With all the grace of a SoCal surfer being tackled during an episode of Cops, Ryan C. Fogle was arrested yesterday in Moscow for spying during an apparent sting operation by the FSB, the Russian foreign intelligence service.

Russian authorities announced that Fogle, a junior diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, was an undercover CIA operative on his way to meet a Russian counterterrorism official he hoped to flip to the CIA. Within hours, he was declared "persona non grata" and ordered to leave the country. But to say that the circumstances surrounding the arrest were bizarre would be putting it mildly.

"There is a lot left to be learned about the whole episode," said Jeffrey Richelson, a