Putin told reporters traveling with him to the Urals mining town Magnitogorsk that he would heed the recommendation made the previous day by the Kremlin clemency commission to release Pope, who was found guilty of trying to buy top secret underwater missile technology. It comprises respected people and I cannot but heed their opinion. The president's national security adviser Sergei Ivanov told reporters that Pope could not be pardoned before Dec. 13, the day his sentence goes into effect, but that the American would likely be home for Christmas. The FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, charged Pope with trying to buy plans for a cutting edge Russian submarine missile called the Squval. The heat-seeking missile is designed to travel underwater at supersonic speeds and evade radar.
Western navies have no equivalent weapon.
During the closed-door trial, which began Oct 21, Pope said he was innocent. U.S. officials repeatedly said the State College, Pa., resident was not a spy. However, the judge on Wednesday sentenced him to the maximum 20 years of hard labor. The White House denounced the verdict, warning it would adversely affect U.S.-Russian relations, and President Clinton called Putin to ask him to release Pope, who suffers from a rare form of bone cancer. After his sentencing, Pope wrote to Putin asking the president to free him on humanitarian grounds.