NEW US ADMINISTRATION SIMPLY GOT ENTANGLED IN ESPIONAGE LIES








MOSCOW, March 8 /RIA Novosti/ - There has never been and there isn't any tunnel under the Russian embassy in Washington, RIA Novosti has learnt this sensational news from a high-placed resource in the Russian Counter-Intelligence Service. 


	According to the source, the version of the existence of the mythical tunnel was thrown into the mass media by the US intelligence services "to place some substantial guilt upon FBI employee Robert Hanssen arrested on the charges of espionage. As the source believes, US authorities don't have concrete and, all the more so, serious proof of Hanssen's spying activity. That is why, the source says, they "have dug out the notorious tunnel for Hanssen."  


	As the representative of the Russian intelligence services noted, according to technical data, to carry out radio-electronic espionage against Russian diplomats, the USA used communications wells and pipelines, and also the load-bearing supports under the Russian embassy in Washington. According to the source, about 10 years ago Russian specialists found and liquidated "a well-thought-out system of eavesdropping on the Soviet and then Russian embassy in the USA."  As was reported earlier, the existence of the tunnel was mentioned for the first time on Sunday by the New York Times newspaper which, as it turns out now, was fulfilling the FBI order. Referring to unnamed sources in the US intelligence circles, the newspaper said, in particular, that the tunnel was used jointly by the FBI and the National Security Agency responsible for electronic intelligence and was part of the US wider efforts for eavesdropping on and looking for the Soviet and later Russian facilities and personnel working in the USA." According to fabricated data, which both the former and current US officials seemed to confirm on condition on anonymity, the tunnel was designed to eavesdrop on telecommunications and conversations inside the building of the embassy in Wisconsin avenue. 


	Quite a different thing is remarkable in all that story about the spy hysteria in the USA - as the New York Times noted, the construction of the tunnel was allegedly carried out at the time when the US leadership accused Soviet authorities of inserting bugging devices during the construction of the new US embassy in Moscow. (fed/vld)