Russian 'femme fatale' delights tabloids
(AFP)
30 June 2010, 8:36 AM
Portrayed as a flame-haired, green-eyed femme fatale, a 28-year-old Russian businesswoman has emerged as a tabloid darling in an alleged spy ring uncovered by US.
Anna Chapman’s Facebook photo was plastered on Tuesday on the front-page of the New York Daily News following her arrest along with 10 other alleged members of a sophisticated network of US-based Russian sleeper agents.
Dubbed the “Red Head” by the New York Post, Chapman is alleged to have passed on information to a Russian official during scenes that could have come straight out of a John Le Carre novel.
The criminal complaint filed by US Justice Department describes how on 10 Wednesdays between January and June 2010 she “covertly exchanged electronic communications via a private wireless network” with her Russian handler.
To avoid having to meet, Chapman and this unidentified man, who the FBI repeatedly observed entering Russia’s UN mission in Manhattan, used specially configured laptops to exchange messages. Russia angry as US seeks to limit spy fallout Moscow on Tuesday angrily rejected allegations by Washington that it had cracked an undercover Russian spy ring but U.S. officials said the Cold War-style cloak and dagger saga would not undermine a thaw in relations. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said U.S. police who arrested 10 suspected spies in four cities in the eastern the United States on Sunday had gone “out of control”. “I hope that all the positive gains that have been achieved in our relationship will not be damaged by the recent event,” Putin told visiting ex-U.S. President Bill Clinton in Moscow. An 11th suspect was arrested in Cyprus on Tuesday and freed on bail, police on the Mediterranean island said. The Russian Foreign Ministry said those arrested in the United States were Russians and the charges against them were baseless. In Washington, administration officials said the case would not set back President Barack Obama’s drive to “reset” ties with Russia, one of the signature diplomatic initiatives of his administration. “I think we have made a new start to working together on things like in the United Nations dealing with North Korea and Iran,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. “I do not think that this will affect those relations.” The suspects, some of whom lived quiet lives in American suburbia for years, were accused of gathering information ranging from data on high-penetration nuclear warhead research programs to background on CIA job applicants. Obama-Medvedev Meeting Gibbs said President Barack Obama knew about the spy investigation before he met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Washington late last week, but did not mention it during their talks. “The choice of timing was particularly graceful,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists sarcastically during a trip to Jerusalem. Other Russian officials also suggested the timing was no coincidence. “We do not understand what prompted the U.S. Justice Department to make a public statement in the spirit of Cold War espionage,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It said lawyers and diplomats should be given access to the suspects. The U.S. Justice Department said all proper consular procedures were being followed. With buried banknotes, coded communications and other details, the U.S. accusations echoed spy scandals of the 20th century and the more recent chill in relations with a Kremlin which, under the 2000-2008 presidency of ex-KGB spy Putin, often accused the West of trying to weaken Russia. Britain and Ireland both said they were checking reports suspects had traveled on false passports from their countries. Moscow has repeatedly accused Western powers of maintaining spying operations against Russia despite the end of the Cold War. Western powers also complain of Russian activity, especially in the commercial and scientific areas. “We’re moving towards a more trusting relationship. We’re beyond the Cold War,” Gordon said. “But ...I don’t think anyone was hugely shocked to know that some vestiges of old attempts to use intelligence are still there.” U.S. Russia analyst Samuel Charap of the Center for American Progress said the fallout could be contained due to the fact that none of those accused in the case thus far were diplomats and the charges did not include espionage. Lingering Distrust But he added that the case exposed lingering distrust on both sides, which could reverberate in the U.S. Senate where the administration hopes to persuade some sceptical Republicans to back the ratify a new U.S-Russia disarmament treaty. Russian analysts said the timing suggested it was an attempt to undermine improving relations, although Justice Department officials said the arrests were ordered because it was feared one suspect was about to leave the country. “It’s a slap in the face to Barack Obama,” said Anatoly Tsyganok, a political analyst at Moscow’s Institute of Political and Military Analysis. He predicted Russia would follow Cold War etiquette and uncover an equal number of alleged U.S. spies. A senior State Department official noted one of the expressions of Russian outrage was from Putin, who was a spymaster in the late 1990s when, according to the allegations, some of the suspected agents were already in place. “It would have been nice if he’d have thought about that first,” the official said. Tatyana Stanovaya, political analyst at Moscow’s Center for Political Technologies, said the accusations could widen a rift in Russia’s elite between advocates and opponents of better U.S. ties. Stanovaya said it could dent the authority of Medvedev, who is struggling to emerge from Putin’s shadow and has made engagement with Washington a hallmark of his presidency. The U.S. Justice Department accused the 11 people of operating as “illegals”, meaning agents infiltrated under false identities, rather than officers who use diplomatic or other legitimate cover. They were accused of collecting information ranging from research programs on small-yield, high-penetration nuclear warheads to the global gold market, and seeking background on people who applied for jobs at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), according to criminal complaints filed in a U.S. court. |
The complaint describes how on one occasion Chapman sat herself by the window of a Manhattan coffee shop. Her handler passed by 10 minutes later in a minivan, close enough to pick up her communications on their covert network.
Last week an FBI agent, purporting to be a Russian consulate employee, arranged an undercover face-to-face meeting with Chapman in another coffee shop in downtown Manhattan, saying he had something urgent to give her.
During their meeting, detailed exhaustively in the criminal complaint, Chapman is asked to give a fake passport to another Russian agent, presumably another undercover FBI operative.
Asked if she is ready to carry out this “next step,” Chapman replies: “Shit, of course,” according to the charge sheet.
Chapman appeared in federal court for the first time on Monday in Manhattan, where Judge James Cott ordered her detention.
Dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt, she spoke for several minutes with a lawyer after being released from her handcuffs.
According to the New York Post and the Russian news website lifenews.ru, Chapman moved to New York in February from Moscow after a divorce.
In an interview posted on video-sharing site Youtube, Chapman described herself as a start-up specialist, seeking to build a recruitment agency targeting young professionals in Moscow and New York.
In the Youtube video, part of a series titled “Online School for Start-Up” Chapman says she worked for several years in London in an investment company. In Moscow she set up a property search website.
In New York, she had launched a business “Time Venture”, specializing in “technology, Internet, media and leisure activities,” she adds, claiming to develop global strategies for new businesses.
On Chapman’s Facebook page, meanwhile, the budding business tycoon sets out a bold personal philosophy. “If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it,” she comments.
During Monday’s court hearing, Chapman’s business was valued at 2 million dollars.
Her lawyer Robert Baum argued vigorously against Chapman’s incarceration, claiming she was an innocent, who had wrongly caught in the FBI dragnet.
“The complaint alleges the conspiracy has been going on since 1990. But my client did not place foot in the United States until 2005,” Baum said, adding that Chapman’s visa had been revoked last Saturday.
Judge Cott rejected her court-appointed attorney’s pleas however. “The defendant was not just the innocent by-stander. The defendant will be detained,” he said.
Suspected spies include Russian citizens: Russia
Some of the suspected spies arrested in the United States are Russian citizens, Russia’s Foreign Ministry acknowledged Tuesday, but it insisted they did nothing to hurt U.S. interests.
The ministry statement said Russia is counting on the U.S. “to show proper understanding, taking into account the positive character of the current stage of development of Russian-American relations.”
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin delivered the same message during a meeting at his country residence with former President Bill Clinton, who was in Moscow to speak at an investment conference.
“I understand that back home police are putting people in prison,” Putin said, drawing a laugh from Clinton. “That’s their job. I’m counting on the fact that the positive trend seen in the relationship will not be harmed by these events.”
The Foreign Ministry would not say specifically how many of the 11 alleged deep-cover agents are Russian.
NTV television identified two of the defendants as Russian and showed their photographs from a social networking website. NTV said Mikhail Semenko had moved to the U.S. in 2008 and Anna Chapman, said to have an English husband, moved to the U.S. in February of this year. Both are in their late 20s.
The FBI announced the arrests of 10 suspects Monday, and an 11th person allegedly involved in the Russian spy ring was arrested Tuesday in Cyprus. Court papers said the operation goes back as far as the 1990s and many of the suspects were tracked for years.
Semenko and Chapman, however, were listed in a separate complaint and said to use their real names. Most of the other suspects were accused of using fake names and purporting to be U.S. or Canadian citizens while really being Russian.
They are accused of attempting to infiltrate U.S. policymaking circles while posing as ordinary citizens, some of them as married couples.
Oleg Gordievsky, a former deputy head of the KGB in London who defected in 1985, said Russia probably has about 50 deep-cover couples spying inside the United States.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev would know the number of illegal operatives in each target country but not their names, the 71-year-old ex-double agent told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Tuesday.
Countries often have a number of intelligence officials whose identities are declared to their host nation, usually working in embassies, trade delegations and other official posts.
Gordievsky, who spent nine years working in the KGB directorate in charge of illegal spy teams, said he estimates there are 400 declared Russian intelligence officers in the U.S., as well as up to 50 couples charged with covertly cultivating military and diplomat officials as sources of information.
He said the complexity involved in training and running undercover teams means Russia is unlikely to have significantly more operatives now than during his career.
“I understand the resources they have, and how many people they can train and send to other countries,” Gordievsky said. “It is possible there may be more now, but not many more, and no more than 60 (couples).”
The ex-KGB officer said deep-cover spies often fail to deliver better intelligence than their colleagues who work in the open.
“They are supposed to be the vanguard of Russian intelligence,” Gordievsky said. “But what they are really doing is nothing, they just sit at home in Britain, France and the U.S.”
The Foreign Ministry’s first reaction to the U.S. arrests was less amicable, and some senior Russian lawmakers said some in the U.S. government may be trying to undercut President Barack Obama’s warming relations with Moscow.
“These actions are unfounded and pursue unseemly goals,” the ministry said in a statement issued earlier Tuesday. “We don’t understand the reasons which prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to make a public statement in the spirit of Cold War-era spy stories.”
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that U.S. authorities announced the arrest just days after Medvedev had visited the United States and met Obama at the White House.
“They haven’t explained to us what this is about,” Lavrov said at a news conference during a trip to Jerusalem. “I hope they will. The only thing I can say today is that the moment for doing that has been chosen with special elegance.”
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service refused to comment on the arrests of its alleged agents.
Nikolai Kovalyov, the former chief of the main KGB successor agency, the Federal Security Service, said some of the U.S. charges against the alleged spies resembled a “bad spy novel.”
Kovalyov, now a lawmaker, said the arrests were an attempt by some “hawkish circles” in the United States to demonstrate the need for a tougher line toward Moscow. Kovalyov added that Russian-U.S. ties will continue to improve despite the spy scandal.
“Our two great powers must stand together,” he said.
Some lawmakers suggested a tit-for-tat Russian response, but Kovalyov said Russia would reciprocate only “if the Americans don’t stop at that and risk evicting our diplomats,” the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Other senior Russian lawmakers also alleged that some in the U.S. government resented warmer ties with Russia.
“This was initiated, was done by certain people of certain political forces, who aren’t in favor of improving relations between Russia and the United States, and I feel deeply sorry about that,” Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house, the State Duma, told Associated Press Television News.
“Not all of them support Obama’s policy,” Mikhail Grishankov, a deputy head of the Duma’s security affairs committee, told AP. “There are forces interested in tensions.”
Viktor Kremenyuk, a deputy head of the U.S. and Canada Institute, a Moscow-based think tank, said the spy case could threaten a planned ratification of a new nuclear arms reduction deal signed by Obama and Medvedev in April.
“That may change the atmosphere, that may change the attitudes among Americans toward Russia, (and) that may cause very significant political consequences,” Kremenyuk said.
In Britain, the case stirred memories of the country’s own illegal Soviet spy — Melita Norwood, a civil servant who spent about 40 years passing atomic research and other secrets to Moscow. Authorities ruled against prosecuting the elderly grandmother when she was exposed in 1992. Norwood died in 2005 at the age of 93.
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