Sources: Call by Russian spy Chapman to dad in Moscow led U.S. to hasten arrests

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 12, 2010

An anxious June 26 phone call from Russian spy Anna Chapman to her father, a KGB veteran working in Moscow's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, led the Obama administration to hasten the arrests the next day of Chapman and nine other "illegals" in the United States, according to U.S. law enforcement and intelligence sources.

In the call to Moscow, apparently monitored by the United States, Chapman voiced suspicions that she might have been discovered.

Planning had begun in mid-June to arrest four couples, who had been under FBI surveillance for years, plus Chapman, 28, and another new Russian "illegal" Mikhail Semenov, who had been in the United States for only months. Part of the plan involved getting Chapman and Semenov to undertake acts, at the suggestion of FBI informants, that would enable them to be indicted for more than just carrying on secret communications with Russian officials.

Chapman's call to Moscow, after a troubling meeting with an FBI informant, came on the eve of a scheduled trip by one of the other Russians, Richard Murphy. He was to leave for Moscow the next day to consult with his superiors at Moscow Center, headquarters of the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence agency.

(More here.)