We had some fun with this story last year, when the FBI busted a Russian spy ring composed of sleeper agents that sounded like something from the Cold War, but acted like something from Spies Like Us. The New York Daily News follows up today with a video released under a FOIA request from the Associated Press of actual surveillance video of the most notable of the group, “hot Russian spy” Anna Chapman. Just how amateurish and compromised was this spy ring? The FBI managed to get video of an actual pass from Chapman in a Starbucks to an undercover FBI agent, among other less “hot” moments:
In scenes that could be from a summer blockbuster, FBI cameras follow sexy spook Ann Chapman as she strolls through a department store, fingering slinky cocktail dresses and looking at handbags as a gizmo in her bag communicates wirelessly with a Russian agent loitering out on the sidewalk, pretending to talk on a cellphone.
In another, the redheaded spy who went home to be a lingerie model, meets at a Starbucks table with a man she believes is a Russian spymaster, passing him a large envelope. Chapman is wearing chic giant sunglasses that almost scream “1960s secret agent.” …
The FBI videos, released as part of a Freedom of Information Act request from the Associated Press, underscore how throughly the agency penetrated the amateurish Russian spy ring. The sleeper agents seemingly couldn’t take a step without being watched, bugged and filmed.
The 2004 “brush pass” at Forest Hills, for example, was shot from two angles by two cameras, in both black and white and color.
Chapman, while strolling past by $1,300 Agnona dresses in the department store, was even captured picking something out of her nose – one of the lesser-known pitfalls of international espionage.
Whatever happened to “dead drops,” anyway?
The FBI has video and photos of key attempts to exchange information and cash over a six-year period, beginning in 2004. The spy ring never actually succeeded in wringing any secrets from the US, except perhaps how to turn a failed espionage career and a shock of red hair into a brief turn as a celebrity. The best work this group did was to provide some coincidental publicity to the spy thriller Salt, released in the summer of 2010 and starring Angelina Jolie as … a hot Russian sleeper agent. Maybe Chapman can make a cameo appearance in the sequel. Keep an eye out for any department-store scenes and wayward noses.
So why did the FBI pull the plug on what had to be a very entertaining diversion? The Washington Times reports that the ring might have tried to penetrate the State Department:
The FBI rounded up a network of deep-cover Russian spies last year after the group came close to placing an agent near a Cabinet official in the Obama administration, a senior FBI counterspy said Monday as the bureau released once-secret documents on the case.
Frank Figliuzzi, assistant FBI director for counterintelligence, did not identify the Cabinet official, but other U.S. officials said it was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mr. Figliuzzi said in an interview that the FBI decided to end its more than 10-year-long counterspy investigation of the network because of concerns that the spies were “getting very close to their objective.”
“These 10 Russian officers were sent to the U.S. on a specific mission to get close to U.S. policymakers and leaders in our government,” he said, noting that one had developed a friendship with someone close to a Cabinet official.
With the FBI tracking this ring so closely, there would have been zero danger of a mole doing any damage anyway, but the FBI acted properly to protect the State Department.
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