World

U.S. Identifies 'Spy' Suspect

April 5, 2000 / 10:58 AM EDT / AP

An American businessman being held in a Russian prison on charges of espionage is a retired U.S. Navy captain named Edmond Pope, an official at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow confirmed Friday.

"We've been in touch with the family and we're following his case closely," said the official, who spoke under condition of anonymity.

The Russian Federal Security Service announced Wednesday that it had arrested an American citizen on charges that he developed contacts with Russian scientists to steal state secrets. It said a Russian contact had also been arrested.

A spokesman for the service still refused to say whether Pope was the American they had detained.

No formal charges have been filed against Pope, but he is being investigated under a section of the Russian criminal code dealing with espionage, the U.S. official said. A Russian lawyer has been appointed for Pope, who was in Russia on business when he was arrested.

Pope, a former Navy captain, worked from 1994-97 with Pennsylvania State University's Applied Research Laboratory, which does research projects for the U.S. Navy.

Pope was an "assistant for foreign technology" who developed contacts between Russian and American research institutes and worked on converting technology for commercial uses, a statement from Penn State said.

He left in 1997 to found a Pennsylvania-based company called CERF Technologies International, which "has commercial contacts with organizations in Russia," according to the statement.

The laboratory still maintains contact with Pope for "his liaison assistance for ongoing research collaboration with Russian universities and institutes," the statement said.

Pope was identified in articles in the journal Penn State Agriculture as a "foreign technology specialist" who had obtained a lightweight, highly sensitive spectrometer from a Russian scientist and as affiliated with the Office of Naval Research, which has awarded contracts to the Applied Research Laboratory in the past.

The FSB said the American cultivated contacts with Russian scientists and a search revealed he had "technical drawings of various equipment." The Russian NTV television station said he was interested in Russian submarine technology.

It wasn't clear how the case would affect U.S.-Russia relations, which have been strained in recent months by a spate of spying arrests, as well as disagreements over the NATO campaign in Yugoslavia and Russia's military action in Chechnya.

A U.S. diplomat was expelled from Russia last year after being briefly detained by the FSB. Washington then expelled a Russian diplomat, allegedly for picking up transmissions from a bugging device discovered at the U.S. State Department.