CIA Caught Spying, Drugging Russian Citizens Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit CIA UP TO ITS OLD TRICKS; RUSSIAN FSB ACCUSES US OF SPYING AND DRUGGING RUSSIAN CITIZEN TO EXTRACT INFORMATION AP via LA Times - April 10 2002, 2:09 PM PDT http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-russia-us-espionage0410apr10.story?coll=la%2Dap%2Dtopnews%2Dheadlines Russian Agency Accuses CIA of Spying by Judith Ingram MOSCOW -- The Russian successor to the KGB on Wednesday accused the CIA of trying to acquire military secrets, allegations that include such traditional spy tradecraft as invisible ink, secret drop points and mind-altering drugs. Russian television showed grainy footage provided by security services. Mark Mansfield, spokesman for the Langley, Va.-based CIA, declined to comment Wednesday. Agency officials routinely decline to discuss foreign allegations of U.S. espionage. Despite the end of the Cold War, experts say the spy business is alive and well between Russia and the United States and that both sides have a healthy interest in trying to predict the other's next moves -- even if they're now allies. A spokesman for the Federal Security Service, the Soviet-era KGB's chief successor, said CIA officers posing as embassy officials in Russia and another, unidentified ex-Soviet republic had tried to recruit an employee at a secret Russian Defense Ministry installation. The security service interfered at an early stage and was able to monitor the CIA officers' activities and prevent serious damage to Russia's security, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity. The service named two alleged participants in the operation: David Robertson, whose post at an unnamed embassy in the former Soviet Union was not described, and Yunju Kensinger, reportedly a third secretary in the consular department of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. The Interfax news agency, citing an "informed source," said Kensinger had already left Moscow. It quoted the security service's press office as saying that Kensinger, like other alleged American intelligence agents in Russia, had not met personally with her Russian contact or contacts. Instead, she used secret drop points and messages in invisible ink. State-controlled ORT television showed grainy footage of a woman identified as Kensinger walking with other embassy employees. It also broadcast pictures of a plastic-wrapped package stashed among some bushes in what it identified as the Sokolniki region of Moscow, and an interview in a darkened room with a man identified as a Federal Security Service operative. He explained that the Russian Defense Ministry employee, identified only by his first name, Viktor, had gone to a U.S. Embassy in another former Soviet republic last spring to try to find information about a relative who had gone missing abroad. Embassy officers allegedly slipped him psychotropic drugs to get information, because he was found a week later wandering the streets in shock and with amnesia. The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that only after psychiatric treatment had Viktor -- whom a security service employee called a "real patriot" -- been able to reconstruct the details of his visit. "As a result, the Federal Security Service took the necessary steps to stop the leak of Russian secrets through this channel and unmask the Langley employees who used the most unscrupulous methods," ITAR-Tass said. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow would not comment on the espionage accusation, which followed a warm spell prompted by Russia's participation in the U.S.-led anti-terror campaign. Analysts noted the latest spy scandal emerged just weeks ahead of a May summit between President Bush and Putin. "It's the choice of timing that immediately raises questions," said Tom Sanderson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "There are a number of people who are unhappy at how Putin is walking in lockstep with the Americans." Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director for the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow, doubted the scandal will affect the summit. "Of course spy scandals aren't good for bilateral relations, but they don't have any negative consequences," he told the Interfax news agency. Relations haven't been too cozy, however. In December, President Bush announced that the United States would dump the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Moscow had vowed to preserve. The two nations also sparred over newly imposed U.S. steel tariffs, which Russia says will severely damage its metals industry, and Russia's ban on U.S. poultry. Shortly after Putin, a former KGB agent, became acting president in December 1999, U.S. businessman Edmond Pope became the first American convicted of spying in Russia in 40 years. Putin pardoned him shortly after his conviction. Last year, Russia ordered 50 U.S. diplomats to leave the country, mirroring the U.S. expulsion of Russian diplomats following the arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen on charges of spying for Moscow. The Russians' arrest of U.S. Fulbright scholar John Tobin on marijuana charges also attracted wide attention after security officials said they believed he was a spy in training. Tobin was freed from prison last August. Copyright 2002 Associated Press * BBC News Online - Wednesday, 10 April, 2002, 17:35 GMT 18:35 UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/europe/newsid_1921000/1921567.stm Russia accuses US of 'spy plot' The case has echoes of the old days of the KGB Russian intelligence officials say they have uncovered a plot by the United States to try to steal military secrets using spies. " The FSB has irrefutable evidence of the CIA's spying activities against Russia " -- FSB official A spokesman for Russia's internal intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), accused the CIA of trying to get classified information on new kinds of weaponry and Russia's defence links with other ex-Soviet states. "The mission was carried out by CIA officers, working under cover of US diplomatic representations in Moscow and one of the CIS countries," the FSB said in a statement. The US embassy in Moscow has refused to comment on the case, which comes just weeks before a US-Russian summit. Tricks of the trade "The FSB has irrefutable evidence of the CIA's spying activities against Russia," an FSB official said. A diplomat at the US embassy in Moscow is accused of leading an operation to recruit a Russian defence ministry specialist who was working on top secret matters. " The timely intervention of the Russian counter intelligence services enabled them to prevent serious damage to Russia's security " FSB statement Sources told the Interfax agency that the diplomat, a woman, had already left Moscow. She allegedly used coded letters, invisible ink and dead letter boxes to communicate with her target. Another CIA undercover agent, a man named as David Robertson, is alleged to have met the informer outside Russia. "The timely intervention of the Russian counter intelligence services enabled them to uncover the CIA's plans at an early stage, bring their activities under control and prevent serious damage to Russia's security," the FSB said. Tensions rising Russia and the United States have traded mutual accusations of spying a number of times in recent years. Just over a year ago, the US expelled 50 Russian diplomats on spying charges, prompting Russia to expel 46 American diplomats, after FBI agent Robert Hanssen was revealed to have spied for Russia. And six months before that, American Edmund Pope was sentenced to 20 years in jail for trying to acquire military secrets. President Vladimir Putin later pardoned him on grounds of ill health. The latest spying allegations are set to heighten tensions before Mr Putin meets US President George W Bush in a few weeks' time. After a brief spell of detente, following the 11 September attacks, friction between the nations has recently grown as they come into conflict over issues including steel tariffs and poultry imports. * Reuters via Lycos - Wednesday, April 10, 2002 2:16 p.m. EDT http://news.lycos.com/news/story.asp?section=LycosWorld&storyId=51683 Russia: CIA Spy Plot Foiled by Clara Ferreira-Marques MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's security police on Wednesday accused the United States of drugging a scientist in a cloak-and-dagger conspiracy to steal military secrets. The allegations were a throwback to tit-for-tat spy scandals that dominated the chilly first months of the presidencies of Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush , and they sounded a sour note ahead of the two men's summit in Russia next month. Sketchy but exotic details of the spy case were described by unidentified officers of the FSB security police, appearing on the evening television news with their faces in silhouette. They said the Russian scientist had stumbled into one of Moscow's consulates in another former-Soviet republic with his memory apparently wiped out by drugs, recalling only that he had visited a U.S. embassy to check on family in the United States. "He was brought to Moscow and here the FSB did some tests on him, and we established that he had known some government secrets and that he had been under psychoactive drug treatment for a long time," a concealed FSB officer told NTV television. The scientist had been recruited by the CIA, which gave him instructions in letters written in invisible ink, the officer said, adding the espionage was thwarted before damage was done. Footage of a young Asian woman was shown, and the news reports said she was a CIA agent responsible for the operation who had posed as a junior American diplomat but was no longer in Russia. Officials at the U.S. embassy in Moscow and the CIA in Washington declined to comment. The FSB did not answer calls. In March last year, the Bush administration expelled 50 Russian diplomats from the United States, prompting a tit-for-tat response from the Kremlin in the worst spy scandal to shake Moscow and Washington since the Cold War. Russia and the United States have greatly improved ties since the September 11 attacks against U.S. cities, when Putin was among the first to offer his support. The Kremlin has since backed the U.S.-led war on terrorism. But the FSB charges add to a growing list of woes likely to crop up at the May 23-25 summit in Moscow and St. Petersburg, already set to include bickering over U.S. poultry imports, a U.S.-funded radio broadcast to Russia's separatist Chechnya region and nuclear disarmament. 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