Russia: CIA spy drugged scientist

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia's security police are accusing the U.S. of doping a scientist with mind-bending drugs in a cloak-and-dagger conspiracy to steal military secrets.

In true Cold War spy-drama style, Moscow's main evening news on Wednesday showed grainy footage of clandestine figures said to be from a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency spy ring.

According to the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) -- successor to the Soviet-era KGB -- the U.S. agents used all the usual tricks of the espionage game, like dead letter drops and invisible ink.

The TV reports, fleshing out details of the spying allegations made earlier in the day, came at an embarrassing time with a summit between Presidents Vladimir Putin -- himself a former KGB agent -- and George W. Bush due in just over a month.

Truncated but exotic details of the spy case were described by unidentified officers of the FSB security police, appearing on the TV news with their faces in silhouette.

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.

A spokesman for the security service said that CIA officers posing as embassy officials in Russia and another, unnamed, former Soviet republic had tried to recruit an employee at a secret Russian defence ministry installation.

State-controlled ORT television 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.

'Double agent'

He explained that the Russian defence 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 out of him, because he was found a week later wandering the streets in shock and with amnesia.

"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 told NTV, adding the espionage was thwarted before damage was done.

The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that only after psychiatric treatment had Viktor -- whom a security service employee called a "real patriot," presumably because he became a "double agent " -- been able to reconstruct 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 (CIA) employees who used the most unscrupulous methods," ITAR-Tass said.

Officials at the U.S. embassy in Moscow and the CIA in Washington declined to comment, Reuters reported.

The spying allegations come amid heightened U.S.-Russian tensions following a warm spell prompted by Russia's participation in the U.S.-led anti-terror campaign.

Shortly after Putin 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 in August 2001.