![]() ![]() ![]() "Maybe they'll get the wigs to stay on better," said Richelson.įogle's seeming amateurishness has more than a few experts wondering if the supposed sting was an FSB setup, a ploy on the CIA's part, or something else entirely. A typed letter explained in almost childlike language how to set up a Gmail account and promised up to $1 million a year in return for the contact's cooperation. He also had a second brown wig, perhaps in case his contact preferred brunettes. Found in his possession: a pocketknife, four pairs of sunglasses (always useful for a late-night rendezvous), a flashlight, 100,000 euros in cash, a cell phone circa 2001, a Moscow map, and a compass. The pomp and circumstance surrounding Fogle's capture were strange enough, but they seemed oddly fitting for a man whose tradecraft seemed to have been learned from a 12-year-old's how-to-be-a-spy kit. Embassy officials on the harm he'd done to U.S.-Russian relations. The reality-TV ambience continued with a second FSB video, this time filmed inside the FSB's Lyubanka headquarters, showing Fogle sitting stone-faced, and perhaps even a little wry, as his captors lectured him and three other U.S. The footage of his arrest, conveniently filmed by the FSB and released to Kremlin-financed satellite news channel Russia Today, showed Fogle-in a checked shirt and jeans-pinned under the knee of an FSB operative, an ill-fitting blond wig spilling out from under his baseball cap, looking more like a frat boy on his way back from a costume party than a wily graduate of The Farm. It's certainly not a shining moment in the history of U.S. "There is a lot left to be learned about the whole episode," said Jeffrey Richelson, a Senior Fellow with the National Security Archive and an author of 13 books on the U.S. But to say that the circumstances surrounding the arrest were bizarre would be putting it mildly. Within hours, he was declared "persona non grata" and ordered to leave the country. Embassy in Moscow, was an undercover CIA operative on his way to meet a Russian counterterrorism official he hoped to flip to the CIA. Russian authorities announced that Fogle, a junior diplomat at the U.S. Fogle was arrested yesterday in Moscow for spying during an apparent sting operation by the FSB, the Russian foreign intelligence service. With all the grace of a SoCal surfer being tackled during an episode of Cops, Ryan C.
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