The Turkey-Russia Connection

Posted: June 30th, 2016

By Michael Sulick

Michael Sulick is the former director of CIA’s National Clandestine Service and is currently a consultant on counterintelligence and global risk assessment. Sulick also served as Chief of Counterintelligence and Chief of the Central Eurasia Division where he was responsible for intelligence collection operations and foreign liaison relationships in Russia, Eastern Europe and the former republics of the Soviet Union. He is the author of Spying in America: Espionage From the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War and American Spies: Espionage Against the United States from the Cold War to the Present.

The three suicide bombers who carried out Tuesday’s deadly attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport have been identified by a Turkish official as citizens of Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, according to press reports.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack that killed at least 44 people and wounded hundreds more, but Turkey has blamed ISIS, and CIA director John Brennan said it “certainly bears the hallmarks of ISIL’s depravity.”

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