Malcolm Nance - The Plot to Hack America

After the Soviet Union’s collapse, the KGB became the FSK (Federalnaya Sluzhba Kontrrazvedki), Federal Counterintelligence Service. It was designed to be similar to Britain’s MI5. In 1995 FSK turned into the FSB—the Counterintelligence “K,” being replaced with the Security (Cyrillic “B”) Bezopasnost—effectively becoming the Federal Security Service.

In December 2000, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev, the successor to Vladimir Putin, spoke to the Russian daily tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda on the founding anniversary of the Cheka secret police. He described the role and stature of the new FSB:

I don’t want to give a fancy speech, but our best colleagues, the honor and pride of the FSB, don’t do their work for the money. When I give government awards to our people, I scrutinize their faces. There are the highbrow intellectual analysts, the broad-shouldered, weather-beaten Special Forces men, the taciturn explosives specialists, exacting investigators, and the discreet counter-espionage operational officers… They all look different, but there is one very special characteristic that unites all these people, and it is a very important quality: It is their sense of service. They are, if you like, our new “nobility.” 8

The founders of the Soviet Union and now Russia harnessed this rich history of the dark arts, and where necessary, applied them precisely and ruthlessly. The modern techniques of electronic intelligence collection, planting listening devices, and using computers to conduct breakins, lives up to its centuries of spy pedigree. In fact Putin’s lifelong worldview stems from maintaining faith with a long tradition of Russia’s agencies dedicated to spying, assassination, and political influence. Now as leader of Russia, he is a master of applying espionage as well as a consumer of its fruits.

A recurring theme in FSB operations in the United States is real estate. From the end of the Soviet Union to the rise of the oligarchs, Russian state money has been buying property and making real estate deals all over the United States. It was a flush market for Russians and a good place to hide illicit cash. Real estate was the perfect investment instrument for the FSB to also introduce its officers into the United States.

In the old KGB, the First Chief Directorate also was known as the Foreign Directorate or the INU . This Directorate was responsible for overseas operations related to foreign intelligence collection and active measures performed by KGB officers, cultivating the KGB’s competence of infiltrating spies into foreign countries as well as recruiting and maintaining sources of intelligence. 9Although it is unlikely that Putin is directing United States external intelligence operations, one can be sure he gives them his opinions based on his own experience. In an British government inquiry about the murder of ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko, Sir Robert Owen stated:

While all academics, media commentators and reporters make much of Putin’s earlier careers in the KGB and the FSB, there have appeared no substantial revelations about his routine of working relations with the intelligence agencies since the start of his first Presidential term. The usual assumption is that he keeps a close eye on their activities and gives them strategic guidance. But the exact extent of his oversight of active operations is veiled in secrecy. It is one of those matters that no one has yet managed to uncover. 10

The answer to that question would be solved in 2010 when the U.S. Department of Justice arrested a network of ten Russian spies operating in the United States. All of them were non-official cover (NOC) agents, The Illegals.

With the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Vladimir Putin, several structural changes came to the agency. The INU functions were detached and became the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), responsible for intelligence activity. 11Underneath First Directorate was Directorate S—home of The Illegals. They were the deepest of deep cover spies to infiltrate foreign countries and conducted background operations in preparation for other active operations.

According to Justice Department documents, federal law enforcement agents began surveillance of a key Russian SVR officer named Anna Chapman in January 2010, across various locations in New York City. Surveillance uncovered regular interactions between Chapman and a Russian Official operating out of the Russian Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan. Using network surveillance equipment, the federal agents were able to observe that the Russian official and Chapman would connect to the same private wireless Ad Hoc network and covertly communicate electronically.

Their secret communications would often take place in coffee shops, book stores, other public places, across the street or nearby one another, rather than communicating directly person to person. On multiple occasions, using network surveillance equipment, federal agents observed the transfer of data between the two. An undercover agent, posing as a Russian Official from the Russian Consulate in New York City, arranged with Chapman to have a fake passport delivered to an undercover Russian operative who was using a false name, also working in New York. 12

After the meeting with the undercover U.S. federal agent, Chapman was observed purchasing a temporary Verizon cellphone from a Verizon store in Brooklyn, NY. She used the cell phone to call her father, a Russian intelligence officer in Moscow. Her lawyer later revealed that she was wary of the passport assignment and was calling her father for advice. Her father instructed her to turn the passport into a police station, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested her for espionage, along with nine others. 13, 14The Department of Justice charged them with conspiring to act as unlawful agents of the Russian Federation within the United States. 15

Chapman was born Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko on February 23, 1982 in the industrial city of Volgograd, Russia, to math teacher Irene and Russian diplomat Vasily. She suffered from scoliosis as a child and lived with her grandmother as her father was sent to work in the Russian embassy in Kenya. She briefly attended a creative studies school in Volgograd from 1996–1997. She went on to study economics at the People’s Friendship University in Moscow, graduating at the top of her class in 2004.

In 2001 and 2002 she spent her summers visiting London, where at the age of nineteen she met twenty-one year-old student Alex Chapman. The two were married in Moscow in 2002. Soon after, now with the name Anna Chapman, she received a British passport. According to Alex Chapman, Anna’s father never took a liking to him and seemed to trust no one. Alex reported that Anna told him her father was a former KGB operative.

After eventually settling in London, Anna began habitually lying about her work experience, claiming to sell private jets to Russians on behalf of Net Jets and working closely with owner Warren Buffet. Alex began to observe her becoming increasingly secretive around this time, often meeting with other Russians in private, boasting about influential people she was meeting, and suddenly having large sums of money. The two eventually divorced in 2006. 16

When Anna Chapman arrived in New York, she moved into an apartment one block south of the New York Stock Exchange. She also claimed on her LinkedIn page to run an internet real estate company valued at $2 million. 17The Daily News reported that she likely became involved with then sixty year-old millionaire Michael Bittan, who made his money in the restaurant industry, real estate, owner of a jeans manufacturer, and in pharmaceuticals. 18