US spy accusations read like a Cold War thriller
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov swiftly demanded an explanation of the charges, which read like the synopsis of a Cold War thriller with encrypted messages, false identities, and tales of buried money and hidden video cameras.
The FBI secretly monitored the mission for more than 10 years.
“You were sent to USA for long-term service trip,” read a message decrypted by the FBI and said to be from Moscow Centre, the headquarters of the SVR intelligence service, a successor to the Cold War-era KGB.
“Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc – all these serve one goal: fulfil your main mission, ie to search and develop ties in policy-making circles in US and send intel to C (Moscow Centre).”
They are charged with acting as an agent of a foreign government, which carries a maximum of five years jail.
Nine were also charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years prison.
The charge sheet unveiled by the justice department said one message from Moscow asked for “info on current international affairs” that was vital for Russia.
“Try to single out tidbits unknown publicly but revealed in private by sources close to state department, government, major think tanks,” it said.
Other requests included information on the latest US policy on Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear programme, and a new weapons treaty between US and Russia, and even “prospects on the global gold market”.
One alleged spy met with an unnamed US nuclear scientist seeking information on US research into nuclear “bunker buster” bombs – explosives proposed under former president George W Bush, but never built – the charge sheet read.
The arrests on Sunday in four north-eastern US states came only three days after US President Barack Obama described his visiting Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev as a “solid and reliable partner” at a cozy White House summit.
“They did not explain what the matter is about. I hope they will,” Russia’s Lavrov was quoted as saying yesterday during a visit to Jerusalem.
“The moment when it was done has been chosen with a special finesse,” he said with apparent sarcasm.
Russian foreign ministry spokesman Igor Lyakin-Frolov told AFP there were a “lot of contradictions” in the information about the case.
There was no White House comment on the arrests or their possible impact on efforts to “reset” the vital US-Russia relationship.
Some of the suspects were apparently Russian citizens and the lengths they went to were staggering, using false identities to manufacture the trappings of ordinary American lives.
Two allegedly pretended to be a married couple called Richard and Cynthia Murphy from Philadelphia; another pair purported to be Peruvians living in Yonkers and were known as Juan Lazaro and Vicky Pelaez, while another purported to be Tracy Lee Ann Foley, a native of Canada but a naturalised US citizen.
Judge James Cott ordered five suspects that appeared on Monday in a New York courtroom to remain in prison until a preliminary hearing set for July 27. A bail hearing was set for tomorrow. The other suspects are set to appear before courts in Virginia and Massachusetts.
All suspects were charged in two separate criminal complaints with spying for the SVR, eight of them allegedly on “deep-cover assignments”.
The suspects allegedly used encrypted data in images on public websites and coded “radiograms” set at special frequencies to communicate with Moscow Centre.
An 11th suspect, named as Christopher R Metsos was arrested yesterday on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, police there said. They said he was arrested at Larnaca airport as he tried to leave for Budapest and was released on bail pending US extradition proceedings. He is wanted in the US on suspicion of espionage and money laundering, police said.
For more than 10 years, the FBI gathered information by covertly placing microphones at the homes of the suspects, and in hotel rooms, and by monitoring and recording their phone calls and emails.
Metsos was under surveillance in Queens in New York in May 2004 when he received a bag containing money from an official associated with Russia’s UN mission.
Two more suspects were followed in June 2006 to Wurstboro, New York, where they dug up a package of money buried there by Metsos.
Other “brush-pass” encounters, in which a suspect receives a hand-off of money or information from another person in a public place, are described in the indictment.
The arrests were made in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and in northern Virginia, just outside the US capital, Washington.
Obama quipped on Thursday that it was time to cut off Cold War-era emergency hotlines at a cordial Washington summit with Medvedev.
US authorities say the accused sometimes worked in pairs and pretended to be married so they could blend into American society. Aside from fake identities, authorities say, they used Cold War spycraft – invisible ink, coded radio transmissions, encrypted data – to avoid detection.
On Monday in federal court in Manhattan, assistant US attorney Michael Farbiarz called the allegations “the tip of the iceberg” of a conspiracy of Russia’s intelligence service to collect inside US information.
“The FBI did an extraordinary job in this investigation,” US attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.
The court papers described a new high-tech spy-to-spy communications system used by the defendants: short-range wireless communications between laptop computers (a modern supplement for the old-style dead drop in a remote area), high-speed burst radio transmission or hollowed-out nickels used by captured Soviet Colonel Rudolf Abel in the 1950s to conceal and deliver microfilm.
On Saturday, an undercover FBI agent in New York and another in Washington, both posing as Russian agents, met with two of the defendants – Anna Chapman at a New York restaurant and Mikhail Semenko on a Washington street corner blocks from the White House, prosecutors said. The FBI undercover agents gave each an espionage-related delivery to make. Court papers indicated Semenko made the delivery as instructed but apparently Chapman didn’t.
Another defendant was a reporter and editor for a prominent Spanish-language newspaper videotaped by the FBI contacting a Russian official in 2000 in Latin America, prosecutors said.
Intelligence on Obama’s foreign policy, particularly toward Russia, appears to have been a top priority for the Russian agents, prosecutors said.
In spring 2009, court documents say, conspirators Richard and Cynthia Murphy, who lived in New Jersey, were asked for information about Obama’s impending trip to Russia that summer, the US negotiating position on the START arms reduction treaty, Afghanistan and the approach Washington would take in dealing with Iran’s suspect nuclear programme. They also were asked to send background on US officials travelling with Obama or involved in foreign policy, the documents say. Richard Murphy is also alleged to have used a false Irish passport.
“Try to outline their views and most important Obama’s goals (sic) which he expects to achieve during summit in July and how does his team plan to do it (arguments, provisions, means of persuasion to ‘lure’ (Russia) into cooperation in US interests,” Moscow asked, according to the documents.
Moscow wanted reports that “should reflect approaches and ideas of” four sub-cabinet US foreign policy officials, they say.
One intercepted message said Cynthia Murphy “had several work-related personal meetings with” a man the court papers describe as a prominent New York-based financier active in politics.
In response, Moscow Centre described the man as a very interesting target and urged the defendants to “try to build up little by little relations… Maybe he can provide [Murphy] with remarks re US foreign policy, ‘romours’ about White house internal ‘kitchen’, invite her to venues (to major political party HQ in NYC, for instance…) In short, consider carefully all options in regard” to the financier.
In the papers, FBI agents said the defendants communicated with Russian agents using mobile wireless transmissions between laptop computers, which has not previously been described in espionage cases brought in the US. They established a short-range wireless network between laptop computers of the agents and sent encrypted messages between the computers while they were close to each other.
Pelaez was born in Cusco, southeast of Lima, and worked as a journalist for the defunct daily La Prensa de Lima and later for a television station, where she gained notoriety among local journalists.
On December 8, 1984, Pelaez, who worked for Frecuencia Latina, was kidnapped for a day and interviewed a leader of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. The interview wasn’t broadcast on television, but the following year it appeared in Marka, a newspaper with leftist leanings.
Lazaro and Pelaez discussed plans to pass covert messages with invisible ink to Russian officials during another trip Pelaez took to South America, a complaint said.
The complaint alleges authorities overheard an unguarded Lazaro once saying in his home: “We moved to Siberia… as soon as the war started.”
Waldo Mariscal, Pelaez’ son, said his mother was innocent.
“This is a farce. We don’t know the other people,” he said, referring to the others who have been accused.
Robert Krakow, an attorney for Lazaro, said after the court hearing that his client was innocent and that the information in the complaint “had no value”.
An attorney for Chapman, Robert Baum, argued the allegations were exaggerated and his client deserved bail.
“This is not a case that raises issues of security of the United States.”
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