Could Putin be culprit in Bush open-mic gaffe?

WASHINGTON — Was the old KGB master at it again?

A British television station says it has identified the person responsible for that open-microphone incident that caught an unvarnished President Bush at the closing G-8 summit lunch in St. Petersburg.

The culprit? Shockingly enough, they blame Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This was the luncheon where Bush, chomping on a piece of bread, issued an expletive, went on about long flights, bashed U.N. chief Kofi Annan and repeatedly interrupted his buddy, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The footage on Britain's Channel 4 shows Blair finally spotting and turning off the "telltale red light," and then the film cuts to Putin, grinning about something. A British reporter asked a Putin spokesman about this, but the spokesman insisted the broadcast was "an accident."

Accidental tapings of private conversations happen a lot in some countries.