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Russia Claims US Citizen Provoked War

Cites teacher's found passport as proof of meddling in Georgia

By Nick McMaster, Newser Staff

Posted Sep 3, 2008 12:16 PM CDT

(Newser) – To support its claims that US intelligence agents played a role in the Georgian conflict, the Kremlin has produced a US passport belonging to an Army veteran from Texas, the Wall Street Journal reports. They say the passport was found in an outpost used by Georgian special forces. The alleged spy, Michael White, is an English teacher in China.

White said he was in the US caring for his 85-year-old father during the Georgian conflict, which was confirmed by family. He figures the passport is one he lost on a Moscow-New York flight in 2005. The presence of US agents in Georgia fits into the narrative propagated by the Kremlin that America provoked Georgia to start the war for the benefit of John McCain’s presidential bid.

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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visits the Far Eastern State University in Vladivostok, about 5,750 miles east of Moscow, on Monday, Sept. 1, 2008. (AP Photo/ RIA Novosti, Alexei Druzhinin, Pool )

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin holds a tranquilizer gun in a Russian Academy of Sciences reserve in Russia's Far East on Sunday, Aug. 31, 2008. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Druzhinin, Pool)

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin speaks during an interview with Germany's ARD television in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, Friday, Aug. 29, 2008. (AP Photo)

Russian construction workers clean up a building where a tank turret was blown through the roof, in Tskhinvali, regional capital of Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia, Aug. 29, 2008. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

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Using a 'found' passport to expose the Americans seems really small-time. The Soviet Union's secret services never stooped that low.
- Alexei Kondaurov, KGB veteran

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Russia Claims US Citizen Provoked War