Russia reports earlier accusation of U.S. spying

MOSCOW --The arrest and expulsion of a U.S. Embassy official this week for allegedly attempting, in a ham-handed way, to recruit a Russian intelligence officer was the second such case this year, Russian state television reported Wednesday.

The earlier arrest took place in January, when an embassy official identified as Benjamin Dillon was arrested “in the attempt to recruit a special services officer,” Rossiya-1 TV reported in an interview with a man identified as an officer of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor agency to the Soviet KGB. The officer was not identified and his face was hidden in shadow. He said Dillon was a CIA agent.

“We decided not to make it public and asked this operative to leave the country, which he did,” the officer said. “The number of CIA agents who are conducting work against our country has not decreased since the end of the Cold War.”

A U.S. spokesman, Joseph Kruzich, said the embassy would have no comment on the report.

News of the January arrest came on the heels of one of the strangest days in the long history of U.S.-Russian spying. On Tuesday, the FSB announced with considerable flourish the brief detention of embassy official Ryan Christopher Fogle, whom it accused of being a CIA agent. The Russians released photos and videotapes of Fogle’s arrest and interrogation after he allegedly attempted to recruit a Russian intelligence official with the promise of up to $1 million.

In a seeming throwback to the 1950s, Fogle was allegedly equipped with a compass, makeup kit, two wigs and a map of Moscow. In a more contemporary mode, he allegedly carried about $100,000 in 500-euro notes.

On Wednesday, the FSB provided Rossiya-1 with what it said was a recording of Fogle calling his would-be recruit. In it, a man can be heard saying, in American-accented Russian: “I represent a Western country, you probably know which one. We have been watching you for a long time and we think your work is very impressive. Today I have $100,000 for you. And you can make for up to $1 million a year. Are you interested?”

Another state-owned station, First Channel, added the detail that Fogle was making his call from the street next to the house where his recruiting target lived. After the call, the officer in question came out and threw Fogle to the ground.

According to the Rossiya-1 report, the FSB claimed to know from the time that Fogle arrived in Moscow in 2011 that he was a CIA agent, and put him under surveillance. The report did not say how the FSB would have gotten that information.

A former KGB general, Alexei Kondaurov, suggested that Fogle behaved so amateurishly as to suggest a hidden agenda.

“I don’t remember anything sloppier, anything more stupid, anything as screamingly unprofessional done by a foreign agent to give himself away in my entire time with the KGB,” Kondaurov told The Times.

His theory: “The incongruity of the whole thing … leads me to believe that the Americans set up this whole giveaway circus and burnt their agent in a decoy move to cover up for some serious operation unfolding at the same time someplace else in Moscow or its vicinity.”

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