crimes" committed by the President. After the disappearance of Georgiy Gongadze, he supposedly decided to publish the recordings and protect his life. Then Melnychenko turned to his political sympathizer Oleksander Moroz for help, and received it. Later, Melnychenko moved to the United States and received political asylum there. His tapes were eventually made available to the United States intelligence services and examined to determine their authenticity and content. The authenticity of the whole file of tapes remains officially unconfirmed. However, U.S. forensic experts have officially analyzed the section of tapes concerning Iraq issues and found it authentic. The Ukrainian authorities have issued an international search warrant for Melnychenko, claiming that he is an 'important witness' and possible traitor of state secrets. However, no evidence of forced return or assassination efforts against Melnychenko were made public. Many experts and journalists find Melnychenko's story highly questionable. In particular, they argue that: It is not clear why or how exactly Melnychenko started the operation. Being a career tech agent, he has never been involved in any kind of intelligence, analysis or criminal investigation. Thus, he was unlikely to have information on the President's committing judicially proven crimes. The means of recording described by Melnychenko seems odd, both in technical and operative terms. Indeed, it is impossible to record about 500 hours of conversations by simply changing amateur dictaphone once a day. Melnychenko's former commanding officers argue that even a very small device would be easily discovered during routine searches of the room conducted by several agents. The original device(s) used for recording, as well as the full file of recordings, have never been presented to journalists or Ukrainian prosecutors. Besides, Melnychenko should have known that a recording copied from digital recorder will not be found authentic, making the whole idea of "documenting evidences" a nonsense. Nevertheless, experts and politicians analyzing the recordings agree that at least some of them are real, judging by known voices, speaking manners and confidential details mentioned. A few politicians, including Kuchma himself, have officially claimed they recognize their own voices on the tapes. However, the President and his supporters have always denied the authenticity of the body of conversations recorded, calling them a "montage". On the other hand, in 2002 Bruce Koenig, of the US forensic firm Bek Tek, a former worker in the FBI's forensic laboratory, examined the recordings and concluded that there were no signs of