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29 March 2024

FBI releases photos, videos of Russian spies

October 31, 2011: FBI shows stills from a video of Michael Zottoli (with a dark, over-the shoulder bag) walking to a meeting with Richard Murphy in 2009, Brooklyn, New York. The pictures were taken or seized during the decade-long Ghost Stories investigation.The FBI has released declassified photos and a video taken during the decade-long surveillance of 10 Russian "deep cover" spies who were arrested and deported last year. The surveillance photos showed other members of the ring in various public places, meeting other members, walking through the streets alone, and one of them at their Harvard graduation ceremony. (AFP)

Published
By AFP

The FBI has released declassified photos, videos and other documents collected during the decade-long surveillance of 10 Russian "deep cover" spies who were arrested and deported last year.

One video showed Anna Chapman, a 28-year-old spy whose nude pictures and racy romances made her an instant tabloid sensation, meeting in a New York coffee shop in June 2010 with an undercover US agent.

A second video shows Chapman browsing in a department store while a "Russian government official" waits for her outside, the FBI said. Other videos show three other agents arrested along with Chapman.

The surveillance photos showed other members of the ring in various public places, meeting other members, walking through the streets alone, and one of them at their Harvard graduation ceremony.

"The arrests of 10 Russian spies last year provided a chilling reminder that espionage on US soil did not disappear when the Cold War ended," the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.

Though the spies "never got their hands on any classified documents, their intent from the start was serious, well-funded... and far-ranging," the FBI said.

Dated October 25, the release also included documents but most of those were entirely censored or had been previously released.

The spies were arrested June 26, 2010 after a decade-long investigation code-named "Ghost Stories" and deported nearly two weeks later after pleading guilty to espionage charges.