As Noose Tightened, Spy Suspect Sought Help From Dad

(July 3) -- A lawyer for Anna Chapman, the flame-haired Russian spy ring suspect whose father was reportedly a KGB agent, says his client sought help from her father in the days before her arrest, as the FBI homed in on her.

Attorney Robert Baum told The Associated Press that Chapman phoned her father, Russian diplomat Vasily Kushchenko, after an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian consulate worker asked her to deliver a fake passport to another female spy.

"She spoke to her father, and her father said, 'Go turn the passport in,'" Baum told the AP. "Her father said, 'You've got this passport. It's forged. Go turn it into the police,' and that's exactly what she did."

Baum believes the exchange shows Chapman wanted to do the right thing, and he hopes to use it in his appeal of a judge's ruling denying his client bail.

The attorney also told AP that if his client gets bail, she will pose no flight risk.

"She feels that if bail were granted there is no way in the world she would ever flee the area," Baum said. "In fact, she's concerned she may get deported. She'd like to live here."

Meanwhile, it's emerging that U.S. authorities may have had Chapman and her family on their radar as long as a decade ago, after her younger sister dated an American diplomat's son in Africa.

Matthew Joseff told the New York Post that his half-brother Nathan Joseff dated Chapman's younger sister Katya Kushchenko 10 years ago in Zimbabwe when they were teenagers. At the time, Chapman's father was the Russian ambassador to the country. Joseff's parents were U.S. intelligence officials posted in the country, and both families had brought their teenage kids to live there as well.

"My mom, the deputy chief, was required by her job to disclose [to U.S. officials] that her son was dating a diplomat's daughter, a foreign national," Matthew Joseff told the paper. "She told the [U.S.] embassy."

Nathan Joseff, who's now married and lives in Virginia, split up with Chapman's sister years ago, but his brother said the two stayed in touch. Katya Kushchenko has been living in Moscow.

Romantic links between Chapman's sister and the son of a U.S. diplomat could have been a harmless fling between expatriate teenagers. But it also fits the mission the FBI has attributed to the deep-cover Russian spy ring of which Chapman is alleged to have been part. Prosecutors say she and nine other suspects, plus their handler, strived to penetrate U.S. financial and policy-making circles, to glean insider information and then funnel it back to Moscow. Katya Kushchenko hasn't been charged with any involvement.

Meanwhile, Chapman's former in-laws are rejecting the idea that the secretive Russian beauty may have married their son in order to get a British passport and help Russia infiltrate the West.

"I'm convinced it wasn't a honey trap," Kevin Chapman, Anna's former father-in-law, told London's Daily Mail newspaper. "They were so much in love. It just doesn't add up."

"She's simply not some Mata Hari, she can't be. ... She's just an ordinary girl," Chapman said.

The spy suspect's former mother-in-law, Jane Chapman, told the paper: "I knew Anna, I saw her with my son, and they were genuinely in love. I don't believe you can fake that. I couldn't have wished for a nicer daughter-in-law. If she were found guilty, then I would think because of her age she'd been sucked into something."

Kevin Chapman also added that if Anna had been out to marry for connections or money, his son Alex, a student at the time of their marriage, wasn't at all rich.

"If she was being groomed by the KGB, you would have thought they would have set her up a bit better. ... They didn't give her a very good expense account," Chapman said.

His son Alex, who divorced his spy suspect wife four years ago, has said she confided in him that her father had been a KGB agent, as well as a Russian ambassador in Africa. He also was quoted as saying that Anna suffered a mid-life crisis in her 20s, developing an obsession with money and mysterious Russian friends that ultimately led to the breakup of their marriage.

Anna Chapman, who kept her husband's name after their divorce, was arrested last weekend in New York and charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government. She was denied bail at a hearing Monday where prosecutors called her a highly trained "Russian agent" and "practiced deceiver."

The 28-year-old self-described real estate business owner had a huge presence, personally and professionally, on the Internet, which she used to market her business and make connections. The FBI alleges it was one way that she reached out to influential figures to try to get secret information from them, and court documents even describe the computer she used to pass secrets, a Mac laptop.

Some of those business contacts have also talked to the media in recent days, describing a friendly but driven young business owner.

"She's very charming, attractive, very smart," David Hantman, who works in New York real estate appraising and was introduced to Chapman through mutual friends, told The Washington Post. "I was surprised at how young she was to be in a position to negotiate with these big companies. ... She had so much business acumen for someone so young."

But Chapman's networking ability, at least on Facebook where her profile last weekend listed nearly 200 friends, may be dwindling. Apparently many of her so-called Facebook friends have "de-friended" her while she's behind bars, perhaps unsure whether her spying arrest will be good for business.