SPOOKED: Alleged spy Ryan Fogle is questioned in Russia earlier this week. (
)
WASHINGTON — The Democratic chair of the Senate committee that oversees the CIA said she’s “embarrassed” by the bungled spy fiasco that led to the arrest and expulsion of an amateurish US Embassy officer from Moscow.
“I think the tradecraft is dreadful,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein told The Post, referring to Ryan Fogle’s capture by Russian security agents while wearing a bizarre blond wig, carrying third-rate spy gear and a small fortune in cash.
“To have anybody that represents us wandering around in that stupid wig with over $100,000 — we’re looking into it,” said Feinstein.
The California Democrat’s harsh words came after grilling Director of National Intelligence James Clapper during a classified hearing.
Fogle, a low-ranking officer at the US Embassy in Moscow, was busted late Monday in what Russian officials called a crude effort to recruit a counterterrorism officer to serve as a double agent for the US.
State media claimed he was caught wearing a floppy blond wing and carrying an Austin Powers-type spy kit, including a compass, map of Moscow, wads of 500-euro notes and a recruitment letter that told a would-be double agent how to sign up for a $1 million-a-year deal with the CIA.
“I’m embarrassed by it,” Feinstein said of the fiasco.
Some former CIA officials suggested Fogle was set up with phony props in an effort to portray Americans as clumsy amateurs. “That would be the best outcome,” Feinstein said.
Russian security sources yesterday told the newspaper Kommersant that Fogle was attempting to recruit an expert on Islamic extremists to help in the investigation of the Tsarnaev brothers. “The CIA needed the anti-terror agent after the terror attack in the Boston Marathon,” the newspaper said.
It added that US investigators were sent to Russia last month as part of the Boston probe.
“It is likely that during the trip in April, the US side obtained the phone numbers of Federal Security Service agents,” Kommersant said, and that led them to the officer Fogle tried to recruit.
Meanwhile, Russian state television reported yesterday that a second “CIA operative” was expelled from the country in January in a botched attempt to recruit another Russian agent.
The alleged operative person has not been identified.
Yuri Ushakov, a top foreign-policy aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, denounced the incident as “crude and clumsy.”