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The presence of a Russian photographer working for a state-owned news agency during President Donald Trump's meeting Wednesday with Russian diplomats in the Oval Office sparked criticism from media advocates as well as concerns over the risk of a security breach.
White House officials seemed caught off-guard by the controversy, initially saying they had not anticipated that the state news agency Tass would post photographs from the meeting. "They tricked us," one unnamed official was quoted as saying by CNN.
American news organizations were not granted access to the Oval Office meeting; an official White House photographer was present. Officials said they were unaware that photographer Alexandr Scherbak would be shooting for both Tass and the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Russian officials have fired back fiercely by taking aim at the U.S. media.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized a Washington Post story about the meeting on the sidelines of Thursday's Arctic Council meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska. The Washington Post story, published soon after the Oval Office meeting, had quoted a number of former intelligence officials who said that White House visitors could hide surveillance equipment such as a listening device in a camera or other equipment.
"Here he is -- the spy!" Zakharova said sarcastically after being approached by a Post reporter, referring to Scherbak, standing nearby. "Your newspaper is making our correspondents feel like Jews in 1933."
In Facebook postings on Thursday, Zakharova also criticized CNN's coverage of the Oval Office meeting, accusing the news network of reaching "rock bottom."
The spokeswoman shared a Web page made by the Russian Embassy in Washington that was simply a list of more than 200 tweets by journalists and other public figures discussing the meeting.
Scherbak issued his reply Thursday in a Facebook post written in Russian and later translated to English. Addressing the "U.S. media" directly about the "hysteria surrounding my photo shoot at the White House," Scherbak said he had covered similar meetings around the world before and there was "nothing unusual" about Wednesday's session.
After the Russian foreign minister met with his U.S. counterpart, "I was taken by a U.S. representative to the White House. I was scanned, patted down, and then sniffed by canines," Scherbak wrote.
Inside the Oval Office, he was accompanied by an official White House photographer, he said. "I took only two cameras to the photo shoot, I left all my stuff, including my cellphone, in another room as I was told to do."
On Friday, the Russian Journalists' Union issued a statement in support of Scherbak, suggesting that he had "become another target of attacks by CNN journalists."
Wednesday's White House meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other officials, including Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, came at a time of renewed scrutiny over ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Kislyak in particular has featured in one of the new administration's most notable controversies, with national security adviser Michael Flynn forced to resign in February after misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with the ambassador last year.
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded with "high confidence" that Russia tried to affect the outcome of the 2016 election, an allegation Lavrov has denied repeatedly.
The Post reported after the meeting that although all visitors entering the White House were subjected to a security screening, some former intelligence officials suggested that such a screening could not detect a sophisticated device. Todd Morris, founder and chief executive of the countersurveillance advisory company BrickHouse Security, told The Post that a covert device could be as small as a matchbook and that though it might eventually be found, it could transmit its data quickly.