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Vlad the impaler: Putin may have had affair with ex-spy ChapmanBy ANDY SOLTIS Last Updated: 7:14 AM, April 24, 2012 Vladimir Putin may have had an affair with sexy former spy Anna Chapman — which might have knocked the Russian president’s wife of 29 years out of the spotlight, Kremlin watchers say. Putin, 59, is an ever-present figure in the Russian media but has been shown just twice with his 54-year-old wife, Lyudmila, in the last two years. Ex-Manhattanite Chapman, 30, who was booted to Moscow in a 2010 spy swap, soon emerged as a key player...

The C.I.A.’s concerns were not unwarranted. In 2019, the Russians undertook an elaborate operation to find Mr. Poteyev, forcing a scientist from Oaxaca, Mexico, to help. The scientist, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, was an unlikely spy. He studied microbiology in Kazan, Russia, and later earned a doctorate in the subject from the University of Giessen in Germany. He was a source of pride for his family, with a history of charitable work and no criminal past. But the Russians used Mr. Fuentes’s partner as leverage. He had two wives: a Russian living in Germany and another in Mexico. In 2019,...

Russian agent 'betrayed spy ring for money' A top Russian secret service agent suspected of blowing the cover of a sleeper spy ring in the United States was a heavy drinker who betrayed Moscow purely to make money, sources said on Wednesday. Alexander Poteyev, who will go on trial in absentia for treason in Moscow on May 16, is charged with having tipped off Washington about a ring of 10 Russian spies who were later deported in the biggest post-Cold War spy scandal. The Izvestia daily Wednesday published a slew of new information about Poteyev, saying he was linked to...

Since Obama has raised the alarm about alleged Russian espionage activity, it’s appropriate to shine a spotlight on his own administration’s connections to Soviet-era spy rings and terrorist networks. Obama and two of his key advisors, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, were raised by families with members who are known either to have been in contact with Soviet agents or to have belonged to the Communist Party (CP) at a time when the CP was controlled by the Soviet Union. Associates of Obama’s campaign team and Jarrett’s family interacted with agents linked to the famous pair of spy rings known...

During the first Cold War, American and British spies would sometimes place coded messages in newspaper classified ads to communicate with each other. And according to new reports in the New York Times and The Intercept, the National Security Agency (NSA) has updated the tactic, using its public Twitter account to send secret messages to at least one Russian spy.... According to the reports, the unnamed Russian met with US spies in person in Germany, and the NSA sometimes communicated with the Russian spy by sending roughly a dozen coded messages from the NSA’s Twitter account. The one important question.......

Is it a surprise to find a Stalin apologist at the center of the Steele dossier scandal? Gotta hand it to Special Counsel Robert Mueller: He knows how to set off a stick of dynamite. I refer, of course, to his office’s recent indictment of thirteen Russians in Russia, which we are now to chase after, yelling “Pearl Harbor!” on the Left and “No collusion!” on the Right, forgetting all about the coalescing revelations of corruption and conspiracy and, yes, Russian influence, to elect Hillary Clinton in 2016, and, failing that, to destroy the Trump presidency. The key is still...

<p>WASHINGTON — Ten Russian intelligence officers have been arrested for allegedly serving as illegal agents of the Russian government in the United States, the Justice Department announced Monday.</p>

As Hillary Clinton was beginning her job as President Obama’s chief diplomat, federal agents observed as multiple arms of Vladimir Putin’s machine unleashed an influence campaign designed to win access to the new secretary of State, her husband Bill Clinton and members of their inner circle, according to interviews and once-sealed FBI records. Some of the activities FBI agents gathered evidence about in 2009 and 2010 were covert and illegal. A female Russian spy posing as an American accountant, for instance, used a false identity to burrow her way into the employ of a major Democratic donor in hopes of...

As Hillary Clinton was beginning her job as President Obama’s chief diplomat, federal agents observed as multiple arms of Vladimir Putin’s machine unleashed an influence campaign designed to win access to the new secretary of State, her husband Bill Clinton and members of their inner circle, according to interviews and once-sealed FBI records. Some of the activities FBI agents gathered evidence about in 2009 and 2010 were covert and illegal. A female Russian spy posing as an American accountant, for instance, used a false identity to burrow her way into the employ of a major Democratic donor in hopes of...

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says he hopes a series of arrests over an alleged spy ring in the US will not harm US-Russian relations. Mr Putin told former US President Bill Clinton in Moscow that US police had "let themselves go" and were putting people in prison. The FBI claims the spy ring had been operating for more than a decade Ten people have been arrested in the US and one in Cyprus after an FBI inquiry. The Russian foreign ministry has said the US allegations are baseless and a throwback to the Cold War. The 10 people arrested...

All Russian roads lead to Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is neck deep in a Russian scandal involving bribery, kickbacks and extortion. FBI documents show that a Russian spy ring was simultaneously targeting her before and during her time as Secretary of State. The FBI arrested 10 Russian spies in June of 2010 and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quickly rushed them back to Moscow on a busy 4th of July weekend before the FBI was finished questioning them. Returning the spy ring to Moscow also prevented them from standing trial. Why???

A leading Democratic fundraiser and close political ally of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have been a target of the alleged ring of Russian spies arrested yesterday by federal authorities. The president of the high-end tax accounting and financial advising firm Morea Financial Services confirmed earlier today that the alleged spy "Cynthia Murphy" was a longtime employee and a vice president at the company, which is located on lower Broadway in Manhattan. Federal and state campaign finance filings suggest that the little-known company manages the finances of one of New York's top Democratic financiers: Alan Patricof, a venture capital...

WASHINGTON -- The White House began deliberating a spy swap with Moscow nearly a month ago, well ahead of the arrests of 10 Russians in the United States less than two weeks ago, a White House official said Friday.

WASHINGTON — When Aleksandr Zaporozhsky, one of four Russians delivered to the West in this week’s spy swap, joins his family in the United States, it will be only the latest unexpected twist in a classic story of espionage and deception. For several years in the 1990s, Mr. Zaporozhsky, a colonel in Russian intelligence who became deputy chief of the American Department, was secretly working for the C.I.A., one of the highest-ranking American moles in history, Russian prosecutors say. After surprising his colleagues by retiring suddenly in 1997, he moved with his wife and three children to the United States...

The man, named as Colonel Scherbakov, worked for Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service, a successor agency to the KGB, where he oversaw a top- secret programme to dispatch long-term sleeper agents or "illegals" to the United States. Russian intelligence sources told the Kommersant newspaper that he was the traitor who had given the FBI the names of the ten sleeper agents who made up the ring, including glamorous spy Anna Chapman. In at least one case, he is even said to have taken part in an interrogation. In an echo of the Cold War, a Kremlin source was quoted as...

<p>Sexy spook Anna Chapman, busted in the summer of 2010 as part of a sleeper cell of Russian agents, proposed to fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden on Twitter.</p> <p>Snowden, who revealed the secret NSA surveillance program PRISM, has been stuck in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport since June 23, after fleeing his Hong Kong hiding place. He has been caught in legal limbo after being stripped of his US passport and has sought asylum wth 21 countries.</p>

Obama in the city for Clinton ally’s fundraiser By Emily Smith President Obama is coming to Manhattan Tuesday for yet another fund-raiser, hosted by longtime Hillary Clinton friend and bundler Alan Patricof. While the president is flying in on Air Force One for the intimate “fireside chat” at Patricof’s home in front of just 26 people at the $32,400 per ticket event, private equity and venture capital pioneer Patricof has made it clear the fund-raiser is not to bolster Obama, but to boost the Democratic National Committee ahead of a possible Clinton presidential run.

A female Russian spy -- possibly flame-haired media darling Anna Chapman -- was close to seducing a member of U.S. President Barack Obama's cabinet in 2010, the assistant director of the FBI for counterintelligence revealed in a recent interview with British television. Frank Figliuzzi said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been tracking a 10-person Russian spy ring for years but had to act sooner than planned because the female agent was getting close to drawing a U.S. official into a "honey trap." The individual "got closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership. She got close enough to...

Sexy Russian spy Anna Chapman's boss was working for us. The head of Russia's spy operations in America defected just before he betrayed Chapman and her nine fellow sleeper agents last summer -- and the Kremlin has ordered a hit team to kill him as revenge, according to a bombshell report yesterday. Senior officials in Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's government said the double agent -- identified only as "Colonel Shcherbakov" -- was a devastating blow to Russia's SVR intelligence agency and touched off a probe.

Another Russian espionage plot has been uncovered, this time in London, involving controversial British Liberal Democrat MP Michael Hancock and his parliamentary aide, Russian national Katia Zatuliveter, a suspected sleeper agent who is being deported on charges that she is a threat to British national security, according to the MI5 intelligence service. This latest episode comes in the wake of the arrest and deportation of 10 Russian sleeper agents in the United States in June 2010, including former British citizen Anna Chapman. Officials also believe that there may be as many as 35 other Russian spies presently working in Britain...