"FBI reveals workings of spy ring; Russian agents had edged closer to policymakers" November 01, 2011|By Douglas Birch and Pete Yost, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Unaware the FBI has her under surveillance, Russian spy Anna Chapman buys leggings and tries on hats at Macy’s.
I would have liked this assignment!
A few months later, cameras watch her in a New York coffee shop where she meets with someone she thinks is her Russian handler. It is really an undercover FBI agent.
Tapes, documents, and photos released yesterday describe and sometimes show how Chapman, now a celebrity back in Russia, and other members of a ring of sleeper spies passed instructions, information, and cash.
The ring was shut down in June 2010 after a decadelong counterintelligence investigation that led to the biggest spy swap since the Cold War.
The FBI released the material in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The investigation was code-named “Ghost Stories,’’ the release of documents on Halloween a coincidence.
While the deep-cover agents did not steal any secrets, an FBI counterintelligence official said they were making progress.
They “were getting very close to penetrating US policymaking circles’’ through a friend of a US Cabinet official, said C. Frank Figliuzzi, FBI assistant director for counterintelligence.
And they found Zionist Jews already there.
He did not name names, but Russian spy Cynthia Murphy of Montclair, N.J., provided financial planning for venture capitalist Alan Patricof, a political fund-raiser with close ties to Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Hmm.
The linchpin in cracking the case, apparently, was Colonel Alexander Poteyev, a highly placed US mole in Russian foreign intelligence, who betrayed the spy ring even as he ran it.
He abruptly fled Moscow just days before the FBI rolled up the operation. Poteyev’s role emerged when a Russian military court convicted him in absentia for high treason and desertion.
The 11-member ring of sleeper spies - deep-cover agents assigned to blend into American society - included Donald Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley of Cambridge, Mass. He worked in sales for an international management consulting firm and peddled strategic planning software to US corporations. She was a real estate agent.
Related: Meet the spies who lived next door
The materials released yesterday show Chapman and the other members of the spy ring shopping in New York City, sightseeing, hanging around coffee shops, or apparently just out for a stroll. While she shops at one department store, a Russian diplomat waits outside.
The FBI says seemingly mundane pursuits often served as cover for the exchange of encrypted messages or the transfer of cash, all with the long-range goal of penetrating the highest levels of US policymaking....
Why would they need to do that? I have a newspaper that informs me of policy all the time.
Other spies are seen in video and photos meeting in Columbus Circle, on Brooklyn street corners, and at a Queens pay phone.
Called “illegals’’ because they took civilian jobs instead of operating with diplomatic immunity inside Russian embassies and military missions, the spies settled into quiet lives in middle-class neighborhoods and set about trying to network their way into the worlds of finance, technology, and government.
The operation’s code name, Ghost Stories, stems from a number of the spies using a technique known among counter-intelligence investigators as “dead doubles’’ - taking the identities of people who have died. Heathfield, Foley, Michael Zottoli, and Patricia Mills all used the technique, Figliuzzi said.
The United States traded the 10 spies arrested by federal agents for four Russians imprisoned for spying for the West at a remote corner of a Vienna airport on July 9 in a scene reminiscent of the carefully choreographed exchange of spies at Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge during the Cold War.
Also see: Slow Saturday Special: Stupid Spy Stories
The Boston Sunday Globe Writes a Russian Spy Story
Actually, I'm tired of reading scripted s*** passed off as news.
While freed Soviet spies typically have kept a low profile after their return to Moscow, Chapman became a model, corporate spokeswoman, and television personality. Heathfield, whose real name is Andrey Bezrukov, lists himself as an adviser to the president of a major Russian oil company on LinkedIn.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev awarded the 10 freed spies Russia’s highest honors at a Kremlin ceremony.
The case was brought to a swift conclusion before it could complicate President Obama’s campaign to reset American relations with the Kremlin, strained by years of tensions over US foreign policy and the 2008 Russian-Georgian war. All of the captured spies were charged with failing to register as foreign agents.
An 11th suspect, Christopher Metsos, who claimed to be a Canadian citizen and was accused of delivering money and equipment to the sleeper agents, vanished after a court in Cyprus freed him on bail.
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I'm sorry, readers, I lost 'em.
"Russian nationalists march in Moscow; Urge others to ‘take back’ nation from migrants" November 05, 2011|By Mansur Mirovalev, Associated Press
MOSCOW - Thousands of far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis marched through Moscow yesterday calling on ethnic Russians to “take back’’ their country as resentment grows over dark-complexioned Muslim migrants from Russia’s Caucasus and the money the Kremlin sends to the restive region.
I'm still having a hard time getting my head around a Russian Nazi. They must not know history.
Some 5,000 people, mostly young men wearing medical masks and balaclavas, marched through a working-class neighborhood of gloomy apartment buildings on the outskirts of the capital. They chanted “Russia for Russians’’ and “Migrants today, occupiers tomorrow,’’ along with anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic slurs and obscenities.
Some raised their hands in a Nazi salute as hundreds of police officers stood shoulder-to-shoulder along the street, which was blocked to traffic.
I just can't help feeling they are provocateurs of some sort.
“All Russian people are on the march: football fans, skinheads, national socialists,’’ said Dmitry Demushkin, a longtime activist who now leads a group called Russkiye, or Russians....
Demushkin is a former leader of the Slavic Union, a neo-Nazi group that was banned last year as extremist, along with the Movement Against Illegal Migration.
Violent xenophobic groups have flourished in Russia over the past two decades. Their members kill and beat non-Slavs, and antiracism activists and crudely denounce the influx of immigrants from the Caucasus and from Central Asian countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.
Since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, they have drawn moral support from his efforts to rebuild a strong Russian state....
Putin ran out the Jewish gangsters thus he is not well-liked by the western media.
Following a clash last December between police and thousands of football fans and other extremists just outside the Kremlin walls - and an unprecedented outbreak of hate crimes - the government has taken a tougher line against the groups. But their virulent hatred is proving hard to combat.
How do you deal with Israel anyway?
Many Russians share the antimigrant sentiment, and even those who would not describe themselves as racist are increasingly resentful of the hefty subsidies sent to the Caucasus, particularly to Chechnya.
The money is intended to bring stability after years of war, but the region remains deeply impoverished while Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov flaunts his wealth.
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Goin' back in time!
"Crew of 6 completes 520-day mock mission to Mars in isolation in Moscow" November 05, 2011|Associated Press
MOSCOW - It seemed more like a bizarre reality TV show than high-tech international space travel experiment: Six men lived in cramped, windowless compartments for more than 17 months to simulate a mission to Mars.
When they emerged from their claustrophobic capsules yesterday in western Moscow, the researchers in blue jumpsuits looked haggard but were all smiles - dreaming of lying in the sun at the beach, taking long strolls, and driving fast cars.
Organizers said the 520-day experiment was the longest mock space mission ever, measuring human responses to the confinement, stress, and fatigue of a round trip to Mars - minus the weightlessness, of course. They describe it as a vital part of preparations for a future mission to the Red Planet, even though it may be decades away because of huge costs and technological challenges....
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"Errant Russian spacecraft raises fears" November 10, 2011|Associated Press
MOSCOW - A Russian space probe became stuck in orbit yesterday after an equipment failure, raising fears it could come crashing down and spill tons of highly toxic fuel on earth unless engineers can steer it back into its flight path.
The spacecraft was headed for one of Mars’s two moons when it developed technical problems.
US space and Defense Department officials are tracking it. Officials at NASA in Washington have determined it will be at least a week, maybe more, before the errant space probe falls back to earth, if it does....
One independent US expert on the Russian space program said the spacecraft could become the most dangerous manmade object ever to hit the planet. But those at the US space agency and other space debris experts are far less concerned. They believe the fuel will probably explode harmlessly in earth’s upper atmosphere....
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Enough of the space race.
"Russians mark historic WWII parade" November 08, 2011|Associated Press
MOSCOW - Thousands of Russian soldiers and military cadets marched across Red Square yesterday to mark the 70th anniversary of a historic World War II parade.
The show honored the participants of the Nov. 7, 1941, parade, who afterward headed to the front line to defend Moscow from invading Nazi forces. Yesterday’s parade involved about 6,000 people - many of them dressed in World War II-era uniforms - and featured T-34 tanks and other historic weapons.
Someone better tell those kids doing the sieg heil salute.
Veterans watched the event, which included a combat imitation exercise and artillery crews getting ready for combat.
During Soviet times, military parades were held annually on Nov. 7, a holiday commemorating the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
Also see: Secret Facts - Soviets & Jews
Russia abolished the Nov. 7 holiday in 2005, but many older Russians still celebrate it and the Communist Party continues to hold its traditional parade....
In a separate development yesterday, member states of a security pact dominated by Russia and China pledged to boost their financial and energy cooperation, despite the global economic slowdown.
Wow, back to the future with that paragraph.
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Also see: Shanghai Cooperation Organization
Resisting Israeli American aggression, 'eh?
