U.S. Scurries to Find How Spy Planted Bug
WASHINGTON--Stunned FBI agents and U.S. diplomatic security officers scrambled Thursday to determine how--and when--a Russian spy secretly planted a sophisticated eavesdropping device inside a State Department conference room used by high-level officials and whether national security was put in jeopardy as a result.U.S. officials also identified Stanislav Borisovich Gusev, the 54-year-old Russian diplomat who was arrested Wednesday as he monitored the "bug" from a bench outside the State Department, as a member of the technical staff of the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service.
"They don't know yet how it got there," said another senior official. "It could be a visitor. It could be a workman. It could be a Russian agent in place" in the State Department. He added, "They don't have a suspect."
Officials said that 50 to 100 meetings were conducted in the room from early last summer, when Gusev first came under suspicion, until his arrest Wednesday. Investigators planned to interview everyone who attended the meetings in an attempt to assess the severity of the security breach.
"It's just not slapped on here," he said. "The ordinary person would not see it."
Neither did State Department diplomatic security and counterintelligence experts. Their routine sweeps of crucial parts of the building with sensitive electronic equipment did not locate the bug. One official said that the device was only found a few weeks ago, months after the FBI first became suspicious of Gusev.
My Sardonic Thoughts
- Are there any more?
- Are they sure?
- How would they know there aren't more bugs?
- They looked for this one for months....
