CIA Spy Caught in Recruitment Sting, Russia Says

Businessweek

Russian operatives caught a CIA agent trying to recruit a member of the special services in Moscow with a promise to pay as much as $1 million a year for information, the Federal Security Service said.

The spy, identified as Ryan Christopher Fogle, worked undercover as the third secretary of the political section of the U.S. embassy, the FSB, as the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB is known in Russian, said on its website today.

The man the FSB identified as Fogle was detained last night in a sting operation that included video footage and photographs that were later distributed to media outlets and broadcast on state television. Fogle was returned to the embassy today, an on-duty FSB officer said by phone.

One photo shows the contents of the backpack the FSB said Fogle was carrying at the time of his arrest neatly arrayed on a table, including dark and light wigs, sunglasses, a compass, a map of Moscow, two knives, a notepad, a microphone, a plastic cigarette lighter and an RFID shield.

‘Dear Friend’
Another photo showed what the FSB said was a printed letter in Russian that Fogle intended to deliver to his target. The missive, which starts, “Dear Friend,” promises $100,000 just to “discuss possible cooperation” and as much as $1 million a year for supplying information demanded by the U.S., state-run RT television said on its website. It instructs the recipient to open a new Gmail account, write an e-mail to unbacggdA@gmail.com and wait a week for a reply, RT said.

The incident shows intelligence services are resuming their Cold War spying tactics after the end of the “reset” policy championed by former President Dmitry Medvedev and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama, said Nikolai Kovalyov, who ran the FSB from 1996 to 1998, when he was replaced by Vladimir Putin.

“This won’t lead to global changes in relations between countries and security services, though it is a signal that Americans have returned to their old tactics and methods of work,” Kovalyov, now a member of the security committee in the lower house of parliament, said by phone from Moscow.

The FSB said in its statement the Fogle case is just the latest in “numerous attempts” by the U.S. recently to recruit Russians in law enforcement and the security services.

Boston Bombing
Kovalyov said relations have worsened since the U.S. passed the so-called Magnitsky Act last year that sanctions Russian officials deemed complicit in human rights abuses. The bill is named for a legal adviser who accused officials of stealing $230 million from Russia’s treasury. Supporters of Sergei Magnitsky, who was arrested on tax evasion charges and died in jail in 2009, say he was tortured and denied medical care.

President Putin responded by banning adoptions of Russian children by American families and urged the Obama administration to pressure Congress to tame its hostile attitude toward Russia.

Kovalyov also said Russian leaders are puzzled by what he said was U.S. reluctance to work more closely with Russia on the global war on terror.

“After the Boston bombings, the whole world saw Russia’s readiness to cooperate against a common threat, but for some reason the Americans didn’t use this chance,” Kovalyov said.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar, ethnic Chechens who emigrated to the U.S. from the Dagestan region of Russia, are suspected of detonating the two bombs that killed three people and injured more than 200 at the Boston Marathon last month. The older brother was killed during a shootout with police, while the younger one is being held at a federal prison outside Boston.

Cold War
Obama said two weeks ago that Russia had been “very cooperative” in the investigation of the attack, which included a visit to Dagestan by a team of FBI agents.

“There are still suspicions sometimes between our intelligence and law enforcement agencies that date back 10, 20, 30 years, back to the Cold War,” Obama said at a White House briefing on April 30.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul for questioning over today’s incident.

McFaul said during a question-and-answer session via his Twitter Inc. account that he would only answer questions about civil society, non-governmental organizations and his blog. займ на карту онлайн займ на карту https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php займ на карту срочно без отказа