Guys, This Isn't A James Bond Movie

People love James Bond movies, because they love sexy spies. Unfortunately, time has proved again and again that spies don't look like Tatiana Romanova, and they certainly aren't supposed to look like Anna Chapman, pictured left. She's become the poster child for the seemingly useless Russian spies captured by the US Justice Department last week, mostly because she is a socialite that insists on flitting around Manhattan in Hérve Léger bandage dresses. Chapman, the daughter of a "Russian diplomat" (code word for former KGB agent, of course), is just the cherry on top of this somewhat hilarious ordeal. She's not the brightest of the Russian spies, reportedly emailing her handler sensitive information while he was standing right outside the café she was emailing him from. An email, we might add, that was confiscated by the Feds pretty quickly. She also signed up for a cell phone under the address "99 Fake Street" (no, I'm not kidding) and fell for the undercover Fed with their silly codeword exchange:

The undercover instructed her on how she would recognize her fellow spy and how to report back on the handoff, the feds said.

"Haven’t we met in California last summer?" the spy expecting the fake passport was supposed to say. Chapman was to respond, "No, I think it was the Hamptons," according to the FBI.

Not only this, but her ex-husband is an accused rapist. Can it get any better? Yes, actually, and Sean Connery is laughing that this is actually more campy than Goldfinger. There are more agents than Chapman, of course, and the other agents have been busy being more successful by spying in suburban backyards. The Daily Intel worries that when they return to Russia they will be able to "divulge all the secrets they've gathered about holding backyard barbecues and shopping at Banana Republic." One of the spy's neighbors reports, "They couldn’t have been spies, look what she did with the hydrangeas!” The spies were also quick to push off quirks with the flimsy excuse that they were from Canada.

Of course, commenters on the issue were quick to report that perhaps the spies' real mission was to assimilate into American culture and thus able to see weaknesses that Americans have been familiar with forever yet seemed insignificant to Russians. However, the Russians should have picked up on the weakness that one of the states, namely Alaska, is very close to Russia (Mhhmm, a Sarah Palin joke).

Russia got very upset when we cracked their little spy ring and offered to trade ten American spies captured by Russia for Anna Chapman & Co. The US seems to be getting the better deal in this spy swap, since the ten agents that Reuters reports the Russians are planning on returning to the US for the captured Russians are not hot and therefore actually spies who accomplished something besides being terrible spies and gardening.

UPDATE: The US is swapping the ten self-confessed spies (with the serious money laundering charges dropped) for four real American spies captured by the Russians, ones who have significantly more espionage that the Russian ring, except that one guy who still insists he's innocent.

Russian Spies' Dumbest Mistakes [Daily Intel]
Factbox: Candidates for possible U.S.-Russia spy swap [Reuters]