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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Convicted spy accused of spying from prison

Officials say man’s son smuggled messages out

Bryan Denson (Portland) Oregonian

PORTLAND – The government took great pains to prevent Jim Nicholson, a former CIA spy who sold classified information to Russia, from sneaking more secrets to Moscow from the federal prison in Sheridan, Ore.

The CIA reviewed every letter Nicholson wrote. The agency routed the former spy’s phone calls through a special number in Virginia so they could be recorded. And the CIA, working with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, approved every person who wrote, phoned or visited him.

Yet Nicholson still found ways to pass messages to Russian intelligence officials, government prosecutors said Friday in court papers that give the fullest account yet of how they suspect he did it.

Nicholson, accused of money laundering and acting as an agent of a foreign government, faces trial next month in Portland’s U.S. District Court.

His 26-year-old son Nathan has already pleaded guilty for his role in the alleged plot and will testify against his father. He admits trotting the globe at his father’s behest to collect stacks of cash from the Russians.

“Nathaniel was excited about the prospect of acting in a clandestine fashion like his father,” prosecutors wrote in a pretrial memorandum.

The memo lays out details of the government’s case against native Oregonian Harold James “Jim” Nicholson, 59, the highest-ranking CIA agent convicted of espionage, who was sentenced to more than 23 years in prison.

Four years ago, Nicholson began grooming Nathan – disabled in an Army parachuting accident – to help him collect his “pension” for past spying on behalf of the Russian Federation.

From 2006 to 2008, Nathan Nicholson paid regular visits to his imprisoned father, who slipped him notes on paper napkins wadded into balls. Nathan smuggled the notes out and carried them to Russian intelligence officials in San Francisco; Mexico City; Lima, Peru; and Nicosia, Cyprus. The Russians paid him $47,000.

Jim Nicholson’s notes sought financial assistance from the Russians and let them know he’d help them if he could. He let them know he was thankful for the money they had given Nathan, reassured them his son was trustworthy and described debts facing his two older children.

Prosecutors allege that Nicholson’s notes also revealed secrets from his days in the CIA.

Nicholson’s defense team, Portland lawyers Sam Kauffman and former federal prosecutor Robert C. Weaver Jr., acknowledge in their trial memo that their client and his son hatched an “ill-conceived” but successful plan to obtain money for the former spy’s children.

Nicholson’s lawyers don’t dispute that their client and his son carried out the plan, with Nathan traveling the globe to collect money from the Russians. But they contend the elder Nicholson committed no crimes.

“Simply put,” they wrote, “it is not illegal for someone to ask a foreign government for financial assistance, even if that person has previously been convicted of espionage.”