WORLD PROPERTY CHANNEL ®

Anna Chapman

This is a tale of The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. They couldn't shoot straight because nobody so far has found anything they stole.

Ten have been living as disguised Americans in the U.S. for the past 10 years. The 11th gang member was arrested in Cyprus.

Two of them had connections with legitimate real estate organizations in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, according to FBI and court files that are growing daily in Washington and New York.

President Barack Obama

The FBI arrested 11 alleged Russian spies this week. They had been operating as a gang for 10 years - but all the FBI has charged them with, so far, is money laundering and failing to register as foreign agents.

They haven't been charged with espionage - which is what real spies, as in James Bond, John LeCarre and Tom Clancy, are supposed to undertake.

Their orders from Moscow were to uncover, steal and transmit nuclear weapons research to the Kremlin.  They weren't even close, according to the best information filed so far by the Justice Dept.

The unfolding drama is a huge embarrassment to Presidents Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush,  Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Premier Dimitry Medvedev.

President Bill Clinton

Clinton visited Putin only yesterday. Both joked a lot. Putin said he hoped the alleged spy incident wouldn't ruin current good relations between Moscow and Washington.

Medvedev visited Obama last week and lunched on cheeseburgers at a Washington, DC fast-food shop.  The alleged spying was going on during Bush's tenure in the White House.

The State Department, the White House and the Washington press corps are playing down the entire incident - on orders from the White House, according to knowledgeable television talking heads.

But more arrests and disclosures of unlawful activities by The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight are expected to surface within the next six weeks, supposedly shoring up the idea that this was a real, honest-to-goodness spy team.

Dimitry Medvedev, Premier, Russia

No one is saying why the Justice Department and the FBI announced the arrests at a time when leaders of Russia and the U.S. were visiting each other.

For the Kremlin leadership and Moscow government insiders, the arrests and disclosures at this time is an even greater embarrassment than it is personally to Putin and Medvedev --- because of what the Gang couldn't and didn't apparently steal.

After 10 years, a "real" Russian spy Gang would have walked away with the White House light sockets, say so-called pundits along Pennsylvania Avenue in DC.

No one in the Justice Department is even certain of the Gang members' real names.  One, Donald Howard Heathfield,  is alleged to have taken the name of a dead Canadian resident.

Tracy Lee Ann Foley

Heathfield's alleged wife, Tracy Lee Ann Foley, worked since 2007 as a field agent with Redfin, an online, Seattle-based real estate company, according to Redfin's own prepared statement on its web site.

Anna Chapman or Anya Chapman is supposed to have been the CEO of London-based PropertyFinder Ltd., an online real estate search engine and also the CEO of New York City-based Domdot.net - but that is only what she listed with a free online profile listing service.

She also told that service she was a vice president for nine months in 2007 and 2008 for KIT Fortis Investments in Moscow; head of initial public offerings at the Navigator Hedge Fund in London;  and a sales associate for one year in 2003 and 2004 with NetJets Europe, a private aviation company in London.

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