Cold War Leftovers

On June 28th, federal prosecutors charged eleven people living in New York, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Northern Virginia with being part of a Russian espionage ring.

So what year was that again?

Audio Embed: BBC, PRI & WGBH's The World 6/29/10, Reporter: David Margolis.

Of course the neighbors never suspected a thing...

The NY Post christened her "The Red Hot Beauty."

Both the Washington Post and Huffington Post assembled a slide shows of photogenic accused spy Anna Chapman, because part of her blending in included posting on social media sites like Facebook... But one clue that something wasn't right was that you could also find her on Odnoklassniki, which is Russian for "classmates."

But Chapman, a 28-year-old divorcee with a masters in economics and an online real estate business, had a cover that even involved returning to Moscow as an American entrepreneur looking to invest in Russian start-up businesses, and speaking like a foreigner.



The Warren Buffett?

MI-5 is investigating the almost five years Chapman, born Anya Kushchenkova (daughter of a Russian "diplomat"), lived in Britain. And early research on her CV, which paints a picture of a high-flying existence working in a string of top London companies before launching her own international property firm with a multi-million dollar turnover and boasting that her work in the capital brought her into contact with Buffett proved greatly exaggerated.

The Telegraph (UK) reports the spposed Buffett connection was really a temporary secretarial job at NetJets, the luxury aircraft charter company partly owned by Mr Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway group.

Résumé inflation & big time name dropping seem very American.