Friday, July 2, 2010

From Russia With Love- FBI Sweep Nets Latter Day Russian Spy Ring

[ I'd probably hit that.....y'know- for America, of course]
By all accounts, accused Russian 'spy' Anna Chapman was a latter day Mata Hari. I have to use the quotes around 'spy' because there's not only the matter of her guilt or innocence being proven through the judicial process, but assuming she was sent by Russia's FSB (successor to the Soviet-era KGB) the her espionage acumen should be called into question. Let's also keep in mind that dancer, courtesan and double-agent Mata Hari was herself fairly inept as a spy and was executed by firing squad in 1917.

While Chapman didn't conceal her Russian identity, she apparently had a hard time keeping her cover stories straight.
"She made up a different story every time," [one Wall Street source] said.

"The first time, she said she ran a real-estate Web site. Then the next time, she was working on an oil deal."

"[Then] she told me she was a derivatives trader. I asked her one thing any derivatives trader would know and she didn't know what I was talking about," he said. "She was just dumb, quite frankly."
Some thought she was an online entrepreneur with a Russian real-estate website, while others assumed she was a prostitute and still others figured she was the wild-child daughter of one of the Russian oligarchs. Those who knew Anya Kuschenko- the real name behind the Volgagrad Vixen's alter ego, according to Russian media- described her as "sweet", "friendly" and "flirtatious". Besides being unusually inquisitive, she also would often wear revaling designer-label dresses to cocktail parties and social functions in Manhattan's financial district.

I think Jim Gerhagty said it best in National Review:
You get the feeling at some point she sent back a message to Moscow begging for cash because she had been swindled out of her lunch money by a moose and a squirrel
All this post Cold War cloak-and-dagger stuff kind of begs the question of what the Russkies were hoping to learn from these spies. I mean they already got what they wanted from the Obama Administration, no questions asked. The FBI complaint alleges that Chapman and 10 others sought to infiltrate and influence policymaking circles of the US Government [so who better to send than the Russkie equivalent of Paris Hilton?- NANESB!]. Aside from Chapman, some of the others detained by the FBI in the sweep include the Vice President of New York's Morea financial services, a journalist for New York's Spanish language El Diario newspaper and an adjunct anthropology professor at Baruch college. As a throwback, they even did the encrypted messages with invisible ink and dead-drops thing with their Russian handlers.

Another member of the ring was detained by Cypriot police in Larnaca, Cyrpus but almost immediately skipped bail.

3 comments:

  1. She is a good looking woman.

    I would bet she could get men to talk to her about anything, even if she wasn't sharp enough to know what they were talking about.

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  2. If this doesn't make the average American realize the world views Obama as weak and America ripe for the picking I don't know what will.

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  3. To be fair, the Feds say the spy ring was around for a few years before Obama even campaigned for President and that Chapman was one of the newre additions.

    BUT with that said, you have to wonder if this spy ring got caught because they were too comfortable with an Adminstration that might've been dancing to the Kremlin's tune without any direct influence from them.

    The decision to abandon our missile shield from Eastern Europe stands out as one example and makes me wonder how come the Russkies would've bothered with a spy ring (that blended in quite well with some leftists) to America when there's a completely malleable and subservent Administration and State Department....

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