The Spy WHo Loved Me ..

London, England (CNN) -- The former husband of alleged Russian spy Anna Chapman said her personality changed after she started having "secretive meetings" with Russian friends a few years ago.

Alex Chapman told The Daily Telegraph newspaper he "hardly knew her anymore" after she became involved with shadowy contacts.
Anna Chapman also confided to her husband that her father, Vasily, had been a senior KGB agent.

The Chapmans met at a London rave or party in 2001, when Alex Chapman, then 21, saw her across the dance floor and told her she was "the most beautiful girl" he had ever seen. She was 19.
They married six months later.

Her "carefree" bohemian lifestyle soon changed, however, he told the paper, and she became obsessed with money and moving to America.


"It was like someone having a midlife crisis, but in their 20s," Chapman told the paper. "She would arrange to go out, but when I said I would join her, she told me not to bother because they would all be speaking Russian. She was adamant I wasn't to meet them."

Chapman said he had suspicions she was being "conditioned" by shadowy contacts by the time their marriage broke down in 2005.

"She had never been materialistic during the years we were together, but in 2005 and 2006, after she started having these meetings with people she referred to as 'Russian friends,' she was transformed into someone with access to a lot of money, boasting about all the influential people she was meeting."

There was such a "dramatic change" in her thoughts and behavior that "I felt I hardly knew her anymore," he said.

Chapman is one of 10 suspects arrested this week in the States as part of an alleged Russian spy ring. She was denied bail and has her next hearing July 27.
The suspects were "trained Russian intelligence operatives," a U.S. Justice Department spokesman said, and information from court documents alleged they were part of a mission to plant "deep-cover" agents in the United States.

The Justice Department said the suspects were supposed to recruit intelligence agents, but were not directly involved in obtaining U.S. secrets themselves. They were charged with acting as agents of a foreign government, and nine also were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The case resulted from a "multiyear investigation" conducted by the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the Justice Department's National Security Division, according to a Justice Department statement.
Chapman and another suspect, Mikhail Semenko, allegedly conducted the private wireless computer links to communicate with a Russian government official, one court document alleged. In one instance, Chapman was in a bookshop and the Russian government official drove by in a van to make the wireless connection, the document said.

Wednesday, a Security Service officer visited Alex Chapman at his current home in Bournemouth, England, to question him about his ex-wife, the Telegraph reported. The officer wanted to know whether Anna Chapman could have been recruited in London or even spied on Britain while she lived there, the paper said.

Alex Chapman met his former father-in-law for the first time during the couple's delayed honeymoon to Africa in 2002, he said."

Her dad was scary," he said. "He was very concerned about which direction my life was going, how I was going to earn my money. Anna told me he worked as a diplomat for the Russian government. It was only much later that she told me he had been a KGB agent."
The Chapmans remained close after their divorce in 2006, the Telegraph reported, and Alex

Chapman "watched with bemusement" as his former spouse achieved success in America.
"She had always said she didn't like America," Chapman told the paper. "She didn't like their accents and would always imitate them when American TV shows were on.
"In late 2006 she went back to Russia and said she was staying there for good, but then all of a sudden she wanted to go to America. She started seeing a very rich American guy who took her to the States, and when she came back, she said she loved it."
Anna Chapman told her ex-husband she was having trouble making her Internet real estate agency a success, he said, but the business suddenly flourished last year and she was employing 50 people.

"Clearly a lot of money had been pumped into the business from somewhere, but I couldn't work it out," he said.
Anna Chapman "seemed distant" when he last spoke to her four weeks ago, Alex Chapman told the paper.

"I thought I knew her, but she has taken this path I don't believe she consciously knew she was going down," he said. "I believe in my heart there has been some sort of influence on her, some sort of conditioning. Then, when push came to shove, she found herself in a situation she couldn't get out of."

Anti-American messages adorn spy's pages

Reuters) - Patriotic, anti-American messages adorn the pages of two alleged Russian spies on Russia's answer to Facebook, a reminder of historic suspicions and resentments that have survived the end of the Cold War.

"Russia will never abandon you!" is the repeated message on the pages of Mikhail Semenko and Anna Chapman, arrested in the United States on suspicion of being part of a Russian spy ring. Over 100 people left similar messages of support on the Russian language social netowrking site odnoklassniki.ru on Wednesday.

"Hang on in there Misha (Mikhail)... Everyone knows this is an American witch-hunt," one surfer posted on Semenko's page, referring to U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist investigations at the height of the Cold War.

The U.S. arrests earlier this week of 10 alleged spies and tales of secret meetings, invisible ink and secret handovers, have been splashed over the front pages of U.S. media.

Russia has angrily rejected the allegations but later said ties between the Cold War foes would not be damaged.

Semenko's page says he is 27 and last visited on May 24. In his profile picture, the floppy-haired smiling Russian poses in front of the White House in Washington.

"Those yanks really know how to freak people out," another surfer wrote in one of many comments slamming Americans and protesting the innocence of those arrested.

People ranging from teenage boys to female pensioners posted the comments.

Chapman, who Russian media say is actually called Kushchenko, last visited the site on June 20. The 28-year-old's photo shows her casting a sideways glance, clad in a bright blue bustier and with flowing brown hair.

One of her many female supporters wrote: "Soon Anna will return home... Enormous respect is due to Anna. A book will be written about her and a film made."

The spy ring is accused of gathering information ranging from data on high-penetration nuclear warhead research programs to background on CIA applicants for the Russian government.

(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman, additional reporting by Aleksandras Budrys; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Operation Moshtarak bags Taliban chief

(CNN) -- International and Afghan security forces wounded and captured a Taliban district chief and killed a "large number" of insurgents in a four-hour firefight, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said in a statement Thursday.
The battle took place in a compound outside a village in the Baghran district of Afghanistan's Helmand province after insurgents opened fire on security forces with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, ISAF said.

No security force members or civilians were killed or wounded in the fighting, but a "large number of insurgents" died, ISAF said, without providing specific numbers.
"Dozens of automatic weapons, RPG launchers and rounds, a machine gun, grenades, and ammunition were discovered along with 20 pounds of wet opium" after the fighting, the statement said.

"This joint force operation dealt another significant blow to the Taliban network," said Col. William Maxwell, ISAF Joint Command Combined Joint Operations Center director. "These joint efforts are key to further establishing peace in the region."

NATO-led forces have been waging an offensive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.
Dubbed Operation Moshtarak, the offensive was launched in February by an international coalition of 15,000 troops including Afghans, Americans, Britons, Canadians, Danes and Estonians.
The Taliban had set up a shadow government in Helmand province's Marjah region, long a bastion of pro-Taliban sentiment.
It is a key area in Afghanistan's heroin trade and full of the opium used to fund the insurgency.

Suspected Russian agent on the run!

CNN) -- A suspected Russian spy is missing after being arrested in Cyprus and released on bail, a police spokesman told CNN on Wednesday.

Authorities arrested Robert Christopher Metsos, 55, in Larnaca after an Interpol "red notice" was served on him, Cypriot police said Tuesday.

Police said he was released on bail pending further proceedings but was told not to leave the country and was ordered to check in nightly with police. He did not check in Wednesday, and police are searching for him, a spokesman said.
Metsos is among 11 suspects in an alleged Russian spy ring in the United States.

At the time of his arrest, he was traveling on a Canadian passport and was about to board a flight to Budapest, Hungary. Metsos faces extradition to the United States.
His disappearance came two days after the U.S. Justice Department announced the arrest of 10 people on charges of being Russian agents involved in a long-term mission in the United States.

How to build a $5,000 dollar UHF SATCOM antenna for under $20 Part II

DIY: Military UHF SATCOM antenna
PART Two
By Steve Douglass

Is it just me (probably) or do antennas cost way too much? Sure that’s an odd statement to make.

I mean-how often does the average Joe think about the costs of antennas – right?

But I have never been an average Joe – and never wanted to be one.

I’ll admit - I’m an odd duck.

My idea of relaxing entertainment is to sit back with the headphones on, listening to emergency action messages on HF or scanning the MILAIR bands for Top Guns in training, fighter jocks going at it in one the nearby MOAs.

I like to be wired in – to everything – to the world. I take pride in the fact that I probably know more about what is going on in my neighborhood, city, state, world … then probably anyone I know – all because of my obsession with monitoring radio communications.

This hobby (addiction) has (time and time again) put me front-row center at some of the most tumultuous events of our times.

I once was hired (by a major news network) to ferret out and monitor the bugs and baby-monitors transmitting from inside the Branch Davidian complex during the infamous “Siege in Waco” 1993. On a cold day in February, 2003, I ran outside in my underwear and photographed the Space Shuttle Columbia as it plunged to its tragic demise over Texas.

On September, 11, 2001 I monitored the mass-confusion surrounding the FAA’s order to ground every aircraft flying over the U.S. or to shoot down any aircraft that wasn’t responding to the order. I also knew exactly where Air Force One was going when the rest of the world’s media hadn’t a clue, including the Vice President - for a time.

Because of my addiction to communications monitoring, I have become a trusted source for national, international and local news media, especially when it comes to breaking news.

My reputation was made when in 1986 (while casually tuning through the shortwave bands) I happened across an errant U.S. Navy communications involving the accidental explosion of missile propellant aboard “K-219” a Soviet submarine prowling the sea lanes off Bermuda. From then on I became obsessed with radio monitoring and since, if there isn’t a scanner or the hiss of a shortwave radio playing low (almost buried) in the background, I feel cut-off.

It was then I realized that there was this entire amazing-invisible world of wireless signals, out there, just waiting to be snatched out of the ether - carrying on their backs the electromagnetic emanations of modern human condition, from tragedy to triumphs.

I’m tapped into this invisible world of waves (that are passing through your brain even as you read this) from my humble two-bedroom apartment in Texas.

It is my great passion to not let these radio emanations go undisturbed and unheard.

So that’s why I worry about the cost of antennas.

Antennas are the proverbial fly-traps that snare the waves- and (in my opinion) they cost too much.

One day-while the idea of building a UHF SATCOM antenna was rattling around in my brain-I came upon this site that sold them to soldier-of-fortune types.



I was stunned that a simple folding TACSAT antenna cost almost $3,000 dollars!

In the demonstration video it looked like nothing-made of ABS plastic and flexible metal. What a rip-off!

But wait there’s more!

As an extra incentive they threw in a hand-dandy flexible tripod and carry pouch – and all this for just under three grand!

Let’s not tell them the same tripod could be had at Walmart for under twenty bucks and the pouch was just like one I saw for less than $10 at the local sporting goods super-store, as a pistol case.
Oh- lest we forget “special pricing available for GSA employees.”

I shouldn’t be surprised – general service contractors have been ripping off the government (i.e taxpayers) for years with $600 toilet seats and $100 space diapers (MilSpec) of course since – forever.

Note: This firm also sells a 20 foot run of coax for $89.00 something RadioShack sells (100 feet) for $24.95.


Needless to say – seeing that video was just another thing that pushed me to start my DIY UHF SATCOM antenna project.

To be continued …

VIEW PART ONE HERE

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