Edmond D. Pope is a retired American intelligence officer-turned-businessman, convicted by a Russian court in 2000 on charges of spying for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for buying up and smuggling classified military equipment out of the country as scrap metal. 253 days into his custody, Pope was pardoned by the newly elected Russian President Vladimir Putin as US government claimed that Pope had a rare form of bone cancer. Pope has always maintained his innocence and continues to assert that the Russian authorities used him as a scapegoat for their broken system.