U.S. citizen was among Georgian commandos - Russian Military

Russia Today
Friday, Aug 29, 2008

A U.S. passport was found in a building in South Ossetia occupied by Georgian troops, a Russian military spokesperson revealed on Thursday. After Russian peacekeepers cleared the heavily defended building, a passport belonging to a Texan named Michael Lee White was discovered inside.

Deputy Chief of Russia's General Staff Anatoly Nagovitsyn showed photocopies of the passport to media in a press briefing on Thursday.

“There is a building in Zemonekozi - a settlement to the south of Tskhinval that was fiercely defended by a Georgian special operations squad. Upon clearing the building, Russian peacekeepers recovered, among other documents, an American passport in the name of Michael Lee White of Texas," said Nagovitsyn.

Neither the owner of the passport nor his remains were found at the scene, despite a thorough search.

"I do not know why he was there, but it is a fact that he was in the building, among Georgian special forces troops,” Nagovitsyn said.

The briefing was delivered on the same day Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told CNN, "We have serious reasons to believe that American citizens were right at the heart of the military action". Putin said the conflict in South Ossetian may have been planned to benefit one of the U.S. presidential candidates.