Christo Grozev on Socialite, Widow, Jeweller, Spy

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2022

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Late last month, investigative journalists at Bellingcat and partner organizations published a story exposing the identity of a Russian spy named Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, who over the course of 10 years had charmed her way into the social circles of NATO members in Naples. Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Christo Grozev, Bellingcat's lead Russia investigator, who walked us through this stranger-than-fiction spy thriller. They discussed how Maria Adela found herself courting NATO officers in Italy, how Bellingcat's team exposed the truth, often at great personal risk to themselves, and how this story can help us understand the state of Russian tradecraft.

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0:25.6	no bull and the aftermath.
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1:23.0	So we don't know what she might have stolen in terms of data.
1:29.1	And if she did, then one would expect that over 10 years, almost 10 years, she would
1:33.6	have had access to somebody's left behind laptop, but even if that were not true, the
1:41.1	risk of somebody knowing intimately so many officers at NATO and being able to create
1:48.9	a profile for them or to pass on such raw information to the GERU profilers, that is a
	...

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