ALEXANDRIA, Va. A former Army Green Beret, who lived in northern Virginia, told military secrets about his unit’s activities in former Soviet republics over more than a decade of contacts with Russian intelligence, prosecutors said.
Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins, 45, told Russian intelligence that he considered himself a “son of Russia”, according to an indictment made public after his arrest on Friday.
“Debbins thought the United States was too dominant in the world and should be cut to size,” prosecutors claimed.
Debbins, from Gainesville, periodically met Russian intelligence in early 1996, when he was a ROTC student at the University of Minnesota, through 2011. As far back as 1997, he even received a code name assigned by Russian intelligence agents – Ikar Lesnikov – after signing a statement saying he wanted to serve Russia, according to prosecutors.
Debbins received nominal payments for his information, even though he initially refused the money.
Debbins’ mother was born in the Soviet Union, and Debbins met his wife in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, where they were married in 1997, according to the indictment.
“When service providers work together to provide classified information to our foreign adversaries, they are betraying the oath they swore to their country and their fellow counterparts,” said G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, whose office is the prosecution prosecutes. “As this accusation reflects, we will be firm and dogged in holding such individuals accountable.”
Prosecutors said Debbins will have an initial court appearance Monday. Online court records remained sealed, so it was unclear whether Debbins had a lawyer.
The espionage took place from 1996 to 2011, prosecutors say. During some of that time, Debbins served in Army Special Forces.
Debbins held secret and later Top Secret security qualifications at the time of his criminal conduct, according to the indictment.
The indictment alleges that Debbins’ espionage began in late 1996 when he gave one of his Russian traders the names of four Catholic nuns he had visited in Russia.
He was assigned to a chemical unit in South Korea in 1998 and 1999, and the prosecutor says he provided his Russian traders with information about that deployment. He later deployed with his Special Forces unit to Azerbaijan and Georgia. He also provided all the information and names of his fellow members of Special Forces.
The case against Debbins is the second prosecution by Justice Department announced this week accused a government as a military official of transferring American secrets to a foreign country. The other case, in Hawaii, accused a former CIA officer of spying for China.
The two prosecutions “demonstrate that we must remain vigilant against spying on our two most vicious opponents – Russia and China,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers, the top national justice official, said in a statement.
• Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report
