Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Talk with Edmond Pope, Accused Spy for U.S.

Aired November 02, 2001 - 09:47   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Convicted in Russia of spying for the U.S., Edmund Pope was looking at spending 20 years in a Russian prison. Instead, two weeks after he was sentenced, he was pardoned.

Since then, he's been very bush, writing a book on his experience. "Torpedoed" is in book stores right now. Edmond Pope joins us this morning to talk about his fascinating account of the last year, a very eventful year. Good to see you, sir, welcome, and congratulations on getting the book done. If nothing else, I'm sure that's a good experience to get it over with.

EDMOND POPE, ACCUSED SPY FOR U.S.: Yes. Thank you very much.

O'BRIEN: Give us a quick little back story for those who have vague memories of your story. You were in Russia and you were doing some legitimate business, and things went afoul quickly.

POPE: It was my 27th trip to Russia. I'd been working over there 10 years, working in this particular technology and many others. On the 3rd of April last year, the KGB broke into our hotel room.

O'BRIEN: Torpedoes, yes?

POPE: Yes, high-speed, underwater torpedo, and we were bringing technologies from the project into the civil, commercial world. They broke in, arrested me, took me in actually for questioning, and 10 days after they took me in, they formerly served papers against me for espionage.

O'BRIEN: OK. And did this come out of complete left field? Did you have some inkling that they were sort of after you?

POPE: I knew they were watching me. They always did, every time they went to Russia. I spent 25 years on active duty in the U.S. Navy, most of that time, as a professional intelligence officer. I knew the risk that I faced, so I went out of my way to avoid problems. I was offered many things, including biological substances, but also things that I knew were illegal. I avoided them, always sought proper permission, and we did have permission for all of this work I was doing.

O'BRIEN: Given what you were doing, given your resume, I guess you -- it might not come as a surprise that you were sort of suspect. POPE: That's correct. And I was always open. Anytime they asked me what I'd done, I told them everything they wanted to know. The nature of work in Naval intelligence is not covert. We're always open. We're supporting the fleet. We're not doing spy-type work.

O'BRIEN: There must have been some very dark moments.

POPE: There were many of them. The worst one was in late July. I believed that I was being drugged in. There was plot to break me out of jail that I didn't know about until I was actually released, but I was very ill at that time. I lost about 30-35 pounds, so ill, for several days, I couldn't walk, couldn't stand up, and I become extremely depressed, considered suicide during that take period.

O'BRIEN: And then suddenly, the reprieve?

POPE: The reprieve, yes. There was a change with the interrogators, too. At that point, they just dropped any semblance of trying to be serious about the investigation, and said, well, it's done, we're going to take you to trial now. But what I learned after I was released, and I'm glad that I didn't know a lot of these things while I was in the prison, was that there had been a deal made between President Clinton and President Putin at that time to release me about the 1st of August. The Russians backed out of it, because it would embarrass the FSB too much to have me released at that point.

O'BRIEN: All right, from your very interesting perspective on all of this, as we look at the war on terrorism and efforts to bring Russia in as an ally in this war, and in particular, Mr. Putin, what would your advice of counsel be to the administration in dealing with them?

POPE: We must deal with them. They're a large country, a large population, with a lot of former weapons labs and materials spread over that country that can easily be gained access to. We cannot ever trust Mr. Putin completely, but that doesn't mean we should cut off communications. I'm glad to see them come aboard.

O'BRIEN: Why can't we?

POPE: Communism taught them as individuals to be liars, cheats and thieves, actually to survive, and they're still in that mode of thinking. They have to survive day to day, and to do that, they don't have allegiances to much of anybody, certainly Americans or Westerners who they view as rich. I'm certainly not rich, never have been, but I was viewed that way. So we can't trust them, but we absolutely have to work with them the way we are doing with this terrorist problem.

O'BRIEN: All right, thank you very much for telling us about the book and a little bit about the state of current affairs between U.S. and Russia relations. The book is "Torpedoed." The author is Edmond Pope, who has spent some time in Russian prisons, wrongly accused, now free, and now talking about it, and as he said, just about to celebrate his first birthday post-release.

POPE: That's right. O'BRIEN: Thanks for being with us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com