Russian spy suspect Anna Chapman: I regret life I've chosen

he British ex-husband of alleged spy Anna Chapman has disclosed a series of emails she sent him weeks before her arrest, describing her regrets over the life she had chosen.

Mrs Chapman, 28, told Alex Chapman she had “suffered a lot” because of her decision to put her career ahead of a chance to start a family with him. But she said she was determined to make her new life in America work, adding: “It’s never too late to be happy and succeed.”

Mrs Chapman, who was arrested in the US last weekend as part of an 11-strong suspected spying ring, was married to public school-educated Mr Chapman for four years before they divorced in 2006. But the couple remained close friends and were in regular phone and email contact.

Mr Chapman told The Daily Telegraph he and his then wife had discussed having a baby and he believes they would have started a family together if she hadn’t become obsessed with a new career after “secretive” meetings with Russians.

He said: “She had to choose between her career and having a baby, and she chose her career. It was a really, really hard thing for both of us, but especially Anna.

“The Anna I knew when we got married wouldn’t have done that. At the time, she had already begun having secretive meetings with people she called 'Russian friends’. Looking back, I think she was being conditioned [by them]. She didn’t seem happy.”

On March 29, Mrs Chapman emailed her ex-husband from New York and disclosed she was still haunted by her decision. She wrote: “I suffered a lot by loving you and losing you …” then referred to her decision not to have a baby.

Mr Chapman told her not to “dwell on painful things” and she replied: “I think it’s never too late to be happy and to succeed … being happy is like business. You have to plan, achieve and enjoy.”

MI5 is investigating whether Mrs Chapman, the daughter of a former KGB agent, was recruited as a spy while she was living in London between 2002 and 2006. Earlier this week, an MI5 officer interviewed Mr Chapman, 30, near his home in Stuckton, Hants.

Mrs Chapman moved out of the marital home in 2005. Between the end of 2004 and 2006, she flitted between jobs at Barclays, a hedge fund and an aircraft hire firm, rubbing shoulders with businessmen including Philip Green and Vincent Tchenguiz.

Two more suspects admitted yesterday that they were Russian citizens living in the US under false identities, prosecutors said. In court papers, prosecutors said Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills told authorities their real names were Mikhail Kutzik and Natalia Pereverzeva. They followed Juan Lazaro, who prosecutors claimed on Thursday admitted he was a member of the Russian intelligence service.

A judge ordered Mr Zottoli, Mrs Mills and another man, Mikhail Semenko, be detained, saying they were “at risk of flight”. Mrs Chapman was denied bail earlier this week.

Anna Chapman: Real life 'Bond girl'?

A concise guide to the "femme fatale" of the alleged Russian spy ring: Real-estate entrepreneur, party girl, and "deep cover" secret agent 

Chapman's Facebook profile provides a glimpse into the life of a Russian spy.Photo: Facebook SEE ALL 5 PHOTOS

Of the 11 alleged "deep cover" Russian spies arrested over the weekend, none has intrigued the media more than Anna Chapman, the "flame-haired, 007-worthy beauty who flitted from high-profile parties to top-secret meetings around Manhattan," asthe New York Post colorfully puts it. So, who is this almost stereotypical "Bond girl," what was she doing in New York, and how did she get caught? (Watch The Young Turks discuss what Anna Chapman may have known)

Who is Anna Chapman?
Anna Kuschenko Chapman, 28, was reportedly raised in Volgograd (then called Stalingrad). Her father was a member of the Soviet Union's diplomatic corps and worked in the embassy in Kenya when Chapman was a child. According to her LinkedIn profile, Chapman earned a master's in economics in 2005, and worked for a (possibly fabricated) hedge fund and an online private-jet broker in Britain from 2003 to 2008. Since 2006, she's owned an online real estate start-up, Domdot.ru and PropertyFinder Ltd., worth an estimated $2 million. Acquaintances sayshe was briefly married to a wealthy Englishman.

Why has Chapman stood out?
While most of the alleged Russian spies are middle aged couples apparently trying to blend into the suburbs, this young divorcée splashed her profile and photos all over social networking sites. Her glamourous Manhattan lifestyle and "Victoria’s Secret body" probably factor in, too.

What can we learn from her Facebook page?
She isn't camera-shy, and she likes Alma de Agave Tequila. Her other "interests" are New York Entrepreneur Week, Do It In Person, AMBAR, MostProperties.com, and the School of Academic and Professional Blogging. Her motto is "If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it."

Why does the FBI think she's a spy?
Federal agents say that Chapman had regular Wednesday cyber-meetingswith a man identified as "Russian Government Official #1," in which they'd pass information through a shared laptop-to-laptop wireless network from across a street. She also bought a cell phone, under the fake name "Irine Kutsov" and address "99 Fake Street," to "avoid detection of her conversations" to Russia not long before she was arrested. Despite this seemingly amateurish front, federal prosecutor Michael Farbiarz says the evidence that she's a specially trained "agent of Russia" is "devastating." 

How was she caught?
An undercover FBI agent, posing as a Russian handler, approached Chapman and asked her to deliver a fake passport to another spy. Instead, on the advice of her real Russian bosses, Chapman turned the passport into the New York police, leading to her arrest.

What's her side of the story?
Chapman's lawyer, Robert Baum, says there's an innocent explanation for her activities. He points out that his client never set foot in the U.S. until 2005, and didn't move here until February, while the alleged spy ring dates back to 1990. Baum also says the fact she went to the police with the fake passports proves she's innocent. A "brilliant spy," as the FBI calls Chapman, wouldn't make such a rookie mistake, Baum argues. "[The FBI] can't have it both ways."

Sources: Washington Post, AP, New York Post, Forbes, NY Daily News,New York Observer, WTSP, AFP, Daily Telegraph

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/65350,news-comment,news-politics,anna-chapman-simple-girl-or-practised-deceiver

Ex-lovers tell their stories  and publish their photographs  as MI5 investigates Chapman’s contacts

Aformer boyfriend of Anna Chapman, the 28-year-old being held in the US for her part in an alleged Russian spy ring, has expressed his amazement that she could be a secret agent. At the same time, her former husband has sold his tawdry bedroom secrets to the tabloids and suggested she was in over her head.

Laurent Tailleur, a French playboy who lived with Anna in his £1m flat in Chelsea for a year after she divorced her British husband Alex Chapman in 2006, told the Sunday Telegraph: "I was very, very shocked to see this in the news... It never came across my mind she was a spy. She was a very kind girl and there was never anything suspicious. It is incredible."

Tailleur told the Sunday Times: "She was pretty and a very nice, simple girl."

Anna left London to live in Moscow in 2007 before moving to New York to pursue her property website earlier this year. The FBI claims she started working for a Russian intelligence officer soon after. Last weekend they arrested her and nine other people across the United States who they suspect of being part of a Russian spy ring.

Alex Chapman, who married Anna Kuschenko in 2002, has spoken to both MI5 and the press about his ex-wife, who he divorced 2006. He says that towards the end of their relationship, Anna, whose father is a senior Russian diplomat, was spending more time with rich Russians and he felt that while she wasn't working as a spy here, "I suspect she had been conditioned towards that end".

What Chapman may not have disclosed to the MI5 agent are details of his sex life with Anna. Should the spooks be interested, they can read all about it in the News of the World. "I found her Russian accent such a turn-on," says Alex, before revealing Anna's love of wearing 

 nipple clamps and how she used to "wield a whip like an interrogator".

Whether or not Anna used her charms to engage in espionage in London, MI5 is taking no chances. Agents are reportedly investigating the possibility that Anna had links to Russian spies working as diplomatic staff in London. The agency believes there may be up to 35 intelligence officers at the Russian embassy.

The Sunday Times also claims analysts believe there may be a network of up to 20 Russian 'illegals'  spies who are not registered as diplomats  operating in the UK.

Meanwhile, speculation surrounding her contacts in London  perhaps encouraged by Anna's undoubted charms  continues to mount.

MI5 would not confirm a report that she befriended a QC who is a member of the House of Lords. But the Sunday Times claims a prominent London Lawyer, who knew Anna, suspected she was being "primed" for intelligence Gathering. And Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB spy who defected to Britain, says he believes a Russian diplomat was grooming her.

Salacious details aside, perhaps the News of the World comes closest to the truth about Anna's role in the Russian spy ring story.

Alex Chapman tells the tabloid he phoned Anna on her Russian mobile on Friday and managed to reach her: "She told me, 'Anjiki (her nickname for Alex), 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'."

Alex Chapman concludes: "Now I believe what MI5 believe - that she did not probably realise the severity of her actions. It's like something out of a movie." 

Spy ring: Anna’s ex says her father was in the KGB

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/65299,news-comment,news-politics,russian-spy-ring-anna-chapmans-ex-husband-says-her-father-was-in-kgb

Alex Chapman suspects Anna was being ‘conditioned’ during her stay in London

The ex-husband of alleged spy Anna Chapman has revealed her father was a KGB agent. Alex Chapman spoke after he had been visited by an MI5 officer investigating whether Anna, who is in custody in the US for her alleged part in a Russian spy ring, had been a threat to security during her time in Britain.

Meanwhile, another suspect in the 'deep cover' spy ring has reportedly confessed to being a Russian agent.

Alex Chapman married Anna Kuschenko – her maiden name – in Moscow in 2002, five months after meeting her in a London nightclub. It was during their honeymoon in Zimbabwe that Anna introduced Alex to her father, Vasily Kuschenko, who she said was there to represent Russia "in certain areas of government", according to the Daily Telegraph.

Anna told Alex her father had been a senior KGB agent in "old Russia".

He didn't trust anyone," says 30-year-old Chapman, who is now a trainee psychologist living with his parents in the New Forest. "He asked me why I had chosen a Russian bride and asked what business I had in Russia, and I said none.

"He was scary. He would never introduce me to other Russian people who came to the house and he always seemed to have a lot more security than the other diplomats. He had a Land Rover with blacked out windows and there was always one car in front of it and one car behind," he said, adding that he believed her father controlled everything in her life and that she would have done anything for him.

In London, Anna took a series of highly paid jobs, including with Barclays small business banking division and the hedge fund Navigator Asset Management. The Chapmans divorced in 2006, but have kept in touch ever since.

Anna returned to Russia following the divorce, but moved to the US in 2007 to set up an internet business. She was arrested at the weekend after meeting with an 

 undercover US agent posing as a Russian spy and denied bail in a court hearing on Monday.

"When I saw that she had been arrested on suspicion of spying it didn't come as much of a surprise to be honest," says Alex, who was interviewed by MI5 on Wednesday.

He said she had fallen in with a group of rich Russians towards the end of their relationship. "I don't think she was working as a spy here but I suspect she had been conditioned towards that end," he says.

Meanwhile in the US, where 10 people are in custody for their alleged part in the Russian spy ring, prosecutors have claimed one suspect, Juan Lazaro, has admitted to working for Russia's foreign intelligence service and that the house where he and his wife and co-defendant lived was paid for by Russian intelligence.

Prosecutors revealed the new information in the face of growing public scepticism at the allegations against the suspects, who are being portrayed as feckless and hopelessly out-of-date for their elaborate schemes to obtain information that is available to anybody over the internet.

They are desperate to ensure the suspects are denied bail, pointing to the case of Christopher Metsos, the alleged paymaster for the spy ring, who skipped bail in Cyprus on Wednesday and who is now the subject of a manhunt.

"There is little need here for speculation as to what

will happen if the defendants are permitted to walk out of the court," they said. "As Metsos did, they will flee." Despite this, the judge granted Lazaro's wife, Vicky Palaez, bail of $250,000 – although she must wear an electronic tag. 

Alleged Russian agent Anna Chapman could have warmed up any Cold War night

There were 11 alleged Russian agents arrested this week, under accusations that they'd been living as Americans while reporting back to the mother country.

But mostly we care about the hot one.

Ever since photos of Anna Chapman began circulating online late Tuesday, the Internet at large has been foaming, frothing, fanatic for details about the reported 28-year-old secret agent/Maxim model look-alike who specialized in sultry-eyed, pouty-lipped, come-hither stares. Da, da,da!

News sites immediately uploaded photo galleries. Someone said "Bond Girl" and we all immediately began casting her biopic in our minds. Scarlett Johansson -- no wait, Jessica Biel!

Someone said that she drank Alma De Agave tequila and almost immediately the company issued an official statement explaining its role in Chapman's drinking habits: "Russell Terlecki, President of the East Coast Operations . . . met her on the Seastreak going to Atlantic Highlands, NJ. She loved Alma De Agave tequila."

She had a Facebook account (and why not? In America, the best way to fly under the radar is to fly over it. Wouldn't it be much more suspect if she weren't on Facebook?), which we immediately began obsessing over.

Unlucky for us: Much of it was written in Cyrillic.

Lucky for us: Chapman's friend list was available for public consumption. Apparently, she didn't understand Facebook's new privacy controls any better than the rest of us.

Phone calls with several of her acquaintances reveal a woman with a head for business (and a bod for sin? Is Anna Chapman the Working Girl of 2010?) -- a woman who single-mindedly pursued her goal of combining real estate with Internet technology.

"She was very modern, energetic, reasonably worldly," says Dan Johnson, the British founder of a real estate Web site, who met Chapman when she suggested a possible partnership between Johnson's site and hers, www.domdot.ru, which focused on Russian listings. They corresponded for several months and met when Chapman was passing through London. "She was flying around the world, setting up businesses. It's not someone with a lazy mind-set who's going to be doing that."

Arthur Welf, a Russian journalist who first met Chapman in 2008 when they both attended a real estate conference, says that Chapman was looking for funding to develop a New York equivalent of her site and was passionately excited about the project. "I would think she would have no time for other things like espionage," Welf says. "She was working 24 hours around the clock." He believes Chapman is innocent.

"She's always brainstorming, always trying to create new ideas," says Alena Popova, a Russian businesswoman who met Chapman at the Global Technology Symposium earlier this year in San Francisco. Popova was so impressed with Chapman's poise that later, when they met up in New York, she filmed an interview with her, Chapman providing tips for creating successful start-ups.

The three-minute video, entirely in Russian, is now going viral on YouTube, with plenty of salivating fans. "That's one hot Russian spy," Assaultman45 offers in the comments section. "Her punishment should be a date with me."

It's so much easier when "From Russia With Love" is a total babe. It's all so Natasha, so Ninotchka, so Cold War retro. The things that Chapman has been accused of doing -- exchanging covert information with a Russian government official -- seem downright quaint when you read the Justice Department's description of the activities. There were code phrases -- Haven't we met in California last summer? -- and there were weekly Wednesday check-ins at a coffee shop. In the Red Scare 1950s, this would have been terrifying, but it sure beats a shoe bomber today.

Maybe this is why we've been treating Chapman more like she's June's Playmate and less like she's a threat to national security -- desperately seeking out her likes and dislikes, her hopes and dreams, as if we plan to take her for a romantic walk on the beach.

International news sites have also gotten in on the action: A profile on the Russian site LifeNews.ru claims that Chapman is the daughter of the former Russian ambassador to Kenya, that she was raised by her grandmother, that she studied economics at the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia and once worked in banking.

In a second video interview, shot at New York Entrepreneur Week, Chapman speaks in English to an unseen interviewer, describing how she loves running her own Web site. Her voice is husky, her mannerisms both confident and girlish.

"She's very charming, attractive, very smart," says David Hantman, who works in New York real estate appraising and was introduced to Chapman through mutual friends. "I was surprised at how young she was to be in a position to negotiate with these big companies" that she said she was dealing with. "She had so much business acumen for someone so young."

Any other details you can release, David? Some other illusory detail for us to salivate over? Perhaps something personal?

"She's very social," Hantman says thoughtfully. "She enjoyed having her nails done."

The alleged spy loved manicures!

But throughout Wednesday, Chapman's Facebook friend list decreased, 168 in the morning, 161 in the afternoon, as her acquaintances presumably began to question whether they wanted to be affiliated with her, and how much they really knew about her to begin with.

"She's such a sweet person, I'd hate to see anything happen to her," Hantman says. "But if she's a spy, that's very disturbing."

Staff writer Kevin Sieff contributed to this report.

The Spy Who Interviewed Me

 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-30/russian-spy-anna-chapman-the-job-interview/

by Scott Beauchamp 

Russian bombshell Anna Chapman was splashed across front pages after she was arrested as part of the spy ring. But when Scott Beauchamp saw her picture, he recognized the woman who’d interviewed him for a marketing job. He recalls what she was really like—and their Gchats.

It’s entirely possible that Moscow has a file on me. I imagine some Russian intelligence analyst flipping through papers with his nicotine stained fingers: “Scott Beauchamp who claims to be a hard worker with excellent task management skills, studied English at the University of Missouri and has only modest salary requirements. His experience as an enlisted soldier in the Army has made him into a very self-motivated team player who thrives on work place diversity...” It would probably go on to list places of past employment and a few professional references. If my secret dossier reads exactly like a cover letter and résumé, that’s because it would be. Because I was interviewed by a Russian bombshell spy.

This past March, after having spent a month on the couch decompressing from my tempestuous four and a half years in the Army, I decided it was time to find some type of gainful employment. It could have been anything. I just needed a way to pay for groceries until school started. And only one site on the Internet provides the part-time foot model, Nerf fetish, and egg-donation jobs that are essential for a combat veteran who’s trying to reintegrate into normal society: Craigslist. I cast my net wide and then narrowed the possibilities down to one.

It was actually the most normal-appearing job posting, a real-estate website that wanted college-age kids to do some marketing on the cheap. There was no overt evidence that the job listing had been placed by Putin. I hadn’t searched for “internships with hot Russian spies in the Manhattan area.” The only thing slightly sketchy about the job was its location, in the Financial District. But just because someone is based in a neighborhood of criminals shouldn’t make them guilty by association. So I emailed my résumé to Anna Chapman and asked for an interview.

The building we met in was residential, and after a little mix-up over the interview location (she had only given me the floor number), we finally sat down in a quiet corner of the lounge area and began the interview. And this is where I have to admit something a little embarrassing: Nothing very interesting happened. Despite Miss Chapman’s Slavic good looks, she seemed just as awkward and self-conscious as any other 20-something. There was nothing out of the ordinary. She didn’t ask me for the maximum effective range of a 25 millimeter Bushmaster Cannon. She didn’t ask me if I felt comfortable working in a non-legal, Russian-friendly environment. There were no bags of cash exchanged. She didn’t once use a radio transmitter, and I never asked her if she was a Bond girl. All in all, it was rather boring. She mostly talked about Pay Per Click software and online advertising, and then told me that she would get back to me in a few weeks. Before she did, I was hired somewhere else.

But I did invite her to chat with me on Google Talk. I think I probably could have been hired by Miss Chapman had I waited, and so I felt like maintaining a contact—not in a foreign agent kind of way—with the company, just in case. We never really talked online, but she did send me a few incredibly boring PDFs about marketing strategies, which I barely even skimmed. And she remained my chat contact. Every day, I would see her gTalk tagline, usually something cheesy about inspiration or creativity, and her gTalk icon, as well. Now imagine my surprise when I walked past the newsstand the morning after 11 people were arraigned on charges of acting as unregistered foreign agents, and saw that same picture. I did a double take. I knew that face. That face had interviewed me only a few months ago!

I immediately called my wife, whose first response was, “You didn’t tell me that she was hot!” And too bad for Anna Chapman that she is, because now she gets to be the poster girl for this whole sordid story: invisible ink, money laundering, code names, fake passports, and being watched by the FBI for 10 years without even realizing it. So Anna might have failed miserably at being a spy, but she achieved the much less elusive goal of American celebrity. She even got a snarky front-page headline in the New York Post. And now I have a connection to it all, too. Thank you, Craigslist!

Scott Beauchamp is a writer living in New York. He spent 25 months in Iraq as an infantryman and has written for Deadspin, Attackerman, The New Republic, and One Year in Texas.