Iran Scientist: U.S. Wanted Spy Swap

Shahram Amiri is alleging that the United States not only kidnapped and held him against his will for over a year, but pressured him to participate in a "spy" swap for Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal, the three U.S. hikers in custody in Tehran. The U.S. government maintains that the three hikers were on vacation and accidentally ventured across an unmarked border, questioning whether or not they were even in legitimate Iranian territory at the time. But Amiri insists that the government admitted to him that Shourd, Fattal, and Bauer were spies. "They [U.S. agents] wanted me to say that 'I was an Iranian intelligence agent infiltrating the CIA,’" he told Iranian state television. "If I said this, they said I could be part of a spy exchange program, whereby I could be handed over to Iran in return for the three American spies arrested near the Iraqi border."