WASHINGTON — They had lived for more than a decade in U.S. cities and suburbs from Seattle to New York, where they seemed to be ordinary people working ordinary jobs.
On Monday, though, federal prosecutors accused 11 people of being part of a Russian espionage ring, living under false names and deep cover in a patient scheme to penetrate what one coded message called American “policymaking circles.”
An FBI investigation that began at least seven years ago culminated with the arrest Sunday of 10 people in Yonkers, Boston and northern Virginia. The documents detailed what the authorities called the Illegals Program, an ambitious, long-term effort by the Foreign Intelligence Service, a successor to the Soviet KGB, to plant Russian spies in the United States to gather information and recruit more agents. The 11th suspect is still at large.
The charges did not include espionage, and it was unclear what secrets the suspected spy ring - which included five couples - actually managed to collect or what prompted U.S. authorities to finally shut it down.
Criminal complaints filed in U.S. district court Monday read like an old-fashioned Cold War thriller: spies swapping identical orange bags as they brushed past one another in a train station stairwell; an identity borrowed from a dead Canadian; forged passports of several countries; letters sent by shortwave burst transmission or in invisible ink; a money cache buried for years in a field in upstate New York.
But the network of so-called illegals - spies operating under false names outside of the usual diplomatic cover - also used cyber-age technology, according to the charges. They embedded coded texts in ordinary-looking images posted on the Internet, and they communicated by having two agents with laptops containing special software pass casually as messages flashed between them.
Neighbors in Montclair, N.J., of the couple who called themselves Richard and Cynthia Murphy were flabbergasted when a team of FBI agents turned up Sunday night and led the couple away in handcuffs. They worried about the Murphys’ elementary-age daughters, who were driven away by a family friend.
Jessie Gugigi, 15, said she could not believe the charges, especially against Cynthia Murphy, who was an accomplished gardener.
“They couldn’t have been spies,” Gugigi said. “Look what she did with the hydrangeas.”
Prosecutors said the Illegals Program extended to other countries. Using fake documents, the charges said, the spies would “assume identities as citizens or legal residents of the countries to which they are deployed, including the United States. Illegals will sometimes pursue degrees at target-country universities, obtain employment and join relevant professional associations” to deepen their false identities.
One message from bosses in Moscow gave the most revealing account of the agents’ assignment.
“You were sent to USA for long-term service trip,” it said. “Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. - all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles and send intels intelligence reports to Center.”
The defendants were charged with conspiracy to launder money and to fail to register as agents of a foreign government, crimes carrying potential sentences of five to 20 years.
The arrests made a splash in neighborhoods around the country.
Two defendants known as Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley were arrested at their Cambridge, Mass., residence Sunday. The couple appeared to be in their 40s, had two teenage sons, and lived in an apartment building on a residential street where some Harvard professors and students live.
“She was very courteous; she was very nice,” Montse Monne-Corbero, who lives in the apartment next door, said of Tracey Foley, who she said spoke with a foreign accent and was “pretty” with short blond hair.
The couple appeared briefly in Boston federal court on Monday afternoon. A detention hearing was set for Thursday.
Another of those charged, Mikhail Semenko, who the authorities said used his real name, was a stylish man in his late 20s who drove a Mercedes S-500, said Tatyana Day, who lives across the street from him in Arlington, Va. He had a brunette girlfriend and the young couple spoke to one another in Russian and “kept to themselves,” Day said.
Semenko appeared before U.S. Magistrate Theresa Buchanan early Monday afternoon in Alexandria, Va., according to the U.S. attorney’s office, with defendants known as Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills, who also lived in Arlington. The hearing was closed, and the three did not have attorneys present, U.S. attorney spokesman Peter Carr said.
Richard and Cynthia Murphy appeared in federal court in Manhattan with three others - defendants known as Vicky Pelaez and Juan Lazaro, who were arrested at their Yonkers, N.Y., residence, and a woman known as Anna Chapman, who was arrested in Manhattan. All five were held without bail.
Information for this article was contributed by Scott Shane, Charlie Savage, Benjamin Weiser, Nate Schweber, Mark Mazzetti, Yeganeh June Torbati and Abby Goodnough of The New York Times and by Pete Yost, Tom Hays, Matt Lee, Jim Heintz, Claudia Torrens, Nafeesa Syeed, Samantha Henry, Russell Contreras, Bob Salsberg and Rodrique Ngowi of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/29/2010