You may remember a classic scene from a classic movie, My Cousin Vinny — made way back in 1992. Vinny and his fiancée Mona Lisa, New Yorkers to the core, are in a small Alabama town. He says, “You stick out like a sore thumb around here.” She says, “Me? What about you?” He says, “I fit in better than you. At least I’m wearing cowboy boots.” “Oh, yeah,” she says, with weary sarcasm, “you blend.”

Those Russian spies recently shipped back to the Motherland didn’t especially blend. They were supposed to be sleepers, blenders — melting with practiced skill into American society. Instead, they stuck out like sore thumbs, a lot of them. And they often didn’t try very hard. One spy, in a cellphone shop, gave her address as 99 Fake Street.

They did a pretty good job choosing “American” names. (I’m mindful that Chang and Gonzalez are American names, too.) Vladimir and Lydia Guryev, who set up shop in Montclair, N.J., called themselves Richard and Cynthia Murphy. Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova, another couple, called themselves Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley. In court, Mr. Heathfield said he preferred to be addressed as Mr. Heathfield, still. His wife — Elena/Tracey — opted for “Defendant Number 5” (which reminded some of us of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s onetime handle: “Client Number 9”).

I like a story told in Cold War days. Konrad Adenauer was introduced to an American spook whose name, genuinely, was Smith. “Der Alte” muttered, “‘Smith,’ ‘Smith,’ it’s always ‘Smith’ with you people.”

One of the recent Russian spies, at least, showed a little ethnic imagination. Mikhail Kutsik called himself Michael Zottoli. (His wife, Natalia Pereverzeva, was Patricia Mills.) Speaking of names, I give you that of their advanced-finance instructor at the University of Washington, who commented on his former students to the press: Ufuk Ince.

The Russians did not exactly speak like the guy or girl next door, unless the guy or girl is Russian. “Cynthia Murphy,” in Montclair, explained to her neighbors why she had an accent: She was Belgian. (Nice and vague.) To still other neighbors, she said she was Scandinavian. (Again, nicely vague.) After the arrests, everyone remarked on how lovely her hydrangeas were.

By the way, did you read about how the Guryevs/Murphys explained to their masters in Moscow why they had bought a house? In a coded message, they wrote, “From our perspective, purchase of the house was solely a natural progression of our prolonged stay here.” And it was a way to “‘do as the Romans do’ in a society that values home ownership.” Well, a lot of people overvalued home ownership in the last decade — that’s one reason the Romans are hurting right now.

The sex of the scandal was Anna Chapman — the one who had given her address as “99 Fake Street.” “Anna Chapman” was her real name, actually, because the young woman born Anna Kushchenko had once been married to an Englishman named Alex Chapman. He told the London tabs all about their bedroom games — and he had photos to share! The New York Post recycled this material under the headline “‘Spy’ vixen’s kinky sex secrets exposed.” The Daily News had some info, too: “The wealthy boyfriend of sexy Russian spy Anna Chapman is being accused in a civil lawsuit of raping a New Jersey woman and giving her herpes.” And so it went. Anna was everyone’s favorite “flame-haired” bim, “the spy who loved us.” The Washington Post purred that she “could have warmed up any Cold War night.”

On the subject of the Cold War: Do you happen to remember Svetlana Ogorodnikova, the Soviet spy who seduced an FBI man named Richard Miller? This was in the mid-1980s. She pleaded with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, “I’m not a spy. I’m not Mata Hari. I’m not sexual maniac like people say about me. Do I look like I’m a sexual maniac?” (Sort of.)

Back to Anna Chapman for a moment. When news broke that we were sending the spies back to Russia, the New York Post asked, “But can we keep her?” Even Vice President Biden got in on the act, leering a bit on The Tonight Show. He said, “Let me be clear: It was not my idea to send her back.” He added, “I thought they’d take Rush Limbaugh.” They certainly would not have taken Joe.

A spy who did not love us so much was Vicky Peláez. She was the only one who wasn’t actually Russian, and “Vicky Peláez” was her real and only name. She came from Peru, where she was a flamboyant TV journalist, and a flaming radical — kind of a red Fallaci. A curious event occurred in 1984 (about the time Svetlana was seducing Dick). She and a cameraman were kidnapped by the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, one of the terrorist armies that have made South America bleed. They were held just a day — and Peláez got an interview out of it: an interview with a terrorist leader.

Curious indeed. These “revolutionary movements” tend not to hold people for just a day. Recently, I met an incredibly brave woman named Clara Rojas who was a hostage of the FARC for six years. People said it looked like Peláez was in on the Túpac Amaru kidnapping, or “kidnapping.” One of those people was the cameraman.

What about her husband, Juan Lázaro, né Mikhail Vasenko? In Peru, he was a photographer and a karate instructor: and he passed himself off as a Peruvian born in Uruguay. Or tried to. People thought it was a bit odd that a Uruguayan-born Peruvian spoke with a Russian accent. But everyone’s allowed to reinvent himself. And Lázaro did name himself after a man raised from the dead.

That Vicky loved Juan, there is little doubt. In a book dedication, she described him as her “comrade and guide of all dreams.”

In New York, the couple worked as commies (openly) and Russian spies (not openly). She was a columnist for El Diario/La Prensa. On her desk were photos of Che Guevara and Abimael Guzmán — Guzmán being the leader of Shining Path, the insanely murderous Peruvian terror group. She spoke at May Day rallies. That sort of thing. As for Lázaro, he went to the New School (of course) and became some sort of anthropologist–political scientist. He once contributed an article to the red journal Dialectical Anthropology. It was about how good Shining Path was in incorporating women. They got to kill, right along with the men.

In her writings, Peláez constantly praised the man she loved: not Lázaro, not even Guzmán, but Fidel Castro. She loved Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, and the other little Castros, too. But she especially loved the big Castro. Her columns were carried by Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban state. In one of them, she wrote, “Fidel Castro is already immortal! He is a man who inspired and demonstrated the fertile path of truth for other leaders!” And Castro loved her back, make no mistake. In a column of his own, just last May, he cited a piece she had written about Arizona’s new immigration law: “such a well-argued document,” he said.

Note, too, that Peláez published at jihadist and jihad-friendly sites, such as WebIslam. The likes of Vicky Peláez will take their revolution where they can get it.

Lázaro did a little teaching: at Baruch College, a component of the City University of New York. He taught a course in Latin American and Caribbean politics. Apparently, he used his time denouncing U.S. foreign policy and celebrating Chávez et al. Talk about blending in! He could not have been more natural in an American classroom. One student said, “He challenged us intellectually.” Certainly, certainly. Other students, however, found his unrelenting anti-Americanism oppressive.

After the arrests, some of Vicky and Juan’s friends scratched their heads. The couple were such devotees of Shining Path; but Shining Path, being Maoist, always opposed the Soviet Union (as too soft), and definitely opposed post-Communist Russia. How to explain the inconsistency? There are also people who wonder how the Iranian regime, which is Shiite, can support Hamas and other Sunni terror groups. They seem not to understand that, when you have an axis going, you aren’t too picky.

Lázaro, or Vasenko, proved proudly Russian upon his arrest. It was almost touching. He said he would never violate his loyalty to the Service — meaning, Russian intelligence — even for the sake of his son.

His son? Yes, Juan Jr., age 17. He is a student of the piano. Vicky has another son, too, from a previous relationship: Waldomar Mariscal (beautiful name), age 38. He is an architect. Initially, he poured scorn on the idea that either Vicky or Juan had anything to do with Russia or Russians. It was “preposterous,” he told the press. Why, the only thing Russian about the accused couple was their fondness for Tchaikovsky. It’s unclear how much the sons knew: how much Vicky and Juan had told them.

Once the jig was up, the Russian government offered Vicky a deal: Come to Russia and take free housing, plus $2,000 a month — for life. In addition, all the travel you and your kids could want. But Vicky wants to do something else: She wants to go back to Peru, where the government said it is happy to have her — or at least willing to have her. She has a ranch there, and an adobe. Juan could go with her, presumably, and they could live happily ever after, in their “adobe hacienda,” as the old song went. They would surely blend.

And bear in mind that they’re all for Shining Path, these two — for a terrorist “revolutionary movement” that seeks to destroy Peruvian democracy, and as many Peruvians as necessary. But that’s Lima’s problem now, I suppose. Washington and Moscow appear through.