Two things stand out in this week’s plea deal of Maria Butina, the Russian citizen branded by U.S. media as an “accused spy.” The description of her offense by federal prosecutors doesn’t mention any link to Russian intelligence services and the plea agreement says she’s willing to cooperate with the U.S. authorities despite knowing she’ll almost certainly be deported to Russia.

These peculiarities make Butina’s a strange case.

The 30-year-old gun-rights activist and former graduate student at American University networked so inventively and tirelessly in Washington that she aroused the suspicion of U.S. counterintelligence and was arrested in July. She found herself in the media spotlight as an unlikely femme fatale until prosecutors walked back one of the original accusations — that she’d been willing to trade sex for getting ahead in her influence operation.

After spending five months in jail, Butina admitted having served as an agent of the Russian government without duly notifying the U.S. attorney general. That summoned memories of 10 people accused of being Russian sleeper agents in the U.S. in 2010, including Anna Chapman, who later became a minor celebrity in Russia, who pleaded guilty to the same offense. But the U.S. government’s complaint against that group stated unequivocally that they had been sent to the U.S. to lie in wait until the Russian foreign intelligence service decided to use them…