Women spies: The infamous stories

Female spies have been working under mysterious garbs since the World Wars. They have been leading lives full of intrigue and glamour.

This week, federal authorities announced that they had been watching Russians sneaking around New York city since 2000. As is customary, city life itself became a camouflage for spies and their counterspies.

In this latest chapter, an FBI affidavit made public on Monday said that a woman named Anna Chapman was passing messages to Russian officials over WiFi.

Besides her, there were 10 others who were arrested for being a part of the decade-old Russian espionage ring.

Anna Chapman has been called the femme fatale of the spy case with Cold War-style intrigue — a striking redhead and self-styled entrepreneur who dabbled in real estate and mused on her Facebook page, "if you can dream, you can become it." (AP Photo)

According to her affidavit, she worked from a Starbucks at 47th Street and Eighth Avenue, and flashed messages to a Russian driving past in a van. (AP Photo)

Chapman began using online social networks, including LinkedIn and Facebook, to develop business contacts and to market her skills.

Her LinkedIn page says, "Love launching innovative high-tech startups and building passionate teams to bring value into market."

She also ran a real estate Web site and according to her lawyer, is the owner of a real estate firm in Manhattan valued at $2 million.

American officials believe that most of the accused were born in Russia and had been given sophisticated training before resettling in the US, posing as married couples.

One of the agents known as Cynthia Murphy reported an annual income of $135,000 as a financial planner, her affidavit says. Before US President Barack Obama's visit to Moscow last year, Murphy and her husband were instructed to size up American intentions from their home in New Jersey.

Neighbours of the couple were shocked when a team of FBI agents turned up on Sunday night and led the couple away in handcuffs.

Here's a look at some of the mysterious women in espionage over the years.

While some have posed as actors, others have dawned the garb of exotic dancers.

Earlier this year, 53-year-old Madhuri Gupta who was posted as Second Secretary to the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, was arrested for spying for Pakistan. She allegedly confessed that she was in love with her Pakistani handler and was also upset because she had been overlooked for promotion. She was a translator who handled press at the High Commission.

Gupta was summoned from Pakistan on the pretext that she was needed for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meet, now underway in Thimphu. On her arrival in Delhi, she was arrested.

Intelligence sources say that while Madhuri Gupta did not have access to crucial information, she outed several Indian undercover agents within the Indian High Commission to the Pakistanis she was in touch with.

Come April 27, Gupta joined the league of not-so-ordinary women.

Roxana Saberi, was a US-Iranian journalist, who was put on trial before a revolutionary court on charges of spying for Iran's arch-foe the United States according to an official in 2009. US President Barack Obama on April 19, 2009 denied Saberi was a spy and demanded her release, after she was sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage.

The most famous, and controversial, spy of World War One was Mata Hari - or Margaretha Geertruida Zelle McLeod - a Dutch born woman who portrayed herself as an exotic dancer. Many myths and legends have surrounded her past. She was a courtesan. However, she had invented an identity as an exotic dancer from India. She was shot by the French as a spy on October 15, 1917.

In 1931 a film loosely based on Mata Hari starred Greta Garbo and popularized her legend.

She was Marie Monin, Germaine, Camille and even Diane. All the aliases point to Virginia Hall, an American spy during World War II.

Despite the fact that her leg had to be amputated from the knee down, she was dextrous in the clandestine work behind enemy lines.

Considered as perhaps the most dangerous of all allied spies by the Gestapo, the Germans even went on to give the nickname 'Artemis'.

Austrian-born actress Hedy Lamarr, a Hollywood star from the 40's and 50's, is also rumored to have been a spy. She made a valuable contribution to the intelligence division by co-producing an anti-jamming device for torpedoes. She also devised a clever way of "frequency hopping" that prevented the interception of American military messages.

Ironically, she also starred in a flick called My favourite spy.

Elizabeth Van Lew, Crazy Bet, as she was known, passed information during the Civil War. Elizabeth effectively used the Crazy Bet moniker to make people think she was mentally ill.

She would wear old clothes and bonnets and talk to herself. Because of this, most people thought that she was crazy.

Belle Boyd became the star attraction in social circles in Washington prior to the beginning of the Civil War.

In 1864, Confederate president Jefferson Davis asked Belle to carry letters for him to England. The Union Navy captured her ship, but the officer in charge fell in love with Belle and let her escape.

After the war, Boyd toured the United States as an actress under the stage name of La Belle Rebelle.

Sarah Emma Edmonds ran away from home as a teenager and in order to survive dressed as a man and called herself Frank Thompson.

In 1861, Frank (Sarah) enlisted in the Second Michigan Infantry and over the next two years not only fought in a number of Civil War battles, but also served as a spy for the Union Army. Solders in her unit called Frank "our woman" because of his feminine mannerisms and his extremely small boot size. However, none of her comrades ever figured out that Frank was really Sarah.

Noor Inayat Khan or Nora Baker, was a British agent in World War II of Indian origin and the first female radio operator to be sent into occupied France to aid the French Resistance.