U.S. Sought to Recruit Spies Despite Warning, Russia Says

{{Russia warned the United States in 2011 to stop trying to recruit its security agents as spies and expelled a CIA operative in January this year after Washington ignored the warning, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday.}}

Russia kept the expulsion in January quiet but went public this week when it detained Ryan Fogle, a U.S. diplomat it says was a spy, because it was fed up with the United States ignoring its concerns, FSB spokesman Nikolai Zakharov said.

“The CIA crossed a red line and we were forced to react,” Zakharov said in a written response to questions from.

In the biggest spy scandal between the former Cold War foes in three years, the FSB said on Tuesday that Fogle had been caught red-handed trying to recruit a Russian security officer as a CIA agent. He was ordered to leave Russia.

The FSB played up the capture, providing television stations with footage of the American being detained in a blond wig and pinned to the ground, as well as pictures of disguises, a wad of cash and a letter offering a target up to 1 million euro a year.

It could hardly have come at a worse time, days after Russia and the United States announced plans to organize an international conference to seek an end to Syria’s civil war and cooperate more on counterterrorism after the Boston bombings.

Senior Russian and U.S. officials have signaled they do not want the scandal to scuttle attempts to improve strained ties, but by publicizing it Moscow has tried to make the point that it is the United States that risks torpedoing those efforts.

{reuters}