#3 - JRL 8156 - JRL Home
Subject: Response from Pavel Podvig (Sutyagin case)
From: Kirill Pankratov (kpankratov@cri-inc.com)
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004

David:

Pavel Podvig asked me to forward his response to my yesterday's letter concerning Sutyagin affair (JRL 8155, #15): Kirill

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A friend of mine forwarded me your posting to the JRL. Well, I would disagree with most of what you are saying (I guess it does look different when you have to deal with the FSB over these issues, rather than when you read about it). I was particularly surprised to hear that I ever told that I "had little doubt that the "consultancy" Alternative Futures was an intelligence outfit." This is simply not true. Quite the contrary - I always insisted that no matter how suspicious someone's business card may have looked like (and it, in fact, didn't) there has never been any evidence that that outfit was connected to any intelligence.

I don't read the Johnson's list and don't know how to post there, so I would appreciate it very much if you coud post my response to the list.

My best regards to Zhanna.

Pavel

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P.S. from Kirill Pankratov: although I do think Sutyagin received unduly hash sentence (which I hope will be appealed and reduced), and I understand Pavel Podvig's position, I stand by my impression from conversation with him a few years ago that he had very serious doubts, to say the least, about legitimacy of the Alternative Futures "consultancy".