Chapman's lawyer: Businesswoman not committed spy

[July 09, 2010]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- The lawyer for one of the women who pleaded guilty in a Cold War-era style U.S.-Russia spy case says she did so mainly to get out of jail.

Robert Baum also maintains in an interview that whatever tasks Anna Chapman carried out over several years for her Russian handlers were "minimal under the statute with which she was charged."

Baum told ABC's "Good Morning America" Friday that "the only conduct that anybody ever claimed she ever did was to communicate on a laptop with an agent of the Russian Federation." He acknowledged she violated the law but insisted she gave the Russians "no secrets whatsoever."

Chapman is the red-haired woman whose sultry photos gleaned from social-networking sites made her a tabloid sensation.

[Associated Press]

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