Was the Top Russian Spy Defection a Strategic Move or a Deceptive Ploy?

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101111/wl_nm/us_russia_usa_spies" .

Of particularly note is the following quote from the article:

"Espionage historian Phillip Knightley said the report should be viewed in the context of the smoke and mirror world of Moscow's spy agencies. "How do we know it is not a plant to draw Western attention away from the real betrayer? Or just to sow confusion in Western spy services?" Knightley said."​
 
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Such a tangled web! Planted fake double agent? My brain isn't wired to understand that very well...I'm going to need a flow chart, a matrix, and a timeline.
 
Considering which spy ring Colonel Shcherbakov worked with and exposed, there is good reason to wonder what the heck this really is: Russian Spy Ring.

Admittedly, it takes time for spies like this to actually move into a position where they can do some actual spying, but this spy ring didn't seem to make any progress in that direction. They seemed a little more similar to Czech agents that refused to return home when their Communist government collapsed and their operations were canceled (they'd spent so much time in the US that they felt more American than Czech).