Brendan Kyle Hatcher is a United States diplomat who was called "the most closely surveilled American in Russia" by ABC News Investigative Reporter Brian Ross in a September 2009 investigative report. Hatcher gained notoriety in August 2009 after the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, a newspaper which Russian intelligence expert Andrei Soldatov ties to the Federal Security Services (FSB) of the Russian Federation, showed a video of him while accusing him of being an undercover CIA agent in Russia. The media reports were quickly condemned by investigating authorities in the U.S. as fabricated. Media coverage According to Eli Lake of The Washington Times, Hatcher became one of several American diplomats and journalists to be attacked and falsely accused between 2007 and 2011 after the Obama Administration's "reset" with Russia. Hatcher served as Political Officer who worked to promote human rights and freedom of religion in Russia from 2008 to 2010. He was awarded in June 2010 by the State Department for his "courage and character, commitment to excellence, and support of human rights and religious freedom in spite of exceedingly difficult circumstances and personal hardship." As part of his job, Hatcher would meet with opposition figures, government officials, NGOs, journalists, and religious leaders to promote human rights and religious equality. Hatcher was fully exonerated by the media and State Department, and he was lauded by his colleagues for heroism. On August 6, 2009, Russian media sources with links to the FSB (the successor organization to the KGB of the Soviet Union) released real video images and pictures of Hatcher that had been spliced with images of another person. The doctored images emerged just one month after the first presidential summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev which prominently featured discussions on human rights and corruption. The Ambassador of the Embassy of the United States in Moscow, John Beyrle, issued a formal protest to the Russian government, stating that the Russian media reports about Hatcher were completely untrue and had no place in the development of better relations between the two superpowers. Despite Beyrle's protest, neither Hatcher nor the U.S government received an apology from Russian officials for the "smear campaign." On September 23, 2009, ABC News ran an investigative piece on Nightline concerning the "smear campaign" against Hatcher, including the interview with Ambassador Beyrle. During the interview, Beyrle stated that Hatcher was 100% innocent of any wrongdoing.