U.S. Man Convicted of Spying in Russia, Gets 20-Year Term

A Russian judge ended the first spy trial of the post-Cold War era Wednesday by throwing the book at American businessman Edmond D. Pope, convicting him of espionage and sentencing him to the maximum prison term of 20 years.

Pope, a 54-year-old retired naval intelligence officer who ran a marine technology firm, is the first American convicted of espionage in Russia since U2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960.

The Pope case, which began with his arrest April 3, has helped sour U.S.-Russian relations, which have been openly strained since NATO intervened in the Kosovo conflict last year. The Russian military and the main security service, the FSB, rankled by what they considered Western high-handedness in the Balkans, relish opportunities to needle their former enemies.

FSB spokesman Alexander A. Zdanovich praised the court’s verdict for “upholding the correctness and legality of the FSB’s investigation.”

“Russia has state secrets to protect, and we will do everything possible to protect them,” he said triumphantly.

In Washington, White House spokesman P.J. Crowley called the verdict “deeply disappointing.” President Clinton spoke to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin several times in recent months to plead for Pope’s release on humanitarian grounds, saying that Pope suffered from a rare form of bone cancer and that his health appeared to be deteriorating in prison. Putin responded that he could not interfere in the judicial process.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called her Russian counterpart, Igor S. Ivanov, on Wednesday to express concern about Pope’s health. U.S. officials did not reveal Ivanov’s response.

Analysts in Russia and the United States have suggested that the Kremlin wanted a conviction so that it could begin back-channel negotiations over a pardon and release.

Other Americans accused in the past of spying--including Powers and Nicholas Daniloff, a journalist arrested in 1986--were freed in prisoner exchanges. Speculation in Moscow has focused on a deal exchanging Pope for American Aldrich H. Ames, convicted in 1994 of spying first for the Soviet Union and then for Russia.

Zdanovich said any exchange “belongs to the sphere of conjecture,” but he hinted that some kind of resolution was possible.

“There’s a procedure for appealing to the president for leniency if the sentenced person wishes,” he said. “Of course, this will all proceed in a natural way, and we are not going to oppose any of these actions.”

Pope, of State College, Pa., retired in 1994 after a 27-year military career. The Pentagon has said his career included stints with the Naval Intelligence Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The FSB accused Pope of paying $30,000 to obtain top secret plans for Russia’s Shkval underwater missile, a torpedo nearly three times faster than any in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s fleet. Although the Shkval has been sold on the open market, the intelligence service insisted that aspects of the torpedo’s design remain secret.

Paul Beaver, spokesman for Jane’s Information Group, the respected British military information service, agreed that the missile’s design would be of interest to Western intelligence, especially if Russia should sell it to potential adversaries such as China or Iraq.

“It’s a very valuable piece of technology,” Beaver said from London. “There’s no other torpedo like it in the world.”

The Shkval, which means “squall” in Russian, travels through water on a cushion of air, reaching speeds of 200 knots. The fastest NATO torpedo travels at 70 knots, Beaver said. The air cushion also muffles its sound, making it hard to detect.

Pope’s lawyers argued that their client was seeking only unclassified information and had received documents from the Bauman technical university in Moscow certifying that the blueprints and other information he sought were not secret.

Moreover, during the trial, the chief witness against Pope, Anatoly Babkin, a Bauman professor, recanted earlier testimony that he provided Pope with classified information.

Pope’s lawyer, Pavel Astakhov, accused the court of deliberately excluding evidence that could acquit his client. He also accused the court of acting with suspicious speed in a country where even routine investigations often take years and few cases ever make it to court. He demonstrated his contempt of the judicial process by delivering his closing arguments in rhyming verse.

“This case broke several [speed] records,” he said after the sentencing. “It took just three months for the investigation of an especially serious crime, it took a little more than two months for the trial, just 2 1/2 hours to reach a verdict and just an hour to announce it. . . . What kind of evenhandedness, objectivity or full judicial examination can be spoken of?”

For his part, Pope appeared resigned. From the courtroom cage where Russian defendants are held during trial, Pope read a lengthy statement proclaiming his innocence.

“Although I spent eight months in prison in Russia, I am not a spy. The only decision that you must make is to let me go home to my family,” Astakhov quoted his client as saying.

The specific charges and evidence against Pope were secret, and the trial took place behind closed doors.

However, Pope’s wife, Cheryl, and a few reporters and other observers were permitted into the courtroom for the verdict. As Judge Nina Barkina read the sentence, Pope hung his head, holding his wife’s hand through the bars of the cage. She gave him an awkward hug before he was returned to the FSB’s Lefortovo prison.

“My husband’s very sick, and he is very frightened,” Cheryl Pope said later. “Quite frankly, the only thing I said to him was, ‘I am there for you.’ ”

She has visited her husband several times in prison and says he believes that his cancer has returned. He has complained of headaches and dizziness and collapsed several times during the trial.

However, the judge said Russian doctors had examined Pope repeatedly and found nothing to suggest that he was unable to stand trial or is unfit for incarceration.

Pope was a career naval intelligence officer before going into business. Since 1997, he has headed a Pennsylvania-based import firm called CERF Technologies International, which markets Russian marine technology in the United States.

In Russia, Pope’s intelligence background was generally regarded as evidence of his guilt.

Pope’s conviction is something of a turnaround for the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, which analysts say has been hoping for a freer hand under Putin, a KGB veteran. The agency suffered a defeat this summer when the Russian Supreme Court upheld the acquittal of Alexander Nikitin, an environmentalist and former naval captain, who was accused of spying by collecting information about nuclear contamination in Arctic waters.

Nikitin denounced the verdict in Pope’s case as “totally bogus.”

“The harshness of the sentence can be explained--it is a political sentence. Once again the KGB/FSB empire is sending a clear message: ‘We’re back! If we can do this to an American, we will crush you into a pulp too.’ They are enjoying their sweet revenge for all the failures and humiliations they suffered in my case and others.”

Nikitin joined others in suggesting that the verdict sets the stage for negotiations on Pope’s release. “All this may be a clever build-up for another Putin image-building trick,” he said.

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Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.

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Noted Spy Cases

Most spy cases involve diplomats and are resolved quickly and quietly. Because diplomats have immunity from prosecution, they are usually simply expelled from the country. The following are spy cases--in which U.S. citizens without diplomatic immunity were arrested--that grew into international dramas:

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1960: Francis Gary Powers, piloting a high-altitude U.S. spy plane, is shot down in Soviet territory, near Sverdlovsk. He goes on trial several months later and is convicted of espionage. Powers is sentenced to 10 years--three in prison and seven in a labor camp. He is freed in 1962 in exchange for a convicted Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel.

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1986: Nicholas Daniloff, Moscow-based correspondent for the weekly U.S. News & World Report, is arrested after accepting an envelope of material from an acquaintance. Daniloff says he believed the envelope contained newspaper clippings; the Soviet government says it contained classified maps. After spending 13 days in prison, he is freed in exchange for Gennady F. Zakharov, a Soviet scientist arrested on spy charges in New York just a few days before Daniloff.

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1997: Richard L. Bliss, a cellular telephone engineer working for San Diego-based Qualcomm, is arrested in southern Russia and accused of possessing spy equipment. Bliss says that the global positioning equipment is necessary for his job and that he is unaware that a license is required to use the gear in Russia. He is jailed for 12 days but released and allowed to go home as long as he agrees to return if summoned by Russian prosecutors. No summons is subsequently issued.

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2000: Edmond D. Pope, a former naval intelligence officer and marine technology importer, is arrested after purchasing the plans for a high-speed torpedo. The Russians say the information was classified; Pope maintains that he requested only declassified information. His case goes to trial, and he is convicted of espionage and sentenced to 20 years in a maximum-security prison.

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Sources: Los Angeles Times, Facts on File, other news sources.

Researched by JACQUELYN CENACVEIRA/Los Angeles Times