Alleged Russian Agent Claimed Official Was His Firm's Adviser

By EVAN PEREZ

Constance Flavell Pratt/Associated Press

In this courtroom sketch, Tracey Lee Ann Foley, left, and her husband, Donald Heathfield, third from left, are depicted with Mr. Heathfield's attorney Peter Krupp, second from left, at a bail hearing in federal court in Boston, Thursday.

The alleged Russian secret agent who posed as a Canadian entrepreneur named Donald Heathfield claimed a former Clinton administration national-security official was an adviser to his company.

A federal criminal complaint by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan filed Monday charged 11 people, including Mr. Heathfield, with being Russian secret agents sent to the U.S. to infiltrate policy-making circles and to help the Russian spy agency SVR cultivate intelligence targets.

A 2008 version of the website for Mr. Heathfield's company, Future Map, lists Leon Fuerth, former Vice President Al Gore's top national-security aide, as an adviser.

Mr. Fuerth, in an email to The Wall Street Journal, denied he was ever an adviser to Future Map. Mr. Fuerth said he met Mr. Heathfield after delivering a speech and that Mr. Heathfield once proposed a partnership on a research grant.

"Heathfield introduced himself to me after a speech I gave, and described himself as having similar interests in the subject of long-range foresight as a means for making better decisions," Mr. Fuerth said. "I was (still am) teaching the subject, and he represented that he was dealing with it as a business subject. Eventually, he proposed that we look for a way to partner on a research grant—but the idea didn't appeal to me. Once he understood that I was not interested, he stopped communicating."

Mr. Fuerth, on vacation in Asia, said he plans to provide details of his contact with Mr. Heathfield to U.S. authorities as soon as possible. "I have never been an advisor to his business," he said.

In a 2005 message to his alleged spymaster handlers in Moscow, Mr. Heathfield reported that he had "established contact" with a "former high-ranking U.S. national security official," prosecutors said in their complaint. The official is unnamed in the complaint.

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The complaint doesn't allege that the former national-security adviser was aware of efforts by SVR to connect with him.

The criminal complaint against Mr. Heathfield notes that SVR handlers told him to keep his cover cautiously, suggesting the official was an unwitting target.

Officials familiar with the matter said that most of the people targeted were similarly unaware they were being used as sources for Russian intelligence.

The Justice Department in Washington declined to comment.

Mr. Heathfield and the woman the FBI alleges was posing as his wife, Tracey Lee Ann Foley, who worked as a real-estate agent, lived in Cambridge, Mass., blocks from the Harvard University campus.

Russia's 11?

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Read more about the spy suspects and allegations against them in the complaints.

Mr. Heathfield listed himself as chief executive of the four-year old company Future Map on his Linked-in professional-networking page. He described the company as developing software to help predict the future.

The current Future Map website has password-protected links that prevent viewing details about the company. Older versions of the company's website, including the one from August 2008 that lists Mr. Fuerth, are available via the Internet archive site known as the Wayback Machine.

Mr. Fuerth's university biography, which is replicated on the Future Map 2008 site, lists his time as Mr. Gore's national-security adviser during both Clinton terms. He was the senior administration official responsible for the operation of binational commissions with Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Egypt and South Africa.

According to U.S. prosecutors in the complaint, Mr. Heathfield worked for more than a decade as an undercover Russian agent tasked with infiltrating U.S. policy-making circles, allegedly focusing on Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Heathfield graduated in 2000 from the Kennedy school, where he would have had access to multiple major figures in U.S. policy. The school is a top choice for students who plan to pursue careers in Washington, including many who join the Central Intelligence Agency and other national-security agencies. His graduating class included Mexican President Felipe Calderón.

The couple moved to the U.S. in 1999, according to the complaint, and part of their mission was to gather information on U.S. assessment of Russian foreign policy, U.S. policy on Central Asia and U.S. data on use of the Internet by terrorists.

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in July 2006 secretly searched the Cambridge townhouse where Mr. Heathfield and Ms. Foley lived at the time and copied computer disks, according to prosecutors. FBI investigators recovered electronic data that prosecutors said were drafts of messages the couple sent to Moscow. The couple allegedly used Steganography software, which embeds messages in images placed on publicly available websites. FBI investigators were able to decode the messages, prosecutors allege.

Mr. Heathfield reported to Moscow in December 2004, according to prosecutors, that he had attended a seminar and made contact with a U.S. government official who worked on nuclear-weapons development at a government research facility. They discussed U.S. "bunker-buster" warheads, he told Moscow handlers, according to the complaint from U.S. prosecutors.

In a separate September 2005 message, he reported contact with a high-level former national-security official, drawing interest from Moscow handlers who encouraged Mr. Heathfield to continue the relationship, according to prosecutors, citing Mr. Heathfield's messages.

Another listed Future Map adviser, William Halal, also a George Washington University professor, like Mr. Fuerth, said he and Mr. Heathfield "had business relationships over the past decade. We met in my office at George Washington University at least 2-3 times. I allowed him to use our TechCast forecasts on his company's site, Future Map, and he was listed as one of our partners at www.TechCast.org."

Mr. Halal said was shocked by the arrest but, in retrospect, the government's allegations against Mr. Heathfield explain questions that always nagged him.

"I never suspected he was a Russian spy," Mr. Halal said. "I did wonder how he supported a family in Boston on what did not seem to be prosperous business. In retrospect, I marvel at how well he and [his] Russian associates infiltrated the normal activities of life in Washington policy circles. I would bump into him at meetings of Federal agencies, think tanks, and the World Future Society.

"I have no information that's of any security value," Mr. Halal said. "Everything I gave Don was published widely and readily available on the Internet."

THE LIBERTARIAN

Friday, July 2, 2010