CIA 'drugged Russian defence worker to get military secrets'

Russia's main security service has accused the Central Intelligence Agency of trying to acquire Russian military secrets, using two agents posing as American diplomats to try to recruit a Russian Defence Ministry employee.

A spokesman for the security service said that CIA officers posing as embassy officials in Russia and another, unnamed former Soviet republic had tried to recruit an employee at a secret defence installation, identified only as Viktor.

The service named two alleged participants in the operation: David Robertson, whose post at an unnamed embassy in the former Soviet Union was not described, and Yunju Kensinger, an official at the US embassy in Moscow. The Interfax news agency, citing an "informed source", said Ms Kensinger had left Moscow. It quoted the security service's press office as saying that Ms Kensinger had not personally met her Russian contact or contacts. Instead, she used secret drop points and messages in invisible ink.

State-controlled ORT television showed grainy footage of a woman identified as Ms Kensinger walking with other embassy employees. It also broadcast pictures of a plastic-wrapped package stashed among bushes in what it identified as the Sokolniki region of Moscow, and an interview in a darkened room with a man described as a Federal Security Service operative.

He explained that the Russian employee had gone to a US embassy in a former Soviet republic to try to find information about a relative who had gone missing abroad. Embassy officers allegedly slipped him drugs to get information out of him. He was found with shock and amnesia, but was later able to reconstruct the details of his visit. (AP)