How Important Were the Russian Spies?

The drama surrounding the Russian spies arrested on June 28 has generated a series of breathless headlines about a story that many said is fit for a Cold War spy novel. But in the wake of the spy swap, it's worth asking: Just how important were these Russian spies, anyway?

"There was a great tendency, at least in mainstream media, to sort of make a joke out of these guys," Ward Sloane, senior producer for CBS Evening News, said on "Washington Unplugged" Friday. "And somehow over the weekend this turned into this huge deal and it was the administration fighting back...telling us 'you can't put too light a face on these people, they're very important.' And then all of a sudden...they're ready to send them back to Russia. What was the point?"

Sloane was joined by moderator Bob Orr and CBS News National Security Analyst Juan Zarate on "Unplugged" in discussing the spy swap. Zarate pointed out that although it's unclear why the spies were shipped off so quickly, the fact they were exchanged for four Russian prisoners is certainly significant. Yet he also said the discrepancy in the spies exchanged makes the situation even more puzzling.

"These spies were soft spies," Zarate said, referring to the Russians. "They weren't deeply embedded moles in the CIA or the Pentagon. They were traded for three longstanding Russian intelligence officials and a nuclear scientist. So there's a little bit of a mismatch in terms of the trade, in terms of the types of spies that we're talking about."

Mismatch or not, the trade was negotiated and completed quickly. According to Zarate, that may be due in part to preserving a relationship between the U.S. and Russia that had been improving.

"The Obama administration has tried to reset the relationship, creating a sense of goodwill between the countries to work on hard issues," Zarate said. "This puts a very messy diplomatic situation to bed and it does so in a very neat way. The ten spies plead guilty, they're sent back to Russia, you get four individuals. It's a tidy way of...hopefully resolving some of the diplomatic tension that resulted."

Sloane believes that tension may have been elevated by the fact that President Obama was met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev right around the time the scandal took place. This, he says, could have contributed to the speed at which the spy swap was negotiated.

"Maybe [Mr. Obama] was not very pleased that this went down and put him in a very tricky situation," Sloane said. "For all I know, he came back to the Oval Office and said 'get this thing fixed and get it fixed now.' That certainly seems to be what happened."

Watch Friday's Washington Unplugged above, also featuring a behind the scenes look from Bob Schieffer about his exclusive interview with Attorney General Eric Holder airing this Sunday on "Face the Nation."

"Washington Unplugged," CBSNews.com's exclusive daily politics Webshow, appears live on CBSNews.com each weekday at 2:00 p.m. ET. Click here to check out previous episodes.