The White House told Russia about the federal government’s knowledge of ten deep cover Russian spies before arrests were made, the Washington Post reports. In fact, the federal government began negotiations for the spy swap before Ana Chapman and her cohorts were even in custody.

The White House began deliberating a spy swap with Moscow nearly a month ago, well ahead of the arrests of 10 Russians in the United States less than two weeks ago, a White House official said Friday.

In the course of the following negotiations with Moscow, the United States put forward the names of the four people who were released by Russia on Friday as their part of the bargain, the official said, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.

The swap took place Friday in Vienna. The official said all of the children of the Russian spies had left the United States for Russia or were in the process of leaving.

The Russian agents had been under observation by U.S. authorities for a decade. The decision to move against them was precipitated by indications that some planned to leave the United States this summer, the official said.

Why could this be a problem? Normally you want to catch spies in the act, perhaps in possession of secret information yet to be handed over to their contacts. By tipping off their home country employer, the spies had time to prepare by ditching intelligence or even expediting the hand-over through other means.

This was like telling a murder suspect about his imminent arrest so he has time to destroy the murder weapon and any evidence that might incriminate him in a court room. Why would you want to do that? You wouldn’t, yet that’s precisely what occurred when the FBI and federal officials tipped-off Russia in advance of the arrests.

Was this naivete? Surely the Obama Administration isn’t so naive as to trust that Russia wouldn’t tip-off its operatives and have then cover their tracks. Or was this just the latest idiotic attempt by the administration to appease Russia (Let’s “reset” relations!”) at the expense of American national security? I’m going with the latter.