Spies Agree To Admit Espionage Ex-Fbi Agent Pleads Guilty; Ex-Cia Agent Due In Court
The two most important spies caught since the arrest of Soviet mole Aldrich Ames in 1994 have agreed to plead guilty to conducting espionage for Moscow, sparing the FBI and the CIA the embarrassment of having traitors from both agencies on trial at almost the same time.
Friday, former FBI counterintelligence agent Earl Pitts, 43, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., to selling secrets to the Soviet Union, and later Russia, beginning in 1987. Pitts, who was arrested in December after an extensive sting operation by FBI agents posing as his new Russian handlers, is only the second FBI agent ever to face espionage charges.
Meanwhile, Harold J. Nicholson, 46, a former CIA station chief and the agency’s highest ranking officer ever to be arrested for espionage, is expected to appear Monday in the same federal courthouse to plead guilty to charges that he spied for Russia from 1994 until his arrest last November. U.S. Attorney Helen Fahey refused to provide details on Nicholson’s plea agreement.
In a plea bargain with federal prosecutors, Pitts pleaded guilty to two of the 12 espionage-related counts on which he had been charged - conspiring to commit espionage and attempted espionage.
Federal prosecutors said at a news conference they agreed to cut a deal with Pitts, apparently sparing him from spending the rest of his life in prison, only after FBI investigators found they could not prove Pitts had passed top-secret information to intelligence agents of either the Soviets or the Russian Federation.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy Bellows said the FBI only had evidence that Pitts had given Moscow information that was classified as secret - even though he had access to top-secret documents - thus calling for more lenient punishment under federal sentencing guidelines.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis scheduled Pitts’ sentencing for June 20.
Among the most sensitive information he provided Moscow was information on an FBI “asset” or Russian spy, in New York, as well as a copy of the FBI’s “Soviet Administrative List,” which was the bureau’s computerized list of all Soviet officials assigned to the United States and which FBI agents monitor their activities. For his treason, Pitts received at least $129,000 from Moscow, while the Russians told Pitts they had set aside another $100,000 for him in a “reserve account.”
Nicholson, the CIA’s former station chief in Romania and later its deputy station chief in Malaysia, began to spy for the Russians in the summer of 1994, just before he left Malaysia to return to the United States to become an instructor at the CIA’s secret training facility.
The government believes that among other secrets, Nicholson gave Moscow the identities of the CIA officers he was helping to train.