KROTOV'S DAILY

February 8, 2002, Moscow, 8.40

Unwanted: Dmitry Kouznetsov

This is the article from the newsletter: Shroud, #53, July 2001, pp.19-20 (writteb by editor, I guess, who is famous Ian Wilson.)

Dr. Dmitri Kouznetsov, the enigmatic Russian scientist who duped many Shroud enthusiasts with his "1532 fire1 answer to how the Shroud carbon dating became skewed, has appeared in the news in yet another guise. According to a report from Moscow in the New York

Times of June 26 of this year, kindly forwarded by Joe Marino, Kouznetsov has claimed that while he was languishing in a Connecticut prison on fraud charges he was approached by an American student - allegedly employed by the FBI - who tried to recruit him as a spy for the United States.

According to the New York Times report:

The scientist, Dmitri Kouznetsov, a toxicologist who was imprisoned in the United States three years ago on bad check charges, accused John Edward Tobin, 24, a Fulbright scholar convicted in April for possession of marijuana, of being an F.B.I, agent. Mr. Kouznetsov said that while he was jailed in the United States in 1998, Mr. Tobin visited him, identified himself as an F.B.I, agent and offered leniency if Mr. Kouznetsov would collaborate. Authorities in Moscow said today that they were reviewing the accusations but had not decided whether to charge Mr. Tobin with espionage.

When Mr. Tobin was arrested, investigators suggested that he was a spy, after learning he had studied at an Arizona military intelligence institute. But ultimately he was not charged with espionage. Mr. Tobin's lawyer told the Echo Moscow radio station that the new accusations were spurious and levelled only to cloud Mr. Tobin's case ahead of an expected release. Russian officials have indicated that the American may be pardoned. Mr. Kouznetsov could not be reached for comment.

Not least of the intriguing features of this report is that here Dmitri Kouznetsov is described a toxicologist. When in 1993 he first came to the attention of the Shroud fraternity he presented himself as an expert in physics and chemistry. Two years earlier, when giving lectures to Creationist groups around the world he was described as a 'distinguished bioscientist'. Clearly he is a man of many parts. However for those in the U.S. and elsewhere seeking to get their money back from him undoubtedly his greatest talent is as the Invisible Man.