More about Russian spies' top priorities

Residents of this New Jersey home were among the 10 arrested on Sunday [AFP]. Each of the 10 suspects arrested on Sunday was charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison on conviction. Also charged was an 11th defendant, who allegedly delivered money to the defendants, though he is at large.

The arrests come in a special time period of "resetting" US-Russia relations. Thus, Barack Obama, the US president, and his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev met just last week at the White House after Medvedev visited California's Silicon Valley, and both leaders attended the G8 and G20 meetings over the weekend in Canada.

FBI agents reported in court papers that the defendants communicated with alleged Russian agents using mobile wireless transmissions between laptops computers while they were close to each other.

The court papers reveals many examples of communications intercepted in the FBI probe that spelled out what they were allegedly trying to do.

Among the top priorities for the defendants were Obama's foreign policy positions, particularly as they related to Russia,

In 2009, for example, two of the accused, Richard and Cynthia Murphy, were asked by Moscow to provide information about the US negotiating position on the START arms reduction treaty as well as Afghanistan and the approach Washington would take in dealing with Iran's suspect nuclear programme, ahead of Obama's trip to Russia that summer.

Another task they charged was to send background on US officials who would be travelling with Obama or involved in foreign policy, and to get their views and learn their "arguments, provisions, means of persuasion to 'lure' [Russia] into co-operation in US interests", according to the court documents.

The papers also described one defendant's contact with a prominent New York-based financier who was active in politics and another's conversations with an unidentified man who worked "on issues of strategic planning related to nuclear weapon development" at a US government research facility.