MONTEREY INSTITUTE GRAD ARRESTED IN RUSSIA FOR ALLEGED DRUG POSSESSION

MOSCOW (Associated Press) -- Russian security officials on Tuesday
announced the arrest on drug charges of a U.S. Fulbright scholar they
alleged had intelligence training -- and said it was a reminder that Russia
must be vigilant for foreign spies.

John Edward Tobin, a 24-year-old graduate student at Voronezh State
University in central Russia, was detained while purchasing drugs, the
Federal Security Service, or FSB, said in a statement.

He was charged with illegal possession of drugs, which can bring up to
three years in a Russian prison, said Pavel Bolshunov, an FSB spokesman in
Voronezh.

Bolshunov said Tobin had not been caught spying, but that he had been
trained at elite intelligence-related institutions: Fort Jackson, S.C., the
biggest Army basic training base in the United States, from 1994-5; the
Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., where he studied Russian in
1996; and a military intelligence school in Fort Huachuca, Ariz., from
1995-6, where he earned a certificate as an interrogation expert.

The head of the local Fulbright program office, Joseph McCormick, said it
was the first time a Fulbright scholar had been detained in Russia, but
program officials declined to comment further on the case.

The U.S. State Department rejected suggestions that the arrest was part of
a new spy war, and that the renowned Fulbright program is a front for
training U.S. spies. ``Any allegations of such connections are absurd,''
spokesman Philip Reeker said in Washington.

Tobin graduated last year from Middlebury College in Vermont with a
bachelor's degree in international studies, and the Monterey institute
confirmed that he attended there. There was no immediate comment from the
other institutions.

"In our opinion, he came here for country and language training. He speaks
without an accent, knows slang very well, and dialects,'' Bolshunov said.

"One does not want to believe it, but a fact remains a fact -- now one
cannot rule out that there may be other Americans in Russia who are
connected with the special services and who hold recommendations from the
U.S. Department of State,'' Bolshunov was quoted as saying by the Interfax
news agency. "Therefore, the Federal Security Service should be on the alert.''

By stressing the alleged intelligence angle, the security service -- the
main successor to the Soviet-era KGB -- seemed intent on turning what would
have been a normal drug arrest into another Russian-American spat. Russian
media followed its lead, with major networks calling the arrest "the latest
spy scandal.''

Last year, a Moscow court convicted U.S. businessman Edmond Pope of
espionage for obtaining the plans for a high-speed torpedo, and throughout
the inquiry FSB officials maintained Western spies were stepping up their
activity in Russia.

A Russian arms control researcher, Igor Sutyagin, is currently on trial on
charges of spying for the United States. The FSB says that he used his
academic work as a cover for espionage, but his supporters say his case is
intended to intimidate Russian scholars from maintaining foreign contacts.

The State Department said a U.S. consular official had visited ``the
arrested U.S. student'' in the Voronezh jail. The State Department said the
man had not signed a privacy waiver so it could not divulge other information.

Independent NTV television reported that police detained Tobin at a
nightclub in Voronezh, 300 miles south of Moscow, on Jan. 26 for possession
of 1.5 grams of marijuana, and that he was formally put under arrest Feb. 1.

Tobin's lawyer, Vladimir Kulinich, said on Russia's state-run RTR
television that his client was arrested after he failed to appear for a
summons.