Brendan Kyle Hatcher Sex Tape

Who? American diplomat in Russia.

Real? The tape exists, but Hatcher and the US Embassy insist the sex part is faked.

ABC News broke this story in late September 2009: US Protests Russian ‘Sex Tape’ Used to Smear American Diplomat. Russian website Komsomolskaya Pravda posted a video in August supposedly showing American diplomat Brendan Kyle Hatcher having sex with a Russian woman in a Moscow hotel room.

Watch the alleged Brendan Kyle Hatcher sex tape at ABC News.

The US government suspects Russian intelligence made the hidden camera tape in order to recruit or discredit Hatcher, who serves as liaison to religious and human rights groups in Russia. He reportedly rejected a blackmail attempt and properly reported the incident to his superiors. Hatcher denies being the man in the sex part of the video, and US government officials are backing him up.

The tape itself is clumsy. The first two minutes include grainy handheld video of a man (Hatcher?) walking Moscow streets at night talking on a cellphone. Tape recordings of phone conversations in Russian play on the soundtrack. Photographs of hot babes in lingerie appear in split-screen alongside Hatcher’s photograph, implying that Hatcher is talking to mistresses or prostitutes. Cheesy Mantovani-style romantic music plays on the soundtrack.

Then we see a one-minute shot of Hatcher (no one denies it’s him in this part) in a hotel room. The video looks like surveillance footage from a hidden camera: stationary, wide-angle, washed out, stuttery framerate.

The final minute cuts to a roughly identical hotel room shot from the same camera angle, except now the lights are off. The only illumination seems to be from the TV set. This part dissolves through various moments of a sexual encounter between a man and a woman. The footage is so dark and grainy, it’s impossible to tell if the man is Brendan Kyle Hatcher or not.

(Humorous side note: the first two times I watched the alleged Brendan Kyle Hatcher sex tape at the ABC News website, it was preceded by a 30-second ad for KY Intense gel. The ads rotate, so you’ll probably see something different.)

International sexpionage was in the news several times in 2009. Compare the cases of British diplomat James Hudson and Romanian consul Ion Nuica.