Russian alleged CIA spy gives interview

Igor Sutyagin

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Of the four Russians alleged spies that the US and the UK received from Moscow in exchange for the 11 Russian illegals in July, only one is talking to the media. The Russian government convicted Igor Sutyagin, a nuclear proliferation expert, of having links with Alternative Futures, a British consulting company alleged by Moscow to be a CIA front. This past weekend, Sutyagin, who now lives in an undisclosed London location, gave a detailed interview to Natalya Golitsyna, a London-based correspondent for US government-owned Radio Liberty’s. As in his previous statements to the press, the Russian scientist rejected he was ever a spy, claiming that “[t]he first thing in my mind […] was doing and thinking for my country”. He also rejected accusations that he provided Alternative Futures with classified information on Russian nuclear weapons policy: “there was no transfer of information”, said Sutyagin, noting that the information he shared with the British-registered company “was just an illustration of the processes that are going on in Russia tasks”. Asked by the Radio Liberty reporter why, if he was a CIA agent, he was taken to the UK, and not to the US, Sutyagin responded: “I really don’t know. I can’t say for sure”, but said he was glad to be “in England and not somewhere even farther from home”. He also rejected speculation that he was interrogated or debriefed by American or British intelligence officers upon his release from the Russian prison system, saying he did meet some of them, but “[t]hey didn’t really question me […]. One guy showed up two or three times and we had short conversations”. Finally, Sutyagin, who before his arrest was Division Chairman on the Russian Academy of Sciences’ USA and Canada Institute, appeared to have tempered his initial determination to return to Russia and join his family there. He told Radio Liberty that “walking the streets of London I found myself thinking that something about this city is more humane and it is more pleasant to walk here than in Moscow […]. Maybe I’ll get over it” and stay here after all, he said.