Russian spy ring claim - 29 June

11.50am:
Here are the key points so far:
The FBI arrested 10 alleged Russian spies on Sunday in Yonkers, Boston and northern Virginia. Five of the suspects appeared in court yesterday. An 11th suspect remains at large.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, today described the charges as "contradictory". "They have not explained anything to us. I hope they will do so," he said. His ministry described the charges as "baseless".
 The alleged spy ring is accused of trying to gather information on US nuclear weapons, American policy toward Iran, and the CIA, and many other subjects. The arrests follow a "multi-year" investigation, the FBI said.
Court papers, running to 55 pages published by the New York Times, show the details of the charges.
Those charged lived as ordinary suburban "couples working ordinary jobs, chatting to the neighbours about schools and apologising for noisy teenagers," according to the New York Times. Some of the four accused couples, including residents of Montclair, New Jersey, and Yonkers, even had children together to make their cover more realistic, according to the New York Daily News.

12.23pm:
The 11th alleged spy has been arrested by police in Cyprus, according to Reuters. He has been released on bail.

12.34pm:
There is a Linkedin profile under the name of one of the alleged spies Anna Chapman. As with so many aspects of this story it is difficult to know at this stage whether this is genuine or a parody. But it says she worked for two years for a hedge fund in London, where she was responsible for "capital market research".

12.46pm:
Oleg Gordievsky, an ex-deputy head of the KGB in London who defected in 1985, told AP that he reckons there are up to 50 couples operating under deep cover in the US.

12.51pm:
The Cambridge Chronicle's Wicked Local website spells out the cover story of two of the alleged spies, Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley.

Heathfield is a principal at Global Partners Inc., an international consulting and management development firm at One Broadway. He is also the developer of Future Maps, a software system that helps map a picture of anticipated future events.

He has worked as a business consultant in information systems across the globe with companies like Alstom, Boston Scientific, General Electric, Praxair and T-Mobile, according to his work profile.

He is highly educated and studied at the London School of Economics, holds an MBA from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees in Paris, a master's in public administration from Harvard's Kennedy School and a BA in International Economics from York University in Toronto.

Tracey Foley is a licensed real estate broker, according to state records. She also goes by the name Ann Foley and has been an agent at Redfin Corp in Somerville for the past five months and at Weichert Realtors under Channing Real Estate in Cambridge for two prior years.

She claimed she's from Montreal and studied at McGill University, according to her real estate website. She also said she's lived and was educated in Switzerland, Canada and France. Prior to her career in real estate she worked as a human resources officer in Toronto and ran her own travel agency in Cambridge that "specialized in organizing wine enthusiast trips to France."

1.09pm:
NorthJersey.com has profiles and details of the arrests of another of the alleged spy couples, Richard and Cynthia Murphy.

It includes amateur video footage of the aftermath of arrests and some great quotes from neighbours.

"I didn't realize Russia still did that," said Margo Sokolow, who has lived on Marquette Road for 34 years. "With a name like Murphy who's going to think they're Russian spies?"

1.16pm:
More details are emerging about the arrest of the 11th man in Cyprus.

Here's Reuters:

Robert Christopher Metsos, 55, was arrested at Cyprus's Larnaca airport as he tried to leave the island for Budapest early on Tuesday, police said. A magistrate released Metsos on €20,000 bail to reappear in court within 30 days, when an extradition hearing will start.

It is highly unusual for Cyprus courts to issue bail for foreign nationals pending extradition. In court hearings prosecutors frequently cite the risk of flight via an unrecognised breakaway state in the island's north.

Police had attempted to hold Metsos in custody pending the extradition hearing.
"Based on the (Interpol) red notice we received, he is wanted for money laundering and espionage," police spokesman Michalis Katsounotos told Reuters.

Local media reports said Metsos was a Canadian with a US passport.

Metsos has been accused of receiving and making payments to the other members of the group, including getting payments during a brush-pass with a Russian government official who was affiliated with the Russian mission to the United Nations in New York, according to the US Justice Department.

Metsos had arrived in Cyprus on June 17 and had been staying alone at a hotel in Larnaca, on the east Mediterranean island's southern coast.

1.20pm:
My colleague Ameila Hill has been going through those court papers. Here's what she's picked out so far:

An FBI undercover agent claiming to be a Russian consulate employee, in New York, gave Anna Chapman a passport with a fictitious name to pass on to an FBI agent posing as another Russian spy.

The two women would have the following conversation: "Excuse me, but haven't we met in California last summer?" "No, I think it was the Hamptons". Chapman would then go to a map of the city and stick a stamp on the margin of the map, to show the meeting had been successful.

Also, information was exchanged between Chapman, [Mikhail] Semenko and a Russian government official by means of private wireless connections. Either Chapman or Smenko would sit in a restaurant, coffee shop or linger in a book shop, and the official would drive slowly by or park in a nearby car park. FBI agents who had the situation under surveillance said that after the Russian agents were in place, the Americans were able to detect the presence of a particular private network with two Mac addresses.

1.37pm:
"They couldn't have been spies. Look what she did with the hydrangeas," 15-year-old Jessie Gugig quipped to the New York Times after the arrest of the Murphys. That has to be the best reaction from a neighbour so far.

1.44pm:
Amelia Hill has another interesting extract from the court papers.

"Illegals use many methods to exchange information with each other, including brush-passes, short-wave radio operation and invisible writing, use of codes and ciphers, including the use of encrypted Morse code messages, the creation and use of a cover profession.

Upon completion of their training in Russia, illegals are generally provided with new, false, identities - known as their 'legend'. Illegals sometimes do degrees at universities, obtain work and join professional assocaitions. They often operate in pairs, placed together under the guise of a married couple. Illegals who are placed together and co-habit in the country to which they are assigned will often have children together - this further deepens an illegal's "legend'."

1.55pm:
The British and Irish governments are investigating claims that members of the ring used false passports from their countries for travel, writes Peter Walker.

While Peter's is being subbed, here's an extract.

Richard Murphy, was told to meet an intelligence operative in Rome for a "brush past" meeting, at which he would be handed a fake Irish passport for his onward journey to Russia.

This involved Murphy meeting an SVR (Russian foreign intelligence agency) agent outside a bookshop on a quiet street just south of Rome's city centre.

The agent was to identify Murphy by a copy of Time magazine he was holding, and give him the coded message: "Excuse me, could we have met in Malta in 1999?"

Murphy was to reply, "Yes indeed, I was in La Valetta, but in 2000", before being given the passport.

2.09pm:
The Guardian has a new Russian spy ring page to house all the stories and analysis on the subject. On it you'll find Peter's piece mentioned below and commentary from Luke Harding in Moscow on the impact on US-Russian relations.

He writes:

Plot or no plot, Dmitry Medvedev now has to weigh up whether he is willing to jeopardise the new and genuine rapprochement he has built up over the past year with the Obama administration. Relations between Washington and Moscow have improved significantly since the dark semi-cold war days of the Bush era, with both leaders having invested heavily in their personal friendship. And there have been results: a new, if modest, Start treaty on nuclear arms reduction, and a deal on civilian nuclear co-operation. The US has backed Russia's long-delayed application for the World Trade Organisation; Russia has taken a tougher line on Iran.

There is also a video of the arrests, a gallery which shows images of the suspect's homes, and the charges in full.

2.47pm:
The English-language Russian broadcaster Russia Today has a fairly straight take on the story, but it makes much of an ex-CIA boss claiming that the arrests were a "PR exercise".

3pm:
This is Richard Adams in Washington, taking over from Matthew Weaver.

The New York Times has more information about Russian reaction to the alleged Russian spies, and a brief history of the use of undercover "Illegals" since the Soviet era:

One of the people accused of involvement in the espionage ring made no secret of his ties to Russia, openly taking part in Russian social media in order to keep up with friends from high school and university.

The suspect, Mikhail Semenko, a Russian immigrant, maintained a page on Odnoklassniki, one of the most popular Russian web sites, where he joined alumni groups from his high school and university in Russia's Far East. He lived in Blagoveshchensk, 3,600 miles from Moscow, and attended Amur State University, earning a degree in international relations.

(So "Odnoklassniki" is Russian for Facebook? No but here's a link.)

3.20pm:
More information is coming in from Cyprus, where the "11th man", Robert Christopher Metsos, was arrested this morning, and has now been released on bail – which suggests the court in Larnaca doesn't think he's a flight risk (especially as Northern Cyprus is just next door). AP is reporting:

Spokesman Michalis Katsounotos said 54-year-old Christopher Robert Metsos was arrested early Tuesday based on an Interpol arrest warrant. Metsos appeared in a Larnaca court, which ordered Metsos released on $US24,700 bail after surrendering his travel documents. The court also ordered Metsos to report to a Larnaca police station once a day.

Katsounotos says Metsos will remain on the island for one month until extradition proceedings begin.

3.30pm:
Fox News is raising the possibility of Russia expelling some US diplomats in a "tit-for-tat" retaliation – but they just seem to like saying the phrase "tit-for-tat" rather than having any real insight.

The US cable news channels are less interested in the spy story than would otherwise be the case, because of two high profile hearings in the Senate this morning: Elena Kagan's nomination to the US Supreme Court, and General David Petraeus's confirmation hearing on Afghanistan.

4pm BST:
My colleague Helena Smith in Athens is reporting on the goings-on in Cyprus in the wake of the arrest of the alleged "11th man" Christopher Metsos (which may not be his real name):

Appearing before a district court judge in Larnaca, the 55-year-old was told he could walk free, pending an extradition hearing within 30 days, if he posted €20,000 in bail. Metsos, who is thought to have been travelling on a Canadian passport, is believed to have immediately returned to the hotel in Larnaca he had booked out of only hours before.

"It's not what we expected," a police spokesman told the Guardian. "We wanted to have him detained until an extradition hearing … we are now waiting for more documents from the United States in the hope that we can go back to the courts."

Suspects arrested on the island are almost always held in custody for fear they may attempt to flee through the internationally unrecognised Turkish-run enclave of northern Cyprus. Both Turkey and Syria are only short boat rides away.

I'll link to Helena's full article when it's on the site.

4.15pm BST:
According to the US court documents detailing the charges against the so-called spies, Metsos sounds as if he was a paymaster for other members in the group

You can see the documents here, with the US complaint claiming that Metsos visited the US to pay the other alleged spies using secretive methods.

Metsos was passed cash by a Russian official by swapping bags while passing each other on a staircase at a train station in upstate New York. Metsos later drove to Wurtsboro in New York state, while being tracked by the FBI using a GPS device secretly installed in his car. Agents went to a spot where Metsos stopped and found a buried package beneath a beer bottle, which they replaced and set up a camera. They had to wait two years before the video caught two unnamed secret agents digging up the package.

4.30pm BST:
With several of the alleged spies claiming Canadian citizenship, the Canadian Press reports, via the CBC:

The defendants known as Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley claim to be born in Canada, while Patricia Mills claims to be a Canadian citizen, court papers filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York showed. [Christopher] Metsos also claims to be a Canadian citizen.

One of the alleged spies reportedly used the birth certificate of a Canadian infant who died in the 1960s, but it's not clear what documents supported the citizenship claims made by the other accused.

4.40pm BST:
An interesting sidelight to the allegations is that one of the so-called spies is Vicky Pelaez, a columnist for El Diario La Prensa, one of the largest and most respected Spanish-language daily newspapers in the US, with a daily readership of nearly 300,000. Pelaez is originally from Peru, and for more than 20 years she has written about US politics, immigration and other issues for the New York-based newspaper.

Naturally, US anti-immigration conservatives have latched onto this, with one blogger at Hot Air describing Pelaez's work as "a derivative recitation of just some of the choicer themes in modern Leftist thought":

Dig around the internet and you'll find a few choice nuggets written by Ms Pelaez, mostly in Spanish. US prisons as modern-day slavery? Check. Arizona's 'unholy' immigration law as modern-day Nazi legislation? Check. The United States as wanton human rights violator? Check. We've been so unfair to so many other well-meaning, anti-imperialist nations, and it turns out that Ms Pelaez just happens to have been a bit more pro-active in her advocacy for one or more of them.

4.55pm BST:
Vicky Pelaez's employers at El Diario La Prensa have an account of her arrest, which I will translate badly from Spanish:

According to statements from their relatives to EDLP [El Diario La Prensa], the vehicle carrying Peláez, Lázaro and their son Juan José, 17, was intercepted by the FBI in two vans when they arrived home around 9pm... After the arrest, FBI agents raided their home and removed boxes of documents, computers and electronic equipment.

Two agents questioned Peláez's sons in the front room, inquiring about the finances and political affiliations of their parents, foreign travel, and if they had special compartments in the house or owned advanced technology. "I was asked if I had ever seen my parents with a large sum of money, if they ever had a computer that they never let me use," said Juan, Peláez's youngest son.

The young man noticed that the agents knew several details about his life. "They even knew my nickname. They knew everything..."

Elsewhere in the piece, one of the couples' sons is quoted as saying: "My parents know very little about computers, they sometimes can't even make Yahoo Mail work."

5.15pm BST:
President Obama declined to comment on the spy allegations just now. Speaking to reporters about the state of the US economy, Obama was asked about the alleged spies, and he brushed off the question with a nod and a brisk "Thank you".

5.38pm BST:
Helena Smith's article on events in Cyprus and the arrest of the alleged "11th man" is now up:

Greek Cypriot police appeared dumbfounded today that Christopher Metsos, the alleged paymaster of the Russian "deep cover" spying operation, should have been released on bail.

6pm BST:
David Wolstencroft, the screenwriter and creator of the BBC spy drama Spooks – broadcast under the title MI-5 in the US – has some fun with the retro-activities of the alleged spies:

What the alleged spy ring is demonstrating is something we already know: that the oldies are still the goodies. We have seen every wrench and spanner of the cold war toolkit on display – dead drops, maps with stamps on, code words and even a "C".

6.30pm BST:
The New York Times has some fresh news. The FBI moved in to arrest the alleged spies on Sunday, after tracking them for 10 years, because it feared one of the ring's members was about to permanently leave the US:

While the person with travel plans was not flying directly to Russia, investigators believed that Russia was his destination and that he was not planning to return. The FBI did not want any of the suspects to escape, and "you can't take down one without taking down all of them," one official said, discussing the case on condition of anonymity.

6.52pm BST:
Others have doubts about the timing of the arrests, especially after 10 years of surveillance. Marcy Wheeler of FireDogLake reads the documents and does some sleuthing of her own:

So why did DOJ decide to roll up this spy network now? Why not continue tracking what the Russians are tracking?

I can think of three potential reasons:

• To disrupt US-Russian relations
• Because the Russians had detected US (or third party) sabotage
• Because of other changes in DOJ personnel

7.14pm BST:
My colleague Andrew Clark in New York City reports on alleged spy Anna Chapman's likely LinkedIn social media website profile:

A profile apparently belonging to Chapman on the social networking website LinkedIn suggests that she may have worked in London before moving to New York. The profile lists a job at the private jet leasing firm NetJets Europe from 2003 to 2004 selling private aviation to Russian businesses. It says she subsequently worked at the investment banking arm of Barclays Bank for a year and at a hedge fund named as "Navigator" between 2005 and 2007.

A NetJets spokesman confirmed that an individual named Anna Chapman worked at the UK office of the private jets leasing agency as an executive assistant in its sales department, albeit for only two months in 2004. However, a Barclays spokesman in London shed doubt on the veracity of this CV, saying: "We have no record of an Anna Chapman who worked at Barclays Capital between those dates."

In the investment management industry, a number of funds contain the name "navigator" but it was not immediately possible to identify a London-based firm simply called "Navigator hedge fund". Chapman's supposed job title, "head of IPO", is not a usual title within the hedge funds industry.

7.38pm BST:
Uh oh, you don't want to get Vladimir Putin angry.

Prime minister Putin mentioned the arrests during a meeting at his home with Bill Clinton, who happens to be in Moscow for a conference.

"You have come to Moscow at the exact right time," Putin said to Clinton, according to reports in the NYT and AP. "Your police have gotten carried away, putting people in jail. That's their job. I'm counting on the fact that the positive trend seen in the relationship will not be harmed by these events."

Notice that Putin instinctively backs the police locking people up.

7.56pm BST:
Slightly late with this, but the Russian foreign ministry has issued a statement, finally acknowledging that some of the alleged spies are Russian citizens, although it hasn't said which ones by name.

But the statement said: "They have not conducted any activities directed against the interests of the United States." The foreign ministry also said it hoped that the US would allow the suspects access to lawyers and Russian officials.

8.16pm BST:
The Russian media is taking a dim view of the arrests. The Boston Globe's David Filipov finds the official newspaper of the Russian government, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, saying that the affair had the look of a political show trial:

"Exactly how much damage was caused by their activity was not clear from the official statements of the [US] justice ministry," the paper said. "However, the enthusiasm with which the American mass media latched onto this story by turning it into a 'spy scandal' speaks of the orchestration of these events."

[Old jokes revisited: "In Soviet Russia, spies arrest you!"]

8.44pm BST:
Wired's excellent Danger Room blog has a piece examining techniques the alleged spies are said to have used, according to the US justice department's criminal complaint. Some were sophisticated, such as hiding messages in photographs on websites. But in at least one case the "spies" got busted by foolishly writing down a password and leaving it lying around. D'oh:

In 2005, law enforcement agents raided the home of one of the alleged spies. There, they found a set of password-protected disks and a piece of paper, marked with "alt," "control," "e," and a string of 27 characters. When they used that as a password, the G-Men found a program that allowed the spies "to encrypt data, and then clandestinely to embed the data in images on publicly available websites."

9.12pm BST:
For what it's worth, the White House says the arrests of 11 people in an alleged Russian spy ring won't affect the relationship between the US and Russia. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said President Barack Obama was "fully and appropriately" informed about the matter, which he described as a "law enforcement matter".

But this is more interesting: Gibbs says Obama was aware of the investigation before he met with the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev at the White House last Thursday. The two leaders did not discuss the issue, Gibbs said.

9.23pm BST:
A State Department spokesman says nobody should be surprised that Russian secret agents are still operating in the US. "I don't think anyone was hugely shocked to know that some vestiges of old attempts to use intelligence are still there," said Phil Gordon.

Hmm, I wouldn't be so sure. The cold war ended a long time ago.

9.52pm BST:
My clever colleagues in London have managed to put all the Russian spy ring details on a spreadsheet for you to search and enjoy. It's a fantastic piece of work. Simon Rogers writes:

We've extracted the specific examples and allegations from the charge sheet and put them in a spreadsheet. Can you do anything with the information?

I bet there is. Download that data here.

10.12pm BST:
Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, has some thoughts on the spy business, along with a host of others, in tomorrow's G2 section of the Guardian:

"The thing I find interesting is why they have been arrested now," says Rimington. "[The FBI has] obviously been having a certain amount of fun with them, inviting them to spook meetings and so on.... It's more likely that the FBI feel they have spent enough resources on these people and it's time to turn those resources to something else.

10.30pm BST:
Russia's NTV television identifies two of the alleged spies as Russian and tonight showed their photographs taken from a social networking website. NTV said Mikhail Semenko had moved to the US in 2008 and Anna Chapman, who is said to have an English husband, moved to the US in February 2010. Both are in their late 20s, and both are said to be using their real names.

Meanwhile, the Guardian's top US agents Paul Harris and Chris McGreal send in their latest dispatch on the day's drama:

Perhaps nowhere gave better cover than the town of Montclair, set in New Jersey's urban sprawl. Richard and Cynthia Murphy lived in a quiet street called Marquette Road in a small but tasteful two-storey home. Cynthia was a well-dressed mother working in a New York bank. Her husband was a stay-at-home dad who helped raise their children. The surrounding streets were home to the television comic Stephen Colbert and middle-aged journalists and academics.

10.44pm BST:
Time to wrap things up for the night, so some closing thoughts:

Is this Anna Chapman's Facebook page?

Will there be any more arrests, perhaps of US citizens?

Did any of these "spies" do any actual spying?