The Plot to Hack America

After the meeting with the undercover U.S. federal agent, Chapman was observed purchasing a temporary Verizon cellphone from a Verizon store in Brooklyn, NY. She used the cell phone to call her father, a Russian intelligence officer in Moscow. Her lawyer later revealed that she was wary of the passport assignment and was calling her father for advice. Her father instructed her to turn the passport into a police station, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested her for espionage, along with nine others.^{13, 14} The Department of Justice charged them with conspiring to act as unlawful agents of the Russian Federation within the United States.¹⁵

Chapman was born Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko on February 23, 1982 in the industrial city of Volgograd, Russia, to math teacher Irene and Russian diplomat Vasily. She suffered from scoliosis as a child and lived with her grandmother as her father was sent to work in the Russian embassy in Kenya. She briefly attended a creative studies school in Volgograd from 1996–1997. She went on to study economics at the People’s Friendship University in Moscow, graduating at the top of her class in 2004.

In 2001 and 2002 she spent her summers visiting London, where at the age of nineteen she met twenty-one year-old student Alex Chapman. The two were married in Moscow in 2002. Soon after, now with the name Anna Chapman, she received a British passport. According to Alex Chapman, Anna’s father never took a liking to him and seemed to trust no one. Alex reported that Anna told him her father was a former KGB operative.

After eventually settling in London, Anna began habitually lying about her work experience, claiming to sell private jets to Russians on behalf of Net Jets and working closely with owner Warren Buffet. Alex began to observe her becoming increasingly secretive around this time, often meeting with other Russians in private, boasting about influential people she was meeting, and suddenly having large sums of money. The two eventually divorced in 2006.¹⁶

When Anna Chapman arrived in New York, she moved into an apartment one block south of the New York Stock Exchange. She also claimed on her LinkedIn page to run an internet real estate company valued at $2 million.¹⁷ The Daily News reported that she likely became involved with then sixty year-old millionaire Michael Bittan, who made his money in the restaurant industry, real estate, owner of a jeans manufacturer, and in pharmaceuticals.¹⁸

After being arrested by U.S. federal agents in June of 2010, the U.S. and Russian governments arranged a swap in July of the same year, exchanging the ten arrested in the U.S. for four former Russian spies who were detained in Russia for helping the U.S. One of them was instrumental in arresting former U.S. FBI Agent Robert Hansen, who had been providing the Russians with information for years.¹⁹

Upon returning to Russia, Chapman has received national celebrity status, modeling for the Russian version of Maxim magazine and appearing in multiple fashion shots. She has also met and has been praised by Putin, and made appearances in Russian military recruitment and propaganda videos. The British tabloid magazine Daily Mail, reported that Chapman posted a picture to her Instagram account this April, expressing support for 2016 GOP Presidential nominee, Donald Trump. In her account she wrote “Trump will ‘get along with Putin,’ he approves of the Russian operation in Syria and is surprised why the USA supports Ukraine. Changes in America are closer? What do you think?” An additional post also mocked Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Chapman’s return as a conquering hero, even if she was a failed spy, is not surprising in Putin’s Russia. Putin values loyalty to the nation above all else and an attractive, loyal FSB officer is propaganda gold. His sense of loyalty to the spy service propelled him to national fame under Yeltsin and keeps his position safe today. In fact, in order to be put under Putin’s “roof” of protection, it is nearly essential for that individual to have a prior association with the KGB/FSB. An estimated 78 percent of Russia’s top one thousand leading political figures worked for FSB or its predecessor the KGB or GRU.²⁰ When asked about a book written by a dissident Putin said, “I don’t read books by people who have betrayed the Motherland.”²¹

This deep history of espionage, intrigue, and murder shaped Vladimir Putin’s worldview toward the West. Forged between decades of a poverty-stricken Soviet Union and tantalized by the riches of U.S. and European economic dominance, Putin’s actions and public statements hint at a world where he and his nation receive the respect and preeminence they deserve. Apparently, Putin surmises that America and NATO are waning, with the U.S. military stretched thin beyond capacity due to two failed wars costing trillions of dollars.