As part of the spy-swap deal that let her leave the country, flame-haired Russian sleeper agent Anna Chapman agreed to what U.S. officials said was a strict condition: she could not profit from her story. A plea-bargain document signed by Chapman and her lawyer lays out the terms: Chapman signed over to the U.S. government "any profits or proceeds” she might collect from peddling information related to "her person, her activities in the United States as an unlawful agent of the Russian Federation, or the facts and circumstances leading to [her] arrest and conviction.”

At the time she and nine sleeper-agent colleagues were flown back to Mother Russia, we reported that despite her signature on the plea agreement, Chapman had at least considered telling, if not selling, her story. Although she ...

Worry is rising over the risk of terrorism at Russia’s 2014 Winter Olympics. Last week’s deadly attack on a hydroelectric station in Russia’s deep south only added to the concern. The number of attacks in the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus was up 57 percent last year, and unlike the Chechen wars of 1994–2001, these killings have been the work of a bewildering array of rebel groups, some motivated by radical Islam but others by separatism or clan warfare.

The Kremlin keeps pouring money and firepower into the region, and it’s backfiring. In Chechnya and Dagestan, the human-rights group Memorial has reported a sickening history of nighttime kidnappings, rapes, and extrajudicial killings by -government-backed death squads. A senior police source in Dagestan says local clans, many of them linked to law enforcement, are encouraging the violence, seeking to bring down more chaos on rival clans. Somehow Moscow needs to break the cycle of violence—or face the possibility of trouble at the ...