1985: The Year of the Spy
Encyclopedia
The American media referred to 1985 as the Year of the Spy because law enforcement arrested many foreign spies operating on American soil. Although 1985 had been referred to as the Year of the Spy, the preceding year 1984 actually had more arrests for espionage in the United States than did 1985.
The eight major agents who became infamous in 1985 for espionage against the United States were John Anthony Walker
, Richard Kelly Smyth, Sharon W. Scranage
, Larry Wu-Tai Chin
, Jonathan Jay Pollard
, Ronald William Pelton
, Randy Miles Jeffries, and Edward Lee Howard
.
and the Soviet Union
at a crucial point in the Cold War
; Mikhail Gorbachev
rose to power as Soviet general secretary in the same year.
These high-publicity cases added to the American public's suspicion of the Soviets at a time when the Soviet Union was transitioning into new leadership and reforms under Gorbachev. Even Gorbachev's meeting with President
Ronald Reagan
at the November Geneva Summit
did little to reduce uncertainty as to the future of U.S.-Soviet relations.
The arrest of so many foreign spies working within the United States Intelligence Community
sparked two demands among the American public: more internal government security and protection against infiltration, and more and better public access to government information.
at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
.
The Archive obtains declassified government documents via the Freedom of Information Act
, Mandatory Declassification Review, presidential paper collections, congressional records, and court testimony.
The Archive’s mission is to ensure and uphold the right to public access to historical documents and records that can provide background for and clarify the US government’s process of decision making.
Only private individuals and foundations including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fund the Archive's USD
2.5 million annual budget. The US government does not fund the Archive.
was born on July 28, 1937 in Scranton, Pennsylvania to Margaret Scaramuzzo and James Vincent Walker. James drank heavily and frequently beat Margaret and their children.
As a child, John Anthony Walker was a rebellious practical joker. At his Catholic high school, he performed poorly academically and did not participate in sports. When he was 17, he was arrested for burglary, and he admitted to six other burglaries. In court his older brother, a US Naval officer, urged the judge to give him probation so that he might enlist in the Navy and gain discipline.
Walker enlisted in the Navy
in 1956.
In 1967, he walked into the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC and offered to steal codes, code machines, and classified documents from the Navy for the initial price of USD 500 to 1000 per week.
For Walker, the Cold War was a game. He believed an outbreak of war would never happen, and that his treason would not cause real damage. He recruited his wife Barbara, his friend Jerry Whitworth, his older brother Arthur, and his son Michael to aid him in his espionage activities.
Barbara eventually disclosed the ring’s activities to the FBI
. After completing a dead drop
coordinated with a Soviet operative north of Washington, DC, Walker searched for USD 200,000 that the Soviet operative was supposed to have dropped 5 miles away. He could not find the package, and checked into a local inn to regroup. The FBI had arranged a sting. The hotel’s front desk worker lured him from his room at 3:30 a.m. on May 20, 1985 with a phone call about damage to his van in the hotel’s parking lot, at which point 2 FBI agents apprehended him.
The Walker case stunned America as the last major spy case involving Americans was the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
case of the 1950s.
consultant on aerospace guidance technology. His Huntington Beach, California business, Milco International Incorporated, was a leading contractor to the US government on aerospace technology and an exporter of this technology.
Between January 1980 and December 1982, Smyth allegedly illegally exported 15 shipments of krytron
s to alleged Israeli intermediary and businessman Arnon Milchan
of the Israeli company Heli Trading Company. Milchan then allegedly mediated the transfer of the krytrons to the Israeli government.
Milchan also produced the films Pretty Woman
, The War of the Roses
, LA Confidential
, The Devil’s Advocate, Mr. and Mrs. Smith
, JFK
, and Fight Club
. In 2006, Forbes listed him as the 240th richest person in the world.
Because krytron
s are electronic switches capable of triggering nuclear explosive devices, the US government deems them munitions and only allows their legal export via a stringent licensing process, though they are central components of common items like copy machines and strobe lights.
Operation Exodus, a US Customs
program, was instrumental in Smyth’s capture. Ronald Reagan’s administration designed Operation Exodus to cut off smuggling of technology and goods to Soviet countries and funded the program by taking USD 30 million from the Department of Defense
and giving it to Customs.
Law enforcement arrested Smyth in May 1985. While awaiting trial he fled with his wife. Law enforcement discovered the couple in Malaga, Spain in July 2001. After his extradition to the US, he pleaded guilty in December 2001 to violating the Arms Export Control Act
and to making false statements to US Customs. His sentence included 40 months in prison and a USD 20,000 fine, though he was immediately eligible for parole because of his old age. He was 72 at the time of sentencing.
was a young American CIA
secretary serving in Accra
, the capital of Ghana
. The Ghanaian government used Michael Agbotui Soussoudis, a young male intelligence officer to target her, romance her, and solicit US intelligence from her.
Scranage disclosed to Soussoudis the identities of undercover CIA agents working in Ghana as well as plans for a coup against the Ghanaian government by dissidents. Soussoudis then passed the information to Ghanaian intelligence chief and Marxist Kojo Tsikata, who then passed it to Cuba, Libya, and East Germany.
According to a study by the Adjudicative Desk Reference, the US government’s guidelines for a person’s eligibility for access to classified information, it is not uncommon for foreign intelligence agents, especially in Communist nations, to use the promise of sex and romance against operatives to gain trust and obtain information.
On September 27, 1985 Scranage began her sentence of 5 years in prison for espionage and violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act
. She earned parole after serving 18 months. Soussoudis received a sentence of 20 years but permanently left the US in exchange for a suspended sentence.
Congress passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in 1982 in response to the murder of Athens, Greece CIA station chief Richard Welch by Marxist group The 17 November Organization. The legislation made it illegal to disclose the identities of or personal information about intelligence officers.
was born in Beijing. He began his US government career as translator for the US Army during World War II. He performed the same job for the US Consulate in Shanghai, the State Department
, and the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service
.
He spied for China for 30 years. He told the Chinese government Richard Nixon
's secret diplomatic goals before Nixon's visit to China, and China was able to strategically prepare for negotiations. Chinese intelligence agents then passed Chin’s secrets on to the Vietnamese.
China paid Chin between USD 500,000 and 1 million, with which he accumulated 29 rental properties and Las Vegas gambling debts totaling more than USD 96,000. Chin channeled his compulsive gambling habit and used it as a way to hide his espionage profits.
After federal district judge Robert Mehrige found him guilty of spying for China on February 7, 1986, Chin suffocated himself with a plastic bag in his Virginia prison cell.
After leaving graduate school at Tufts University, he became a civilian US Naval intelligence officer in 1979. He earned a promotion in 1984 and immediately passed satellite imagery and CIA reports to Israeli agents, unsolicited. Apart from cash, he received jewelry and a honeymoon on the Orient Express for his wife Anne Henderson.
Pollard reportedly admitted to selling materials that could fill a 10-foot by 6-foot by 6-foot space to the Israeli Intelligence, from where, it is claimed some intelligence specialists believe that the Soviet moles then passed those secrets along to Moscow.
Pollard’s need to constantly handle classified materials drew too much attention, and law enforcement arrested him when he was walking out of his office on November 18, 1985. He pleaded guilty to espionage and received a sentence of life in prison on June 4, 1986. After Anne served her 5-year sentence for unauthorized possession of government documents, she divorced Pollard.
In April 2008, federal prosecutors accused 84-year-old retired US Army engineer and New Jersey resident Ben-Ami Kadish
of passing intelligence to an Israeli official who also received information from Pollard.
. After attending Indiana University, he joined the US Air Force
and analyzed SIGINT
in Pakistan. He had a photographic memory.
He began working for the National Security Agency
as a communications specialist in 1966. He personally went to the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC and volunteered to spy after he retired in 1979.
He eventually disclosed to the Soviets intelligence about Operation Ivy Bells
, a plan to monitor underwater Soviet communication cables. At the time, the information Pelton had disclosed was so sensitive that CIA director Bill Casey and NSA director William Odom asked the media to report any leaked information to them before going to press.
Alleged Soviet defector Vitaly Yurchenko
was a KGB colonel who revealed Pelton’s identity during an interrogation by the CIA.
Pelton received three concurrent life sentences in 1986.
On December 14, 1985, Jeffries conspired with a coworker to attempt to sell to the Soviet Military Office in northwest Washington three classified documents including one titled “US House of Representatives, Department of Defense Command Control Communication and Intelligence Programs, C31, Closed Session, Subcommittee on Armed Services, Washington, DC.” At 4:45 p.m. he hand-delivered sample documents to the Soviet Military Office. He returned on December 17, at which time Soviet agents paid him USD 60. On December 20 he met with an undercover FBI agent who was posing as a Soviet. Law enforcement arrested Jeffries later that night.
A subsequent federal audit of Acme Reporting Company revealed that their security system was a total failure. Background checks were inadequate, employees worked on classified materials from home, and no proper document destruction procedures were in place.
In response to the Jeffries case, the Defense Investigative Service started Project Insight in 1986 to gather and analyze industrial security data and develop recommendations for new techniques.
On March 13, 1986 a federal judge sentenced Jeffries to 3 to 9 years imprisonment.
was a Boy Scout
, an altar boy, and a Returned Peace Corps
Volunteer who served in Colombia
. After a period spent doing international development work with USAID
, Howard went to work for the CIA in 1981.
On May 2, 1983, the CIA fired him after noting discrepancies in his polygraph
tests regarding past drug use and petty theft. Howard promptly made drunken phone calls to the US embassy in Moscow using a phone line he knew Soviets were monitoring, and thereby exposed his former supervisor as a CIA employee.
In 1984 Howard allegedly sold US intelligence to KGB agents in Austria. In 1985 he vanished into the New Mexico desert after Soviet defector and KGB deputy chief Vitaly Yurchenko gave the FBI information which caused them to heavily surveil Howard. Howard escaped with the help of his wife Mary who drove home from the desert with a dummy decoy in the passenger seat of the car, and played a recording of Howard’s voice on a phone line she knew the FBI was tapping.
Howard defected to Russia where the Soviets granted him asylum, an apartment, and a new identity.
Howard died on July 12, 2002 at the age of 50 according to former KGB chief Vladimir A. Kryuchkov and State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher.
The eight major agents who became infamous in 1985 for espionage against the United States were John Anthony Walker
John Anthony Walker
John Anthony Walker, Jr. is a former United States Navy Chief Warrant Officer and communications specialist convicted of spying for the Soviet Union from 1968 to 1985, at the height of the Cold War...
, Richard Kelly Smyth, Sharon W. Scranage
Sharon Scranage
Sharon Scranage is a former CIA employee who was jailed for revealing the identities of CIA agents.Scranage, who worked in Ghana in the role of Operations Support Assistant, passed classified information to her boyfriend, Michael Soussoudis...
, Larry Wu-Tai Chin
Larry Wu-Tai Chin
Larry Wu-tai Chin was a former Chinese language translator working for the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service...
, Jonathan Jay Pollard
Jonathan Pollard
Jonathan Jay Pollard worked as a civilian intelligence analyst before being convicted of spying for Israel. He received a life sentence in 1987....
, Ronald William Pelton
Ronald Pelton
Ronald William Pelton was an National Security Agency intelligence analyst who was convicted in 1986 of spying for and selling secrets to the Soviet Union. He reportedly has a photographic memory as he passed no documents to the Soviets...
, Randy Miles Jeffries, and Edward Lee Howard
Edward Lee Howard
Edward Lee Victor Howard was a CIA case officer who defected to the Soviet Union....
.
Political climate
The majority of these operatives were spying for Communist nations. Their arrests in 1985 heightened tensions between the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
at a crucial point in the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
; Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
rose to power as Soviet general secretary in the same year.
These high-publicity cases added to the American public's suspicion of the Soviets at a time when the Soviet Union was transitioning into new leadership and reforms under Gorbachev. Even Gorbachev's meeting with President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
at the November Geneva Summit
Geneva Summit (1985)
The Geneva Summit of 1985 was a Cold War-era meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. It was held on November 19 and 20, 1985, between U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev...
did little to reduce uncertainty as to the future of U.S.-Soviet relations.
The arrest of so many foreign spies working within the United States Intelligence Community
United States Intelligence Community
The United States Intelligence Community is a cooperative federation of 16 separate United States government agencies that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities considered necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and the protection of the national security of the...
sparked two demands among the American public: more internal government security and protection against infiltration, and more and better public access to government information.
Aftermath
As a result, journalists and researchers who had been demanding and obtaining government information sought to store it in one central location and in 1985 created the National Security ArchiveNational Security Archive
The National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
.
The Archive obtains declassified government documents via the Freedom of Information Act
Freedom of Information Act (United States)
The Freedom of Information Act is a federal freedom of information law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government. The Act defines agency records subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure...
, Mandatory Declassification Review, presidential paper collections, congressional records, and court testimony.
The Archive’s mission is to ensure and uphold the right to public access to historical documents and records that can provide background for and clarify the US government’s process of decision making.
Only private individuals and foundations including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fund the Archive's USD
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
2.5 million annual budget. The US government does not fund the Archive.
John Anthony Walker
John Anthony WalkerJohn Anthony Walker
John Anthony Walker, Jr. is a former United States Navy Chief Warrant Officer and communications specialist convicted of spying for the Soviet Union from 1968 to 1985, at the height of the Cold War...
was born on July 28, 1937 in Scranton, Pennsylvania to Margaret Scaramuzzo and James Vincent Walker. James drank heavily and frequently beat Margaret and their children.
As a child, John Anthony Walker was a rebellious practical joker. At his Catholic high school, he performed poorly academically and did not participate in sports. When he was 17, he was arrested for burglary, and he admitted to six other burglaries. In court his older brother, a US Naval officer, urged the judge to give him probation so that he might enlist in the Navy and gain discipline.
Walker enlisted in the Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
in 1956.
In 1967, he walked into the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC and offered to steal codes, code machines, and classified documents from the Navy for the initial price of USD 500 to 1000 per week.
For Walker, the Cold War was a game. He believed an outbreak of war would never happen, and that his treason would not cause real damage. He recruited his wife Barbara, his friend Jerry Whitworth, his older brother Arthur, and his son Michael to aid him in his espionage activities.
Barbara eventually disclosed the ring’s activities to the FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
. After completing a dead drop
Dead drop
A dead drop or dead letter box is a method of espionage tradecraft used to pass items between two individuals by using a secret location and thus does not require them to meet directly. Using a dead drop permits a Case Officer and his Agent to exchange objects and information while maintaining...
coordinated with a Soviet operative north of Washington, DC, Walker searched for USD 200,000 that the Soviet operative was supposed to have dropped 5 miles away. He could not find the package, and checked into a local inn to regroup. The FBI had arranged a sting. The hotel’s front desk worker lured him from his room at 3:30 a.m. on May 20, 1985 with a phone call about damage to his van in the hotel’s parking lot, at which point 2 FBI agents apprehended him.
The Walker case stunned America as the last major spy case involving Americans was the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were American communists who were convicted and executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. The charges related to their passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union...
case of the 1950s.
Richard Kelly Smyth
Richard Kelly Smyth was an American physicist, businessman, and NATO and NASANASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
consultant on aerospace guidance technology. His Huntington Beach, California business, Milco International Incorporated, was a leading contractor to the US government on aerospace technology and an exporter of this technology.
Between January 1980 and December 1982, Smyth allegedly illegally exported 15 shipments of krytron
Krytron
The krytron is a cold-cathode gas filled tube intended for use as a very high-speed switch, and was one of the earliest developments of the EG&G Corporation. It is somewhat similar to thyratron...
s to alleged Israeli intermediary and businessman Arnon Milchan
Arnon Milchan
Arnon Milchan is a film producer, Israeli intelligence agent, and arms dealer. Milchan produced many films such as The War of the Roses, Once Upon a Time in America, Pretty Woman, Natural Born Killers, Under Siege, The Devil's Advocate, The Fountain, Unfaithful, L.A. Confidential and many others...
of the Israeli company Heli Trading Company. Milchan then allegedly mediated the transfer of the krytrons to the Israeli government.
Milchan also produced the films Pretty Woman
Pretty Woman
Pretty Woman is a 1990 romantic comedy film set in Los Angeles, California. Written by J.F. Lawton and directed by Garry Marshall, this motion picture features Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, and also Hector Elizondo, Ralph Bellamy, and Jason Alexander in supporting roles. Roberts played the only...
, The War of the Roses
The War of the Roses (film)
The War of the Roses is a 1989 American comedy film based upon the 1981 novel The War of the Roses by Warren Adler. It is a black comedy about a wealthy couple with a seemingly perfect marriage. When their marriage begins to fall apart, material possessions become the center of an outrageous and...
, LA Confidential
L.A. Confidential (film)
L.A. Confidential is a 1997 American film based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel of the same title, the third book in his L.A. Quartet. Both the book and the film tell the story of a group of LAPD officers in the 1950s, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity...
, The Devil’s Advocate, Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005 film)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a 2005 American romantic comedy action film directed by Doug Liman and written by Simon Kinberg. The original music score was composed by John Powell...
, JFK
JFK (film)
JFK is a 1991 American film directed by Oliver Stone. It examines the events leading to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and alleged subsequent cover-up, through the eyes of former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison .Garrison filed charges against New Orleans businessman Clay...
, and Fight Club
Fight Club (film)
Fight Club is a 1999 American film based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. The film was directed by David Fincher and stars Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter. Norton plays the unnamed protagonist, an "everyman" who is discontented with his white-collar job...
. In 2006, Forbes listed him as the 240th richest person in the world.
Because krytron
Krytron
The krytron is a cold-cathode gas filled tube intended for use as a very high-speed switch, and was one of the earliest developments of the EG&G Corporation. It is somewhat similar to thyratron...
s are electronic switches capable of triggering nuclear explosive devices, the US government deems them munitions and only allows their legal export via a stringent licensing process, though they are central components of common items like copy machines and strobe lights.
Operation Exodus, a US Customs
United States Customs Service
Until March 2003, the United States Customs Service was an agency of the U.S. federal government that collected import tariffs and performed other selected border security duties.Before it was rolled into form part of the U.S...
program, was instrumental in Smyth’s capture. Ronald Reagan’s administration designed Operation Exodus to cut off smuggling of technology and goods to Soviet countries and funded the program by taking USD 30 million from the Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
and giving it to Customs.
Law enforcement arrested Smyth in May 1985. While awaiting trial he fled with his wife. Law enforcement discovered the couple in Malaga, Spain in July 2001. After his extradition to the US, he pleaded guilty in December 2001 to violating the Arms Export Control Act
Arms Export Control Act
The Arms Export Control Act of 1976 gives the President of the United States the authority to control the import and export of defense articles and defense services. It requires governments that receive weapons from the United States to use them for legitimate self-defense...
and to making false statements to US Customs. His sentence included 40 months in prison and a USD 20,000 fine, though he was immediately eligible for parole because of his old age. He was 72 at the time of sentencing.
Sharon W. Scranage
Sharon W. ScranageSharon Scranage
Sharon Scranage is a former CIA employee who was jailed for revealing the identities of CIA agents.Scranage, who worked in Ghana in the role of Operations Support Assistant, passed classified information to her boyfriend, Michael Soussoudis...
was a young American CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
secretary serving in Accra
Accra
Accra is the capital and largest city of Ghana, with an urban population of 1,658,937 according to the 2000 census. Accra is also the capital of the Greater Accra Region and of the Accra Metropolitan District, with which it is coterminous...
, the capital of Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
. The Ghanaian government used Michael Agbotui Soussoudis, a young male intelligence officer to target her, romance her, and solicit US intelligence from her.
Scranage disclosed to Soussoudis the identities of undercover CIA agents working in Ghana as well as plans for a coup against the Ghanaian government by dissidents. Soussoudis then passed the information to Ghanaian intelligence chief and Marxist Kojo Tsikata, who then passed it to Cuba, Libya, and East Germany.
According to a study by the Adjudicative Desk Reference, the US government’s guidelines for a person’s eligibility for access to classified information, it is not uncommon for foreign intelligence agents, especially in Communist nations, to use the promise of sex and romance against operatives to gain trust and obtain information.
On September 27, 1985 Scranage began her sentence of 5 years in prison for espionage and violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act
Intelligence Identities Protection Act
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 is a United States federal law that makes it a federal crime for those with access to classified information, or those who systematically seek to identify and expose covert agents and have reason to believe that it will harm the foreign...
. She earned parole after serving 18 months. Soussoudis received a sentence of 20 years but permanently left the US in exchange for a suspended sentence.
Congress passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in 1982 in response to the murder of Athens, Greece CIA station chief Richard Welch by Marxist group The 17 November Organization. The legislation made it illegal to disclose the identities of or personal information about intelligence officers.
Larry Wu-Tai Chin
Larry Wu-Tai ChinLarry Wu-Tai Chin
Larry Wu-tai Chin was a former Chinese language translator working for the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service...
was born in Beijing. He began his US government career as translator for the US Army during World War II. He performed the same job for the US Consulate in Shanghai, the State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
, and the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service
Foreign Broadcast Information Service
Foreign Broadcast Information Service was an open source intelligence component of the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Science and Technology. It monitored, translated, and disseminated within the U.S. government openly available news and information from media sources outside the...
.
He spied for China for 30 years. He told the Chinese government Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
's secret diplomatic goals before Nixon's visit to China, and China was able to strategically prepare for negotiations. Chinese intelligence agents then passed Chin’s secrets on to the Vietnamese.
China paid Chin between USD 500,000 and 1 million, with which he accumulated 29 rental properties and Las Vegas gambling debts totaling more than USD 96,000. Chin channeled his compulsive gambling habit and used it as a way to hide his espionage profits.
After federal district judge Robert Mehrige found him guilty of spying for China on February 7, 1986, Chin suffocated himself with a plastic bag in his Virginia prison cell.
Jonathan Jay Pollard
Jonathan Jay Pollard, son of a microbiology professor, grew up in South Bend, Indiana. As a child he loved to read and tell stories. His family lost 70 relatives during the Holocaust, and he dreamed of avenging these wrongs. He attended Stanford University where he falsely boasted that Israeli intelligence paid his tuition and his father worked for the CIA.After leaving graduate school at Tufts University, he became a civilian US Naval intelligence officer in 1979. He earned a promotion in 1984 and immediately passed satellite imagery and CIA reports to Israeli agents, unsolicited. Apart from cash, he received jewelry and a honeymoon on the Orient Express for his wife Anne Henderson.
Pollard reportedly admitted to selling materials that could fill a 10-foot by 6-foot by 6-foot space to the Israeli Intelligence, from where, it is claimed some intelligence specialists believe that the Soviet moles then passed those secrets along to Moscow.
Pollard’s need to constantly handle classified materials drew too much attention, and law enforcement arrested him when he was walking out of his office on November 18, 1985. He pleaded guilty to espionage and received a sentence of life in prison on June 4, 1986. After Anne served her 5-year sentence for unauthorized possession of government documents, she divorced Pollard.
In April 2008, federal prosecutors accused 84-year-old retired US Army engineer and New Jersey resident Ben-Ami Kadish
Ben-ami Kadish
Ben-ami Kadish is a former U.S. Army mechanical engineer. He pleaded guilty in December 2008 to being an "unregistered agent for Israel", and admitted to disclosing classified U.S. documents to Israel in the 1980s. His unauthorized disclosure of classified U.S...
of passing intelligence to an Israeli official who also received information from Pollard.
Ronald William Pelton
Ronald William Pelton was born in 1942. After attending Indiana University, he joined the US Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
and analyzed SIGINT
SIGINT
Signals intelligence is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether between people , whether involving electronic signals not directly used in communication , or combinations of the two...
in Pakistan. He had a photographic memory.
He began working for the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
as a communications specialist in 1966. He personally went to the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC and volunteered to spy after he retired in 1979.
He eventually disclosed to the Soviets intelligence about Operation Ivy Bells
Operation Ivy Bells
Operation Ivy Bells was a joint United States Navy, CIA and National Security Agency mission whose objective was to place wire taps on Soviet underwater communication lines during the Cold War.-History:...
, a plan to monitor underwater Soviet communication cables. At the time, the information Pelton had disclosed was so sensitive that CIA director Bill Casey and NSA director William Odom asked the media to report any leaked information to them before going to press.
Alleged Soviet defector Vitaly Yurchenko
Vitaly Yurchenko
Vitaly Yurchenko is a former high-ranking KGB officer in the Soviet Union. In 1985, after 25 years of service in the KGB, he made a fake defection to the United States during an assignment in Rome. After providing the names of two U.S. intelligence officers who were KGB agents, Yurchenko slipped...
was a KGB colonel who revealed Pelton’s identity during an interrogation by the CIA.
Pelton received three concurrent life sentences in 1986.
Randy Miles Jeffries
Randy Miles Jeffries worked as a clerk for the FBI from 1978 to 1980. In 1983 he received a one-year suspended sentence for heroin possession and attended rehab. A social service worker referred him to Acme Reporting Company, a stenography and reporting company that frequently contracted with federal agencies. Here Jeffries was responsible for photocopying, bundling, and handling classified documents and later disposing of them, unshredded, in a dumpster.On December 14, 1985, Jeffries conspired with a coworker to attempt to sell to the Soviet Military Office in northwest Washington three classified documents including one titled “US House of Representatives, Department of Defense Command Control Communication and Intelligence Programs, C31, Closed Session, Subcommittee on Armed Services, Washington, DC.” At 4:45 p.m. he hand-delivered sample documents to the Soviet Military Office. He returned on December 17, at which time Soviet agents paid him USD 60. On December 20 he met with an undercover FBI agent who was posing as a Soviet. Law enforcement arrested Jeffries later that night.
A subsequent federal audit of Acme Reporting Company revealed that their security system was a total failure. Background checks were inadequate, employees worked on classified materials from home, and no proper document destruction procedures were in place.
In response to the Jeffries case, the Defense Investigative Service started Project Insight in 1986 to gather and analyze industrial security data and develop recommendations for new techniques.
On March 13, 1986 a federal judge sentenced Jeffries to 3 to 9 years imprisonment.
Edward Lee Howard
Edward Lee HowardEdward Lee Howard
Edward Lee Victor Howard was a CIA case officer who defected to the Soviet Union....
was a Boy Scout
Boy Scout
A Scout is a boy or a girl, usually 11 to 18 years of age, participating in the worldwide Scouting movement. Because of the large age and development span, many Scouting associations have split this age group into a junior and a senior section...
, an altar boy, and a Returned Peace Corps
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the United States Government, as well as a government agency of the same name. The mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand US culture, and helping...
Volunteer who served in Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
. After a period spent doing international development work with USAID
United States Agency for International Development
The United States Agency for International Development is the United States federal government agency primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid. President John F. Kennedy created USAID in 1961 by executive order to implement development assistance programs in the areas...
, Howard went to work for the CIA in 1981.
On May 2, 1983, the CIA fired him after noting discrepancies in his polygraph
Polygraph
A polygraph measures and records several physiological indices such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while the subject is asked and answers a series of questions...
tests regarding past drug use and petty theft. Howard promptly made drunken phone calls to the US embassy in Moscow using a phone line he knew Soviets were monitoring, and thereby exposed his former supervisor as a CIA employee.
In 1984 Howard allegedly sold US intelligence to KGB agents in Austria. In 1985 he vanished into the New Mexico desert after Soviet defector and KGB deputy chief Vitaly Yurchenko gave the FBI information which caused them to heavily surveil Howard. Howard escaped with the help of his wife Mary who drove home from the desert with a dummy decoy in the passenger seat of the car, and played a recording of Howard’s voice on a phone line she knew the FBI was tapping.
Howard defected to Russia where the Soviets granted him asylum, an apartment, and a new identity.
Howard died on July 12, 2002 at the age of 50 according to former KGB chief Vladimir A. Kryuchkov and State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher.