Living the American dream. But all the time spying for Russia
On Wednesdays, Anna Chapman would sit in a coffee shop in Times Square or another public space in Manhattan and transmit information to a Russian official
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
The endgame came last Saturday, on a sweltering early summer afternoon in downtown Washington. The year was 2010, but the Cold War might never have ended. The FBI undercover agent, purporting to be a Russian government official, and a suburban travel agency employee named Mikhail Semenko met on a street corner six blocks east of the White House, and exchanged pre-arranged code phrases. "Could we have met in Beijing in 2004? Yes, we might have, but I believe it was in Harbin."
With the formalities out of the way, the pair got down to serious business, discussing problems with communications equipment, before the undercover agent gave Semenko a newspaper folded around an envelope containing $5,000. The package was to be dropped off at an agreed spot in a park in suburban Arlington the following day.
Semenko carried out his instructions. Within hours he was arrested along with nine other people across north-eastern US, all of them accused of belonging to a network of Russian deep-cover secret agents, spying on the United States. Whatever else, the operation had not been rushed; some of the alleged agents had been living here since the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union was still warm in its grave. The FBI, court papers show, had been on the case since at least 2004.
Most of the suspects had acquired American identities, American families, American jobs and American children. They were unimpeachably suburban, imbued with the bedrock suburban virtues of faith, family and proper living – and owning your own home.
Take Richard and Cynthia Murphy, referred to in the court filing as 'the New Jersey Conspirators'. They lived with their two young daughters in the little town of Montclair, a dozen miles west of New York City, in a smartly painted house with a trim and tended garden, resplendent with hydrangeas.
The house seems to have had a bit of history, however, with their masters in Moscow. The Murphys wanted to buy it themselves, "a natural progression of our prolonged stay here", they explained to the SVR, the Russian intelligence service intercepted by the FBI. It was a convenient way of solving their particular housing problem and, they added, a nice way to "'do as the Romans do' in a society that values home ownership".
But the SVR apparently balked. Maybe the house would cost too much, maybe it considered the Murphys were going a bit too native. In the end a compromise was reached: the house would technically be owned by "C" – Moscow Centre – but the Murphys would live in it.
Such were the vicissitudes of being one of the 'Illegals,' as the FBI termed the network. The name was a nod to one of the great traditions of the espionage business, of deep-cover agents who built their entire lives in their target countries, operating without diplomatic cover.
Illegals have left a lasting mark on the history of spying. There was Rudolf Abel, who ran a major Soviet spy ring in the US until his arrest in 1957, even as he pretended to be an artist. There were Peter and Helen Kroger, seemingly innocuous antiquarian bookdealers who lived in quintessentially suburban Ruislip near London – until they were unmasked in 1961 as ringleaders of the Portland Spy Ring that stole important British naval secrets.
Over the years the tradecraft of spying has changed. Back then, microfilm and dead drops were the order of the day. Dead drops and "brush-passes" feature in this 21st-century tale of illegals, as well as tried and trusty '"micro-bursts" of encrypted data, now called "radiograms", that can be picked up by a receiver set to the proper frequency.
But the newly uncovered network also employed state-of-the-art communications between laptop computers set to special networks, as well as "steganography", where secret data is hidden in a seemingly normal computer screen image.
Even so, the early indications are that this bunch of illegals will not occupy a very exalted place when the definitive history of the second oldest profession is written. Apart from the aforementioned Murphys, the couples include Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley of Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as Vicky Pelaez, a writer for the Spanish language paper El Diario, who lived with her husband, Juan Lazaro, a few miles up the Hudson River from New York City. Then there were Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills, residents of a high-rise block of flats in Arlington, Virginia, just across the river from Washington DC.
Semenko, however, to be in a slightly different category, as does Anna Chapman, the 10th individual arrested. A 28-year-old divorcee who bears a passing resemblance to a Russian tennis starlet, she was described by the New York Post yesterday as "a flame-haired, 007-worthy beauty who flitted from high-profile parties to top-secret meetings around Manhattan".
According to court papers, Ms Chapman had 10 Wednesday encounters with a Russian official, where she would sit in various New York public spaces – ranging from a Tribeca bookshop to a coffee shop in Times Square – and transmit information over private wireless networks. Her lawyer insists she is perfectly harmless – but prosecutors claim she is a "highly trained" Russian agent and "a practised deceiver" who had to be denied bail.
Most importantly, both she and Semenko seem to have retained their original Russian identities. Not so the eight others, the true "illegals" whose real names may never be known. Anyone who has seen The Day of the Jackal will know how easy it could have been for the SVR to take the birth certificate of a dead American or Canadian to build new, entirely false personas for its agents. Richard and Cynthia Murphy, Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills, who are you really?
From the court papers, Semenko and Chapman would appear to be links between the eight and the Russians. If the group has a single co-ordinator it would appear to be the 11th alleged conspirator, Christopher Metsos, who travels on a Canadian passport and was reportedly arrested yesterday in Cyprus. The court papers depict him as the paymaster, under surveillance by the FBI since 2004, if not before.
Quite possibly, the group, as prosecutor Michael Farbiarz maintains, is just "the tip of the iceberg." Indeed, if the former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky, who was exfiltrated to Britain in 1985, is to be believed, the SVR may be running 40 or 50 couples as deep-cover agents in the US. If so, the question must be asked: are they getting good value for this long-term investment? The evidence suggests not.
Ensconced in suburban New Jersey, the Murphys, for instance, were asked for information about President Obama's trip to Russia in the summer of 2009, and for details of Washington's stance on the new nuclear arms reduction treaty that was signed a few months ago. From their base in Cambridge, the Heathfield/Foley duo is said to have established contact with an American nuclear weapons specialist.
But no classified information ever changed hands: the 11 are not even charged with espionage, merely with failing to register as agents of a foreign government, an offence that carries a maximum jail term of five years. Rudolf Abel or Helen and Peter Kroger – this motley band is not.
Indeed the entire concept of illegals may now be somewhat passé. As any intelligence officer will admit, the vast bulk of his raw material is already in the public domain as "open source material". In the internet age, that proportion has surely increased.
Russian spy suspect detained, released on bail in Cyprus
The eleventh suspected member of an alleged Russian spy ring in the US was detained by police in Cyprus on Tuesday and immediately released on bail.
Reuters news agency quoted the official police representative as saying that the man, identified as Robert Christopher Metsos, was detained in Larnaca Airport as he was trying to leave for Budapest.
The Associated Press news agency reported that Metsos was a Canadian citizen.
Soon after the detention, Metsos was released on $24,000 bail and a pledge to show up in court within the next 30 days for extradition hearings.
The man was declared wanted by Interpol for alleged complicity in the recently uncovered Russian spy ring in the US.
Аmerican special services reported on Monday that they had detained ten people over charges of illegally gathering information for Russian intelligence. The people were denied bail and are currently facing jail sentence of a maximum 25 years.
Some of the suspects lived calm family lives and raised children. Their neighbours were shocked at the news.
“I was here when the FBI took them,” neighbour of a suspected couple, Stanley Skolnik, says, pointing to the yard near the house in New Jersey where two of ten alleged Russian spies were detained. “The little girl was in the house, the older girl was at the party or something. They brought her back and then a few minutes later the woman working for FBI escorted them out with their bedding and stuff and I think they went to their friends’ house to be sheltered there.”
Stanley Skolnik isn't convinced his neighbors Cynthia and Richard Murphy are part of an alleged Russian espionage ring working under false names to infiltrate US policy making circles.
“They were like every one of our neighbors. Quiet. Didn't impose upon anybody. Kept their privacy like we all do. We share when we want to share. They seemed like very nice people,” he says.
The neighbors say the Murphys moved into the neighborhood two years ago.
Watch RT’s report from New Jersey and Yonkers
The elder son of arrested Vicky Pelaez says his mother and her husband are “absolutely innocent”.
Waldo Mariscal is working as an architect and his parents’ arrest has come as a surprise to him. Waldo said that “his parents are engaged in culture, journalism” adding that “they have never been to Russia, though they are interested in Russian culture and like Tchaikovsky.”
And others believe the El Diario print reporter is being targeted for her critical stories surrounding US policy.
“This situation is very hard because, despite the fact that she writes harsh columns against the American government, on top of everything, Vicky is a outstanding person, she is a college graduate, she is a Peruvian like me. And of course this situation affects us because we value her,” says Vicky Pelaez’ colleague.
“It's nonsense!” – former KGB agent
Mikhail Lyubimov is a former KGB officer who served for years in the Russian secret services in Britain and Denmark.
He says the whole story looks more like the work of spy fiction and has nothing to do with real under cover work.
“How can you imagine that eleven professionals didn't notice that secret services had been watching them, as they say – for years!” he asks. “If not them – their wives could have noticed! And so far it's not clear at all – exactly what secret information they've been looking for and what were they supposed to have sent to Moscow directly to the Kremlin, Medvedev or Putin! It’s nonsense! And I don't even talk about invisible ink – I remember the Bolsheviks loved it!”
With the scandal breaking out just days after President Medvedev's successful visit to the US, Mikhail is sure – this is a ploy to spoil Russia's image.
But if so, who could be behind it?
“It's a PR campaign by the US's secret services to get more money for next year's budget,” Mikhail Lyubimov believes. “They can say: you remember that operation with eleven spies? We did that! And they make these operations catchy ones to attract people's attention. It happens quite often that the administration and the secret services are conflicting. This could be the case.”
The former secret service officer says that back in Soviet times the response to something like this would have been very different from that of today, with the consequences much more serious for both.
A typical tactic would have been tit-for-tat arrests of Americans.
“Russia could have arrested ten photographers, US tourists for instance who've been taking pictures at the Black Sea and say they were interested in Russia's fleet there. Everybody would have believed it,” Mikhail Lyubimov says.
But with Moscow and Washington saying they hope the row won't affect relations between the two, it's clear old tactics are no longer an option.
Couple associated with Russian spy ring arrested in Arlington
Two out of the ten people who are in federal custody, accused of acting as Russian intelligence agents, lived in Arlington, VA near the Pentagon.
The man who called himself Michael Zottoli along with his wife, who went by the name Patricia Mills, was living in a high rise building. It had a round-the-clock security guard and was footsteps away from a shopping mall, and across the street from a park. Most neighbors had the same reaction upon finding out the couple was arrested and accused of being Russian agents.
“It’s pretty shocking,” said Scott Inouye. “I didn’t think stuff like this still went on.”
“We’re not from the city so we were surprised,” said Erica Whitelaw, whose mother lived in the building. “The FBI is kind of a big deal.”
“That surprises me because I thought relations were a little bit better with Russia and the United States these days,” said Kathy Mizerak.
Witnesses say more than a dozen agents came into the building, known as “The River House,” Sunday night before arresting the couple and searching their apartment.
“My mom works with FEMA and she said she saw two FBI agents show their badges and go into the basement or go into the parking garage in the building and were looking for something,” Whitelaw said.
The couple has two small children who are now in the care of family friends.
Patricia Auxier said her friend lives on the same floor as the couple.
“ She heard a loud knocking and so she looked out and they told her to get back inside and then she came out later and they told her that they had arrested two people and that everything was safe,” Auxier said.
The building is tucked in a neighborhood filled with single family homes, and quiet side streets with Neighborhood Watch, ironically reminding people there are watchful eyes all around.
Some neighbors have a view of the Pentagon from their apartment windows. Many of those in the neighborhood work, or used to work, for the US government.
“I worked for Central Intelligence and retired and was a Cold War worker,” said Frank Halligan.
“I noticed that the type of information that they were getting was kind of general, how the US works, economy, politics, rather than what’s the latest weapon or nuclear attack or where are your submarine forces deployed,” Halligan said.
John Henley was in the army for 20 years and worked for the Pentagon. Now he lives down the street and barely flinched when he heard the news.
“It’s been going on the whole time – whether China or Russia, North Korea, the while area – it don’t surprise me one bit,” Henley said.
US “lobby war” behind Russian spy charges
As international special interest groups are vying for influence in the US government, the line between espionage and lobbying work is becoming dangerously vague.
The US Justice Department announced on Monday that 10 individuals were arrested on charges of working as “agents of a foreign government [i.e. Russia] without notifying the US attorney general,” a crime that carries a penalty of a maximum of five years in prison. Nine of the arrested individuals were also charged with money laundering.
Read more Made to resemble some sort of powerful storm front blowing in from the east, US media reported that the arrested individuals worked in “deep cover” in Boston, Montclair, New York and Arlington. An 11th suspect has been detained by Interpol in Cyprus and released on bail.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says that it has been collecting extensive electronic surveillance of the suspects “for years,” yet, as CNN reported, the arrested individuals “were not directly involved in obtaining US secrets themselves.”
The obvious question is: what exactly did these individuals do to attract the attention of the US intelligence community?
One of the suspects is Vicky Pelaez, who has been a columnist for the Spanish-language “El Dario" newspaper for more than 20 years. Pelaez has covered a wide range of touchy topics, ranging from local and international politics to immigration issues.
Since one of the primary functions of a political reporter is to make connections and ask penetrating questions, was Pelaez singled out for suspicion by simply trying to do her job? After all, “infiltrating policy-making circles” is exactly what people in the journalistic and lobbying community do in order to fulfill the requirements of their respective jobs.
It is also the work of reporters and lobbyists to “learn about US weapons, diplomatic strategy and politics.” But simply asking questions about such subjects does not automatically make a person a spy. At least it should not.
Another one of the arrested individuals, Anna Chapman, was said to have “met with an individual purporting to be a Russian Government official in Manhattan, New York, at which she received a fraudulent passport,” according to the official criminal report.
Chapman, however, immediately went to the local police and gave them the passport.
CNN reported that Chapman never "fulfilled the mission" of delivering the fraudulent passport that the undercover FBI agent gave to her.
“She met an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian who set up an urgent meeting asking her to deliver a passport,” reported Deborah Feyerick, a commentator with CNN. “This was her first person-to-person mission, but it [the passport delivery] never happened.”
Chapman was also arrested for apparently using her laptop computer inside of a New York City coffee shop at the same time that a Russian Government official was driving by in a minivan.Moscow has already called the charges “contradictory,” and is demanding more information on the criminal proceedings from their US counterparts.
Then there is the case of Donald Heathfield and his quotation-marked wife Tracey Foley, and their two teenage sons.
Heathfield is the CEO of international consulting and management development firm Global Partners Inc., which Jeff Stein of The Washington Post described as “a beehive of cutting-edge technology firms with close ties to MIT and the Pentagon.” He also operates Future Maps, “a software system that helps map a picture of anticipated future events,” Wicked Local Cambridge reported.
Heathfield's Linked-in page shows his affiliation with over 30 professional alumni, business, academic and international relations associations.
Are some US-based groups getting too uncomfortable with Russians moving into such positions of influence?
Bad timing for a scandal
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday provided a tongue-in-cheek comment over the curious timing of the arrests, while expressing his hope that the US side will explain their actions.
"They have not explained anything to us. I hope they will do so,” Lavrov, who is meeting with officials in Jerusalem, told a news conference. “The moment when all this was done was chosen quite smartly.”
Smartly, indeed. After all, just last week Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was in California, where he paid a visit to the hi-tech capital of Silicon Valley. There, he met with the leaders of various IT companies, while breaking ground on a number of ambitious virtual projects between Russian and US companies.
Russia, with its rich pool of computer engineers, is in the process of building its very own Silicon Valley in an effort to keep its IT talent gainfully employed at home, while perhaps tempting Russians abroad with the new opportunities in the Motherland. Whether the United States perceives Russia’s ambitious program of modernization as an opportunity or a challenge remains an open question.
During the Washington leg of his US visit, Medvedev and US President Barack Obama gave reporters a memorable photo opportunity inside a Washington diner as the two men enjoyed a light-hearted, all-American meal of hamburgers and French fries.
Indeed, given the good-humored atmosphere between the two presidents, it looked as if the US-Russian “reset” was not just an empty slogan to hide deep divisions between Moscow and Washington. It was the real thing. Although this unfortunate setback on the reset may blow over like a brisk summer rain, it could snowball into something that neither country wants nor needs – especially as officials in both countries are getting ready to ratify the START arms reduction treaty.
Why the hysteria over “secret agents”?
In this particular case, the arrested individuals have been charged with “conspiring to act as unlawful agents,” as opposed to full-blown, Clancy-esque spying. According to US legal code, there is nothing illegal about “an agent of a foreign government” working in the United States, so long as the individual notifies the US Attorney Generals Office of their activities.
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The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), for example, the largest and most powerful foreign lobby group now working in the US, employs hundreds of “agents of a foreign government” to represent the interests of Israel before the US Congress, yet few people would call them spies.
According to Section 951, Title 18 of the US Code, “Whoever, other than a diplomatic or consular officer or attache, acts in the United States as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the Attorney General…shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
The amendment, however, also relieves the US attorney general’s office of all responsibility connected with its [hypothetical] failure to provide a copy of the registration to the US Secretary of State.
“The Attorney General shall, upon receipt, promptly transmit one copy of each notification statement filed under this section to the Secretary of State for such comment and use as the Secretary of State may determine to be appropriate from the point of view of the foreign relations of the United States.
“Failure of the Attorney General to do so shall not be a bar to prosecution under this section.”
In other words, the Attorney General could fail to notify the US Secretary of State as to the activities of a specific individual or group, yet bear no legal responsibility for the oversight. At this point, it would be the responsibility of the individuals to prove their innocence.
US Attorney General Eric Holden claims he never received such a notification regarding the arrested individuals. So now the question must be asked: did somebody fumble the ball – knowingly or unknowingly – as the Bush administration handed off executive responsibility to the Obama White House?
Now, Obama’s political opponents – and there are many – may be conspiring to sabotage the American president’s efforts to reset relations with Russia, which is integral to Moscow and Washington signing the START treaty. How much these new revelations will harm those efforts remains to be seen.
Gennady Gudkov, vice chairman of the Duma Security Committee, argues that this new spy scandal is possibly a provocation by the "anti-Obama" coalition, or co-ordinated activities on behalf of the American authorities. Based on those criteria, Russia should consider its response carefully, Gudkov said in his interview with "Ekho Moskvy" radio station.
Gudkov also stressed that this whole story needs to be thoroughly analyzed before any decision is made. Since US officials have only released bits and pieces of these 11 different stories, this seems to be excellent advice.
Finally, there are reports of a decrypted message from Moscow to two of the suspects, apparently reminding them that they were sent to the United States for "long-term service."
"Your education, bank accounts, car, house, etc. – all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e., to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in the US and send intels back to center," the alleged document reads.
Such a message is strange to say the least. To suggest that these individuals, who allegedly received extensive training, needed a reminder from their handlers of their mission sounds more like poorly scripted fiction than true espionage. Even a civilian arm-chair observer can understand the inherent risk of dispatching a letter – even coded – that basically outlines the entire mission, not to mention outing the agents.
Why now?
The big question on everybody’s minds in Moscow is: why now? Why did the FBI, after allegedly conducting “multi-year” surveillance of these individuals, wait until the Russian president was just exiting the United States to drop this stink bomb? Indeed, the timing of this scandalous news seems too “perfect” to be merely coincidental.
For that answer, we must go to the very tip of the iceberg of US political circles, to the very individuals behind the scenes and calling the shots in America. Who are these individuals? For starters, there is America’s extremely powerful lobbying community, which has one real objective: to sway US foreign policy, which has become dramatically militant over the last decade.
Russians may not fully appreciate this unique part of the US political process, which relies much more on special-interest spending than on any "general will" of the people.
It is these deep-pocketed groups who fill the campaign war chests of American politicians, and it goes without saying that they do not donate their money without expecting some sort of favors in return. And with big global issues on the front burner – not least of all the question of what to do with Iran, which some argue is trying to acquire nuclear weapons – many people could be accused of “infiltrating US foreign policy circles.”
So there is the possibility – however difficult to prove – that one of these powerful lobby groups called in one of their political debts – at Russia’s expense.
Indeed, those “special interests” who now enjoy the ultimate legal power of influencing US politicians in order to support specific legislation, not to mention foreign policy directives, will not stand by idly as Russians attempt to make their voice heard in Washington. It is possible that other foreign lobbies will go to great extremes to reinforce the image of Russians as “spies” in a smear campaign that will make it politically unattractive for US politicians to “do business” with America’s growing Russian community.
But in the end, what this “spy case” proves is not that the Cold War winds have returned, but that the American people must work to regain control of their political system, which has become too financially dependent upon the legal or illegal “agents of foreign governments.”
The only political lobby that should be permitted to influence the halls of Washington should be “We the American People.” All others need not apply.
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