12. The Spy Who Loved Me: A Russian in New York (Ep 2)

Summary

The Rest Is Classified
Episode 12: The Spy Who Loved Me: A Russian in New York (Ep 2)
Release Date: January 21, 2025
Hosts: David McCloskey & Gordon Corera

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Introduction

In this enthralling episode of The Rest Is Classified, hosts David McCloskey and Gordon Corera delve deep into the shadowy world of espionage, focusing on the captivating story of Anna Chapman—a young Russian woman who became one of the most infamous spies in New York City. Drawing from Gordon Corera’s insightful book, The Wonderful Russians Among Us, the episode unravels the intricate operations, surveillance tactics, and eventual downfall of Chapman within the intricate web of international espionage.

Anna Chapman's Entry into New York

The story begins with Anna Chapman's arrival in New York, where she seamlessly integrated herself into high society. Described by an acquaintance as "relentless," Chapman quickly established connections within the financial sector, leveraging her confidence and social acumen to navigate influential circles. Gordon Corera narrates:

"She really understood people... Well, that is some Coreran prose if I've ever heard it."
[02:12]

Anna’s ability to blend in and gain trust was instrumental in her role as a deep-cover spy, collecting intelligence while maintaining the facade of a successful businesswoman.

FBI Surveillance and Operation Ghost Stories

Unbeknownst to Anna, the FBI had placed her under intense surveillance as part of Operation Ghost Stories, a meticulously planned mission to monitor Russian illegals in the United States. The operation was spearheaded by a crucial asset, Alexander Potaev—a high-ranking Russian intelligence officer who had been turned by the FBI. This insider provided invaluable information that allowed the FBI to keep a close watch on Chapman and her compatriots.

Gordon explains the significance of Potaev’s role:

"He is like the line manager effectively for illegals in the States. It's an absolute intelligence coup."
[10:00]

The surveillance teams, affectionately dubbed "Phoebes" by David (a nod to their undercover work), monitored Chapman’s every move. The meticulous observation included tracking her interactions and technological communications, such as her use of a laptop to pass information discreetly.

The Capture and Arrest

As Operation Ghost Stories progressed, the FBI grew increasingly confident in their control over the situation. However, the operation faced a critical challenge when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made a diplomatic visit to the United States, compelling the FBI to expedite the arrest to avoid international embarrassment.

The hosts recount the tension during the final moments of the operation:

"The idea is that they always thought at some point we might try and arrest these illegals... but here's the almost bizarre coincidence"
[13:12]

On June 26, 2010, Chapman received a phone call purportedly from a consulate official, which was actually a carefully orchestrated entrapment maneuver by the FBI. Under pressure and sensing something was amiss, Chapman contacted her father—a former KGB officer—for advice. Her father’s guidance to “report to the police” inadvertently led her straight into the FBI’s trap.

David reflects on the delicate timing required:

"The order from the White House is, you cannot do this until the Russian President has left and his plane has left."
[17:00]

Ultimately, the FBI executed a flawless arrest once Medvedev had departed, ensuring minimal diplomatic fallout. Chapman was taken into custody without any incriminating evidence of espionage, as the operation relied heavily on surveillance rather than direct proof.

Spy Swap and Aftermath

Rather than prosecuting Chapman and her fellow spies, the U.S. opted for a high-profile spy swap. In July 2010, at Vienna Airport, Chapman and nine other Russian operatives were exchanged for individuals being held in Russia for espionage against the West. This deal was met with sensational media coverage, turning Chapman into an overnight tabloid sensation.

Gordon highlights the cultural impact of the swap:

"This is something that matters to him [Putin]. He is treated as heroic figures."
[43:17]

Upon her return to Russia, Chapman embraced her fame, leveraging her status to build a personal brand. She appeared in Russian media, starred in television shows, and amassed a significant social media following, effectively transforming her espionage past into a successful public persona.

Insights and Conclusions

The episode underscores the complexity and high-stakes nature of modern espionage. David and Gordon emphasize that without the insider information provided by assets like Potaev, operations like Chapman’s could have caused far greater damage by infiltrating influential sectors in Western societies.

David offers a reflective insight:

"If she hadn't been watched, she could have been very damaging... more than, if you like, the honey trap stereotype."
[48:35]

Moreover, the episode sheds light on the enduring cat-and-mouse game between intelligence agencies, highlighting that as long as global tensions persist, the cycle of spying and counterintelligence will continue. The hosts conclude by suggesting that stories like Anna Chapman’s are just the tip of the iceberg, with many more spies operating under the radar worldwide.

Gordon adds:

"There is tremendous incentive for the Russians to be building these programs and dispatching this type of person."
[49:38]

Conclusion

The Rest Is Classified delivers a compelling narrative that not only explores Anna Chapman’s journey as a spy but also offers a broader understanding of the intricate dynamics of international espionage. Through expert analysis and detailed storytelling, David McCloskey and Gordon Corera illuminate the hidden battles fought in the shadows, reminding listeners of the ever-present influence of spies in our global landscape.

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Note: The timestamps referenced correspond to the original podcast transcript provided.

Transcript

[David]

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[David]

Relentless is how one of the acquaintances who encountered Anna Chapman in New York remembers her. She was introduced to him at a fancy dinner in Soho. At first, he thought she was just like the other young Russian women in New York. So he made sure she knew he was not interested in her type. But she would not give up. Somehow she got his number from a friend and began texting him, asking to meet. She kept texting again and again over the next few weeks. So he checked her out with a few people in the business community. Well, Placed. People had known her from her former life in London as well as now in New York. The type worked in finance and traveled the Atlantic regularly. Hedge fund guys, they all vouched for her. Clearly, her time in London had been well spent. Her connections were paying off. She knew everyone, he says. Soon they were dating and she was around his place. It was not just the looks. She had this confidence about her you don't see in many people. You could drop her anywhere and she would find her way, he says later, when he found out the truth, he would wonder if she had had some kind of training in psychological manipulation. She really understood people, he says, before pausing and adding, men in particular. Well, that is some Carreran prose if I've ever heard it. Gordon, that is a section on Anna Chapman and her adventures in New York from your book, the Wonderful Russians Among Us, which is a great title, by the way.

[Gordon]

Thank you, David, for the plug.

[David]

All about this story, not just Anna Chapman and of course all these other illegals who are going to be investigated at around the same time as Anna. And we have followed Anna Chapman. Now we. Last week we. We followed her in London, in Moscow, and we are now with her in New York.

[Gordon]

That's right. Welcome back to the Rest is classified. We are looking at the story of Anna Chapman. This young Russian woman who, age 19, comes to London, meets a Brit, soon gets married, intelligent, ambitious, moving in social circles, soon moving from the party set in London. Now we found her in the party set in New York, moving around, gathering influence. But by now we're sure a Russian deep cover illegal, as they were known, spy collecting intelligence. So the problem for Anna, though, is that she's there partying. But what she doesn't know is that the FBI is watching. They're on her tail. So on January 20, 2010, an FTBI team is at a coffee shop on the corner of 47th street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan. And they've got covert video cameras for surveillance on her. They're watching her. She's got a tote bag with her. Ten minutes after she arrives, she's pulled out a laptop from a bag. A minivan passes the window of the coffee shop. Now, we know all this because the FBI surveillance team were taking detailed notes and making videos of it all.

[David]

A lot of these videos are actually online now. Yeah, you can find the video, see all this stuff? Yeah.

[Gordon]

And one FBI team is watching her, and another is watching this minivan which is passing by her at this coffee shop, and it's being driven by a Russian official from The Russian mission to the United nations there in New York. And what's interesting is Chapman and this Russian, who's clearly a Russian intelligence officer, are not going to speak. They're not going to meet, but they're going to pass information. And the way they're going to do it is through that laptop, which she's pulled out of her tote bag. And what it does is create a temporary wireless network through which information can flow between her laptop and one in the minivan. So it's not going, if you like, over the regular Internet, where information can be collected and swept up by American intelligence, but over a private connection between those two laptops. And by now they're watching her.

[David]

And one could be forgiven, Gordon, for thinking that this would be very hard for our friends at the FBI. The Phoebes, as I like to know them as.

[Gordon]

Is that what they're really called?

[David]

Well, they don't call themselves that. I don't think they don't like that very much. No Phoebe I've ever met has enjoyed that term. But yeah, at CIA, we would call them the Phoebes. I think they sort of frown on it. And I will tell you that a bit of this story that does make me feel somewhat nauseous is that at the root of why the Phoebes are watching is a great Phoebe success story, which I will have a hard time.

[Gordon]

Discussing because you're from the CIA and is the rivalry that bad?

[David]

Is it really that. I mean, so they are. So I think the. The Phoebes are cops and the CIA are robbers. That's kind of the cultural difference. Typical way cultural difference. The Phoebes are here to get, you know, somebody investigated and convicted. And so really, the Phoebes are upholding American law. The CIA is out there breaking foreign laws. And so you have very different cultures. But this is. And I. I'll. I'll stomach it. This is a great Phoebe success story at the heart of it, isn't it?

[Gordon]

Yeah, it is. Because we've heard about how Anna has moved from London to New York, but the question is, why are the FBI watching her? How have they got onto her? Because the whole point is she's supposed to be this kind of deep cover spy who is able to meet people without being spotted undercover as just being a kind of ordinary Russian working as a businesswoman in New York. And the answer is because Thebes, as you put it, have recruited a source and they've got a source in Moscow. And it goes back actually to the late 90s, so about a decade before Anna is being Watched at this point, which is early 2010, there'd been a Russian intelligence officer who'd been based in New York at the mission to the United nations called Alexander Potaev, and he had been approached by the FBI. My understanding is, and it's obviously a bit murky because it's a kind of a deliberately. A very obscure story.

[David]

There's no formal sort of acknowledgment of Batayev's role in this.

[Gordon]

Yeah, the FBI and CIA simply refer to him always as the source when they talk about him because they don't want to acknowledge ever that he was their name. But before anyone thinks we're giving away some secrets to the Russians, they know it because they actually prosecute him in the end, in absentia after this all kind of blows up. So.

[David]

And try to kill him, and try to kill him in the States, too.

[Gordon]

And try and kill him later on, which gives you a sense of how important he is. But he'd been based in New York and the FBI, and I hadn't quite understood this originally, but if someone is in the U.S. it's the FBI's job to pitch them in spy talk, isn't it, to approach them and try and recruit them to spy for the other side, to become an asset. So if that happens in another country, that would be the CIA doing it, but if it's inside the U.S. that's the Thebes. The FBI are doing it. Yeah.

[David]

Yeah. I think the reality is a little bit murkier. I mean, the CIA has domestic field stations that we have a. What's called nr, the National Resources Division, inside the Directorate of Operations that has purview over the United States. So the reality is there's a little bit of a kind of give and take or grayness over who would do that, but it would certainly be reasonable, depending on kind of who has really done the development work or the spotting for the fibs to do the pitch. And obviously here it was a remarkable success.

[Gordon]

Yeah. Because Pataev gets recruited by the FBI. He agrees to be their agent, their source, and provide intelligence, and he's on his way back to Moscow from New York. And so during that period in the 2000s, he's inside Russian Foreign Intelligence Headquarters. And most importantly, he is inside what's called Directorate S, which is the directorate, the most secret bit, if you like, of Russian Foreign intelligence, which runs these deep cover spies, these illegals. Even better, he ends up being effectively deputy head of the team which runs deep cover spies in the Americas, including the US in terms of where to have an agent, a source. You don't get much better than that, do you?

[David]

No. Listeners should understand that. This would be like a once in a generation type recruitment. The CIA would be running Russian intelligence officers, MI6 would be running Russian intelligence officers on the regular. But to have someone so high up, and in particular so high up in the part of the bureaucracy that's dealing with you. So he's looking at, he's, he's basically responsible. He's like the line manager effectively for illegals in the States. It's an absolute intelligence coup. Like you, you almost don't get better than this.

[Gordon]

Yeah, in that position he has oversight, management, responsibility. You know, he's the line manager of Anna Chapman effectively and all the other.

[David]

Filling out her, her annual performance.

[Gordon]

Yeah, he's doing an annual performance review and probably sending those notes back to the FBI and the CIA. So it gives the US absolute insight and oversight of the Russian illegals program inside the U.S. including Anna Chapman. And as a result they know exactly what's going on and they are able to monitor both Anna and a group of other illegals, some of whom have been there for years, operating as families, you know, kind of married with kids, a whole group of them, they're able to watch them, monitor them to some extent, prevent them doing anything too harmful and you know, kind of maneuver people out the way if they're coming too close to people. But in the case of Anna Chapman particularly, they were able to kind of watch her carry out these covert meetings with Russian intelligence officials through the laptops. These are kind of called the Wednesday meetings because they would always happen at Wednesday where she'd go to a coffee shop and try and make contact to pass on whatever intelligence she's collecting.

[David]

Just like every other 20 something in New York, she's sitting in a Starbucks on Wednesday sending potentially useless reports to her superiors. So fitting right in. I mean, I do think it is kind of interesting to think about the story from the lens of the FBI surveillance teams that are watching her because they all have a very intimate view of Anna Chapman and the rest of these illegals. And I guess one would have to think that there's some amount maybe of envy, a little bit of. Because this woman is living this sort of funded high society lifestyle. And you know, you have these, these FBI watchers who are probably making significantly less money than Anna Chapman is every year. And on this grind of a surveillance beat, for the most part, watching her do nothing, really.

[Gordon]

Yeah, well, watching her do nothing but basically party and live it up and hang out in the best places in New York and, you know, meet influential people and, you know, wear the best clothes. So that's what they're doing for a period of months. But then summer of 2010, we get to the point where the net's going to close. So they've been watching these illegals, and this is the crucial moment, because the operation, which is code named Ghost stories is the FBI's name.

[David]

Great name. You can't frown on that name.

[Gordon]

No, it's a good name, isn't it?

[David]

You know, got to hand it to the Phoebes yet again here on the code name. Wonderful work.

[Gordon]

Ghost Stories is going to come to a close, and it's interesting. The reason why is very interesting. It's not because Anna Chapman or any of the others are doing something particularly dangerous. It's because of the source. It's because of Potaev, who's in Moscow, and he's been doing this for more than a decade, and he fears that the Russians might be on to him or they might have some sense that there's a leak somewhere in Moscow, because in other places, people are being arrested, things are happening. And I mean, also, I. I'm guessing after a decade of doing this, of spying, at some point you'll spray the nerves, probably spraying the nerves, isn't it? I mean, not many people can do that for a decade, providing intelligence, knowing if you get caught, you're going to die. So you can understand that at some point, you know, he thinks the net's closing on him and he seems to send a signal saying, I'm done. Get me out, I need to pull out.

[David]

And I suppose at this point, you kind of step back and you think about the fundamental logic of what the FBI and CIA are, how they're playing this is they've got the full picture of the illegals, right? They know who they all are because of Potaev. They can watch them. They presume if they do get too close to anything really sensitive or to anyone particularly sensitive, they can manage it. But there's a lot of value in just watching the operation. But then as soon as Potayev is gone, that insight goes away. So they figure, we just got to. We're going to close this down now, right?

[Gordon]

Yeah, yeah. And the idea is that they always thought at some point we might try and arrest these illegals. We'll round them up, we'll arrest them. But here's where it gets tricky, because Pataev has indicated he wants to get out fast, as fast as possible because he's obviously worried and the CIA and FBI want to get him out fast. And so you've got this window in the summer in June of 2010 to try and get him out. You've also got a. The window is quite narrow because you've got to get the operation in place to get him out. But you've also got some of the illegals who are planning to travel, you know, on holiday and leave the country. So you've got to kind of wind it up before they leave if you want to be able to kind of arrest them and stop them. But here is the kind of almost bizarre coincidence which is there's a window around the end of June, the weekend of the kind of 26th, 27th of June, and that weekend, over the end of June is when the then Russian President is also going to be in town on a very important diplomatic visit. I mean, you couldn't kind of make it up, could you, that all these things are happening at the same time.

[David]

I imagine this was very frustrating to the people at Langley and at FIB headquarters to have Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian President, in town as you're trying to architect the exfiltration of one of your most senior Russian assets. I mean, you almost couldn't script it worse. And also, I mean, we are not in the present day darkness of the West's relationship with Russia either. So because we are in this little Medvedev interregnum 2008-2012ish where sure we've had a little nasty war in Georgia, but we're before Ukraine. And I think there is some sense, I think that we could. Well, this is the famous reset, isn't it?

[Gordon]

That's right. That's reset relations. Because Putin seems to have moved away from being President to being Prime Minister. And so there's this hope that they can reset relations. And Obama has invited Medvedev to Washington as part of that.

[David]

There was that stupid button, remember that? The reset button.

[Gordon]

Yeah.

[David]

That I believe was mistranslated as overload. Is that right? Yeah.

[Gordon]

And Hillary Clinton was supposed to press the button as a symbol of resetting relations and actually said overload.

[David]

That's right, Yeah. I just handed this button, it said overload. You should not press a button that says overload on it as a general rule, I think, even if you are a Russian. So all that to say, I guess, that there is sensitivity in the Obama White House, extreme sensitivity about embarrassing the Russian President while he is in the United States with the largest roll up of Russian spies since the Cold War.

[Gordon]

Yeah, I think Obama is actually really unhappy about this.

[David]

Yeah, I would be pissed. Yeah.

[Gordon]

I think he actually says something like when the FBI and CIA come to him and say, we want to roll up these illegals and this is the weekend to do it, he goes, you come to me with this Cold War stuff, this John le Carre stuff, you know, at this time, you know, he's like, cold War is over, you know, and you guys are just running around chasing spies. What are you doing? And they're like, well, you know, we got to do it this weekend. So the compromise is that Thebes can roll up these illegals, including Anna, they can arrest them. But the deal the White House says is you can only do it when Medvedev has left US Airspace. So when he's flown out on the Sunday night of this weekend, so they're going to get their source out of Moscow, he's going to start traveling out. Friday, Saturday he's going to be out, and you can only arrest the illegals on the Sunday when he's out and Medvedev is out to kind of minimise the embarrassment to the Russians, basically.

[David]

Well, and we should say it with Anna. Right. With the other illegals, they're already here illegally using false or fabricated fraudulent identification. Right. So an arrest can be made on that basis alone. But with Anna, and this is the particularity of sort of the peculiar aspect of I think the way the United States prosecutes espionage cases is they need to observe her doing something. Right. Committing some act of sort of espionage or espionage adjacent acts before they can arrest her. Because she's in the States legally. Right. She's in the States on a passport that says Anna Chapman. And you know, you want evidence. This again, is the fee mindset of they need something that will. Will hold up in court. Yeah, right. And you're sure as heck not gonna go and get Putayev the source on the stand in the States. I mean, the level of paranoia about using, probably rightly so, about the CIA or FBI using an asset in court to try to convict someone else, that's not going to happen. I mean, you know, the Russia House guys and the Phoebes are never going to go for that. So they need her to do something.

[Gordon]

Yeah, exactly. They need to effectively get her to do something which is going to incriminate her. So Thebes cook up a plan where they're going to get a. One of their officers to operate under what's called false flag. So to pose as a Russian and to get her to incriminate herself effectively by doing something for him. Handing over a fake passport to someone else. All kind of organized by them and controlled by them, which will then allow them to say she is acting as what's called an undeclared foreign agent. In other words, she's acting knowingly on behalf of another state without having declared it, which in the US is a crime. And so this is the plan that they've cooked up and which they're going to try and launch on that weekend of June 26th.

[David]

We've put so many bones in the soup here, Gordon. I think with Dmitry Medvedev in the United States, the Phoebe's watching Anna. A false flag operation underway to entrap her. Maybe we take a break there and when we come back, we'll see how it all goes horribly wrong for Anna Chapman.

[Gordon]

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[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 to the Rest Is Classified. We now have a trap set, don't we, Gordon, for the Russian spy Anna Chapman. The Phoebes are closing in and it is, I assume, lovely Saturday in New York. It's June 26, 2010, and Anna's life is about to change forever.

[Gordon]

Yeah, she gets a phone call from a man who speaks in Russian and uses a name that she recognizes and says he's from the consulate in New York and he says he needs to meet her urgently that day to hand something over. Now, at first it seems like Anna is a bit reluctant to meet. I mean, she's a busy woman. You know, this is Saturday. You know, she's obviously got plans. And even though this is supposed to be her journey, which is being a spy, she at first seems to kind of try and brush him off and say, ah, maybe can we do it tomorrow?

[David]

Well, the social calendar or the fact that this hasn't happened to her. Yeah, this is a change in.

[Gordon]

It's something odd.

[David]

The commo plan, Right? Yeah.

[Gordon]

But eventually she calls back and interesting enough, she thinks she's calling the consulate, but obviously the phone in some clever Phoebe trick is diverted to them. And deviousness knows no balance.

[David]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

And she agrees to meet at 4, 4pm at a coffee shop in downtown Manhattan. She gets her about half an hour late. Now the undercover is there. I find these undercovers fascinating because, you know, I was reading about them. The FBI clearly have a kind of cadre of people who can really pose as Russian. They speak the language. I mean, maybe they're ethnically Russian, might even be Russian.

[David]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

But they can absolutely pose as a Russian entirely convincingly to people. And they use these for these kind of false flag operations. And they meet up. She's there. He's got a hidden recording device on him. And so we know actually a lot of what is said because it's all recorded by him. Chapman's there. She's wearing jeans and a white T shirt, sunglasses, looking very casual. How you doing? The undercover FBI guys goes. And she goes, everything is cool and it's interesting. She then just goes, I just need to get some more information about you before I can talk.

[David]

Yeah, her spidey senses are going off here, aren't they? Like she knows that something's something.

[Gordon]

It feels weird.

[David]

Not right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Gordon]

And he says, sure, I work in the same department as you, but I work here in the consulate. He's obviously trying to say I'm from the kind of team dealing with deep cover illegal spies. She then talks about how her laptop isn't working very well.

[David]

Tech issue, right off the bat. Tech issues, yeah.

[Gordon]

And she's, you know, she's really annoyed that, you know, the laptop she's been given to do these kind of COVID communications we were talking about isn't working. So she actually hands it over to him and says, can you take it to Moxisco and get it fixed?

[David]

I will say that the tech always breaks. You know, it's not. It's not part of the movies. It always breaks. I mean, anytime that I am writing a scene for a book that involves tech and I'm Talking with CIA current or formers about it, they will say, make the tech break. Have it take a long time.

[Gordon]

Right?

[David]

Make essentially the help desk, whatever that you're trying to contact be not help desk. It's like it doesn't work. So it's the same. We should all take comfort in the fact that none of our tech works. The CIA tech work also breaks. So this is common? This is common, yeah.

[Gordon]

So at this point, then he says, the undercover says, there's a situation that I need your help with tomorrow. Which is why it's not like regular contact. In other words, why he's kind of called this special meeting. And Chapman goes. A short task.

[David]

Yeah, she's got.

[Gordon]

She.

[David]

I mean, she probably does, right? She's got other plans.

[Gordon]

He goes, yeah, tomorrow at 11:00. And I love this. In the transcript, it says Chapman audibly sighed.

[David]

She's going to have to cancel something.

[Gordon]

Yeah, she's got to cancel something. And then he says, and it's interesting, there's a person here who's like you, okay? But the person is not here under her real name. We have to give her new documents. I have the documents for you to give her tomorrow morning. And so what the documents are, is a passport. Now, this is the crucial bit, because what the FBI are doing is they are. They are making clear to Anna Chapman that this is a person here under a false name, that someone from the Russian consulate is giving her a passport to pass to someone who is in America under a false name. And that is the act which will entrap her, you know, will incriminate her for basically acting as an agent, as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia. So that's what they've got to get her to do. In their mind.

[David]

This is your conviction, right? The video and the recording. Here again, they're thinking. And the way they had, I'm sure, gamed it out with this undercover the whole time was we need her to take this because. And you need to say these things, these specific things to her in the conversation so that we can demonstrate for a jury and judge that she has an intent to commit espionage and that.

[Gordon]

She knows that it's a false passport and on behalf of the Russian government. So that's the point. And then he says to her, she needs to be at a bench the next day, 11am near the world Financial center, and hand over the passport. There'd be a recognition signal. Now, I love this. The woman she meets would say, excuse me, but haven't we met in California? Last summer. And Chapman has to respond, no, I think it was the Hamptons. Is that kind of normal kind of spycraft?

[David]

Yeah. I mean, I can't. They lifted this right out of the. Right out of the manual. You know, this is the classic recognition signal, Gordon. I mean, I guess it does make some sense for Anna, you know, in a way. I mean, you know, this is a bit in line with. With her lifestyle, I think. So it's. Yeah, yeah. Strange.

[Gordon]

It's plausible. Yeah, it's a kind of plausible, I guess, thing to say, isn't it? So she seems to agree, but she does seem a bit nervous because she also asks him again, so you work in the consulate, who instructed you to do this? And he says, I don't have any answers. I just have instructions. And then she says, okay. It's just really scary. So I think it's kind of interesting insight, isn't it, into what's going through her head at that time.

[David]

How old is she at this point?

[Gordon]

I guess she is 2001. She's 19. So she's. Yeah, just. Just hit about, you know, 30 or so. Yeah. To late 20s.

[David]

And, you know, again, if you kind of take the premise that her experience over the past, you know, five to 10 years has been one of taking slow, steady steps forward with the Russian svr, the Foreign Intelligence Service, I would imagine, you know, she's not a seasoned, you know, crusty spy.

[Gordon]

No, I mean, this is new for her, isn't it?

[David]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gordon]

This is a step up.

[David]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

And I think actually, you know, the undercover almost suggests that at one point he goes, you know, are you ready for the next step?

[David]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

And she goes, of course, you know, so I think they're playing on her psychology there of wanting to be a spy, improving herself, you know, and saying, well, if you are, this is what you've got to do. You've got to do this. So, I mean, this ends at about 5 o'clock on that Saturday afternoon, and she leaves the cafe. But then things appear to start to go wrong. So this is Saturday, about 6pm The FBI are watching her, and they've got a surveillance team on her, and they see her go to a phone store and appear to buy something and also start to do a kind of what they call a surveillance detection route, an sdr. That's when you're trying to see if you've got anyone on your tail. Is that right?

[David]

Yeah, exactly. I think she's. And my sense from the FBI documents are that she's kind of doing this in A bit of a slipshod fashion, but the idea is how do you run a route that fits in your pattern of life? So if someone's watching you, it makes sense, right, that you're going from point A to B to C to D, but it's being drawn out and you're moving in such a way so that you cannot not evade surveillance or lose it, but detect it to see if.

[Gordon]

Someone'S on your shell.

[David]

She is trying to see if there are, you know, someone watching her. And it could be all the way from a lone person following you to a really sophisticated effort of, you know, three, four or five teams, some fixed, some mobile.

[Gordon]

Yeah.

[David]

And the problem of course is that the FBI team and. I can't believe this, Gordon, I'm again having to laud the Phoebes here. The FBI has the special surveillance group which called the GS, which are their best surveillance teams working this target. And so the idea that Anna, who I think is probably has some probably mixture of classroom and maybe back in Moscow, some street training in how to do an SDR is woefully overmatched.

[Gordon]

Yeah, she's not going to be the team.

[David]

Yeah, exactly.

[Gordon]

She's not going to find that on FBI's home team. Her.

[David]

Yeah, right.

[Gordon]

And she makes a crucial mistake, it appears, because after she's been to one of these phone stores to, to, to buy something, she throws away a bag and the GS or the phoebes, the GS from the phoebes, is that right?

[David]

These are the GS from the GS from the.

[Gordon]

Pull the bag out of it and inside is a contract to purchase a cell phone made out in the name of Irina Kutsova. And the address that she'd given is 99 Fake Street, Brooklyn. You gotta love it.

[David]

I mean, I mean, I think if we needed any more evidence that she is a bit of a trainee at this point in her intelligence trajectory. There, there we've got it. 99 Fake Street.

[Gordon]

Yeah. And so it's clearly what she's got. And there's also a kind of international calling cards which she seems to have bought, she's clearly bought a burner phone for kind of one time use to contact someone in Moscow. Now potentially this is an absolute disaster, isn't it? Because if she calls Moscow and says, hang on a sec, did you really send this guy to meet me? And you know, I'm worried someone's on my trail, the whole thing collapses. You know, if she sends a kind of warning to Moscow and then Moscow sends A warning to the other illegals. And The Americans, the FBI aren't allowed to arrest them for another 24 hours. The whole thing kind of risks falling apart. But the mistake she's made is throwing away the receipt because using that, the FBI can then get up on her phone. They can kind of intercept her phone.

[David]

They get the phone, and then I presume, they probably immediately get a FISA warrant to intercept him. Right, right.

[Gordon]

And who does she call?

[David]

Dad. She calls her dad, which makes total sense. And also he's kind of uniquely positioned also to counsel her. Right. Because he's an intelligence officer. Yeah, yeah.

[Gordon]

So she's gone to her dad for advice and also perhaps for help, given he is a KGB now SVR officer from Foreign Intelligence Service. And she says to him, something strange has happened. You know, I met someone. I was asked to meet them. I handed over my laptop to them, which he. He appears to get, you know, very angry about. You did what? You know, because I think he's. He's immediately sensing that something is wrong. But it's interesting. He. The advice he gives her is not to run, not to kind of get out of there immediately. But interesting enough to report what happened to the police. I mean, I find this kind of interesting.

[David]

It's actually brilliant, though, I think, isn't it? Because of course, he doesn't know. Anna's dad does not understand the level of surveillance that the Phoebes have on her and just how they completely. They've got her completely owned at this point.

[Gordon]

Yeah.

[David]

So turning the passport in, it's brilliant because it allows you to return to sort of your cover. Right. As, hey, I'm a property broker, and this strange person came up to me and tried to get me to do this thing, and I'm coming clean.

[Gordon]

So you bluff it out. Basically. Yeah.

[David]

Yeah. I think it's actually a really wise bit of counsel rather than just run.

[Gordon]

Because I guess if you run, it's done. It's done. You're right.

[David]

It's over. It's over. And of course, I think it'd be fair to say psychologically, Anna doesn't want to run either because she's having quite a good time in New York. So she doesn't want this party to come crashing down.

[Gordon]

No.

[David]

Any more than the SVR does.

[Gordon]

So we get to the final day. Sunday, 11:00am, the FBI. An FBI person posing as a Russian woman is waiting near the World Financial center to talk about the Hamptons or California or whatever it is. And there's a no show. She doesn't turn up for that. And instead she follows Dad's advice and she goes to the first precinct station of the nypd, New York Police Department in downtown Manhattan, and basically goes, this really scary thing happened to me. You know, I don't know what to do. But here's the Phoebes, who've of course got the advantage that they've been up on her phone. And so she's there in the police station, thinking she's talking to police detectives. But no, it's Phoebe, it's Thebes again. They're there, They've got there overnight. They put in place a plan. Now, this is the bit I find extraordinary because they've got her. It's now Sunday afternoon. They've got her in a police station. They've actually got a warrant for her arrest anyway. And they can't arrest her because the orders from the White House are, you cannot do this until the Russian President has left and his plane has left. So they've basically got to delay her for hours and just keep her talking.

[David]

I think this was a couple days earlier, but the part of the Obama Medvedev visit that I recollect most vividly was they went to one of my favorite burger places in Northern Virginia. It's called Ray's Hellburger. It was the best burger in D.C. for a long time. I think all these places have shut down. They had a great burger that had, like, bone marrow and all this stuff on it was delicious.

[Gordon]

That's right.

[David]

So Obama and Medvedev are eating their burgers. I always think with this story that they're eating their burgers while the Phoebes are sweating. And a chat.

[Gordon]

Yeah.

[David]

In the NYPD station in New York.

[Gordon]

And so what they do is they just kind of find ways of delaying it. They get to look through, I think, mug shot books of people going, you know, is this the person you saw, you know, when at the coffee shop? And of course it's not going to be the person. Surprise, surprise. But they've got a lot of pictures to show us. Yeah. So they managed to kind of hold it there for hours. And all this time the other sequences are going in place. So Pataev, the agent from the CIA and FBI have been running in Moscow, has got out this weekend and he's finally arriving. I think he comes out through Belarus, Ukraine, Frankfurt, and then eventually to the U.S. so he's arriving. So the CIA are watching that and making sure that he's got out without being stopped. And the FBI are watching not just Anna, but a whole group of Illegals waiting for the order. And then finally you get the instruction that Medvedev's plane is out of North American airspace. The order goes in and the team literally just walk into the room where Anna thinks she's talking to a bunch of police detectives. And on go the handcuffs and it's over.

[David]

And then ensues an absolute Gong show of insane headlines.

[Gordon]

Yeah, yeah.

[David]

Are you aware of how mean your tabloids are, Gordon? Are you? The tabloids had an absolute field day with it.

[Gordon]

Oh, they.

[David]

I mean, almost instantly, right. Even with the mug shot.

[Gordon]

Yeah, because 10 people got arrested. But inevitably all the attention is on Anna because of the way she looks. And, you know, even in a mugshot, she looks quite kind of glamorous. And of course, it's tabloid fodder for New York tabloids and for London tabloids, because you've got someone who's been there in both and you've got the tabloids immediately focusing on her talking to her ex boyfriends, you know, getting details of her life. I mean, she becomes, you know, this kind of sensation in a way as this kind of Russian spy. And that's when the caricature kind of develops that we spoke of, you know, at the start about her being this kind of honey trap, which, as we say, she wasn't the rosy haired Rusky. But that was one of your tabloids, I think you'll find that was the New York Daily News.

[David]

Well, in the Post. The New York Post, which is, you know, maybe a kindler, gentler version of some of your Fleet street rags, Gordon. They wrote, can we keep her on the front page? As there's sort of rumors of a potential swap being offered. I mean, even Jay Leno, who's a late night host here in the States, had then Vice President Biden on in this time period. And Leno asks, are our spies this hot? And Biden says, it's not my idea to send her back. And this is the part of the story that I just find it's a fascinating insight into the instant fusion of sex and espionage in our culture. Like, I don't know if it's the bond effect or something like that, but that, I mean, the underlying assumption here is that you couldn't possibly have a female intelligence officer who was, you know, I mean, obviously she's a, she's in training and all this kind of stuff, but like who was really working effectively or on a path to work effectively to really do something valuable for the Russian services or to collect on us. Right. It's all just Sort of instantly a cartoon about sexpionage. And it misses the fundamental point about the threat, I think.

[Gordon]

Yeah, absolutely. So she appears in court, but in the end, the decision is not to prosecute her and the others because they're gonna be swapped for a group of people who are being held in prison in Russia for spying for the West. And four of them are going to be released in return for these 10 Russians or people linked to Russia who've been arrested in America. One of those, you know, who's coming out the other way is Sergei Skripal, who eventually gets poisoned with Novichok in Salisbury in 2018. But the swap is going to be at Vienna Airport that summer in July 2010. So it only takes a couple of weeks to organize it. And it's interesting because I remember speaking to one of the FBI officers who was, you know, with Anna actually at the airport, then on the plane. You know, they remember Anna being quite obsessed with whether she'd get her passport back first her American passport and then her British passport. And she's actually, when she's told no, she's not going to be able to keep them, she's really disappointed. I mean, she's surprised. And that's also quite kind of telling, isn't it, is that, I mean, she somehow thought that she'd be able to kind of go live in London after all this. But also that really bothers her, you know.

[David]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

And then on the plane, she gets really annoyed because she's kind of. All the newspapers are on the plane and she's flicking through these newspapers and again, it's all focused on her and her sex life. Basically. It's kind of Russian spy babes. Hot affair says one. She may have been a true cold warrior, but she was red hot in the sheets is another. And all these pictures, you know, she's kind of really annoyed about this and you can kind of understand why. And she kind of pushes them over to the FBI guy and say, look at this. And he says, everyone's seen it. And she's kind of, I think, maybe understandably annoyed at how she's being pictured and how she's being being treated. And she. She goes back and this spy swap to Moscow, and this is also, I think, fascinating, is that her and the other illegals have. Because the FBI have been watching them, they've not achieved that much. They've been rounded up, they've been caught, they've been exposed. Russia's had to swap out for, you know, people it wanted to keep. And so in some Ways they've been a failure. But actually, Vladimir Putin welcomes them as heroes, and he personally meets them, he sings songs with them, and he treats them as heroic figures. I think it tells you something about Putin as well, doesn't it? The fact that he does that well.

[David]

And he's greeted even. I mean, there have been other batches of illegals swapped back in the almost 15 years since, and he meets them at the airport. I mean, this is something that matters to him. Yeah, in some deep way. I mean, obviously, he is former kgb. You know, we were talking in the last episode on Anna about the differences in how the Russians think about espionage and the way we might think about it. And there's a tremendous amount of value placed on these people who get into enemy societies and sort of help the Russians understand or maybe shape them. I mean, it's. You know, I think to view it as a failure is not quite right.

[Gordon]

No. And I mean, illegals are kind of mythologized in Russian culture. And I mean, Putin himself kind of likes to say, at one point, I dealt with these people when I was in the kgb, so they're treated as heroes more than anything else. And I think then Anna, you know, it's interesting, some of the other people who are swapped out go very quiet and almost disappear, but Anna decides to go for it.

[David]

She goes for it.

[Gordon]

She goes for it. I mean, within, you know, a few months of being swapped out, she's at the launch of some cosmonauts who are going to the International Space Station. She's posing in Maxine magazine in a kind of quite a revealing, you know, outfit with a gun. I mean, almost playing to the James Bond stereotype about spies. It's interesting, isn't it? She's clearly made a decision. Well, this is what I've got. This is what I've been portrayed as. I'm going to make the most of it.

[David]

You know what it reminds me of a little bit, Gordon? There was a young woman here in the States who recently had a video go viral across every social media network possible. She was interviewed on the street and made some comments about certain acts in the bedroom, and it went absolutely insane. And then within a couple months, she's got her own podcast. She's got, you know, different licensing, branding deals. She's got a whole brand that's sort of connected to this very kind of infamous thing, but is separate from it, building on it, more refined in many ways. And I think anna, you know, 10 years, 15 years later, Anna's kind of doing that she's building a brand out of virality and she's selling a fantasy in many ways, isn't she?

[Gordon]

It's exactly right. She's a kind of early influencer, isn't she, who's worked out what her brand is and then decides to go for it. I mean, she gets a kind of TV show called Mysteries of the World with Anna Chapman, in which she's going to kind of review reveal things on Russian tv. You know, she's on Instagram. She's still, I think, got half a million followers or more.

[David]

Yeah, it's a big Russian language account. Yeah, yeah.

[Gordon]

I mean, she's still got a show on Russia Today, I think, called Red Alert. I started watching some of the episodes of it the other day, which was all about, you know, the kind of what the west was really up to and how, you know, CIA and MI6 were behind all the evils of the world. So, you know, she's built it and she's built that brand and the Anna Chapman brand. And where are we? We're 15 years after that arrest. She's still using it and building it quite effectively. Do you remember it at the time in 2010 when it first broke?

[David]

I was at CIA then. And what kind of is fascinating to me is, I mean, I found out in the press just like everybody else. And it's not totally uncommon, of course. I mean, CIA is a big place, and I was working on the Middle east, and so it was not abnormal to discover things in the press that are going on in other parts of the world. But it's an interesting facet of kind of the CIA's Russia culture, its Russia house culture, that it is so insular, you know, I mean, if we were reading anything related to, you know, I worked on Syria, anything related to Syria, Russia. I mean, a lot of it back then was hard copy stuff. Someone would literally walk you the report. It would go back in a safe. I mean, the Russia House guys and girls were seen even inside the sort of paranoid bounds of CIA as being freakishly paranoid. And in many respects, I think, kind of adopting the same paranoid tendencies of the country that they watched. Right. I mean, they sort of became like the Russians in many ways, really outside of the loop, a very small loop inside Langley. And of course, a few folks out in Moscow station knew this was. This was happening until it was ongoing on the tarmac in Vienna. Now, one of the people that we talked about in the first episode of this when she was married to him is Alex Chapman. Right. And it is Interesting, I think, to see, again, to take this to a pretty human level and to see some of the individual costs that happened along the way. Because his story ends up being quite a sad one, doesn't it?

[Gordon]

Yeah, it is. I mean, he obviously becomes focus of media attention at the time. He gets interviewed by MI5 straight after the arrest in 2010 because they want to know as much as they can about his ex wife's past.

[David]

Is he the source of some of the leaked photos?

[Gordon]

I think that's the assumption is that he's passed on some of the photos, might be, you know, there are other boyfriends as well. But while, you know, Anna goes on to be a kind of tabloid sensation and TV star, you know, Alex dies in 2016, aged just 36, and I mean, apparently a drug overdose. Nothing suspicious, we should say. A sad story, you know, and it's, in a way, it's a reminder that sometimes, you know, there are people who get caught up, you know, ordinary people, if you like, who get caught up in these spy stories and real lives sometimes damaged by them. It is a kind of sad part of it. And I guess that's a good moment to kind of step back and think what we make about this story. Because, I mean, one of the things we make of it is, is that it was a success story because FBI and CIA had this source inside found, you know, were able to monitor them. It was because they had that source, they were able to watch Anna Chapman and, you know, wrap up the operation when they wanted to. And I mean, that's a great success. And without that, it could have been much more damaging, I think. I mean, I think, you know, one of the things I often reflect on is that, you know, people say, wow, how damaging was Anna Chapman anyway? She was going to various parties and what did that mean? But I do think she had the potential. If she hadn't been watched, if she'd been left without any kind of coverage from the FBI and CIA, she could have been very damaging because you could imagine her being the kind of person who would, you know, marry a senator or the CEO of a bank and move in very influential circles and gather very, very sensitive information and be able to influence things in a very, you know, significant way because that was the world she was moving in and clearly capable of moving in. And so without that kind of coverage, I think, you know, the ability of someone like Anna Chapman to do some actually quite significant damage would have been quite real and quite much more than, if you like the honey trap stereotype that we Talked about.

[David]

Well, and you have to think we're talking about a story that came to its head in 2010, almost 15 years ago. You have to think today with Russia being much more shut off from the West. I mean, frankly, right after the invasion of Ukraine, there was a massive expulsion of Russian diplomats. And I'm sure there were a whole bunch of SVR and FSB spies who were sent home in this. You know, all these guys are sent, girls are sent back to Russia. You have to think the kind of these illegals. There is tremendous incentive for the Russians to be building these programs and dispatching this type of person, dispatching people like Anna to the states, to Western Europe, in order to collect information in a world where sort of Russian officialdom is not welcome and that kind of COVID is no longer going to be helpful. So, you know, you have to think that there are plenty of Anas out there today among us. Gordon?

[Gordon]

Yeah, I think that's right.

[David]

What are we not seeing, you know, particularly if we don't have the deputy head of directorate S for an asset.

[Gordon]

That's right. Some illegals have been rolled up. I mean, summer of 2024, some got swapped who'd been living in kind of Slovenia, you know, people in Norway, people who've been arrested elsewhere. I think one got picked up in Brazil who was trying to kind of get a job at the International Criminal Court. So. So Russia is still using these kind of people and, and the types of people like Anna Chapman and still sending them out and trying to make the most of that ability. And you're right. I mean, what we don't know is how many other Anna Chapmans are there out there or have there been, you know, and what have they got up to?

[David]

There is a great truism about this kind of work, which is it is basically impossible to find these kind of deep cover illegals unless you have a spy in the system. You know, it sort of. It takes a spy to catch a spy. Right. And so I think even though there are some definitive Cold war vibes over this whole thing, it's a very modern story in which penetrating the other side's intelligence service continues to have massive value because you just cannot see these networks unless you get someone inside kind of the belly of the beast to report back. Yeah, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. I mean, I think there would be plenty of reasons. I mean, I think this is maybe a good place to close, Gordon. With a great rest is classified dose of paranoia about the Russians. But there's great reason to Think that there will be more Anna Chapmans down the line at some point in the future.

[Gordon]

Indeed. Well, thanks for listening to the Rest is Classified and we'll see you next time.

[David]

See you next time. Foreign.

[Gordon]

Here. And if you've been enjoying the Rest is Classified and are after more espionage content, I've got very good news for you. We have ways of making you talk. Another podcast from Goal Hanger that focuses solely on World War II has just released a special series on female spies during the Second World War and it's featuring the brilliant Claire Mully, a friend of mine and an amazing historian. Now, amongst the stories they're going to discuss is the tale of Kristina Skarbek, the Polish beauty queen who became an SOE agent and undertook extraordinarily dangerous missions in Nazi occupied Poland and France. Such was her success that she was once described as Churchill's favorite spy. To give you a taster, here's a clip from the series. Just give us this amazing woman. Absolutely incredible. Without hesitation, deviation, repetition. Just a minute on Christina Scarborough. Well, we were talking about being the originals, you know, the originals of the SAS the other day. She is the original.

[Alexandra]

She is first woman to serve Britain as a special agent even before SOE was established and actually the longest serving special agent, male or female for Britain during the Second World War. Yeah, indeed. Six years. Six years. So yeah, she was banging on the door of SIS MI6 in 1939. Not so much volunteering as demanding to be taken on. And of course the young men in there, and they were all young men, just laughed at her.

[Gordon]

Okay, but what's her motivation for that?

[Alexandra]

Well, she's Polish born. Christina Skarbek or Kristina.

[Gordon]

She's living in England. Is she by this time?

[Alexandra]

No, she was actually then married to her second husband who was a diplomat in Southern Africa when they heard the news of the outbreak. So they turned around to come back to serve their nation, Poland. But they had to come back with wartime conditions very slowly in convoy around sort of possible submarine areas. So by the time they got back, Poland, of course never capitulated, but had fallen and been occupied and divided. And so she felt that the fastest way she could join the Allied effort was to volunteer for the British Special Forces. So there she is demanding to be taken on and they just laugh at her because she's not British and above all she's a woman and there are no women doing this work. But she's just too good to be turned down.

[Gordon]

How does know which doorbell to ring to go and see sis?

[Alexandra]

Well, I Mean, she, she'd done a bit of journalism before the war and she definitely was moving in those circles internationally. Yeah, she'd been in Paris, her husband was a well known diplomat, so yeah, she had contacts we don't entirely know, but we know some people who could.

[Gordon]

Have put her adjacent enough.

[Alexandra]

Exactly.

[Gordon]

And after all, journalism, diplomacy, there is some interface. Lots of people double hatting in those. Exactly worlds. Yeah.

[Alexandra]

So. Yeah. So because she served directly for Britain during the Second World War, most of her papers are in the National Archives at Kew. And the first memo in there is really fantastic. It's these young men who describe her as expert skier, a great adventuress and absolutely fearless. But what I loved is one of them had pencilled in the margin. But she terrifies me. That gives you an idea of her character. And despite everything, you know, she had, she was a gift horse. They couldn't look in the mouth. She had the right contact, she spoke the right languages and she knew secret routes in and out of occupied Poland. Because as a rather bored countess at the. When she was married to her first husband, actually she used to smuggle cigarettes by skiing over the high Tatra Mountains, in and out. And actually she didn't even smoke. She was one of the few women in 1930s Europe who didn't smoke. She just did it for kicks, just for the thrill of it. But it meant she knew the smuggling routes in and out of the mountains.

[Gordon]

So in February 1941, for instance, she's taking microfilm.

[David]

Yeah.

[Alexandra]

She served in three different theatres of the war. So this is the first one she is serving as sort of working in intelligence and as a courier.

[Gordon]

Yeah.

[Alexandra]

She made the first contact between Britain and the fledgling resistance in Poland, which of course is the first occupied nation. So Britain's desperate to find out what's going on in the country. So she skis in, gets rid of her skis and then she goes around the country, she makes contact with the resistance, she collects information from them, but she also undertakes her own intelligence, going around the country, seeing where troop movements are and so on, and then takes microfilm and other material first coding information so we could establish radio contact with the Polish resistance, skis back over the mountains to Budapest where she's based, and hands it over to both Polish and British resistance contacts, which is remarkable.

[Gordon]

Can we just go back a bit? Because she's arrived in London in 1939, back end of 1939, says, you need to take me on. They're. They eventually say, yes, okay, fine, yep. Then what I mean, she has training?

[Alexandra]

No. Well, she's trained later on she's trained.

[Gordon]

In 41, she's volunteered to MI6.

[David]

SIS.

[Alexandra]

That's right.

[Gordon]

So she's been taken on by SIS.

[Alexandra]

So they do give her a false identity. She's sent to Budapest and she's meant to be a French journalist. I mean among her language skills she's completely fluent in French and that's not unusual. Hungary hasn't fallen yet. There's lots of international journalists based there, seeing what's going on in Eastern Europe. So she's sent out there and from there she independently goes across the mountains and she does make contact with the fledgling Polish resistance. The first time she skied in is actually with the pre war Olympic Polish skiing champion, which is quite handy. And then when she comes back she makes contact with the man, Andrew Kawarski, who becomes one of her main partners in the war, who's a one legged veteran. He's got a prosthetic, one wooden leg which is quite useful actually because he whittled a hole in it and would hide information, hide stuff in his leg. Yeah, this is why I don't write novels, you know.

[Gordon]

Yeah, we just touched on it a moment ago that soe, the creation of soe, and she predates this, but this is really the sort of significant thing that happens in British efforts to famously set Europe ablaze. Yeah, I mean we're doing a podcast about secret agents about soe. We have to say set Europe ablaze or we'll be run out of town, won't we? We have to use get through that bit.

[David]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

And this, this is really, really important, isn't it? Because when we've talked about SIS here, but here's an actually separate organization being set up quite deliberately partly under the.

[Alexandra]

Wing of sis, even though there was huge problems between them.

[Gordon]

Well, yes, I mean it's sort of Venn diagram that they sort of phase in and out of one another as the war runs. And is soe under SIS's purview or.

[Alexandra]

It wasn't, but it was partly from SIS, partly from Section D, Defer destruction, which is, you know, Big Bang, sabotage, which is partly why sas, of course, which is silent intelligence to get on with them.

[Gordon]

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