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Stolen Identities, Suburban Spies
When Donald Heathfield appears in a Boston court today asking to be released on bail, a complicated past life will come back to haunt him. So will the short, tragic life of a Canadian boy whose identity he allegedly stole.The fake Mr Heathfield, according to the FBI, came the closest of all the alleged Russian spies arrested on Sunday to acquiring real intelligence for his paymasters. He made contacts in "US power circles", sent cables to Moscow about senior CIA staff changes in the run-up to the 2008 election, and discussed nuclear "bunker-busters" with a US government official. The real Donald Heathfield was born in Ontario on February 4, 1963. He died six weeks later in his cot. Yesterday his elder brother, now 51, expressed outrage at the theft of his sibling's name, identity and birth certificate, which the FBI found in a Massachusetts safe deposit box nine years ago. "At first we thought it was a joke," David Heathfield told The Times from his home in Canada. "It's not a joke any more. I didn't even know there were spies after the Cold War. I thought it was a dead thing, but it's quite real now. How does this man get off using someone else's name? What he has done to our family is despicable." The Boston Globe has other material: "I kept thinking how nice this is; finally, there's someone who's really friendly,'' Doris Stanley, 65, said yesterday from her front porch. But then Stanley, a French teacher, said she noticed some inconsistencies. "I noticed she [Mrs. Heathfield] had an accent, and I said -- because I'm nosy -- 'What's this accent you have?' '' Stanley recalled. "And she said, 'I'm from Montreal.' '' The two women began speaking French. "I was thinking, 'That's strange,' because I actually understood this person, and I usually don't understand people from Montreal,'' she recalled. Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-07-01 |
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