Russian agent posing as suburban mother used British passport to spy on U.S., claims FBI

 

 

By Mail Foreign Service

Last updated at 5:38 PM on 29th June 2010

 

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• Foreign Office investigating British passport claims
  
• Obama refuses to answer questions on arrests
  
• Putin says he hopes case will not damage U.S.-Russia relationship
  
• Man believed to be 11th spy nabbed today in Cyprus - then released on bail
  
• Accused allegedly used invisible ink and steganography
  
• Eight of the suspects were married couples, some with children
  
• Plot 'has been in place since the 1990s'
  

 

The flame-haired femme fatale: Anna Chapman, dressed in in brilliant red, at a party in New York in March. She is accused of being a Russian spy

 

One of the women accused of being a Russian spy in the U.S. travelled on a British passport, according to the FBI.

Tracey Lee Ann Foley, who was posing as a naturalised U.S. citizen born in Canada, is believed to have been given forged British documents by her Russian handlers.

She used them to travel to and from Moscow with greater ease, the FBI has claimed.

The Foreign Office said today it was investigating the claim.

 

If true, itwill undo some of the work that Prime Minister David Cameron did during the recent G8 and G20 summits to improve relations with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

The arrests are already likely to cause huge diplomatic embarrassment and chill relations between Mr Medvedv and U.S. President Barack Obama at a time when they had been thawing.

Today Mr Obama refused to answer questions over the arrests.

Meanwhile Russian premier Vladimir Putin - himself a former KGB hardman - said he hoped the case would not damage recent gains made in U.S.-Russia relations.

 

Foley is believed to be in her 40s and the mother of two teenage sons.

Her husband Donald Heathfield is also accused of being a Russian agent.

He was posing as a Canadian citizen, living with Foley in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard University is located.

 

The pair have lived in the U.S. since 1999.

 

Foley, Heathfield, and their nine co-accused allegedly used invisible ink, short-wave radios, steganography and wi-fi in cafés to pass coded messages back to Russia - including information on nuclear weapons.

Some of them are believed to have been operating for more than a decade.

One is a red-headed femme fatale named Anna Chapman.

 

Believed to be a 28-year-old divorcee with a masters' degree in economics and her own online real-estate business, she is being held without bail after prosecutors called her a 'highly trained agent' and a 'practised deceiver'.

Chapman is believed to have used her high-profile connections to pass American secrets on to a Russian government official every Wednesday since January.

On Saturday, an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian agent met with Chapman at a restaurant in New York.

Accused: L-R, Anna Chapman, Vicky Pelaez, the defendant known as 'Richard Murphy', the defendant known as 'Cynthia Murphy', and the defendant known as 'Juan Lazaro' are seen in Manhattan federal court in New York last night

 

Suburban spies? Neighbours point outside the residence of Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after their arrest

 

The agent was pretending to send the alleged spy on a mission to deliver a fake passport to another female agent, according to court documents.

'Are you ready for this step?' he asked.

 

'S*** yes,' was her emphatic reply.

She was told that her fellow spy would greet her by asking: 'Haven't we met in California last summer?'

Chapman - who agents believe was operating under her real name - was supposed to reply: 'No, I think it was in the Hamptons.'

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The 'practised deceiver': Above left, Chapman in a photo from her Facebook page wearing her signature red dress. Above right, the accused spy in a racy pose also taken from her Facebook page

 

 

 

 

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'Highly trained agent': Chapman has also posted some less racy images of herself on her Facebook page

 

 

'SHE COULDN'T HAVE BEEN A SPY - LOOK WHAT SHE DID WITH THE HYDRANGEAS'

 

They wanted to infiltrate the inner core of American society, so naturally they chose the place that would arose the least suspicion - the suburbs.

The 11 men and women accused of spying for Russia lived apparently ordinary, mundane and even boring lives, neighbours have revealed.

Rather than engage in overt espionage, they spent most of their time tending the garden and making sure their children got to football practice on time.

It all helped create a veneer of respectability that would enable them to become highly 'Americanised', and carry out their secret mission without attracting suspicion.

Their technique was summed up succinctly by one teenager who lived next to 'New Jersey conspirators' Richard and Cynthia Murphy: 'They couldn't have been spies. Look what she did with the hydrangeas.'

 

Others were stunned when FBI agents turned up on Sunday night and led them away from their Montclair home in handcuffs.

One called them 'suburbia personified,' saying that they had asked people for advice about the local schools.

In the Yonkers area of New York, neighbours were just as shocked when Juan Lazaro and Vicky Pelaez were carted off by police.

'It's so hard to believe - they looked like regular folks,' said neighbour Jonathan Kroll, 39, a school administrator.

The situation was the same in Cambridge, Massachusetts where forty-something couple 'Donald Howard Heathfield' and 'Tracey Lee Ann Foley' were arrested, to the surprise of those who knew them.

'All I knew about them was when I saw them pull in and out of their driveway,' said Vicky Steinitz, 71.

Another added: 'She was a friendly neighbour. She was gorgeous. She was nice. They were European but I didn’t know what kind.'

 

 

 

Once she had handed over the passport, she was to plant a stamp on a wall map to let her handlers know she had succeeded.

But the exchange never took place. The FBI court documents do not explain why.

One of her co-accused, Mikhail Semenko, was similarly set up in Washington by the FBI on the same day.

Unlike Chapman, he did follow through with his delivery.

 

The FBI also watched Chapman as she sat in a coffee shop in New York and used her lap top to, they claim, communicated with a Russian agent hiding in a mini-van nearby.

And she was once observed going into a Verizon mobile phone shop in Brooklyn to buy a phone using the name 'Irine Kutsov' - giving her address as '99 Fake Street'.

She intended to use the phone for her spying activities, the FBI claimed.

Chapman's lawyer Robert Baum argued that the allegations were exaggerated.

 

'This is not a case that raises issues of security of the United States,' he said.

 

The alleged spies have been charged with acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government and with money laundering.

Ten were arrested in the U.S. yesterday and charged in American courts. An 11th man had been on the run - but was arrested by police in Cyprus this morning.

However he was released on bail. Police have not yet explained why.

 

Among the accused were four couples, including Foley and Heathfield, living quietly in the suburbs of New York and Washington and Boston.

They are believed to have married as part of their cover.

 

One of the married women, believed to be working under her real name, is Vicky Pelaez, a Peruvian born reporter and editor.

 

 

 

She worked for several years for El Diario/La Prensa, one of the country's best-known Spanish-language newspapers.

 

She is best known for her opinion columns, which often criticize the U.S. government.

'You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc - all these serve one goal: fulfil your main mission, ie to search and develop ties in policy-making circles in US and send intels (intelligence reports) to C (Moscow Center).'

- The accused spies 'mission statement', as outlined in a message to 'Richard and Cynthia Murphy' from Moscow Center, intercepted and decoded by the FBI

 

Her son, Waldo Mariscal, told the court that his mother was innocent.

 

'This is a farce,' he said. 'We don't know the other people.'

 

In January 2000, Pelaez was videotaped meeting with a Russian government official at a public park in Peru, where she received a bag from the official, according to one complaint.

Pelaez and her husband Juan Lazaro discussed plans to pass covert messages with invisible ink to Russian officials during another trip Pelaez took to South America, the court documents also claim.

The FBI said it intercepted a message from Moscow Center, headquarters of Russia's intelligence service, the SVR, to some of the defendants describing their main mission as 'to search and develop ties in policy-making circles in U.S.'

Intercepted messages showed they were asked to learn about a wide range of topics, including nuclear weapons, U.S. arms control positions, Iran, White House rumours, CIA leadership turnover, the last presidential election, Congress and the political parties.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1290611/Russian-spy-ring-used-fake-British-passports.html#ixzz0sHNOP9PO

It's incredible how you can get instant (most random) pictures of anybody around the world by using facebook.

Pretty sexy spy :cool3:

It's incredible how you can get instant (most random) pictures of anybody around the world by using facebook.

 

Or maybe on this occasion, SpySpace?:P

Better than the rock-spy: