FBI Releases Russian Spy Videos

Surveillance videos show deep-cover spies at work
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 1, 2011 2:16 AM CDT

The FBI has released videos, photos, and documents from its decade-long investigation into a Russian spy ring. In one video, Anna Chapman can be seen talking to an undercover FBI agent, ABC reports. Other videos show sleeper agents exchanging cash in a "brush pass" in a New York City train station. The 10 deep-cover spies involved in "Operation Ghost Stories" (so named because six of them took on the identities of dead people) were busted in 2010 and—in the biggest spy exchange since the Cold War—sent back to Russia, where they received the country's highest honors.

And the Los Angeles Times reports that while they aren't accused of walking away with US secrets, they were closer to succeeding than thought. "Several were getting close to high-ranking officials," explains an FBI assistant director for counterintelligence. One was working for someone closely associated with a US Cabinet member; another provided financial planning for the finance chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign. And a third attended Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, a training ground for many top government officials. (More Anna Chapman stories.)

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