Russians Among Us

by Gordon Corera

  There was head-scratching in some parts of the FBI, former officers say, at the way the illegals seemed interested in people who worked in the markets, academics, fund-raisers close to politicians, think tanks—and the like. The width and breadth of the cultivation was a surprise when set against the traditional view of Russian targeting, in which they focused on classified information. Some questioned whether the illegals were just “living off the government tit,” as one former bureau official says, just enjoying life in America at the SVR’s expense. But others pointed out that the Russians would not have continued funding the operation unless they felt they were getting some benefit. Only later would it be appreciated that their targeting signaled a shift in Russian behavior toward greater interest in politics and influence rather than just secrets.

  On February 3, 2009, Cynthia reported a major success. She “had several work-related personal meetings with a prominent New York based financier and was assigned his account.” The message said the financier was “prominent in politics,” an “active fundraiser” for a political party, and a “personal friend” of a current cabinet official. This was Alan Patricof, a friend of Hillary Clinton, a fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) who also sat on the board of overseers for Columbia Business School. Hillary Clinton was one of the highest-priority targets for the SVR—she had just been appointed secretary of state. Anyone close to her could be of great benefit in picking up useful information.

  Moscow responded that Patricof had been checked in the SVR’s database and he was “clean”—with no signs of being a dangle. “Of course he is very interesting target,” the SVR responded. “Try to build up little by little relations with him moving beyond just (work) framework. Maybe he can provide [Murphys] with remarks re: US foreign policy ‘roumours’ [sic] about White House internal kitchen, invite her to venues (major political party HQ in NYC for instance . . . etc.).” It ended with a clear sense of encouragement. “In short, consider carefully all options in regard to” the financier. But Murphy was only ever able to work on Patricof’s taxes rather than cultivate him in any deeper way. “She never once asked me about government, politics, or anything remotely close to that subject,” he later said.

  As well as Cynthia Murphy’s attempts to cultivate people close to Hillary Clinton, there were other attempts by Moscow to try to gain influence around her. “In the end, some of this just comes down to what it always does in Washington: donations, lobbying, contracts and influence—even for Russia,” Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, later said. Such an influence campaign directed at a powerful figure with the potential to direct policy toward Russia should be no surprise. This is where the work of the illegals needs to be seen in a wider context. Their mission in getting close to officials and understanding the way in which power and influence flowed in Washington was part of a broader strategy. The illegals were just one cog in this bigger machine and the information they fed back could be used by other parts of the state. An illegal might identify a person who was well connected with a politician whom an oligarch could then approach with a business deal for instance. The Kremlin could coordinate between undercover illegals, state businesses, and oligarchs in order to secure influence. Cynthia Murphy’s success in getting close to powerful people was starting to sound alarms. “We had seen enough of the reporting going back to Moscow Center to trouble us,” Figliuzzi said soon after the case closed. “Several were getting close to high-ranking officials.”

  Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills had also moved to the nation’s capital. They had been struggling in Seattle. Despite his strong academic performance, Zottoli did not get the big job he wanted. He worked for a while as a car salesman and from July 2007, he was leaving at 7:30 a.m. every day to work as an accountant in Bellevue. Colleagues remember him as grumpy and unhappy. He was vague about his background and when people asked about his accent, he would respond with annoyance by saying, “Where do you think my accent is from?” He did not hide his politics. He occasionally went on tirades about President George W. Bush. Sometimes these would annoy coworkers so much that they would simply walk away. And it was not just the politics that was making him unhappy. Colleagues remember his phone would often ring. “My wife,” he would say apologetically in his thick accent and then walk out of the office. Colleagues could still hear him argue with her on the phone. The feeling from what they could overhear was that he was henpecked or under the thumb.

  In September 2008, Zottoli took six months off work, telling his employers he was going to see his wife’s parents in South Africa (although she told people they were going to Europe). Zottoli was pushing Moscow Center to let him go to Washington, DC, where he felt he could make a fresh start and do more. Eventually, the SVR relented. In October 2009 the couple moved to Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC, with their two boys now in tow. The couple was not short of cash, with more than $100,000 in their joint checking account, but Zottoli had not produced much for all the investment placed in him by the SVR. Now he was told it was time to see what he could do in the nation’s capital.

  As they arrived in Washington, one of the things that worried the FBI was where they ended up living. There was always an element of fear when an illegal moved, in case they disappeared off the radar. But in this case the couple was in an apartment block just across the road from the Pentagon. And that meant it was packed full of people who worked in sensitive positions. In particular they lived on the same floor as people who had top security clearances. There were people in the building who worked in the Defense Intelligence Agency and even the FBI itself. That had the additional by-product of making life even harder for the bureau when it came to surveillance in the form of putting cameras and microphones in the apartment. These neighbors were the kind of people who might notice something odd going on next door. Zottoli and Mills were the least successful of the illegals, but they were still now in a position where they could start to make inroads. And you never knew which one of their neighbors they might have around for a beer and get friendly with.

  DONALD HEATHFIELD WAS also making strides. There was talk of him moving down to Washington with his family. And the risks posed by his contacts were growing. One message indicates plans to build a spy ring at George Washington University: “Agree with your proposal to use ‘Farmer’ to start building network of students in DC,” SVR Center said. Heathfield was playing the long game of penetration. Farmer—an unnamed individual but likely an academic—was perhaps going to recruit among students who could then apply for jobs inside the US government and even intelligence agencies (although Heathfield could have been exaggerating his cooperation). This, as with Murphy’s work, was the real prize. In the past century people talked about the Cambridge spies in Britain; it could have been Columbia or GWU spies in this century if the illegals had succeeded. Ann Foley was also heading to Moscow for operational reasons. An SVR message gave her precise instructions: Paris to Vienna by train, where she would get hold of a fake British passport for a flight to Moscow the next day (she was told it was “very important” to sign her passport and practice the signature). She was told to “be aware” that she had just visited Russia and use a cover story about a business consultancy meeting on invitation of the Russian Chamber of Commerce. “In the passport you’ll get a memo with recommendation. Pls, destroy the memo after reading. Be well.”

  THERE WAS ONE additional challenge for Heathfield and Foley—but one that might also offer an opportunity. And that was their children. They were older than the Murphys’ girls and that posed a challenge that many illegal families faced. What did you tell them and when? Their parents had made a conscious decision that they wanted their children not to grow up simply as Canadians or Americans but with a more European outlook and a feel for the rest of the world. Was this just to reassure the parents and make their decision to mislead their kids easier—avoiding awkward patriotic dinner-table discussions of how wonderful America was
and how bad Russia was—or was it perhaps because they feared one day their children might learn their secret? Or was it even because they themselves planned to tell them?

  In 2008 Alex had become a US citizen as a result of his parents being naturalized. Timothy never took American nationality and always saw himself as Canadian. He was awarded first prize from the Canadian Consulate in Boston for artwork that promoted “Canadian values” and he returned a number of times, skiing with his family in Whistler and on road trips with friends (taking advantage of the fact the drinking age was lower over the border). The boys enjoyed video games and James Bond films (they had a full collection) even though Russians were not always presented very admirably. The brothers also occasionally played the Russian side in computer games set in World War II. “We were alarmed when in the end when their team won, the USSR national anthem was played,” recalled their mother. The parents were no doubt disciplined enough not to stand to attention, but the music had a strange effect on them that they had to hide.

  For any parent, deciding how to raise their children poses many challenges. Some parents will keep secrets from their children—perhaps a skeleton in the closet of their own past or that of their family. But what is it like for an illegal whose very identity—and therefore that of their children—is a lie that they have to hide? How long can you sustain the lie? What do you tell them and at what age? If you tell them too young, then will they go around the playground and boast, “My mommy or daddy is a spy”? What if you leave it too late? Your children are being brought up as Americans. What if they become Americans and when you finally tell them they decide they want to stay where they are rather than become a Russian?

  These were discussions that the FBI could overhear many of the illegal parents struggling with. It was just one of the strange aspects of the investigation that the bugs would pick up these intimate parental discussions where the FBI knew the truth about the different parents but their own children did not. The parents worried that if they left it too late, their children would become Americanized. Would it be better to give up on the whole spying thing and go back home before it was too late? Or even try to stay in America and give up spying? The Murphys’ children were too young to be told. But could they remain the Murphys and give up spying to become a normal family? Or do they give up spying and return to Russia and become the Guryevs again? “Each single one of them understood there would be a reckoning coming someday,” says one FBI agent who watched the illegals. There was of course another option. Bring up your children with an eye to seeing if they might follow in the family business.

  In Boston, Alex and Timothy’s parents had wrestled for years with the question of what to do. One option was to retire to Russia when the children were young enough to adapt to life there. Another was to move to Europe as a kind of halfway house. They even wondered about returning to Russia but still under their cover as Heathfield and Foley rather than Bezrukov and Vavilov, which would allow them to go home but also to avoid having to confront the children with the fact they had lied to them. But in the end they had decided to keep working in America. Now the boys were growing up. That led to one of the most disputed elements of the case. Former FBI officials say the parents were definitely pondering whether or not children could be inducted into their secret life and become part of their operation.

  This would not have been unprecedented. Rudolf Herrmann, an illegal code-named “DOUGLAS,” was operating in America in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a husband-and-wife team (one of his missions was to penetrate the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington). He had been worried about his son growing up filled with anticommunist propaganda and had taken him on vacation to Europe to broaden his views. But he also saw the possibility of his son penetrating the US government or political life. During a trip to Latin America in 1972, he revealed his true identity to his teenage son, Peter, on a park bench. The son said he was ready to join the KGB and they went to Moscow, where Peter began training under the code name “Inheritor.” Bizarrely, one of his classmates at high school remembers Peter actually showing him spy gadgets, including a secret camera and a coin that had a hidden space inside it. “This was a safe thing for him to do because whoever suspects a fifteen-year-old classmate to be a real spy?” the friend later recalled. Peter went on to study at Georgetown, where he was told to report on students whose parents had government jobs, especially if there was some vulnerability the KGB might be able to use, or provide details of fellow students who disliked American imperialism. He was also told to try to get a job at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. But the father was confronted by the FBI and told to turn or else he and his family would be arrested. So there had been precedents in trying to turn whole families into operational illegals.

  The risks from a new generation would have been significantly greater than that of their parents for the FBI. “It is that next generation which really would be damaging because they could pass a background check where [for] the traditional illegals, a deep background check would have uncovered some of the problems with the backstories,” explains FBI agent Derek Pieper. “Their game is long and they will do it for a generation—and always the fear was when these people have kids and the kids grew up.”

  Timothy was inducted into the secret of his parents’ espionage, according to US officials and Canadian documents. The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service informed Citizen and Immigration Canada (CIC) that Timothy was “sworn in” by the SVR prior to his parents’ arrest. The implication is that this was a pledge of allegiance. Other sources suggest that this was more of an oath of secrecy never to reveal the truth of what his parents were doing.

  Timothy attended George Washington University, full of people planning a career in government. Friends recall him being ambitious but with a good group of friends and who liked to spend time on the weekend at the Hawk ’n’ Dove, a well-known bar off Capitol Hill. He studied international relations with a particular focus on Asia and he spent a semester in Beijing, learning Mandarin. In November 2009, he said he wanted to go into banking or “whatever makes me money.” But in one account, the parents revealed to their son that they wanted him to follow in their footsteps. At the end of the discussion it is claimed he stood up and saluted Mother Russia and agreed to go to Moscow for training.

  Timothy has always vehemently denied he was inducted into his parents’ secret. “Why would a kid who grew up his whole life believing himself to be Canadian decide to risk life in prison for a country he had never been to nor had any ties to? Furthermore, why would my parents take a similar risk in telling their teenage son their identities?” He said the claim that he saluted Mother Russia is “just as ridiculous as it sounds.”

  Numerous officials have suggested that Timothy knew something. “It’s logical to presume, and we suspect he knew something toward the end, before their arrests,” Richard DesLauriers, who ran the Boston field office, said soon after the case became public. However, he did not suggest the same of his brother, Alex. “I’d say we have no reason to believe the younger son was witting of his parents’ involvement.”

  AS THE SUMMER of 2010 approached, Donald Heathfield was planning to go to Moscow with his sons. “My brother and I had already been to most areas of the world. Russia stood out as a gap in our global coverage and so as a result of a year or two of pressure from us, my parents finally agreed to book a trip and apply for a visa,” Alex said.

  It was only in hindsight that some events from that June began to look a little odd to Heathfield and Foley. Her car had been taken away to a garage for a day. They had been trying to sell it and someone had supposedly wanted to have a look before buying it but then changed their mind. Later they would think that it was an excuse for bugging and tracking equipment to have been installed. And then there was a woman who introduced herself to Heathfield under some strange pretext in his work circles. She seemed uncomfortable, almost nervous, talking to him. And fin
ally, someone in the neighborhood had popped around to their house—supposedly to look at how it was being refurbished. All of these events, the couple would later believe, were signs that the net had been closing. But of course if they had reported it back to Moscow, then there was someone there who could always reassure them that there was nothing to worry about, even though he knew the truth, and make sure no further action was taken. The net that had been around them for a decade was about to close.

  EARLY IN 2010, FBI director Robert Mueller went to Langley to brief CIA director Leon Panetta and his senior team about the illegals. Even though the agency’s Russia House had been involved in running Poteyev, the CIA had only limited visibility of the details of the FBI investigation that resulted from his work. Panetta, an experienced Washington hand, had been in office for a year but had known nothing of the Ghost Stories investigation until he was briefed on it, because it was so highly classified. The FBI team played videos and provided full details of the tradecraft. “It was a very important reminder of what Russia was trying to do to us,” says Panetta, “also a reminder for us that we could not let our guard down.” The illegals were becoming more deeply established. The decision was to keep watching them closely to see what they would do next. “We felt like we were really ahead of the game,” says Panetta.