Shapiro writes letter on behalf of grad student implicated in espionage case

Joshua Handler GS was reading the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, when he read that he was being connected with espionage.

"I was shocked," Handler said in an interview yesterday. "As far as I'm concerned, [the allegations] are baseless."

Handler — who is working toward his Ph.D. in the Wilson School — returned from Russia in the fall of 1999 after researching for his dissertation at the USA and Canada Institute in Moscow.

He is studying nuclear disarmament and arms control negotiations between Russia and the United States.

President Shapiro has written a letter to Yuri Osipov, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, asserting Handler's innocence.

"I thank the president for going to bat for me," Handler said. "Hopefully, the University will stand behind me, if necessary in the next couple of months if this problem continues."

While in Russia, Handler was friends with Igor Sutyagin, a staff member who was arrested by Russian authorities in October 1999 and charged with espionage. The FSB — a Russian security agency — obtained a warrant to search Handler's apartment for evidence in Sutyagin's case.

"I've known Igor for 10 years," Handler said. "I'm certain he didn't do anything unlawful."

But in December, he read that FSB head Nikolai Patrushev had called him an American spy.

"In the course of the investigation, we revealed the spying activities of [Sutyagin's] contact, U.S. resident Joshua Handler, an expert in nuclear security, who is currently in the United States," Patrushev said, according to The Washington Post's translation of the Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Handler said he suspects the allegations stem either from work he was doing with some declassified, 30-year-old American satellite imagery of Russian missile silos, or from his earlier involvement with Greenpeace efforts to aid Russian nuclear decontamination and disarmament.

In either case, Handler asserts he did nothing illegal.