MillionTalks: Russian Spies - MillionTalks

Jump to content

Today's Fun Links

Page 1 of 1
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

Russian Spies there have been too many of those

#1 User is offline   Amelia 

  • Advanced Member
  • Group: Moderators
  • Posts: 800
  • Joined: 13-July 10
  • LocationLA

Posted 12 October 2010 - 06:03 AM

Inspired by the recent movie starring Jolie and latest news about all those Russian spies I decided to start new topic for dicussion. The world has learned a lot about the Russian spy suspects in the US in recent days.
Attached Image: 0702-russian-spies-mysteries.jpg_full_380.jpg
So how about those 11 russian spies who have been allegedly working for the russian intelligence agency. Apparently they have been undercover and being watched by the FBI for quite a few years, but the arrests were made after the recent "resetting" of the russia-US relations.

Do you think they were actually spies, or have they been set up in a political subterfuge by either government to destroy potential realtions for an unkown third party for their own unkown purposes?
0

#2 User is offline   Mary 

  • Advanced Member
  • PipPipPip
  • Group: Members
  • Posts: 1205
  • Joined: 15-July 10

Posted 12 October 2010 - 08:28 AM

I think if they actually were spies, they would never been exposed, i guess it is just another political trick!
0

#3 User is offline   Bella 

  • Advanced Member
  • PipPipPip
  • Group: Members
  • Posts: 1042
  • Joined: 16-July 10

Posted 12 October 2010 - 09:05 AM

View PostAmelia, on 12 October 2010 - 06:03 AM, said:

wacthedby the FBI for quite a few years, but the arrests were made after the recent "resetting" of the russia-US relations.


guess that's the answer.
0

#4 User is offline   Amelia 

  • Advanced Member
  • Group: Moderators
  • Posts: 800
  • Joined: 13-July 10
  • LocationLA

Posted 12 October 2010 - 09:06 AM

Well, I wouldn't state anything so confidently...even great spies may be exposed, the history know many cases. But anyways, here are some interesting facts about those mysterious Russian Spies:

So far, little is known about the true identities of the 11 people accused of spying for Russia. But the group has at least one thing in common: Their neighbors are shocked.

From Seattle to New York, neighbors and acquaintances have described the suspects as strikingly ordinary members of the community, upstanding citizens who walked their children to the bus stop and seemed to enjoy things like gardening. In other words, they fit it.

Cynthia and Richard Murphy, Montclair, N.J.


Who they are: The New Jersey couple appeared to be living the American dream in a $481,000 colonial in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, along with their two young daughters.

Alleged cover:
The Star-Ledger of Newark reports that neighbors thought Cynthia was an accountant working on her MBA, and Richard an architect.

Background: Richard claims to be from Philadelphia, and Cynthia says she was born Cynthia A. Hopkins in New York City. The FBI, however, says they've been in the United States since the 1990s.

The kicker: According to one neighbor, Cynthia was a solid gardener as well. "They couldn't have been spies," Jessie Gugig, 15, told The New York Times. "Look what she did with the hydrangeas."

Patricia Mills and Michael Zottoli, Arlington, Va.

Who they are:
A couple with a toddler son and a baby who lived in a high-end apartment in Arlington, Va., just outside of Washington, D.C. According to WUSA9 news, neighbors described them as "friendly" and "social."

Background:
Mills claims to be a Canadian citizen, and Zottoli says he was born in Yonkers, N.Y. According to the FBI, however, Zottoli has only been in the United States since 2001.

Tracey Foley and Donald Heathfield, Cambridge, Mass.

Who they are: Foley and Heathfield were known as a married couple, maybe in their 40s, who lived in an apartment in Cambridge with their two teenage sons.

Power couple: Foley is a licensed real estate agent with Redfin in the Boston area, which says it didn't notice anything out of the ordinary when it hired her. "Redfin validated her social security number, her deal history and that her real estate license was in good standing," the company said on its corporate blog today. "As with every agent we hire, we ran a criminal background check, which came up clean."

Heathfield, Foley's husband, is a senior business consultant with an international management firm based in Cambridge. According to his LinkedIn profile, Heathfield's specialties include "Comprehensive management of Risks and Uncertainties," and "Capture of Strategic Opportunities."

In 2000, he received a degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Former Harvard classmate Craig Sandler told The Boston Globe that Heathfield seemed "a little bit mysterious."

The kicker: Heathfield had apparently assumed the identity of a Canadian baby who died in 1962.

Vicky Pelaez and Juan Lazaro, Yonkers, N.Y.


Who they are: The married couple lived in Yonkers, outside of New York City, with their son, Waldo Mariscal. Pelaez is Peruvian born. Mariscal told The Wall Street Journal today that the only connection his mother had to Russia was a passion for Tchaikovsky.

Alleged cover:
Pelaez was a well-known columnist with El Diario/La Prensa, one of the country's oldest Spanish-language news outlets. Lazaro was a professor at Baruch College in New York.

The kicker: Lazaro's students told The New York Times he was a fan of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and vehemently disagreed with U.S. foreign policy.

Anna Chapman, New York City

Who she is: Chapman, 28, says she runs an online real estate business. But according to the feds, she met regularly with a Russian official to exchange sensitive information.

The kicker: Chapman is a looker. And the Village Voice, which broke the story about sexy banker Debrahlee Lorenzana, is worried that Chapman may be too sexy to be a spy. "Anna Chapman -- if that is her real name -- is hot," the paper wrote. The New York Post calls her "red hot."

Mikhail Semenko, Arlington, Va.


Who he is:
Semenko, who is described as being in his late 20s, seems to be the flashiest suspect. He drove a Mercedes S500 and spoke to his girlfriend in Russian, The New York Times reports.

Robert Christopher Metsos


Who he is: The 55-year old was arrested in Cyprus late Monday and is thought to be a Canadian citizen.
0

#5 User is offline   Amelia 

  • Advanced Member
  • Group: Moderators
  • Posts: 800
  • Joined: 13-July 10
  • LocationLA

Posted 12 October 2010 - 09:20 AM

The most popular is "sultry Russian agent" Anna Chapman. This "celebrity" has even got a page on wiki, and here is what it says:

Anna's Bio:


Born Anna Vasil'evna Kushchenko in Volgograd, according to US authorities, her father was employed in the Russian embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. He also married a sister of Russian gangster Vyachslav Ivankov, fathering a daughter born Natascha Ivankova Kushchenko, who is believed to have been sent off to live with distant relatives. According to Chapman's British ex-husband, her father, Vasily Kushchenko, was also a senior KGB official, although this is unsubstantiated. She attended an elite boarding school and earned a master's degree in economics from the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia in Moscow.

London: 2001-2006

Chapman moved to London in 2000/1, working at NetJets, Barclays Bank and allegedly at a few other companies for brief periods.

In 2001, at an underground rave party in London's Docklands, she met Alex Chapman, then 21, the son of a British business executive. The couple married shortly thereafter in Moscow, and as a result she gained dual Russian-British citizenship, and a British passport.After Anna was arrested in New York, Alex engaged media publicist Max Clifford, and sold his story to The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Alex stated that by 2003–2004, Anna had become distant, falling in with a group of "secretive, well-connected Russian friends." He has said that during this period, she would often go out with other Russians without inviting him along because they would only be speaking Russian. He has also stated that she seemed to have more access to money during this period, and often spoke of meeting influential people. By 2005, the marriage had fallen apart and they divorced. Anna went back to Russia in 2006, but according to Alex they remained in contact.

New York: 2006-2010

After her return to Russia in 2006, her ex-husband stated that she began seeing a rich American man, and moved to New York, where she started a real-estate business. She took up residence at 20 Exchange Place, one block from Wall Street in Manhattan's Financial District. Alex has stated that Anna told him the enterprise was continually in the red for the first couple of years, and then suddenly in 2009, she had as many as 50 employees and a successful business. Anna's LinkedIn social networking site profile identified her as CEO of PropertyFinder LLC, a website selling real estate internationally.

Alex commented that their contact was less frequent in the year following her sudden success, and Anna was arrested on June 27, 2010. Anna is reported to have been dating Michel Bittan, a prominent New York restaurant owner, at the time of her arrest. She later described her time in the US with the Charles Dickens quote, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times"

And some pics of the hot Russian Spy Anna Chapman:

Attached thumbnail(s)

  • Attached Image: mp_main_wide_AnnaChapman452.jpg
  • Attached Image: 1008-anna-chapman-ap101009118965-credit.jpg
  • Attached Image: article-1306739-0AF0F425000005DC-786_468x697.jpg
  • Attached Image: Anna_Chapman11.jpg

0

#6 User is offline   Romain 

  • Advanced Member
  • PipPipPip
  • Group: Members
  • Posts: 255
  • Joined: 06-September 10

Posted 12 October 2010 - 12:14 PM

I'm sure there is still a bunch of red spies in US!
0

#7 User is offline   Amelia 

  • Advanced Member
  • Group: Moderators
  • Posts: 800
  • Joined: 13-July 10
  • LocationLA

Posted 19 October 2010 - 04:06 AM

This is 28-year-old Anna Chapman as you've never seen her before.

The flame-haired Russian agent has not shied away from publicity since returning to her native country in July and this raunchy magazine shoot will certainly do nothing to quell the public's fascination with her.

Clad in skimpy black lingerie, complete with suspender belt, she appears on the cover of this month's Russian Maxim with her finger poised on the trigger of a gun.
Attached Image: article-1321612-0BAAC824000005DC-555_468x599.jpg
While the other agents sent back to Russia have kept a low profile, Ms Chapman certainly seems to making the most of her new found fame.

And today she was handed a top state medal by Kremlin president Dmitry Medvedev for her espionage work in the West. She is believed to be one of the youngest people ever to receive such an award.

Nine other agents thrown out of America with her accused of spying for Russia were also awarded highest honours at the ceremony.

A Kremlin statement marked the first unequivocal official admission from Moscow that Chapman was definitely an employee of Russian foreign intelligence when she was thrown out of America.

'A ceremony took place in the Kremlin today to hand top state honours to a number of Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) employees, including the spies who were working in the United States and returned to Russia in July,' said Kremlin spokeswoman Natalya Timakova.
President Medvedev, seen here last week, awarded 'top honours' to ten agents thrown out of the U.S.

President Medvedev, seen here last week, awarded 'top honours' to ten agents thrown out of the U.S.

No television or press pictures were released of the ceremony. The exact medals the spies received were not revealed but they were described as 'the state’s highest awards'.

The group of 10 spies, many of whom had been working for years undercover in the United States as sleeper agents, returned to Russia in a sensational Cold War-style spy swap.

In return, four Russians who secretly spied for MI6 and the CIA were allowed to go free in the West.

After she returned to Russia in July, Chapman was stripped of her British passport for which she had qualified after marrying a former public schoolboy, Alex Chapman.

In the weeks after their return, strongman prime minister Vladimir Putin met the spies and sang patriotic songs with them.

He blamed a traitor - who has so far not been named - for exposing them.

Before today's ceremony, espionage experts in the East and West raised doubts as to whether Chapman was in fact a fully fledged agent who conducted heroic work for the Russian state.

There were claims the glamorous socialite - whose semi-naked pictures were sold by her ex-husband after her arrest in New York - was in reality only a minor player unwittingly caught in the spy scandal.

Today’s award by President Medvedev removes any doubt. Moscow now admits she was a fully-fledged spy worthy of one of the highest honours Russia can bestow.

This may renew interest in Chapman’s activities during the six or so years she lived in Britain.

So far no evidence has emerged that she was spying during this period but she is known to have spent far longer in London than New York.

Unlike the other spies, Chapman has had a high public profile since returning to Russia.

Last week she was appointed advisor to a Russian bank, and in this capacity she attended a space launch at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

She is reported to be writing a book, though it is believed she has been barred from selling her story.
0

Share this topic:


Page 1 of 1
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

1 User(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users


Today's Fun Links