“I was accused of using investigative materials on Viktor Bout”

TV presenter Maxim Shevchenko on Ekho Moskvy proposed to ban New York journalist Vladimir Kozlovsky from entering Russia - it turns out that, by publishing materials on the case of Russian Viktor Bout, he “worked as an open employee of American intelligence services”

I did not start Russian television in a foreign land and did not suspect the existence of a sullen Maxim Shevchenko until a few months ago he accused me of using the materials of the Viktor Bout investigation, which, according to him, leaked to me by American intelligence agencies. I was immediately informed of this from Langley.

When you type a lot, they regularly write nonsense about you, and usually I don’t react to them. But I was touched that Shevchenko and I were almost colleagues. I graduated from the Institute of Oriental Languages ​​at Moscow State University (now ISAA) and postgraduate studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies, and Shevchenko took courses at ISAA, which means that he is almost an orientalist. Therefore, I then answered him that, as a professional journalist, I would gladly accept the drain from any special services and use it with rapture. True, after making sure that I was not leaked bullshit.

The problem is that American intelligence agencies very rarely provide journalists with classified information - and almost never, when it comes to a trial, because they are wildly afraid of ruining it. In the United States, court reporters get the lion's share of their information from lawyers who are in need of new clients and plant documents on us in order to advertise. But in recent years, lawyers are also not very needed, because almost all the court materials a journalist needs immediately appear in an open database of US federal courts, to which one can also subscribe from Moscow. It's called Pacer. True, the base is paid and has just risen in price: before, a page cost 8 cents, but now it’s already 10 cents.

The Booth case files are also available from the archives on the second floor of the federal courthouse for the Southern District of New York at 500 Pearl Street. But there they charge 35 cents for a copy.

My answer obviously did not reach Mr. Shevchenko, because on December 13 he made the following statement on Ekho Moskvy: the right to appeal to the Russian parliament - with the aim of all the investigators and all the CIA employees who participated in this provocation against her husband Viktor Bout, the journalists who supported and justified this, for example, Mr. Kozlovsky, who simply openly worked as an employee of the American intelligence services , publishing materials allegedly about the guilt of Viktor Bout, they, of course, should be banned from entering Russia. This will be an adequate response to the complaints of Russian citizens. This should not be invented by our parliamentarians…”

Firstly, Bout was developed not by the CIA, but by the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration - Drug Enforcement Administration, an agency within the US Department of Justice).

Secondly, I promise not to ask the US Congress to refuse a visa to either Alla Bout or the same Shevchenko, although he, it seems to me, is a pretty dirty trick.