Ten 'Russian spies on deep cover assignments' held in NY

[MinM]

White House advisers believe that, under the leadership of former KGB hardman Vladimir Putin, no other country is as aggressive as Russia in trying to obtain U.S. secrets, with the possible exception of China.

....or Israel ?...

Russia alarmed by CIA view of Iran's weapons - Yahoo! News

On a side note -- PBS' History Detectives ran a story tonight on Russian inventor/Soviet Spy -- Leon Theremin.

History Detectives . Investigations - Theremin | PBS

At the end of the piece they repeat the myth about Gary Powers' U2 being "Shot Down"...


with a twist I had never heard before.

Averill Harriman had been awarded a plaque following WWII, presumably as gratitude and a token of friendship, but some years later it was found to have an electronic listening device in it. The listening device was the work of inventor/musician/spy, Leon Theremin. The United States revealed this during special U.N. Council Hearings called to condemn the U.S. for the Gary Powers incident. This revelation effectively ended those hearings...

More on that plaque given to Averell Harriman on July 4, 1945...

The Great Seal Bug Story - Russian Eavesdropping - Leon Theremin

and the subsequent (May 27, 1960) condemnation from eastern elite scumbag Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.


YouTube - UN Spy Debate, Reds 'Bugged' American Embassy 1960/5/27

[Sweejak]

All FWIW: I'm remembering all this stuff, the plaque thing, (do you know the CIA hires furniture makers, of course you do) the U2 shootdown, Bay of Pigs, Cuba, Berlin, Laos. I can tell you what some mid level US Army officers thought about it, the tiny slice that I caught from those who were friends of my father. The U2 incident was spoken of as highly suspicious and the attitude was one of frustration, the bugging of the plaque was thought of as a hilarious incident, very clever, but it mostly funny. I remember hearing a lot of talk about something called the John Birch Society on TV and my parents talking about it, they were asked to join and I distinctly remember a long discussion, but it was finally decided that they were too radical, they didn't use those words, it was more like an open palm gestured toward a stack of literature and a shaking of the head. I also remember the base quartermaster coming over to check our quarters for "fire safety", but my parents knew they were FBI looking to see if we were Reds. Mom was pissed off. She mentioned the word "Gestapo". Man, good times!

[JackRiddler]

Today the Daily News had the hot dog shit-eating contest as a front page, and the Post had a naked picture of Anna Chapman.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/spy_ ... 3rEGvG9ePN

Updated: Mon., Jul. 5, 2010, 12:01 PM
'Spy' vixen's kinky sex secrets exposed

By TODD VENEZIA

Last Updated: 12:01 PM, July 5, 2010

Posted: 3:19 AM, July 5, 2010

Ravishing redhead "spy" Anna Chapman is a sizzling Russian undressing in stunning topless photos shot by her ex-hubby.

Alex Chapman, who was married to the undercover -- and uncovered -- spy for four years, says she loved to pose nude and had a libido worthy of a James Bond femme fatal.

The pair orchestrated mile-high airplane bathroom sex romps, used toys for S&M sessions and held love-making marathons he called "incredible."

PHOTOS: SEXY RUSSIAN 'SPY' ANNA CHAPMAN

"Anya was great in bed!" the Englishman gushed to Britain's News of the World -- adding that she apparently knew more sex secrets than spy secrets.

"She knew exactly what to do. She was awesome," he said of his ex, who was born Anya Kushchenko. "For the first few months, we met for sex about five days a week. We loved it."

He also said that the accused spy was not shy about revealing her covert assets.

"She also liked posing for pictures," he told the paper. "I took one of her topless first thing in the morning.

"I said to Anya, 'Go on! Get them out!' and I took the picture of her with only a bit of the duvet over her. She laughed about it."

Anna apparently used her sexy ways to seduce Alex, even though he was only a lowly psychology student and hardly an international man of mystery.

One encounter early in their relationship stood out in his mind -- a furtive coupling aboard a British Airways jet on its way to Moscow in 2002.

"When we were on the plane, we came up with a plan to join the Mile High Club. I went to the toilet first and told her to follow later and knock," he said.

"Anya was wearing a denim dress, so I hitched it up and we just went for it. It was fantastic because of the thrill of doing it on a plane.

"We were in the toilet for about 15 minutes, and then one of the cabin crew knocked on the door. I said Anya had been sick and I was helping her."

The pair married later that year.

Alex, 30, recalled that he couldn't have been happier.

The pair experimented with S&M, and Anna sometimes liked to pose as a KGB interrogator as she took take the role of dominatrix and wielded a whip.

"I found her Russian accent such a turn-on," he said. "She was the most beautiful person I had ever met, with an extraordinary body, and I was infatuated with her."

He said he never suspected his wife could have been a spy in the service of Vladimir Putin. Although there were strange incidents that made him question the truth about her past.

One encounter in Moscow stood out.

"I remember we were outside a nightclub but the doorman wouldn't let us in," Alex said. "Then a guy got out of a Lamborghini, had a word with the people on the door, and we were whisked through. He was some sort of Persian prince.

"I didn't know how well connected she was until then."

He said she loved living with him in London and even liked watching James Bond films with him.

"She also liked watching Benny Hill," he said.

Soon her tastes started getting more expensive, and when her humble hubby couldn't keep up, she started turning to more high-end company.

"We were going in different directions. I was the creative person, but she had become ambitious and materialistic," he said.

"She was with a Swiss banker. He gave her a Cartier watch worth $26,000. She dumped him soon after that. Then she was with an American entrepreneur."

He said her dad -- whom he now believes to be a former KGB agent -- was presented to him as a Russian diplomat named Vasily Kushchenko.

"He sorted out a full Russian visa for me by bending the rules," Alex said. "He was very well connected -- but he didn't seem very impressed with me."

The pair split in 2005 after arguing over issues such as having a joint bank account.

Chapman -- who said he has been questioned by British secret agents since the bust -- said he actually spoke with his ex by cellphone on Friday, even though she is being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Using her nickname for him, "she told me, 'Anjiki, so much has happened. I am not surprised about everything that is happening in England. It is happening everywhere. Don't worry. Don't worry.' "

The 28-year-old Anna Chapman was allegedly instructed by her handlers to use her now well-known charms to build contacts in the business and government worlds.

She and her fellow accused spies were busted last week after she missed a meeting with an FBI agent posing as a Russian spy, causing federal authorities to fear she would flee and alert her higher-ups to the investigation.

On Saturday, her lawyer said the Big Apple resident turned red over some of the sexy, but clothed pictures that have already surfaced of her since her bust.

"She was embarrassed by some of the photos that were obviously taken from her Facebook pages," the lawyer said. "The truth is she's probably no different than your typical single 28-year-old woman in New York City. She runs a successful business, goes out at night. She dates men, enjoys a social life."

She's likely to go off like a Soyuz rocket when she sees the topless pictures her husband has released.

"The sex was great, and she had this incredible body," he explained "It was more about lust at first. I hadn't met anybody like her before."

Meanwhile, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev wrote a letter to President Obama that does not directly address the arrest of 10 of his supposed spies in the United States but insists that diplomatic relations between the two countries would continue to thaw.

NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc.

nypost.com , nypostonline.com , and newyorkpost.com are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc.

[Avalon]

Not a natural redhead, to judge by her roots. Or at least, that red is not a natural color, at least at this point.

[RocketMan]

Anna Chapman speaks on tape acquired by UK's Mirror tabloid

[JackRiddler]

Chapman's being swapped for some Russian who was spying for the US. Don't feel like fishing out the stories. There's always the possibility that this was very big - that she and the rest of them had infiltrated some high power elite circles who don't want to make it a story. Or not.

[semper occultus]

There's always the possibility that this was very big - that she and the rest of them had infiltrated some high power elite circles who don't want to make it a story.

agreed.

given the nature of the various photos & gossip about Ms Chapman in particular & her predeliction for associating with middle-aged men of a certain type I think we can speculate as to what methods she was using to infiltrate & possibly compromise those circles !

[Stephen Morgan]

All FWIW: I'm remembering all this stuff, the plaque thing, (do you know the CIA hires furniture makers, of course you do) the U2 shootdown, Bay of Pigs, Cuba, Berlin, Laos. I can tell you what some mid level US Army officers thought about it, the tiny slice that I caught from those who were friends of my father. The U2 incident was spoken of as highly suspicious and the attitude was one of frustration, the bugging of the plaque was thought of as a hilarious incident, very clever, but it mostly funny. I remember hearing a lot of talk about something called the John Birch Society on TV and my parents talking about it, they were asked to join and I distinctly remember a long discussion, but it was finally decided that they were too radical, they didn't use those words, it was more like an open palm gestured toward a stack of literature and a shaking of the head. I also remember the base quartermaster coming over to check our quarters for "fire safety", but my parents knew they were FBI looking to see if we were Reds. Mom was pissed off. She mentioned the word "Gestapo". Man, good times!

Little mentioned, even by conspiracy theorists, is the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald worked on the radar ATC for the U2 plane at Atsugi in Japan. That's where he was taught how to speak Russian and suspected by his fellow soldiers of being an intelligence agent. Then less than a year before the Gary Power incident he defected with his top secret information to the USSR. Probably just a coincidence. Not like he'd be trained covertly by the CIA from his youth in the CAP right through his period in the military then sent as a double agent into the USSR to feed them information the CIA wanted them to have to derail Eisenhower's peace talks, then use his as a patsy in the Kennedy hit.

[elfismiles]

Russian spies infiltrating STRATFOR?

" ...the Russian operative tried to get the STRATFOR employee to try out software he said his company had developed. We suspect that had this been done, our servers would be outputting to Moscow..."
From "Russian Spies and Strategic Intelligence," by George Friedman

Russian Spies and Strategic Intelligence
July 13, 2010 | 0844 GMT
By George Friedman

The United States has captured a group of Russian spies and exchanged them for four individuals held by the Russians on espionage charges. The ways the media have reported on the issue fall into three groups:

* That the Cold War is back,
* That, given that the Cold War is over, the point of such outmoded intelligence operations is questionable,
* And that the Russian spy ring was spending its time aimlessly nosing around in think tanks and open meetings in an archaic and incompetent effort.

It is said that the world is global and interdependent. This makes it vital for a given nation to know three things about all of the nations with which it interacts.

First, it needs to know what other nations are capable of doing. Whether militarily, economically or politically, knowing what other nations are capable of narrows down those nations’ possible actions, eliminating fantasies and rhetoric from the spectrum of possible moves. Second, the nation needs to know what other nations intend to do. This is important in the short run, especially when intentions and capabilities match up. And third, the nation needs to know what will happen in other nations that those nations’ governments didn’t anticipate.

The more powerful a nation is, the more important it is to understand what it is doing. The United States is the most powerful country in the world. It therefore follows that it is one of the prime focuses of every country in the world. Knowing what the United States will do, and shifting policy based on that, can save countries from difficulties and even disaster. This need is not confined, of course, to the United States. Each country in the world has a list of nations that it is interdependent with, and it keeps an eye on those nations. These can be enemies, friends or just acquaintances. It is impossible for nations not to keep their eyes on other nations, corporations not to keep their eyes on other corporations and individuals not to keep their eyes on other people. How they do so varies; that they do so is a permanent part of the human condition. The shock at learning that the Russians really do want to know what is going on in the United States is, to say the least, overdone.

Read more: Russian Spies and Strategic Intelligence | STRATFOR
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100712 ... telligence

[elfismiles]

Figured they'd resort to using this for advertising spin...

Russian agent tries to spy on STRATFOR's network...

As you no doubt know, the FBI recently arrested 10 suspected Russian operatives in one of the largest counterintelligence investigations in U.S. history. One of these Russian agents, Don Heathfield, had previously approached a STRATFOR employee about installing software on our servers. As George Friedman wrote in a recent Geopolitical Weekly report, "We suspect that had this been done, our servers would be outputting to Moscow."

That STRATFOR was a target for this agent's espionage shows just how valuable our intelligence is.

Fortunately, you don't have to develop advanced hacking software to access it. Click here to become a member for $129/year. You'll gain access to the same reports that intelligence agencies and decision-makers seek worldwide.

[dqueue]

A bit of nepotism on their return from Russia. BBC reports on Anna Chapman's new job...

Russia spy Anna Chapman given pro-Kremlin youth role

Anna Chapman, a Russian spy deported this year from the US, has been elected to a top role in the governing party's youth wing, the BBC has learned.

Ms Chapman was chosen to head the public council of the Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard) which elected its leadership at a meeting in Moscow.

The glamorous former agent was at the centre of a spy ring uncovered by US authorities in June.

The 10 agents were sent back to Russia in return for four US spies.

Ms Chapman spent only a short time at the youth group's fourth congress on Wednesday, the BBC understands.

State honours

Also known as Anya Kushchenko, Anna Chapman is the daughter of a Russian diplomat.

She has made the headlines several times since returning to Russia, including for posing for a Russian men's magazine.

She has also met Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, as well as becoming a representative of a little-known asset management firm called FondsServiceBank, AFP reports.

The 10 Russian agents received state honours from President Dmitry Medvedev for their services at a ceremony at the Kremlin in October.

They were deported from the US after pleading guilty in New York to "conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign country". More serious charges were dropped.

Prosecutors said the accused had posed as ordinary citizens, some living together as couples for years, and were ordered by Russia's External Intelligence Service (SVR) to infiltrate policy-making circles and collect information.

The Molodaya Gvardiya has its roots in the Soviet-era Komsomol youth group and was revived in the late 1990s under Mr Putin.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12060698