WASHINGTON — Federal officials charged 11 people on the East Coast as secret agents of Russia on Monday in a multiyear investigation that turned up allegations of a vast undercover network designed to collect fresh information for Moscow, including new U.S. nuclear weapons research.
The alleged spy ring’s members were given the single, primary goal of becoming “sufficiently ‘Americanized’ ” to gain access to the U.S. government’s planning and policy apparatus, the FBI said in documents supporting the charges.
To dramatize that point, officials said they decrypted a 2009 message sent to two of the alleged co-conspirators.
“You were sent to USA for long-term service trip,” the intercepted message read. “Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. — all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e., to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in U.S. and send intels (intelligence reports) to C.”
“C” was identified as the Russian foreign intelligence headquarters in Moscow, also known as “Moscow Center.”
Some of the material collected and transmitted by the alleged 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.
The charges also state that one of the defendants had “established contact” with a former high-ranking U.S. national security official, who was not identified.
Former President George W. Bush’s administration once proposed a nuclear bunker buster bomb, but only a non-nuclear version of the weapon has been pursued.
Ten of the suspects were arrested in Virginia, New York, New Jersey and Boston and charged with federal offenses ranging from conspiring to act as unlawful foreign agents to conspiracy to commit money laundering. An 11th suspect remained at large Monday.
Appearing in federal courts along the East Coast, they face prison sentences ranging from five to 20 years, if convicted.
Authorities said the conspiracy began as far back as the 1990s and ended Saturday when FBI agents and Justice Department officials closed in. Two of the alleged conspiracy principals, Mikhail Semenko and Anna Chapman, were confronted by U.S. undercover operatives who posed as their Russian government handlers.
Unlike other individual Soviet Union spy cases broken up in the United States, this one appears more remarkable in that so many operatives were arrested in one fell swoop, and so long after the end of the Cold War.
In a lengthy affidavit, FBI Special Agent Amit Kachhia-Patel said the spy operation was a “deep cover” assignment filled with false identities, secret rendezvous, such old-school spy craft techniques as “invisible writing” and a “cover profession” to blend in to American society.
The defendants also set up a special covert communication system to report back to Russia, using a private wireless network through linked laptop computers, authorities said.
On 10 separate Wednesdays since January, Chapman was trailed by U.S. agents as she met with an individual who they said was known to visit the Russian Mission at the United Nations in Manhattan.
On Jan. 20, Chapman stopped at a coffee shop just off Times Square in New York City, sat near a window and slipped a tote bag off her shoulder, officials said. Passing by the window was a minivan driven by the Russian Mission contact. Officials said the vehicle was equipped with secret computer capacity enabling Chapman to freely send material from her laptop to his without going through commercial networks and leaving a trail.
On March 10, she chose a bookstore near Greenwich Village and stayed there for half an hour before the van passed by that location as well, officials said.
Authorities said Semenko was involved in the same sort of clandestine operations in Washington. On June 5, Semenko entered a restaurant shortly before the lunch hour carrying his own bag. Ten minutes later, a car with Russian diplomatic plates drove through the restaurant parking lot and stopped for about 20 minutes.
Inside the car was an individual identified as the second secretary of the Russian Mission, U.S. officials said. After he drove away, Semenko abruptly left the restaurant.
The end-game in the case came when U.S. officials used their own undercover operatives in a sting on Chapman and Semenko.
In Chapman’s case, they said, an FBI agent posed as a Russian consulate employee and met with her at yet another Manhattan coffee shop. There, the FBI said, they discussed her “Wednesday covert laptop communications sessions.”
“This is not like the Wednesdays with the notebooks, this is different. It is, it is the next step,” the fake Russian told her, according to wiretaps of their conversation. “You are ready for the next stop. OK?”
Chapman allegedly replied, “OK.” The fake Russian told her that from now on, communiques would not be “laptop to laptop” but rather “person to person.”
U.S. officials said Semenko was tripped up in a similar fashion.
