The Kremlin played down reports of a CIA spy inside Russia's presidential administration, but said an official identified by Russian media as the likely U.S. mole had worked there although he did not have access to President Vladimir Putin.

CNN reported on Monday that the United States had successfully exfiltrated one of its highest-level covert sources inside Russia in 2017.

Russian daily newspaper Kommersant said on Tuesday the official may have been a man called Oleg Smolenkov, who is reported to have disappeared with his wife, Antonina, and three children while on holiday in Montenegro in June 2017.

It cited unnamed Russian law enforcement officials as saying Moscow had initially opened an investigation into his suspected murder in Montenegro before concluding he was alive and living abroad.

Kommersant published a picture of a house in Virginia which it said had been bought later by the Smolenkovs and linked to details of the property's purchase, including its exact address, in a real estate listing and a local county tax filing.

One U.S. official familiar with the background to the story said it was not necessarily totally stupid or against standard spy practice for a defector to buy property in his own name. He did not say why.

But now that the story had become public it was highly likely the U.S. government would have to make serious efforts to protect the defector, said the source, who did not dispute the mole was Oleg Smolenkov.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking at a White House briefing, dismissed reports that the CIA pulled the informant out of Russia over concerns the asset's identity could be exposed.

"The reporting there is factually wrong," said Pompeo, without elaborating.

Pulp fiction

Asked about the matter, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Smolenkov had worked in the Russian presidential administration but had been fired in 2016/17.

"It is true that Smolenkov worked in the presidential administration, but he was fired several years ago. His job was not at a senior official level," said Peskov.

Smolenkov did not have direct access to Putin, Peskov added, declining with a laugh to confirm whether he had been a U.S. agent or not.

"I can't confirm that. ... I don't know whether he was an agent. I can only confirm that there was such a person in the presidential administration, who was later sacked."

"All this U.S. media speculation about who urgently extracted who and saved who from who and so on – this is more the genre of pulp fiction, crime reading, so let's leave it up to them," said Peskov.

Smolenkov at different times worked at the Russian Embassy in the United States, in the Russian government administration and in the Russian presidential administration, open-source documents inside Russia show.

His wife worked in another Kremlin department, Kommersant said.

It cited some unnamed sources as saying they thought Smolenkov had only done routine work and could not have passed anything more than "two-bit rumors" to the Americans.