Your friendly neighborhood espionage suspect

Tue Jun 29, 2010 5:15 PM EDT

By Will Femia

When the Russian spy story broke yesterday, I immediately picked out the Manhattanite, Anna Chapman, to see if our paths had ever crossed. (She's in Complaint #1 (pdf).) Apparently I wasn't alone because our gal is now in the number 2 spot on Google Trends.

Anyway, the farthest I got was what I suspected was her LinkedIn page and some related real estate pages. It's weird to watch her defend/explain her business (last comment) given the possibility that it's really a front for her spy work. What made her Russian/English real estate operation seem like a front was the cover allegedly manufactured for fellow suspect Tracey Lee Ann Foley:

Similarly, TRACEY LEE ANN FOLEY, the defendant, has traveled on a fraudulent British passport prepared for her by the SVR. One of the Boston Conspirators' Internet Messages provided instructions for FOLEY with respect to her then-upcoming trip to Moscow:

Itinerary to M. [Moscow] for D.; Paris - Wien (by train), Mar 18 in Wien exch[ange] doc's for British pass[port] - [Moscow] (Mar 19, flight OS 601). Very iportant: 1. Sign your passport on page 32. Train yourself to be able to reproduce your signature when it's necessary. 2. Pls, be aware that you just visited Russia (see stamps on page 14 - entry - Mar 16, departure - Mar 17). If asked, we suggest you use the following story: you flew to Moscow on Mar 16 from London for exammple flight SU 211 to participate in business talks (your business is international consultancy seminars - pls, coyp sample of your husband) on invitation by Russian Chamber of Commerce.
...
In the passport you'll get a memo with recommendation. Pls, destroy the memo after reading. Be well.

Having a real business excuse to travel to Russia seems like it would be easier than memorizing Moscow's suggested story.

After the jump, how I found out it was her.

I didn't use any of that in my post earlier today because there are probably a lot of Anna Chapmans in New York City, some of them even Russian, and I didn't have the resources to confirm that LinkedIn page. But now I've seen the photos of her, specifically the New York Post article and they match the profile shot on the LinkedIn page. I am a little bothered by the Post's piece though. Maybe I missed it but I didn't pick up any "fatale" details in the Justice Department complaint. The bookstore she went to is not in the West Village. Warren Street is way farther downtown than that, and in fact, I only know of one bookstore at that intersection and it's pretty obvious. (Dear spies-not-yet-arrested, for future note, just up the block from there is an Italian restaurant, Il Giglio, where the waiters wear tuxedoes and they bring over a massive wheel of cheese and scrape curls of it onto a plate for you - MUCH better suited to meetings of the international espionage variety.)

And the photos, helpful as they were for me to confirm what I'd found, where the heck did the Post get those?? Facebook, duh (The San Francisco Chronicle has them.)

So that's what she looks like. Nope. Don't recognize her. ;)


Check Out Alleged Russian Spy Anna Chapman's Facebook Glamour Shots

Anna Chapman is one of 10 people across the United States accused of spying for the Russians over the past decade.
Whatever information she might have shared with the Kremlin, she most certainly had a lot to share with everyone online. Her public LinkedIn profile indicates she was a serial entrepreneur, active in the New York City startup community.
She also has a Facebook profile (pointed out to us by CNBC's John Carney) on which she opted to share a number of glamour shots.