CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — If an outsider wanted to gain intimate access to a rarefied group of business and political leaders, attending Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government certainly would not hurt. It was there that Donald Heathfield, now accused of being a Russian secret agent under deep cover inside the United States, blended in while forging connections with classmates from around the world.
Mr. Heathfield received a master’s degree in public administration from the Kennedy School in 2000. In a class that included Felipe Calderon, now the president of Mexico, and others who were well connected, exceedingly wealthy or both, he did not stand out at the time, classmates said. But looking back now, after the F.B.I. broke up what it described as a Russian spy ring, some of his characteristics have taken on a new, perhaps eerie, meaning.
Mark Podlasly, a Kennedy School classmate from Vancouver, said he got to know Mr. Heathfield fairly well because they were both Canadian. Mr. Heathfield even organized a Scotch-tasting tour for the handful of Canadians in their class, Mr. Podlasly recalled.
“We called it the Royal Canadian Scotch Stagger,” he said.
Mr. Heathfield told Mr. Podlasly that he had been raised overseas, the son of a Canadian diplomat, and had attended an international school in the Czech Republic.
“It seemed plausible,” Mr. Podlasly said.
But Mr. Heathfield was “always very vague” about his career ambitions, Mr. Podlasly recalled.
“He always used a lot of business speak,” he said. “He’d go around in circles and after a while the conversation would move on to something else”.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Mr. Heathfield, Mr. Podlasly said, was how carefully he kept track of his classmates’ careers after graduation. He traveled overseas a lot and visited many of them, Mr. Podlasly said.
“He kept in touch with almost all of our international classmates,” Mr. Podlasly said. “In Singapore, in Jakarta — he knew what everyone was doing. If you wanted to know where anybody was at, Don would know”.
Several classmates remembered Mr. Heathfield as a soft-spoken but sociable type with a dry wit and a hard-to-place accent.
“He was smart and funny — a flavorful conversationalist,” said Craig Sandler, a classmate who is president of State House News Service, a news organization in Boston. “I thought quite highly of him, but yes, his work was a little bit mysterious”.
Mr. Heathfield was one of about 200 students in a midcareer program in public administration, Mr. Sandler said.
Classmates recalled Mr. Heathfield telling them he was from Montreal, but Mr. Sandler assumed he was French.
“He seemed to know Paris very well,” Mr. Sandler said. “He told us what hotel to stay at and he was right; it was great”.
Mr. Heathfield’s wife, identified in court papers as Tracey Lee Ann Foley, worked at Redfin, a real estate company with an office in Somerville, Mass., said Alex Coon, her boss. Mr. Coon said that Ms. Foley, whom he hired in February, did not earn commissions but made about $100 a day showing homes. The company ran a background check before hiring her, Mr. Coon said, and it came back clean.
“She was well put together, well spoken — a good real estate agent,” he said. “We were nothing but happy with the work she did for us”.
Ms. Foley, who went by Ann, also had a personal Web site on which she described herself as a Montreal native who had lived and gone to school in Switzerland, Canada and France.
According to the site, Ms. Foley once “ran her own travel agency in Cambridge that specialized in organizing trips to French wine regions for small groups of enthusiasts”.
Ms. Foley also wrote on her Web site that her family had “enjoyed visiting much of Europe but are particularly in love with Asia.” She also “appreciates gourmet food, ballet and spending time with her children,” according to the site.
Both Mr. Sandler and Karen S. Kalish, another classmate at Harvard, recalled seeing Mr. Heathfield last month at their reunion, but without his wife. He told Ms. Kalish that his two teenage sons were not living at home, she said.
“I remember that because it seemed kind of strange,” Ms. Kalish, a philanthropist in St. Louis, said. “He said the boys were living elsewhere and going to school elsewhere, but he didn’t explain”.
Mr. Sandler said he knew that Mr. Heathfield had started a company called Future Map, but that its mission seemed vague.
“It was about systemically analyzing problems and mapping out their solutions,” Mr. Sandler said. “At the reunion, I asked, ‘How is Future Map going?’ He said it was going great. I was a little surprised; it seems like that kind of enterprise is a bit of a luxury in this economic climate”.
Another classmate who did not want his name used described Mr. Heathfield as “a joiner” who regularly showed up for social events during his year at Harvard.
“He was definitely not a loner,” said the classmate, a grant writer for a nonprofit organization in Boston. “He was a very lovely, kind of refined guy”.
