Pubdate: Tue, 27 Feb 2001
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2001 San Jose Mercury News
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Author: Judith Ingram, Associated Press Writer

MONTEREY INSTITUTE GRAD ARRESTED IN RUSSIA FOR ALLEGED DRUG POSSESSION

MOSCOW (Associated Press) -- Russian security officials on Tuesday 
announced the arrest on drug charges of a U.S. Fulbright scholar they 
alleged had intelligence training -- and said it was a reminder that Russia 
must be vigilant for foreign spies.

John Edward Tobin, a 24-year-old graduate student at Voronezh State 
University in central Russia, was detained while purchasing drugs, the 
Federal Security Service, or FSB, said in a statement.

He was charged with illegal possession of drugs, which can bring up to 
three years in a Russian prison, said Pavel Bolshunov, an FSB spokesman in 
Voronezh.

Bolshunov said Tobin had not been caught spying, but that he had been 
trained at elite intelligence-related institutions: Fort Jackson, S.C., the 
biggest Army basic training base in the United States, from 1994-5; the 
Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., where he studied Russian in 
1996; and a military intelligence school in Fort Huachuca, Ariz., from 
1995-6, where he earned a certificate as an interrogation expert.

The head of the local Fulbright program office, Joseph McCormick, said it 
was the first time a Fulbright scholar had been detained in Russia, but 
program officials declined to comment further on the case.

The U.S. State Department rejected suggestions that the arrest was part of 
a new spy war, and that the renowned Fulbright program is a front for 
training U.S. spies. ``Any allegations of such connections are absurd,'' 
spokesman Philip Reeker said in Washington.

Tobin graduated last year from Middlebury College in Vermont with a 
bachelor's degree in international studies, and the Monterey institute 
confirmed that he attended there. There was no immediate comment from the 
other institutions.

"In our opinion, he came here for country and language training. He speaks 
without an accent, knows slang very well, and dialects,'' Bolshunov said.

"One does not want to believe it, but a fact remains a fact -- now one 
cannot rule out that there may be other Americans in Russia who are 
connected with the special services and who hold recommendations from the 
U.S. Department of State,'' Bolshunov was quoted as saying by the Interfax 
news agency. "Therefore, the Federal Security Service should be on the alert.''

By stressing the alleged intelligence angle, the security service -- the 
main successor to the Soviet-era KGB -- seemed intent on turning what would 
have been a normal drug arrest into another Russian-American spat. Russian 
media followed its lead, with major networks calling the arrest "the latest 
spy scandal.''

Last year, a Moscow court convicted U.S. businessman Edmond Pope of 
espionage for obtaining the plans for a high-speed torpedo, and throughout 
the inquiry FSB officials maintained Western spies were stepping up their 
activity in Russia.

A Russian arms control researcher, Igor Sutyagin, is currently on trial on 
charges of spying for the United States. The FSB says that he used his 
academic work as a cover for espionage, but his supporters say his case is 
intended to intimidate Russian scholars from maintaining foreign contacts.

The State Department said a U.S. consular official had visited ``the 
arrested U.S. student'' in the Voronezh jail. The State Department said the 
man had not signed a privacy waiver so it could not divulge other information.

Independent NTV television reported that police detained Tobin at a 
nightclub in Voronezh, 300 miles south of Moscow, on Jan. 26 for possession 
of 1.5 grams of marijuana, and that he was formally put under arrest Feb. 1.

Tobin's lawyer, Vladimir Kulinich, said on Russia's state-run RTR 
television that his client was arrested after he failed to appear for a 
summons.
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