Largely out of view of the West, Russia has been waging a bizarre media campaign internally, striving to convince its citizens that the recent unpleasantness in Georgia was all the doing of the United States. One of the main accusations was that Russian troops found numerous "American mercenaries" among the dead.
When pressed by Western reporters inside Russia, to display some of this evidence, the Russians have been evasive. Late last month, the Russians finally came forward with the U.S. passport of one of the "American mercenaries". The name on the passport was Michael Lee White, who turns out to be a 41 year old U.S. Army veteran.
But at the time of his alleged death, and for some time before that, he was in Texas, caring for his sick father. He is now teaching English at the Guangdong (China) University of Business Studies, where he was when the Russian accusations caught up with him. When questioned by reporters, White said he had never been to Georgia, and had nothing to do with what was going on there. When asked about his passport, he said he did lose one on a 2005 flight from Moscow to New York. Now he knows where that passport ended up.
The Russians will probably assert that White lost his passport in Georgia, and escaped to the United States, where the CIA provided a dying father and a teaching job in China as part of a coverup. This sort of thing plays well in Russia, and for the Russian government, that's all that counts.
Let's not forget the historical contribution of thousands of American communists and socialists that upon arriving in the 1920-30's Soviet Union had their passports confiscated. Passports that were then used to insert NKVD spies and sleepers into America. Even though these ex-Americans were executed or exiled to die in the gulags during Stalin's purges, I'm positive they would be proud of the fact they gave their last measure of devotion for the Rodina. 
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