Feds charge former Green Beret with espionage with Russia

FALLS CHURCH, VA. » A former Army Green Beret living in northern Virginia was arrested on Friday, charged with divulging military secrets about his unit’s activities in former Soviet republics during more than a decade of contacts with Russian intelligence.

Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins, 45, told Russian intelligence he considered himself a “son of Russia,” according to an indictment made public after his arrest.

“Debbins thought that the United States was too dominant in the world and needed to be cut down to size,” prosecutors alleged.

The indictment also states that Debbins was motivated in part because of bitterness over his Army career and a desire to establish business contacts in Russia.

The espionage took place from 1996 to 2011, prosecutors say.

The case against Debbins is the second Justice Department prosecution announced this week accusing a government or military official of transmitting U.S. secrets to a foreign country. The other case, in Hawaii, charged a former CIA officer with spying for China.

The two prosecutions “demonstrate that we must remain vigilant against espionage from our two most malicious adversaries — Russia and China,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said in a statement.

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.