Christopher Mestos was arrested in Cyprus but jumped bail and is still a fugitive. He studied for a while at Norwich in 1994 and is now alleged to have been a Russian spy. Photo courtesy Reuters Until last week, the FBI was seeking a man who is alleged to have been spying for the Russian Federation and it was reported that there was a Northfield connection.

The press including local and national TV and print media descended on Northfield taking pictures of the Post Office on South Main Street where the alleged spy was supposted to have rented a postal box. They attempted to question the postal employees and even stopped mail carriers on their routes around town to question them about the alleged spy.

They found out nothing. Postal employees are prohibited from talking about anyone who rents a postal box or discussing what goes on at the post office with its customers. It’s covered by the privacy act.

When they couldn’t get any information out of the postal workers, they started interviewing anyone they could find on the street eventhough the suspect apparently hadn’t been in Northfield since 1994.

The facts were not clear but it turns out that one of the alleged spies attended Norwich for one year back in 1994 and while there, had a postal box at Norwich University as most students do who attend there, said a spokes person for the university.

Christopher Metsos was in the sports medicine program for a time at Norwich.

The FBI arrested 11 people accusing them of being Russian spies who they said spent years in the United States using fake identities in a bid to ferret out intelligence on American policy and secrets, the Justice Department said.

According to the complaint filed in district court in New York, the accused individuals made connections with government officials and think tanks in order to carry out their motives, an official said.

The operation carried out by the accused was named, “the Illegals program,” by federal investigators.

One official told Newsweek, “I can't remember a case where we've been able to arrest 10 intelligence officers from a foreign country in one fell swoop. This network in the United States has now been completely compromised.” However, another official said although some of the accused have lived in the United States for decades, Russian network appears to have achieved little of its espionage aims.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrovs said that federal officials “have not explained to us what it's all about.”

He went on to state that “it is regrettable that all this is happening on the background of the 'reset' in Russian-American relations” following the meeting between President Obama and Russian President Medvedev in Washington last week.

Last week, the White House emphasized an improved relationship with Russia in advance of the G20 summit.

Of the 11 people facing charges, including acting as an unauthorized foreign agent, ten were arrested Sunday in raids in Arlington, New York, New Jersey and Boston.

The 11th suspect was arrested while attempting to board a plane in Cyprus which was bound for Budapest, Hungary. He was carrying a Canadian passport according to authorities.

The eleventh suspect, Mr. Mestos, the alleged spy with the Northfield connection, was described as “a shadowy money man for the Russian spy ring whose members were assigned a decade or more ago to infiltrate American society.”

The complaint says Mr. Metsos “traveled to the United States to pay other members of the ring using clandestine — and sometimes bizarre — methods.”

“He was surreptitiously handed the money by a Russian official as the two swapped nearly identical orange bags while passing each other on a staircase at a commuter train station in New York.

“After giving some of the money to one of the defendants, he drove north and stopped his car near upstate Wurtsboro, N.Y. Using data from a global-positioning system that had been secretly installed in his car, agents went to the site and found a partially buried brown beer bottle. They dug down about five inches and discovered a package wrapped in duct tape, which they photographed and then reburied.

“Two years later, video surveillance caught two unnamed secret agents digging up the package,” the Complaint states.