Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey 08544-0015
President's Room
July 31,2000
Academician Yuri Osipov
President
Russian Academy of Sciences
Leninsky prospekt 14
117901, Moscow, GSP-1
Dear Academician Osipov:
I am writing to you to draw your attention to a matter that I find very troubling because it threatens collaborative academic research between Russia and the United States. I have recently learned from a letter from Pavel Podvig, a researcher at the Center for Arms Control Studies in Moscow, that the Russian Federal Security Service (the FSB) has questioned the legitimacy of research that was carried out in Moscow by a Princeton University doctoral student during the fall of 1999. I am writing to you about this matter because the student in question, Joshua Handler, was in Moscow at the invitation of an Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of USA and Canada Studies.
As far as I know, Mr. Handler's research project became a subject of an FSB investigation in connection with the case of Dr. Sutyagin, who was arrested by the FSB in October 1999 on suspicion of treason and espionage. I have been provided with the transcript of a news story from "Vesti" TV (RTR, Russia's official governmental TV channel, 30 October 1999, 9:00 p.m.) which reported that the FSB had
|
"determined that among Sutyagin's contacts were intelligence officers from the United States and Great Britain. And recently the researcher met with Joshua Handler, who works at Princeton University. During a search of Handler's Moscow apartment the FSB found materials of an "intelligence" nature. The FSB have no doubts that Handler is also involved in gathering of secret information." |
|
|
"What alerted the operatives to the fact that Handler, in addition to everything else, works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The FSB has data that this Center is involved in "double-purpose" research. Besides, since 1995, the Russia and CIS division of the Center is headed by Keith Bush, former US President's nephew and a known intelligence officer." |
First of all, Handler has never had any association with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). I can only guess that the FSB got this idea from a confusion of acronyms with one of the research centers within Princeton University with which Handler is associated: the Center for International Studies (CIS) or the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies (CEES).
Secondly, with regard to the "materials of an 'intelligence nature'" that the FSB reportedly found in Mr. Handler's apartment, he had with him 30-year-old declassified satellite images of Russian nuclear-weapon storage sites. US Vice-President Gore made a major public announcement of the declassification of these materials in 1995. Handler obtained them from the US National Archives in connection with research project that he had conducted on the ability of Russia to safely store warheads removed from its missiles. A Russian expert had written an article arguing that it would be impossible for Russia to "de-alert" a large fraction of its missiles by removing and storing their warheads because of lack of adequate storage. Handler did his research on this topic in a completely open manner. Indeed, on October 5,1999, he presented his research in a seminar, "The Safe Storage of Nuclear Weapons in Russia and Disarmament Problems," in Moscow at the Center for Policy Research in Russia. He had previously presented it at two international arms-control conferences in Washington, D.C., and Obninsk.
After the FSB's October 27,1999 search of his apartment, Mr. Handler sent a detailed letter to the FSB through his host, Dr. Sergei Rogov, Director of the Institute of USA and Canada Studies, describing his research and career and offering to meet with the FSB investigators to answer any questions. The only FSB response was to follow him conspicuously and to interrogate any Russians with whom he spoke. After a week of this treatment, the U.S. embassy advised Handler to return to Princeton, which he did. He has since spoken to the FSB investigator several times by phone from Princeton and continued to offer to respond to any questions that the FSB may forward to him. He has also suggested he could meet with competent officials from the Russian embassy in Washington or consulate in New York. However, no questions have arrived to date, and the FSB has still not returned to Mr. Handler the laptop computer and all of the research materials that it confiscated from him. Instead, the FSB has reportedly been telling researchers in Moscow that Mr. Handler was involved in some kind of "criminal activity."
I therefore request that you inform the FSB that such treatment of a U.S. academic conducting open research in Russia is extremely destructive to the important collaborative relationships between Russia and U.S. researchers.
Sincerely yours,
Harold T. Shapiro