On December 27 the Kaluga regional TV station aired a news story that allegedly showed Igor Sutyagin's pleading guilty during the court hearing that took place a day earlier, on December 26. This could not have possibly been true, since the only question that the court considered at that date was the motion to postpone the trial. There was no plea or anything else of this kind.
As it turned out, the FSB just faked the coverage. An FSB officer walked to the coutroom with a videocamera before the hearings and asked Igor to stand up, saying it is necessary for documenting purposes. This was later shown on TV with a "plead guilty" commentary.
Sergey Rogov, Director of the U.S. and Canada Institute, protests media reports about Sutyagin's having access to classified materials. In a statement released by ITAR-TASS agency, Dr. Rogov underscored that his institute does not work with classified materails, so, contrary to the FSB assertions, Sutyagin could not have had access to secret information.
As the trial of Igor Sutyagin opened on December 26, 2000, the FSB began an informational cover-up operation. In the information that the FSB released to the state information agency ITAR-TASS, which was then repeated by almost all news organizations, it claimed that
"Igor Sutyagin had access to classified data on structure of the Russian strategic forces, their operations, command and control of the strategic nuclear forces."
This is a lie. Igor Sutyagin has never had access to classified data and the FSB has failed to find a single classified document among his working materials. Neither has the FSB found evidence of Igor Sutyagin's having seen any classified documents.
Among other lies, distributed by the FSB, are claims that Igor Sutyagin admitted his guilt, that he had contacts with U.S. and British intelligence officers, that the FSB found some "intelligence materials" during the search at Joshua Handler's apartment, and others. Neither of these claims are true.
In an apparent attempt to cover-up and justify its actions the FSB spokeswoman said that the court proceedings will be closed because there are secret documents to be considered during the trial. She failed to mention, however, that the only secret documents that appear in the materials of the case were introduced there by the FSB itself.
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