The masters of SEXPIONAGE: Glamorous female spies who used sex to lure male targets - from Russian who now teaches women how to get any man they want to the US agent who 'used a bedroom like Bond used a Beretta'
- Governments around the world have warned officials not to fall for 'honey traps'
- MailOnline takes a look at six of the most notorious femme fatales in history
The world of espionage has a reputation for glamour, deceit and - thanks to the exploits of James Bond and the real-life operatives who inspired him - seduction.
The best spies are the ones who can earn their targets' trust and glean information from them - with flirtation and pillow talk methods that are not just used in movies.
Honey trapping - designed to sexually undermine a target to elicit information - is a technique which has been used by intelligence agencies around the world for centuries.
The Chinese government warned its citizens this year not to fall for the allure of 'exotic beauties' who may be spies - while Beijing itself allegedly targeted British intelligence officials with honeytrap operatives.
For many spies, sex and seduction are some of the most valuable tools in their arsenal, and sometimes the only way to get valuable information which could save lives or even win a war.
Here, MailOnline takes a look at some of the most notorious femme fatales in history - who used their skillsets to seduce, ensnare and exploit their male targets.
As a 'sleeper agent' it was Chapman's job to seduce power brokers in the US capital Washington DC and report back to her Kremlin paymasters
Anna Chapman - Russian spy who became a glamour model and TV host
The daughter of a Russian diplomat - who himself was believed to be a senior official in the KGB - Chapman was born Anna Vasilyevna Kushchenko in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in 1982.
She studied business at university in Russia before heading to London, where she met ex-public schoolboy Alex Chapman at a rave.
The pair had a whirlwind romance, and got married in 2001 in Moscow, securing the new Mrs Chapman a British passport.
Their marriage lasted for four years, but Alex said his wife changed during it, beginning to mix in different circles with wealthy Russians.
Little did he know she had been recruited by the SVR - the Kremlin's foreign intelligence agency, something he later said did not surprise him owing to his ex-wife's often 'erratic' behaviour.
Chapman now works as a model and speaker and hosts a show called Secrets of the World
After the couple split, Chapman relocated to New York where she set up an internet property business - with the aid of a $1m cash injection from the Russian Government.
But according to the FBI the business was a front for her spying activities and she was part of a group known as the Illegal's Programme.
As a 'sleeper agent' it was her job to seduce power brokers in the US capital Washington DC and report back to her Kremlin paymasters.
The flame haired secret agent had been tasked with seducing power brokers, and set about collecting information to send back to Russia.
The FBI surveilled Chapman in 2010 as part of an investigation into deep-cover Russian operatives called Operation Ghost Stories, and arrested her, along with nine others in June.
Chapman's 2010 mugshot taken when she was arrested in New York
One of the four Russians swapped for Chapman and the others was Sergei Skripal, a former colonel for Russian military intelligence, the GRU.
He was sentenced in 2006 to 13 years in prison for passing the names of other Russian agents to British intelligence.
After the prisoner exchange, Skripal moved to Britain, and in March 2018, Russian assassins travelled to the British city of Salisbury to attempt to kill him with the nerve agent Novichok.
They failed but did kill a British woman who came into contact with a discarded vial of the deadly substance.
The freed Soviet spies mainly kept a low profile after their return to Moscow, but Chapman became a lingerie model, corporate spokeswoman and television personality.
She also became an activist for the pro-Kremlin youth party, and was outspoken in her support of Donald Trump.
Then-president Dmitry Medvedev awarded all 10 of the freed deep-cover operatives Russia's highest honors at a Kremlin ceremony.
Chapman now works as a model and speaker and hosts a show called Secrets of the World.
Chapman's arrest dominated the newspapers at the time, when it emerged she had been working as a real estate agent in New York
Chapman's Instagram feed is full of sultry poses in evening gowns
Fang Fang - Chinese student who used her charm to get close to US politicians
Fang Fang or Christine Fang is a Chinese national who allegedly utilised her networking skills to get close to powerful US politicians.
Fang left China to go to college in California in 2011, and then worked on developing relationships with key lawmakers in order to get access to sensitive information.
A 2020 Axios report stated that: 'Through campaign fundraising, extensive networking, personal charisma, and romantic or sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors, Fang was able to gain proximity to political power, according to current and former US intelligence officials and one former elected official.'
Fang targeted up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country who had the potential to make it big on the national stage, including Rep. Eric Swalwell, who would later become a Congressman in 2012.
A Chinese national named Fang Fang or Christine Fang, targeted up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country who had the potential to make it big on the national stage, including Rep. Eric Swalwell
She portrayed herself 'to be the connector between the Asian American community and members of Congress,' according to a Bay Area political operative who knew her.
Swalwell's ties to Fang Fang sparked a House Ethics Committee investigation opened in 2021 into his conduct.
The committee ended up not taking any disciplinary action against Swalwell, and closed out the investigation last year, but issued a letter warning lawmakers about the threat of foreign infiltration.
'Members should be conscious of the possibility that foreign governments may attempt to secure improper influence through gifts and other interactions,' the letter stated.
She reportedly raised money for his 2014 campaign and attended a number of events that the congressman attended.
Fang left China to go to college in California in 2011, and then worked on developing relationships with key lawmakers in order to get access to sensitive information
Swalwell's ties to Fang Fang sparked a House Ethics Committee investigation opened in 2021 into his conduct
The FBI, who was investigating Fang Fang, first brought their concerns to the congressman in 2015. At that point, Swalwell said he broke off any contact with the suspected spy.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy kicked Swalwell off of the House Intelligence Committee last year due to his Fang Fang connection.
While officials reportedly did not believe Fang passed on or received any classified information, a senior intelligence official said what she did 'was a big deal, because there were some really, really sensitive people that were caught up'.
Aliia Roza - Ex-Russian spy who is now a 'seduction teacher' in LA
Aliia Roza, 39, was born behind the iron curtain in Kazakhstan into a military family, and says she was raised to be a spy.
The daughter of a high-ranking Kazakh-Tatar official and granddaughter of a Soviet soldier who fought the Nazis in WWII, she was only allowed to follow one path in life.
After years of grooming and training by Russian intelligence services, she was tasked with spying for the Russian government - with seduction as her key weapon.
She has described herself as a 'female James Bond' and was trained to be an expert in 'the psychology of men' so she was able to get top secret information by hitting on enemy agents.
The mother-of-one eventually decided to leave her life of espionage behind, fleeing Moscow for LA, and now uses her specific set of skills to teach other women how to ensnare any man they want.
Aliia was coached in manipulation, seduction, persuasion, and neuro-linguistic programming, with orders including going undercover to trap targets
Born in the USSR to a family consisting of several high-ranking generals, the now 39-year-old was expected to follow in their footsteps and enlisted to become a spy
Roza was already at a special school for children of military officials when
At age 18, she said that she was selected out of hundreds of her peers for a top-secret programme developed by former KGB psychologists - all focused on how to seduce male targets and extract information from them.
'It's not just sex – it's very far from sex actually,' Roza explained on a podcast this year.
'It's all about the art of communication. We're taught how to dress up, how to put on makeup, how to present yourself, how to speak with your targets, how to make your targets believe in you and trust you.
'It's about the psychology of people, of criminals, of men. … It's about understanding the perspective of men and what exactly they want.'
While the idea of espionage might conjure images of glamour and jetsetting, Roza said she received low pay and worked six days a week.
'But I felt patriotic,' she said. 'I felt like a hero saving someone's life. And I felt very powerful. I felt that nobody could do anything to me. I was sacrificing my body doing all these missions. So, I just detached my emotions from my body.'
After many years, Roza said, she began to realise she had been 'brainwashed'.
She fell in love with one of her targets in 2004, the New York Post reported, but the man's associates discovered she was a spy.
With the help of her lover, she was able to flee Moscow with her son and eventually laid down roots in America.
No longer a spy, in July 2017 she launched her own private members club - teaching women how to bag any man they want.
Aliia Roza is an expert in charming the opposite sex, having spent years in the military to become a master manipulator
Olga Kolobova - NATO 'socialite' who spied for GRU
A member of Vladimir Putin's GRU military intelligence service, Olga Kolobova began her spy work in 2006, assuming the identity of 'Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera'.
Kolobova posed as a jewellery designer and wannabe socialite, and used her charm and 'understated beauty' to seduce NATO officers stationed in Naples.
There, she reportedly told friends that she had been abandoned in Russia by her Peruvian mother and raised by an abusive family.
In fact, she was the daughter of a colonel in the Russian military. She settled on the Italian coast after her husband mysteriously died aged 30.
She also attempted to befriend Lady Judith McAlpine, a member of one of the UK's wealthiest families, in an apparent bid to penetrate the British establishment.
Olga Kolobova posed as a jewellery designer and slept with NATO officers stationed in Naples, Italy, in a bid to obtain military secrets had also attempted to befriend Lady Judith McAlpine, a member of one of Britain's wealthiest families
Olga Kolobova, a member of Russia's GRU foreign intelligence service and the infamous network of deep cover 'illegals', began spying as early as 2006 when she assumed the identity of 'Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera' (taken from Adela Serein's Facebook page)
Lady McAlpine, 78, whose brother Alistair had been a Tory donor and adviser to Margaret Thatcher, revealed that she thwarted the spy's attempts at trickery because she did not trust the 'fake' and 'self-invented' woman, the Telegraph reports.
For years she travelled across Europe, moving to Malta and Rome in 2010 where she befriended Marcelle D'Argy Smith - former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine - before jetting to Paris and registering a trademark to open a jewellery company.
Returning to Italy in 2012, she married a Russian-Ecuadorian man but their romance was short lived.
He died mysteriously just one year later, leaving 'Maria' free to roam around Italy again before settling in Naples - the home of NATO's Allied Joint Force Command.
Olga Kolobova, a member of Putin's GRU military intelligence service, began spying as early as 2006 when she assumed the identity of 'Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera'. She is pictured in Malta in 2010 alongside Marcelle D'Argy Smith (left), a former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine who she duped into friendship
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is pictured on Friday
It is there that Peruvian-born 'Maria' established herself as a custom jewellery-maker and nightclub owner, whose fun-loving and outgoing nature allowed her to strike up friendships and romances with dozens of NATO employees and even high-ranking colonels.
But in actual fact, Kolobova is the daughter of a Russian military official who was flogging Chinese made knock-off jewellery while luring European and US security officials to unwittingly divulge sensitive information for her bosses in the Kremlin.
Marcelle D'Argy Smith, the former editor of Cosmopolitan who had attended a party with Kolobova unware she was a Russian agent, believes Adela may have been playing the long game with her.
Mata Hari - Dutch exotic dancer who 'spied for the Germans' during WWI
Dutch-born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle worked as a dancer and courtesan in Paris in the early 1900s, and was better known as Mata Hari.
Her name has become synonymous with the femme fatale - with many believing her to have been a seductive female spy who unearthed secrets from unsuspecting male targets.
As a young woman, she endured an abusive marriage to a Dutch army officer, which eventually ended in divorce.
With her daughter in her ex-husband's custody, Hari desperately sought to earn a living in the hope of one day reuniting with her, and relocated to Paris in 1905.
She soon adopted her stage name - a Malay expression for the sun likely inspired by her time in Sumatra - and cultivated the image of an exotic dancer.
Dutch-born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle worked as a dancer and courtesan in Paris in the early 1900s, and was better known as Mata Hari
The tall beauty brought in audiences in Paris and across France with her East Indian-inspired dances, as well as her willingness to appear virtually nude in public.
She had a string of lovers, many of whom were military officers and powerful officials, often charging them for her services.
Because her home country remained neutral in the First World War, she was able to move across borders relatively freely.
While living in the Hague, a German official is believed to have offered to pay her for whatever information she could glean from military targets on her next trip to France.
Hari was eventually undone by one of her lovers, a German major who sought to dispose of her by identifying her as a spy in a code he knew the French had cracked.
After her arrest, she acknowledged that she had accepted money from Germany, but claimed to have only given outdated information to an intelligence officer.
France blamed her espionage for the death of up to 50,000 French soldiers, though provided no evidence to support the allegation.
Mata Hari's name has become synonymous with the femme fatale - with many believing her to have been a seductive female spy who unearthed secrets from unsuspecting male targets
In late July 1917, Mata Hari was tried by a military court and sentenced to death by firing squad.
Bold until the end, legend has it that the 41-year-old refused to wear a blindfold and even smiled at her executioners as they put her to death.
Despite her reputation, Mata Hari's story is seen as an unjust account by many, who in the years since her death have proclaimed her innocence.
The German government publicly exculpated her in 1930, while documents released by the French in recent years have led many to believe she was used as a scapegoat for the country's setbacks in the war.
Her legend persists nevertheless, and her name is still known more than 100 years after her execution.
Betty Pack - American who spied for MI6 in WWII and was dubbed 'female James Bond'
Dubbed the 'Mata Hari of Minnesota', American-born Betty Pack was one of the most successful Allied agents of the World War II - and one of its great unsung heroes.
The MI6 agent's beauty and brains allowed her to seduce diplomats and officials to steal secrets which helped to defeat the Nazis.
The intelligence she obtained included vital details about the Enigma machine which the Germans used to code all their messages.
She also stole the Vichy Papers in an elaborate plot which helped with Allied landing in North Africa in 1942, an event which is said to have changed the course of the war.
She was born Amy Elizabeth Thorpe in Minneapolis in 1910, and her father was a US Marine Corps officer. Friends and family called her Betty and that was the name that stuck.
The MI6 agent's beauty and brains allowed her to seduce diplomats and officials to steal secrets which helped to defeat the Nazis. Amy Thorpe aka Betty Pack in a wedding picture 1936
The made her debut in Washington society aged 18, and stunned men with her beauty.
As a future MI6 colleague put it: 'The trick of making a man feel he is her entire universe is an old feminine wile, but she had it to the nth degree.'
She became pregnant at 19 without knowing who the father was, and married married Arthur Pack, the second secretary at the British Embassy to avoid a scandal.
He was 19 years her senior, and the union brought Pack little more than dual British American citizenship - and a way into the world of espionage.
The Packs were sent to Warsaw, Poland as it was coming onto Hitler's radar - the move coordinated by MI6 so that she could be tested further in the field.
There she seduced a Polish foreign office official, later describing their meetings as 'very fruitful'.
'I let him make love to me as often as he wanted, since this guaranteed the smooth flow of political information I needed,' she reflected matter-of-factly.
She went on to court Count Michael Lubienski, the chief aide to the Polish foreign minister, Jozef Beck.
Incredibly, she managed to extract details from him about how Polish mathematicians were trying to crack the Enigma machine.
The information was passed along to the experts at Bletchley Park in England, where Britain's greatest minds were trying to do the same.
Pack even obtained proof of Hitler's plans to take apart the former Czechoslovakia before she was ordered to leave Poland in 1938.
When World War Two broke out, she offered her talents to the British intelligence service and traveled to New York where she was given the codename 'Cynthia'.
Her first assignment was to get hold of the code books used by the Italian navy, and she undertook the assignment by reconnecting with old friend Alberto Lais, who was an attaché at the Italian embassy in Washington.
Time magazine wrote in her obituary that she 'used the bedroom like James Bond uses a Beretta'
She had written to Lais, who was almost 30 years her senior, as a child of just 11, and he affectionately called her his 'golden girl'.
Lais, who was married, could not resist Pack but did not sleep with her and instead preferred to stroke her naked body and fondle her for hours. Pack described their affair as 'sentimental rather than sexual'.
He eventually revealed the name of the clerk in the relevant office, who Pack bribed to get the codes which would go on to enable Britain's Royal Navy to destroy the Italians at the Battle of Cape Matapan.
She went on to get hold of the naval ciphers belonging to Vichy France, which supported the Nazis.
Going undercover as a journalist, she targeted Charles Brousse, a married newspaper owner and press attaché at the Vichy embassy in Washington.
The pair went to bed together the same night, and Brousse's instant love for her saw him turn on his own government and assist her in the mission.
The pair got into the Vichy embassy, where the ciphers were held, by saying they needed somewhere discreet to have their affair.
After two failed attempts, they were able to crack the safe containing the codes, take the books and copy them rapidly, before putting them back the same night.
Two days later the ciphers were at Bletchley Park, the British code cracking base, and they proved a vital aid to the Allied landing in French-held North Africa in November 1942.
Arthur Pack killed himself in 1945 in Argentina, and Brousse divorced his wife and married Pack. Tragically, she died of mouth cancer aged just 53 in 1963.
According to Blum, she said never had any regrets about combining the two oldest professions in the world - spying and prostitution - and said: 'Wars are not won by respectable methods'.
Time magazine wrote in her obituary that she 'used the bedroom like James Bond uses a Beretta'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13392371/sexpionage-glamorous-female-spies-sex-male-targets-Russian-agent-bedroom-Bond.html?ico=topics_pagination_desktop
No comments:
Post a Comment