Note: The following post is a quote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2543552/posts
Russian spy assumed Burlington man’s identity
Hamilton Spectator ^ | June 29, 2010
Posted on June 29, 2010 4:01:24 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
U.S. officials charged 11 people with being deep-cover Russian spies after a multi-year investigation that turned up allegations of a vast undercover network designed to collect information for Moscow, including new U.S. nuclear weapons research.
Four of the alleged spy ring’s members were posing as Canadians, one of whom had apparently co-opted the identity of the son of a Burlington man who died in 2005.
Court papers filed by the FBI say Donald Howard Heathfield, Tracey Lee Ann Foley, Patricia Mills and Christopher R. Metsos all claimed to be Canadian. Metsos remains at large.
Investigators allege Heathfield assumed the identity of a dead Burlington man as part of his spy legend — possibly using his actual birth certificate.
When investigators searched a Cambridge, Mass., safety deposit box, they found a photocopy of a birth certificate in the name of Donald Howard Graham Heathfield.
While the birth certificate “appears to be real,” an obituary search revealed the man to be the dead son of Howard William Heathfield of Burlington, who died in June 2005 at age 70.
Heathfield and Foley, a married couple who lived near Boston, claimed to be naturalized U.S. citizens born in Canada, court documents say.
Laurie Heathfield, of Toronto, is the sister of the man whose birth certificate is being used.
“Nothing surprises me in life anymore,” she said. “It’s kind of weird, but until somebody from a legal standpoint contacts me, I’m not too worried about it.”
No investigators have contacted her about the matter.
The Donald Heathfield name is also not her brother’s real name though the name of her late father, who lived in Burlington, is correct, she said.
The spies were given the single, primary goal of becoming “sufficiently ‘Americanized’” to gain access to the U.S. government’s planning and policy apparatus, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Foley, though claiming to be Canadian-born, travelled on a fake British passport prepared for her by the SVR, the court papers say.
The FBI says Moscow instructed the couple to gather information on U.S. foreign policy in areas such as use of the Internet by terrorists, the military and Central Asia. In one instance, Heathfield supposedly told his spymasters he had made contact with a U.S. nuclear weapons researcher.
The FBI alleges Heathfield and Foley communicated with Moscow through special computer software that embeds secret messages in images — a process known as steganography.
Mills and Metsos also claimed to be Canadian citizens.
Mills and her co-defendant husband, Michael Zottoli, lived for years in Seattle before moving to Arlington, Va., last October.
The FBI says Metsos, perhaps the most mysterious of the four purporting to be Canadian, does not live in the United States. The agency did not disclose his country of residence, but said he often travelled to the U.S. to meet with agents and pay them on behalf of Moscow.
In 2004, a Russian government official surreptitiously handed Metsos money in New York, the documents allege. Metsos then buried some cash in upstate New York and, two years later, Mills and Zottoli dug it up, the FBI says.
Some of the material collected and transmitted by the accused spies dealt with U.S. research on nuclear “bunker buster” bombs, according to the federal document charging the members of the ring. They also sought information on Pentagon planning, U.S. policy toward Central Asia and research on terrorists gaining access to the Internet.
Ten of the suspects were arrested in Virginia, New York, New Jersey and Boston and charged with federal offences ranging from conspiring to act as unlawful foreign agents to conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The 10 face prison sentences ranging from five to 20 years, if convicted.
Thanks for all the great info Cindy, others. I hope many FRers have time to read much of what’s on this thread.