath would change everything for the Jets, by winning Super Bowl III.

No one knew that Tom Seaver would change everything for the Mets, and that the Mets would give us the baseball miracle of 1969. Reggie Jackson was the free agent who put the Yankees back on top, in 1977 and then 1978, but the Yankees were in the Series the year before Reggie got to town.

"I didn't need New York to be a star," Reggie used to say. "I brought my star with me."

LeBron James is all that, at 25, even though he has been to the NBA Finals just once. Amar'e Stoudemire, whom the Knicks paid $100 million just to get a better shot at LeBron, said this last week when his signing was announced:

"The Knicks are back."

Stoudemire is a good, exciting player. He's not good enough to bring the Knicks back by himself. LeBron James is good enough, if he brings his own star with him, to do that by himself.

New York doesn't deserve him more than the other cities in the great free agent chase of July 2010. The owner of the Garden, James Dolan, doesn't deserve to win the player known as King James. But Knick fans do. The ones who were there through all the losing, the ones who kept coming because they remembered what the Garden was like when it was run by better people and had better teams and mattered - they deserve a chance to have LeBron come play for their team.

They find out a little after 9 the way everybody else does. This close to LeBron James. After the darkest period in the history of the Knicks, in the history of basketball New York, maybe the lights finally come back on Thursday night.

08/07/10 · 0 comentarios · Autor: Fbpigisiira ·

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Russian Spy Swap May Be Imminent

New York Knicks are tantalizingly close to landing LeBron James and reviving Madison Square Garden

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