Russia spy agency claims CIA agent arrested for trying to recruit Russian agent in Moscow

Updated 4:46 p.m. ET

Russia's security services claimed Tuesday to have arrested a CIA agent in a blond wig posing as an employee of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow while he was allegedly trying to recruit a Russian secret service agent to work for the U.S.

Ryan Fogle, a third secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, was carrying special technical equipment, disguises, written instructions and a large sum of money when he was detained late Monday, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said.

The U.S. Embassy would not comment on the reports when contacted Tuesday morning by CBS News.

The FSB, which is the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said Fogle was trying to recruit a Russian counterterrorism officer who specializes in the Caucasus, a region in southern Russia that includes Chechnya and Dagestan. The suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings are ethnic Chechen brothers and the elder brother spent six months last year in Dagestan, now the center of an Islamic insurgency.

U.S. investigators have been working with the Russians to try to determine whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev had established any contacts with the militants operating in Dagestan.

After being arrested and processed by Russian security services, the man was handed back to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Moscow. Fogle was declared persona non grata and ordered to leave Russia immediately, the Foreign Ministry said. He has diplomatic immunity, which protects him from arrest.

The FSB said Fogle had been masquerading as a career diplomat at the Political Section of the U.S. Embassy, but that he was a CIA employee. A photo provided by the FSB and published across Russian media allegedly showed his Russian-issued diplomatic identification card.

It was the first case of an American diplomat publicly accused of spying in about a decade and seemed certain to aggravate already strained relations between Russia and the U.S.

The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed to CBS News that U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul had been summoned to the Ministry over the incident. An official at the Ministry said they had not yet heard back from the Embassy regarding the summons. McFaul, who was doing a question-and-answer session on Twitter when the detention was first announced, said he would not comment on the spying allegation.

Noting recent efforts by the two countries to improve cooperation in countering international terrorism in the wake of the Boston bombings, the Foreign Ministry said "such provocative actions in the spirit of the Cold War do nothing to strengthen mutual trust."

Despite the end of the Cold War, Russia and the United States still maintain active espionage operations against each other. Last year, several Russians were convicted in separate cases of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.

Russian state television showed pictures of a man said to be Fogle, wearing a baseball cap and what appeared to be a blond wig, lying face down on the ground. The man, now without the wig, was also shown sitting at a desk in the offices of the FSB. Two wigs, a compass, a map of Moscow, a pocket knife, three pair of sunglasses and packages of 500 euro notes were among the items displayed on a table.

Russian state television also displayed a typewritten letter it described as instructions to the Russian agent who was the target of the alleged recruitment effort. The letter, written in Russian and addressed "Dear friend," offers $100,000 to "discuss your experience, expertise and cooperation" and up to $1 million a year for long-term cooperation. The letter also includes instructions for opening a Gmail account to be used for communication and an address to write. It is signed "Your friends."

In Washington, the White House referred questions about the detained diplomat to the State Department. There was no immediate response from the State Department. The CIA declined to comment on the case.

Little was immediately known about Fogle. A third secretary is an entry level position in the State Department, the lowest diplomatic rank in the foreign service.

President Vladimir Putin has stoked anti-American sentiments among Russians in recent years in what is seen as an effort to bolster his support at home. He also appears to have a genuine distrust of Russian nongovernmental organizations with American funding, which he has accused of being fronts that allow the U.S. government to meddle in Russia's political affairs. Hundreds of NGOs have been searched this year as part of an ongoing crackdown.

Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University who studies the Russian security services, said the public exposure of Fogle and the pictures splashed across Russian television suggest a political purpose behind the detention. He said these kinds of spying incidents happen with some frequency but making such a big deal of it is rare.

"More often, the etiquette is that these things get dealt with quite quietly — unless they want to get a message out," Galeotti said. "If you identify an embassy staffer who is a spy for the other side, your natural impulse is to leave them be, because once you identify you can keep tabs on them, see who they talk to, and everything else. There's no reason to make a song and dance, detain them, eject them."

Samuel Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King's College London, called the evidence bizarre.

"I wouldn't have thought that spies gave each other written instructions," he said in a telephone interview. Greene also noted that the FSB had displayed Fogle's official diplomatic ID, suggesting he was carrying it along with the spy paraphernalia when he was detained.

"Maybe this is what the CIA has come to, maybe the propaganda folks in the Kremlin think we are this stupid, or maybe both," he said.

Russia and the United States have been at odds lately over Syria, the adoption of Russian children and U.S. sanctions against Russian officials accused of human rights abuses.

Galeotti, however, said the Fogle case was unlikely to affect the recent increased cooperation between U.S. and Russian counterintelligence agencies over the Boston Marathon bombings.

"Everyone goes into intelligence sharing knowing there's a parallel process where everyone spies on everyone else," he said.