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- [00:00]
Gordon Carrera
Foreign.
- [00:04]
David
This episode is brought to you by our new friends at NordVPN. Now, Gordon, you have been a NordVPN user for over a year now. And why in the world do you like them so much?
- [00:13]
Gordon Carrera
So many reasons, David. But one feature in particular that I love is that with just one subscription, you can keep multiple devices safe up to 10 at once with the NordVPN app. So I've got a lot of phones and laptops around the house which I've used over the years in various places. And to keep them all safe and secure, I do use that NordVPN.
- [00:35]
David
You can also protect unlimited devices on your router by using NordVPN, which means that it is perfect for keeping your family safe online when they're using social media, email, banking online, or really anything for that matter.
- [00:48]
Gordon Carrera
If you want to ensure that you're safe online, you should take advantage of our exclusive NordVPN discount. All you need to do is go to nordvpn.com restisclassified and when you sign up, you can receive a bonus, bonus four months on top of your subscription plan. And there's no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. The link is also in the episode description box.
- [01:18]
David
Anna was the most beautiful girl I ever seen in my life. I plucked up some courage and went over to her and said, I'm sorry, but you're the most gorgeous girl I've ever seen. She turned around and looked at me and said, my God, so are you. I just couldn't stop thinking about her. Well, Gordon, those are the words of a man named Alex Chapman. He's talking about a girl who was then known as Anna Kushenko. He's just met her, surprisingly, at a party. They're out on the dance floor, they're in London. It's the summer of 2001. She's 19, he's 21, and they're going to get married soon. She'll become Anna Chapman. And then importantly for our story today, famous or infamous as a Russian spy. And this time on the Rest is classified. We are talking about Gordon Carrera's favorite subject, Russians hiding in plain sight.
- [02:07]
Gordon Carrera
Well, thank you. I'm Gordon Carrera. Thank you also for those accents, which were beautifully done, David.
- [02:13]
David
I'm told it's a Stoke Newington accent, Gordon.
- [02:17]
Gordon Carrera
No, it wasn't. And neither was Anna's particularly Russian. But we'll leave that. Let's leave that. This is, as you said, the story of Anna Chapman. When it emerged in 2010, it had everything, particularly for the tabloids here was this sultry redhead young woman who'd been living a party lifestyle in London and New York, living it up, but who it turned out was a deep cover Russian spy. And she was one of a group who was arrested at that time. But inevitably all the attention focused on her and I think caricatured her, didn't it, David? I mean, it portrayed her as the kind of classic honey trap, you know, the kind of woman sent seduce in the spy world. A bit of a cliche and a stereotype, but I'm not sure that that's quite right. And I think what we're going to look at today is how actually that's unfair treatment of her when she's actually far more interesting and perhaps even far more dangerous, this story.
- [03:12]
David
On one side you have this beautiful Russian woman who's the centerpiece of the story. She's involved in espionage. And there is a tendency, I think, when you put those things together, of course, to really look at her as kind of a, I mean, frankly a sex symbol, a seductress, you know, a honey trap that's sort of seducing as part of her espionage work. And we'll see, of course, that that's a gross caricature of who Anna Chapman really was and is. And frankly, it really ignores the reality that the type of espionage that she's involved in, which by the way is ongoing today and to some degree probably even more prevalent now post Ukraine, it's extremely threatening. Again, we can sort of make her a cartoon or as I hope we'll do here, really look closely at who she was, where she came from and the very real threat that I think she posed to both the US and the UK or sort of that spies like her pose to our societies.
- [04:19]
Gordon Carrera
That's right. I think it is that sense in which her story actually tells us something about how Russia spies and also how we're vulnerable to that spying, which is definitely still relevant today and very interesting. And you can see it all through the lens of this kind of quite interesting and quite extraordinary in some ways. Young woman who gets caught in 2010.
- [04:38]
David
I think, you know, to some degree, Gordon, I don't know if we had the word back then or if we did, it was probably relatively new. But I think Anna is almost an influencer in a way where she, as we'll see part of her story, she's almost selling a fantasy to convince people or to get close to people who might have interesting information she's putting out to the world. An image of the seductress in a way that is a total caricature, but that plays on some of our deepest fantasies about espionage and makes this story fascinating. But if we focus only on that, we sort of miss the point, don't we?
- [05:16]
Gordon Carrera
I think that's right, definitely.
- [05:18]
David
Should we go back to the rave, Gordon, where Anna and Alix first met? I mean, this is a scene, of course, you know, 2001. I suppose a young Gordon Carrera would have been similarly at such venues in, I believe, the Docklands. Right, Gordon, I mean, this is your scene.
- [05:35]
Gordon Carrera
This was an underground rave in the Docklands in summer 2001. I could search my diary and check whether I'd been at this particular rave.
- [05:42]
David
But I think that's how zapped you were from 2001.
- [05:45]
Gordon Carrera
That's how good it was. But I think it's pretty unlikely, given, given what I was doing in 2001, that I would have been at this race. But Anna was there and Alex was there. And now Alex, at this point, he's a 21 year old. He'd left boarding school at 16. You get the feeling of a kind of young man who's still trying to find his way. He's into music, working at a recording studio. He's at this underground rave, summer 2001. And there is Anna at the rave in this long white dress.
- [06:10]
David
What's the Docklands equivalent in the States, by the way? Is there a New York equivalent of the Docklands?
- [06:16]
Gordon Carrera
I don't know, it's kind of industrial. Especially 2001 industrial, slightly gritty, edgy. I don't know. What's the equivalent in Dallas where you are? Is that.
- [06:23]
David
That's a great question. I also don't remember or know, maybe in New York. Is it the meatpacking district back in 01? Something like that. Okay. But this is a cool place to be.
- [06:32]
Gordon Carrera
And there is Anna, and at this point she's 19 years old, she's wearing this long white dress. And immediately Alex is smitten. They meet up, they talk through the night. She says he loves his accent, which was obviously beautifully recreated by you, and his hair, which she describes as a bit like Liam Gallagher from the band Oasis. And she's a student. And this is the crucial bit, she's a student, she's studying economics in Moscow and she's going back the next day to Moscow. And so it looks for a moment as if this romance might be just a kind of one night thing. But interestingly enough, they decide they're going to keep going and they agree to start meeting. And over the next few months they go back and forth between London and Moscow. It's interesting, he doesn't know that much about her. She seems to have grown up in Volgograd. He doesn't meet her family at this point because her family seemed to be abroad. She's being brought up by, I think, largely her grandmother. But amazingly quickly, within a matter of months, Alex is proposing marriage. And they don't tell either of their parents, it looks like, according to what Alex said, soon afterwards. And in 2002, they just get married.
- [07:37]
David
Looking back, of course, you could have a very suspicious lens. Is the marriage arranged? Is she being pushed into this by unseen sort of puppeteers in Moscow, or. I kind of look at this as these are really young people who have fallen sort of madly in love and they're young and want to get married. Right?
- [07:54]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. And I think even Anna later says there were no secret motives at this time and it was a genuine romance. You know, it's hard to be sure. I think the one thing to say is that this is a time where she is of the first generation of young Russians who can come over to London. It's interesting, isn't it? She's going back and forth between London and Moscow since 2001. For young Muscovites, young Russians, this is quite exciting. The Cold War only ended about a decade before, and she's young and she's ambitious and she's smart, and you can't think that somewhere there isn't the thought that getting a British passport is also kind of useful for her. You know, that's a fairly familiar story about that. So do we really know what went on between them? It's hard to say, but it does look like romance. Plus perhaps that passport and the chance to move from being Anna Kushenko to Anna Chapman is perhaps part of it. The story, I think, really gets interesting when it comes to the honeymoon. And the fact is, they go for their honeymoon to Zimbabwe. Now, that's not a normal place you go for your six week honeymoon. But the reason is her dad is there and her dad is serving in the embassy as a diplomat.
- [08:58]
David
It's also a bad sign for a marriage if the honeymoon destination is being chosen based on your father's location. I think that's an immediate, immediate red flag.
- [09:07]
Gordon Carrera
And it does seem like Anna's mother is quite welcoming and quite keen on this young Briton who her daughter has married. But the father is suspicious immediately and kind of asks, you know, what business do you have in Russia or what links do you have? And he just seems like a kind of domineering and quite difficult character and who is instantly suspicious. And also that he would drive around in a blacked out Land Rover with other vehicles always in front and behind him, which was more security than potentially the Ambassador might have had. So what does that tell you, David, with your CIA background about Anna's father and this Russian diplomat?
- [09:45]
David
I've been to too many raves, Gordon, to connect those dots. Gray cells can't do it anymore.
- [09:50]
Gordon Carrera
I think it's pretty obvious that, you know, he's not just a regular diplomat, but he is what would have been KGB and what's now become the SVR Russians Foreign Intelligence Service.
- [10:00]
David
And he's told eventually by Anna that her father was former kgb.
- [10:05]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, exactly. So I guess if he hadn't guessed it, he eventually learns. So we've already got this idea that there's something a little bit different there about Anna at that point. Then they go back to London, they get this flat in Stoke Newington, hence the accent. They don't have much money. She's going back and forth to Moscow to finish her degree. She graduates with first class honours 2004.
- [10:23]
David
She's clearly smart, we should say on that point. I obviously cannot verify this, but many reports that her IQ test was like off the charts as well. Like she is not just above average intelligence. Anna Chapman is really, really wicked smart.
- [10:37]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's worth saying. But the marriage already starts to disintegrate pretty soon after she finishes her degree. After they start settling in London, stuff starts to go wrong and she starts to change. And I mean, it's a slightly sad story because she just immediately starts hanging out with a different crowd, basically.
- [10:56]
David
And it happens pretty quickly, doesn't it? They're back in London, they're living in Stoke Newington. And it is kind of sad, isn't it, on the individual human level here because he starts to see Anna kind of hanging out with a different crowd, changing, keeping things from him. I mean, this is a story of high espionage, but at the end of the day there's people involved and the marriage really comes apart, I think in part because of it. Although I will say we don't precisely know Doobie Gordon when she was quote unquote recruited or what her relationship with the Russian secret services was formally at this point.
- [11:30]
Gordon Carrera
No. And we might come back to where, where that might have happened, but you're right, we don't know for sure. But there is this quote from Alex which he says later, there was such a dramatic change in the way she went about things. I felt I hardly knew her anymore. It was like someone having a midlife crisis, but in their 20s, she would arrange to go out, but when I said I would join her, she told me not to bother because they'd all be speaking Russian. And she started meeting these people she refers to as her Russian friends. And I think maybe it's worth stepping back for a moment and talking about Russia and Britain at this point, because this, I think, is almost the high point of Londonograd as people call it, Moscow on Thames, as other people described it, which is this is the kind of peak period of Russian influence in Britain and particularly in London. I don't think it was replicated in the us, But I think London and Britain were particularly the focus of where Russian influence came. And I think lots of reasons for that short flight from Moscow over to London. You'd have all these Russian businessmen, the so called oligarchs, the kind of people who mix business and politics, who would come and they'd come and watch a football match, maybe at Arsenal on the weekend, their wives would go and do shopping, maybe they'd send their kids to school in Britain, they'd invest here. The visa regime, everything was quite permissive, it was quite easy. And of course they also worked out they could stash their money and spend it in London and London, and particularly the city of London, welcomed them with open arms, said, you know, come along, bring all your money, we don't really care where it came from. And, you know, there was an interesting question how far some of these things were about reputation laundering by some of these people who had influence in Russia and wanted to improve their reputation in the uk, how far they wanted a safe haven. So you had both Russian dissidents and exiles, but also kind of people close to Vladimir Putin, all of them coming over to London in this time. And you can just feel, you could feel, I mean, I remember seeing it, you could feel the money flood in, the houses being bought, the people in the restaurants, just that sense of Russian influence. And equally obviously that brings with it a darker side. But the security service, MI5, police, I mean, they didn't have the resources or the ability to kind of look at this in very much detail. I mean, this is the kind of post 2001 era when they're focusing on terrorism, terrorist threats. So they're not really kind of that bothered about it.
- [13:53]
David
Even though Putin started killing people in London in this time period, because 2006 yeah.
- [13:59]
Gordon Carrera
2006, you get Alexander Litvinenko, who's poisoned with polonium. It's interesting. I don't think that was ever that level of influence in say New York or Washington News.
- [14:08]
David
Never quite, never to the, to the same degree. I mean, this is the world. Anna's floating in and so we're picking her out here. There are lots of Russians like her in London in this period. She does not stand out at all. Right. I mean, Even, even if MI5 had been paying very, very, very close attention, which would have been almost impossible given how many Russians were there, she would have been remarkably low on the list, let's say.
- [14:32]
Gordon Carrera
And she starts to move into the fast set in London, into the place where kind of Russian money and British money is intermingling. You know, she gets a job which is renting and selling private planes, private jets. I mean, you can't get a better way to mix with the kind of far set than that. So she's going to kind of, you know, film premier society parties. She starts hanging out with a kind of boss of a hedge fund who takes her to Annabelle's, which is a famous nightclub, you know, where the kind of Euro trash, if you like, you know, minor European royalty, people who want to meet them are all hanging out and drinking late into the night. And she's just moving into those circles and moves eventually over, I think to Chelsea, you know, much more upmarket than Stoke Newington, where she was with Alex. She's organizing a £235 ticket, white tie, Russian themed War and Peace ball at the Dorchester Hotel, which is a fancy.
- [15:26]
David
I've had high tea at the Dorchester, Gordon.
- [15:29]
Gordon Carrera
Have you?
- [15:30]
David
It was very lovely and I almost had a heart attack when I received the bill at the end. £235 of tickets. Sounds like you might get some small finger sandwiches and a couple of cups of tea for that Russian themed War and Peace.
- [15:44]
Gordon Carrera
That's right. These aren't the places normal people hang out. Apart from you, obviously.
- [15:47]
David
Exactly. Do you feel like she's. This is sort of her London dream. Is this what she was after, do you think? Or is she sort of. Is she a fish out of water in this remarkably lavish, glittering scene?
- [15:59]
Gordon Carrera
I think this is where she wants to be. I think she loves it. She's a natural at it. She's where she wants to be. She's enjoying it. I think the interesting question is whether she's just there because she's enjoying it or whether she's there because she's been told to do it. Or directed to do it. But the reality, maybe it's a bit of a mix of both.
- [16:17]
David
And maybe there, Gordon. With Anna yucking it up with Euro trash at the Dorchester and mingling in high society, we'll take a break. When we come back, we can talk about how this extremely unique woman becomes a spy.
- [16:35]
Gordon Carrera
This episode is brought to you by our new friends at NordVPN. Now, David, what do you find useful about Nord?
- [16:41]
David
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- [16:56]
Gordon Carrera
It can often be hard to distinguish fake websites from real ones or phishing texts that appear to be real. But Threat Protection Pro will prevent you from accessing these dangerous things. So NordVPN is actually the first and only VPN app to receive the certification that their anti phishing software is reliable.
- [17:16]
David
So to stay secure online, you should take advantage of our exclusive NordVPN discount. All you need to do is go to nordvpn.com restisclassified when you sign up, you can receive a bonus four months on top of your plan and there is absolutely no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. The link is also in the episode description box. Well, welcome back. We are talking about Anna Chapman and she has just ensconced herself in the world of London high society. Balls, high tea at the Dorchester. And Gordon, I think the question now is, is she a spy or when did she become a spy?
- [18:02]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, and I've asked lots of people this and no one actually seems to know the definitive answer. You know, did she arrive in London age 19 with the intention simply of marrying someone, getting a passport, becoming a spy and doing this as part of a kind of grand strategy? Or did it come later? Did she get into this world and then someone in Moscow, perhaps through her father go, hmm, she could be useful. Let's recruit her to help us. And the truth is, we don't know for sure.
- [18:32]
David
There are some suspicious things though, right? I mean, because she was. She's floating in a lot of different Russian circles in London, but she is also getting close to a man named Boris Berezovsky. Right. Who's, you know, well, friend of the podcast.
- [18:47]
Gordon Carrera
He's not a friend, wouldn't quite describe as that. So, yeah, that is an interesting one. So she's dating a lot of people. At one point, Boris Berezovsky meets her and is introduced to her, and as someone put it, he took quite a fancy to her and he sends his car to pick her up for lunch. Now, who was Boris Berezovsky? He was a very interesting man when you talk about oligarchs in Russia in the 90s. So these are these people who are kind of powerful figures who are wealthy, own businesses, but also dabble in politics. And they're the kind of power behind the throne of people like Yeltsin, who's the leader in the 90s, working at.
- [19:20]
David
An aluminum smelting plant in 1992, and then by 2005, he owns two English Premier League football teams. Kind of a guy?
- [19:28]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, yeah, not quite, but yeah, he is that kind of guy. I mean, he's at one point he's like, you know, he moves into politics. He's a National Security Council in Russia in the 90s. The interesting thing about him is he is this powerful figure. And in his mind, he effectively picks Putin to be the next leader and picks Putin as a person who he thinks will protect this system where the oligarchs have the power. But then after Putin takes over in 2000, he suddenly realized Putin's not going to be controllable and Putin's his own man. And Putin turns on the oligarchs and basically says, I don't work for you, you work for me, and you work for the state. And Berezovsky is one of those who tries to kind of fight against this and ends up fleeing, and he ends up fleeing to London. So he comes to London with all his money and wealth and influence and sets up in Mayfair. And I did once, I met him in Mayfair at his office, and it was exactly what you'd imagine a Russian oligarch's office in Mayfair to be like. I mean, plush, fancy, lots of people hanging around who didn't quite say who they were or what they were doing.
- [20:32]
David
Heavies. Just heavies kind of hanging around?
- [20:35]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, definitely some heavies. Definitely some heavies. Some other people who were just kind of hangers on. And it was interesting because I was interviewing him about a book which he'd been involved in, which was accusing Vladimir Putin of having blown up some apartment building buildings in Russia a few years earlier. And so Berezovsky had obviously sponsored this story as part of his kind of campaign against Putin, because the two hated each other intensely. And he sat there and with a kind of very thick, you know, Russian accent, and told me about how bad Putin was and Then drove off in his fancy arm plated Mercedes. I think at the end. True oligarch style.
- [21:09]
David
When I picture an oligarch's apartment in London, I guess I picture like chandeliers, horribly gaudy furniture, you know, zebra prints, tassels, things like that.
- [21:19]
Gordon Carrera
It wasn't quite like that. I mean, it was that kind of London, anonymously, very rich style that you have, which you see in places. You know, he's a very interesting character because he is, if you like, the center of the kind of anti Putin opposition in London, and Putin particularly hates him. One of the things Alexander Litvinenko we mentioned, who gets poisoned with polonium, has been working for Berezovsky both in the 90s and then in London, and that that's possibly one of the reasons he gets killed. Berezovsky himself ultimately dies a somewhat mysterious death in his house and he's discovered hanging in his bathroom behind a locked door.
- [21:55]
David
He was strangled with a robe, his own robe. Right. Was that the theory?
- [21:58]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. And found hanging. And I think it's never quite clear, you know, I think there's different views about how suspicious that was or not.
- [22:07]
David
With Boris, though, there's a theory that Anna's being kind of directed, nudged at people, at Boris and people like him who are Putin oppositionists. Right.
- [22:18]
Gordon Carrera
I think that's the point is if you were Russian intelligence and you wanted an agent to keep your eye on someone in London, your top target, who you'd want intelligence on and information on would be Boris Berezovsky. So I think that's why the fact that she's kind of hanging out with him feels suspicious to me.
- [22:35]
David
I'll say, Gordon. I think her process of becoming an intelligence officer, I see it as kind of a more organic, step by step process, because that's a bit of how the Russians operate. You know, we tend to think of the categories of like, are you an asset or are you not? Or, you know, are you an intelligence officer? What type are you? I think in the west, particularly in the States with CIA, we have more rigid categories for these types of people. I think the Russians are pretty fluid with it. And the Russians really, they care about is, do you produce? They care less about whether are they a formally recruited asset or are they not? At CIA, we cared a lot about that and the words mattered for what you called somebody. But I think with the Russians, it's a little bit more like, can she give us interesting things? And they could push her in a variety of kind of largely informal settings up to this point, to See if she can produce. And I would imagine that her getting close to Boris Berezovsky is probably something that the Russians would look at and say, well, maybe she can. So I tend to think it's actually she's got to produce before the relationship progresses. It's not the other way around.
- [23:45]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting way of saying it because rather than thinking she is someone who is trained as a spy and, you know, recruited, put through, you know, a year or two of training and then sent to do this, she's someone who they go, you've got access, you've got influence, you prove that in London, you know, let's start using you and training you up as you go to become a spy. And I think, you know, it's worth reflecting here about the way Russia spies, which is slightly different as well, in that one of the things that they do is use these people under what they call illegal cover, which it's a kind of odd phrase. But the contrast is they think of someone who's under diplomatic cover. So a spy who's working at the embassy, they have legal cover because they've got diplomatic immunity. And if they get arrested, they can't be arrested, they just get expelled. But an illegal is someone who doesn't have, if you like, diplomatic cover, but is blending into a society and who is moving around with it kind of swimming in the waters, hopefully unseen. And it's a particular type of spy which the Russians specialize in.
- [24:52]
David
Well, and she'll be a particular type, won't she? Because when you think of an illegal, I mean, the show that really captures this dynamic is called the Americans. And the premise is it's sort of Reagan era United States in the 80s Height of the Cold War. And the premise is that there are two Russians who come to the States, they're living under assumed identities, typically gleaned from fabricating kind of a passport based off a real person who may have passed away when they were two or three or something, taking the identity, I think the Russians call it tombstoning, but living under a false. A false name. And Anna isn't going to do that, although she's got that great last name, Chapman, which can kind of mask the fact that she's Russian. She's not hiding who she is. Right. At any point. So in, in some respect, she's a little bit like a CIA officer who'd be under a commercial cover who is probably operating with their real name, but hiding the fact that they're working for CIA. Right. But she's sort of not your illegal who's taken Argentinian documents and come up with a new identity.
- [25:57]
Gordon Carrera
Exactly. And I think the Russians were famous and the Soviets for using these deep cover illegals who they trained for years and they trained them to actually pose as being another nationality. So you take a Russian and you'd make them into being a Canadian or a Britain or an American and insert them with the identity of a real, you know, maybe a Britain or an American who died and have them kind of embed themselves deep in society. The idea was that they could then do things which a Russian couldn't do. You know, they could move in circles and not be as suspicious. And so that was your classic deep cover illegal. But what I think we're seeing here in the 90s and 2000s is a recognition by Russia that times have changed and for two reasons, I think. One is that it's harder to do that kind of deep cover stuff. Stuff. One of the reasons is biometrics, because you've got kind of passports, you've got databases. It's harder to kind of create a fake identity and then sustain it when you know, whether it's fingerprints or DNA or facial recognition to use different names and different types of COVID But also one of the reasons that they needed to do this in the kind of 20s and 30s and in the Cold War onwards and use these illegals was because Russians couldn't move easily in Western society, where suddenly you've got this period where, as we said from the 90s, the 2000s, Russians can come into London, they can move around London, that's not suspicious, there's not a kind of barrier to it. So Anna, I think, is emblematic of this new type of spying that Russia can do, which is no need to do the deep training for some illegal spy, but take someone who's already moving in between the two societies or has got links in London or somewhere, and just train them up, use them, make the most of them, because they're there. They've got the ability to kind of meet people and talk to people and move in interesting circles.
- [27:45]
David
There's a great Russian acronym to describe this type of asset. They call them the apparatus of attached employees. And basically it is you're an intelligence officer, but you're also working at a company. And that company could be Gazprom, or it could be, in Anna's case, you know, your own little property kind of real estate brokerage that you set up. The other sort of term or label that we talked about at the beginning of this show that gets painted across this whole story, and I think falsely is Honey Trap, you know, sort of this. This idea that she is getting information, getting sensitive information, getting access by seducing people. I mean, I think, Gordon, it's just not the case at all with the Anna Chapman story. But I think it's important we talk about it a little bit, because you see that a lot in the way that she's discussed after this in the tabloids and in the media. Right?
- [28:46]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. And that's partly because, you know, honey traps, a kind of feature of the mythology around spies, whether it was, go back to kind of Mata Hari in World War I, and then, you know, there is some truth to it in that the kgb, the Soviets, definitely in the Cold War, did use honey traps. I mean, they used them particularly actually within the Soviet Union. So if you were a kind of diplomat, a visiting businessman who went to Moscow, you would find that attractive woman at the bar.
- [29:15]
David
You are Pierre, the overweight commercial attache at the embassy. And you spend a wonderful evening with Katia, and then you wake up and Uncle Sasha is sitting by your bed, and all of a sudden your world is turned upside down. Right. That would be kind of the classic.
- [29:31]
Gordon Carrera
That's the classic way it would happen is Uncle Sasha would say, I'm afraid, you know, you're in a little bit of trouble now. And we have these pictures of you with Katya last night, and you better start spying for us or else you're out. And, I mean, they did do this quite successfully. They did it successfully. They even used kind of homosexual, gay honey traps, famously with John Vassall, who was, you know, kind of a Britain. In Moscow, they used Romeo spies, kind of male honey traps. Stasi were particularly good at doing that in West Germany. So there is a history of it. But actually, I think you're right. Anna doesn't. Anna Chapman doesn't really fit into that. She's the daughter of a KGB SVR officer of a Russian diplomat. She's a very intelligent young woman. I mean, the fact she's attractive is no doubt an aid to her doing her kind of her work of moving around society and getting to know people, which is clearly what she's there for, to kind of gather intelligence and influence. I think it's far too simplistic to kind of portray her somehow as someone who's. That's all she is, or that's what she is.
- [30:33]
David
And she, of course, in around maybe 2005 and 2006, I think she starts to set her sights on America doesn't she? No longer content with London grad and her Euro trash parties at the Dorchester. She's tells kind of bizarrely, I think, because I believe they're already either separated or divorced at this point. But she tells Alex that she's going back to Russia, doesn't she? And has this weird sort of sojourn in Moscow before then going onward to the States.
- [31:05]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. And it is interesting because he remembers that she'd actually always been quite anti American and she'd kind of made dismissive references to Americans, you know, when they were watching Hollywood movies. And then suddenly she decides she wants to go. So again, back to the kind of. When did she become a spy? By this point, she is definitely being directed.
- [31:24]
David
She spends a few months in Moscow, right?
- [31:27]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah. It's not quite clear how long, but definitely months, maybe even longer. And then she's on a path to the us which is clearly, if you're Moscow as well, is the kind of big prize. So you could imagine them thinking she's good at what she does, she's got influence, she's built up a kind of COVID in London, effectively. Let's put her onto the big stage, as it were. You know, off to Manhattan.
- [31:46]
David
This, to me again from the outside, feels like a moment where in the comfort, the warm embrace of Russia, she's probably getting some practical instruction in how will we communicate? You know, how do you use the type of clandestine communication or covert communication, Covcom, how do you use this stuff? What sort of things? She would get the taskings. This is a time when you could do more formal training. To me, it tracks with this idea that they've been kind of operationally testing her in London and she's probably given them some useful stuff too. But they've been operationally testing her, she's produced and now they're. They're going to take the next step and they do sort of arrange a plausible reason for her to go to the States.
- [32:30]
Gordon Carrera
That's right, because by the late 2000s, she's setting up a business. She set up her own business, which is selling property in America to rich Russians online. And she's got a business card which says on it, explore your possibilities.
- [32:42]
David
That's what my business card says. I can't believe it. This is where I must have gotten it from her.
- [32:47]
Gordon Carrera
She. There's also one of those great videos of her that I found online, which is where she's explaining how she came up with her startup idea. You know, she's got the classic spiel, which is, you Know, I saw this gap in the market. I realize there's, you know, no one's doing this for Russians. And I just thought, hey, I could do it. And I started my own business. So she's there. She maybe has a bit of support from the Russian government and some money to do that as well. But she started this kind of property tech company. You know, she's in that world. She's living in a really fancy art deco, you know, apartment in Manhattan. She's living it up in New York.
- [33:22]
David
She's definitely got support from Moscow, Gordon. Right. I mean, there's money. She's been given some startup funds to make this work.
- [33:28]
Gordon Carrera
And again, she's dating interesting people. She dates one former Marine who had worked, had kind of security clearances at the past. You know, there's people who are kind of on the fringes of politics. I think it's a good question, though, to think what her task was.
- [33:47]
David
Yeah. What is she actually sending to Moscow? What are they getting in return?
- [33:51]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, what's the return? And I think the answer is that with these kind of illegals, it's not classic secrets. They're not working in government or handling an agent, a source who's got access to kind of Pentagon secrets. So it's something else that Russia is after, which is its influence, its gossip, its information. And I think it's easy to underestimate how useful that is. But one of the things is understanding who's rich and powerful. If you move in those circles, what their weaknesses and vulnerabilities might be, what the gossip is about them, gathering that kind of information is useful, isn't it?
- [34:29]
David
Absolutely. And you know, what I find fascinating about this is the stark contrast it paints between, I'll take the CIA example, right. The type of intelligence that we were trying to collect on. I worked on the Middle east, on Syria, let's say, versus the kind of things that the Russians are interested in when they're looking at the States. And I am continually amazed at how narrow our viewers of intelligence is. I mean, we had pretty rigorous, what we called intelligence requirements that dictated what collectors, what case officers would try to go out and get, the types of assets they would recruit and the type of information that was considered to be valuable or sometimes even secret. Right. And a lot of it would have to do with sort of, you know, plans and intentions of the Assad family or, you know, certainly today, the plans and intentions of Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime. Like Russia, because I think they see the security services as a critical tool, perhaps their most useful tool to sort of shape other societies or to bend them or try to, like, manipulate them for Russia's interest. They're really interested in trying to map the kind of social environment, the kind of the full ecosystem of the United States. Right. They want to see where are the cracks and fissures, who hates who, who would be open to taking money from us, even unwittingly to do things that might be in our interest. And that is where a spy like Anna, I think, is very valuable, because she could get a sense in New York of kind of who's up and who's down and who's who.
- [36:14]
Gordon Carrera
And so it's the ability to understand society and therefore maybe influence it and perhaps work out who Russian intelligence might be able to target, to recruit or to influence. So it's a pretty valuable set of things which you only get by being somehow embedded in that society, don't you? And being. By kind of living in it.
- [36:33]
David
And I think the difference fundamentally between us and the way the Russians approach this is we're trying to understand, or to sort of gather secrets to help us understand decision makers in a particular society. The Russians are gathering information to try to shape and undermine that society. And that's the difference. Right? That's the kind of conceptual difference in why we do not have illegals. You know, we don't have those programs and the Russians do. Yeah.
- [37:06]
Gordon Carrera
The difference is we're after secrets, and they're after secrets, but also influence.
- [37:10]
David
Amy Gordon there with Anna, ensconced in her Manhattan apartment and living her party lifestyle, building her Rolodex of contacts. We should end it, because when we come back next week, we'll see that one of the largest FBI counterintelligence investigations ever is very much on her tail. She is being watched and monitored as she moves around New York. And this whole thing is about to come crashing down. So maybe we leave it there, we come back, we'll see what happens to Anna Chapman when the net closes.
- [37:46]
Gordon Carrera
See you next time.