BBC Learning English
Words in the News
US releases film of Russian spies

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st

November 2011

Words in the News

© British Broadcasting Corporation 2011

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bbclearningenglish.com

The FBI has released photographs and video of a group of Russian spies who were
arrested and then expelled from the United States last year. This report is from Steve
Kingstone:

Much of the material released by the FBI follows the classic Hollywood formula for
espionage.

We see agents exchanging identical bags as they brush past each other, while another
undercover spy retrieves a package hidden in the Washington undergrowth.

The glamorous Anna Chapman is filmed shopping in a department store, and having
coffee with a man who she believed to be a Russian handler but who in fact was an FBI
infiltrator. That was the moment Ms Chapman suspected her cover as an estate agent
in New York was blown.

Soon afterwards, the FBI broke up the spy ring. Ten defendants pleaded guilty to acting
as foreign agents, before being exchanged last July for four Russians who'd been jailed in
their own country for spying for the West.

Members of the US-based group had gathered public information and networked on
behalf of Moscow, while leading suburban middle-class lives often assuming the
identities of Americans who had recently died.

The FBI case file offers an intriguing glimpse of 21

st

Century espionage. But it

remains to be seen whether the images prove as popular as others of Anna Chapman.
Now a successful television presenter, the former spy has appeared with very little cover
in men's magazines.

Steve Kingstone, BBC News, Washington

Words in the News

© British Broadcasting Corporation 2011

Page 2 of 2

bbclearningenglish.com

Vocabulary and definitions

espionage

spying; the work of trying to learn the secrets of one
country to pass on to another

brush past

walk in opposite directions towards each other and just
touch as they pass

undergrowth

bushes, plants and weeds growing under the trees of a
wooded area

handler

someone who acts as a contact for a spy

infiltrator

a person who secretly becomes part of a group in order
to get information about that group

cover

everyday job used to hide the work of a spy

blown

discovered and revealed

broke up

arrested the members of

assuming the identities of

using the names and documents of other people

an intriguing glimpse of

a fascinating view of

More on this story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15527462

Read and listen to the story and the vocabulary online:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2011/11/111101_witn_spies.shtml