Bliss: Life on hold until cleared of Russian espionage charge

Wednesday, Dec. 31, 1997 | 9:11 a.m.

"The important thing is that I want my name cleared," Bliss said Tuesday, seated in a conference room at Qualcomm Corp. headquarters. He wore a company polo shirt and had a company cellular telephone strapped to his hip.

"I won't come up with any other goals until that happens."

Bliss was arrested for investigation of espionage by Russian authorities on Nov. 25. At the time he was working for Qualcomm on a cellular telephone system in the city of Rostov-on-Don.

Since his arrest, Bliss believes, Russia's Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, "sensed there was no espionage" and simply didn't realize that the equipment he was using was a necessary tool for the installation of modern wireless phone systems.

"They had no evidence," Bliss said. "They know I'm not a spy, or else they wouldn't have released me."

Despite the charges he still faces in Russia, Bliss seemed optimistic that he won't have to return there. He was released under an agreement struck between his employer and the Russian government to allow him to spend the holidays at home.

Officials first said he would have to return by Jan. 10, but have since wavered on an actual return date.

The field technician, who looks younger than his 29 years, has been employed by San Diego-based Qualcomm only since July. He said Russian officials first approached him and colleague Robert Holt by identifying themselves as the Russian equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission.

They told the pair that their equipment was causing interference and said they simply wanted to check it out before returning it the next day.

Interrogation started four days later, and Bliss ended up in jail. For 12 days, he was held in a Russian cell. He said he wasn't mistreated.

Conditions in confinement were "sterile," he said. "I don't mean clean, I mean devoid of anything interesting." He declined to elaborate.

Finding himself at the center of an alleged espionage case is something that he had only considered in jest.

"I mean, we all kind of made jokes about it, because of the past (political) relationship, but no one ever took it seriously," Bliss said.

Officials first told him the investigation could take up to 18 months. He doesn't speak Russian and had no contact with anyone outside jail.

"When I was still in jail and I wasn't sure if I was ever going to get out or not, the one thing that hit me is the fact that I had never had kids," Bliss said. " ... I didn't realize that was important to me until then."

He jokingly said he may start dating again.

"I'm a completely different person who took that picture," he said, pointing to his Qualcomm badge photo, taken just a few months back. "You don't go to a foreign country, get thrown in jail, think you're going to be there for the rest of your life and end up the same person. It just can't happen that way."

He said he's not cynical and he's actually looking forward to getting back to work after visiting relatives and supporters next week in Nevada and Washington. He also said he'd take another overseas job assignment.

"I think I have some options now that I didn't have before, so I'm going to explore everything," he said.

What apparently made Russian officials nervous was Bliss' use of Global Positioning System equipment while doing what he called "drive testing."

That's basically quality control - literally driving around in a car with a laptop computer - using GPS to mark areas so the cellular company will know where a signal is strong or weak.

Bliss said when drive testing is completed the company has a series of dots that overlay a map to show where weak areas are.

"You can't really ever prove that you're not something that somebody says you are," Bliss said of the spy accusation. "All you can do is prove that you are something that you say you are. I work for Qualcomm. Qualcomm is not a spy organization. All I'm interested in is the performance of this system."

Bliss and Qualcomm officials said they've heard nothing from Russian officials since his return on Dec. 25. They filed a motion to petition to stop the investigation, and that was denied. That motion now is in the hands of a regional prosecutor in Rostov-on-Don, 600 miles south of Moscow. If the regional prosecutor denies the petition, it then goes to the Moscow attorney general.

Bliss hopes that's where - due to heavy political pressure and lack of evidence - it ends.

"I hope that they haven't painted themselves all the way into a corner," he said. "They did to a certain extent, and maybe this is their way to gracefully bow out of it. I hope that's true."

But if Russian officials demand it, what would make him go back?

"First of all because I've got nothing to hide," he said. "The only thing that I've got is truth, and if they can't see it then I'll go beat it over their head."