#3 - JRL 8157 - JRL Home
From: "Robert B. Brannon" <BrannonRB@ndu.edu>
Subject: Igor Sutyagin
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004

My name is Bob Brannon and maybe some of you know that I was U.S. Naval Attaché in Russia for three years form 1998 - 2001. I knew Igor Sutyagin very well. He was a frequent guest in my home and we often met for coffee or chai on Noviy Arbat or someplace else near where we both worked - I was at the American Embassy, he was at ISKRAN.

Igor never had much money. Once when he was my guest for dinner - attended by some pretty senior military officers and a few rising diplomats from both our countries - he didn't have the means to offer the usual hostess gift when he arrived at the embassy's north gate. When I escorted him to my apartment door, following the standard security checks, he presented my wife with a little package of photographs. We'd been to Suzdal not long before and he knew we were fond of the visual images that attempt to catch Russia at its best. When we opened the package after Igor had left that night, we found a small collection - maybe four or five - simple photographs of the churches and icons, some imaged against a sunset made the more spectacular by the ice and snow. I've since had those snapshots framed and they hang in a place of honor in my home. Every time I walk by that little collection of photographs I think of Igor.

He had a strange and quirky little smile - anyone who knows him remembers that. And he was smart - really smart. But he never stole anything and he was not a traitor. I remember asking him once what he thought about some of the people who were causing Russia so much trouble - environmentalists who were drawing attention to some of the most horrific aspects of the Soviet legacy in Russia - Igor had no sympathy for them. He was a pragmatic man who valued patriotism and was very proud to be Russian.

He laughed at my awkwardness in assimilating into Russian life - offered me good advice and always tried to help. An archetypical academic, he was completely disinterested in money. I usually picked up the tab but that was just because I had more money than he did. He was always sheepish about that - but pragmatic nonetheless. We struck up a pretty good friendship over the years we were together - we'd often call each other in the course of a routine work day. There are many Russian holidays - a lot of them military in nature. Igor loved to call me and wish me happy "day of the navigator" for example because he knew I was a Naval Flight Officer.

When the Russian Navy decided to send a small ship into the Adriatic during the early stages of NATO's military intervention into Kosovo, I called Igor to ask his opinion. That phone call would later haunt us both, because we both lived in Russia and we were being watched all the time. In a phone call that was later used against us during our respective "trials," I asked Igor to tell me what he thought about that small ship, an AGI to use a name familiar to many of you. Igor told me what I pretty much already knew - that the ship was certainly capable of carrying small arms and perhaps even shoulder fired missiles, but that it would be unlikely that any Russian ship might ever actually fire on a U.S. aircraft - he always believed in the altruistic point of view.

Not long after that episode (about three months) Igor was arrested for espionage. It took them more than a year before they finally expelled me in a round of reciprocity aimed at retaliation for the arrest of Robert Hanssen in the United States and the subsequent expulsion of a number of Russian "diplomats." On the day Russia threw me out, in the evening news broadcast by RTR, they ran a 5 minute video "documentary" about my supposedly nefarious activities associated with my job as Naval Attaché. Prominently featured in that newscast was Igor Sutyagin, already in jail, videotaped in my presence, and accused of spying against his government. I will never forget the narrator saying that one of the most "guilty" aspects of the case against Igor was the stack of foreign newspapers and magazines in his little office at ISKRAN.

The phone call about the ship and its potential impact on the crisis in Kosovo had been taped by Russian surveillants and was "doctored" to appear incriminating to us both. The difference between us was that I had immunity and he did not. All I got was a hard time, some relatively benign harassment, and a trip to the airport. Igor got hard time - literally - and has now been sentenced to 15 years in a Russian prison. His only crime was that he had a passion for navies and he liked to talk to foreigners. I was one of the foreigners he liked to talk to and for that I am eternally grateful, if sad for his fate. I will always remember walking through Moscow with him and talking about things we were interested in. Innocent things like whether or not Russia's Navy might be better off following Britain's example of a slightly smaller but much more capable force. Those were great debates and I am richer for having known him.

And I cherish those little pictures of Suzdal that Igor took with his camera when he was still free to watch a sunset. He was a free spirit when he was free and his soul will outlive the souls of those who have imprisoned him. He is alive today but he is not free. So please take just a brief moment to pause from your routine and think about Igor Sutyagin today - call upon whatever deity you wish and ask that he be given a little respite from his grief. Yes, I knew Igor Sutyagin, he was and is a very good man.

And he will always be my friend.