Johnston, David. "C.I.A.
Employee Held on Charges of Passing Information to Russia." New
York Times, 18 Nov. 1996, A10 (N).Materials presented in chronological order.
Johnston, David. "C.I.A.
Employee Held on Charges of Passing Information to Russia." New
York Times, 18 Nov. 1996, A10 (N).
On 16 November 1996, an as-yet unnamed CIA employee was arrested on espionage charges.
Johnston, David. "U.S.
Case Sets Out 2-Year Betrayal by C.I.A. Official." New York Times,
19 Nov. 1996, A1, A12 (N).
Suspected spy, Harold J. Nicholson, probably began spying for the Russians in 1994 while he was stationed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. According to Helen Fahey, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Nicholson "betrayed his country for money.... He was not motivated by ideology, but by greed." Nicholson, had served in Manila, Bangkok, Tokyo, Bucharest, and Kuala Lumpur and as an instructor of CIA Trainees. FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and CIA Director John M. Deutch held a joint news conference on 18 November, where they described the investigation that led to Nicholson's arrest.
Click for text of the PRESS RELEASE from the joint FBI-CIA news conference.
Weiner, Tim. "Spy
Suspect Seemed Like the Best and the Brightest." New York Times,
19 Nov. 1996, A12 (N).
Harold J. Nicholson, a 46-year-old divorced father of three, had worked for the CIA for 16 years and "was highly regarded by his peers in the C.I.A.'s operations directorate." Weiner points to several "startling" aspects to the Nicholson case. One is Nicholson's "rise from trainee to station chief in a decade." Another is that Nicholson is the first station chief to have been charged with spying against his country. A third aspect is that Nicholson had been "a trusted instructor at the agency's training school for spies at Camp Peary." In contrast to Aldrich Ames, Nicholson's career had been a successful one. He reached the position of station chief in Bucharest, Romania, in 1990 after having been in the Agency for only 10 years at the time.
Davies,
Hugh. "CIA Man Faces Spying Charge." Electronic Telegraph
, 19 Nov. 1996. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk]
Harold Nicholson, 46, a former CIA station chief, was arrested on 16 November 1996 and charged with selling secrets to the Russians. U.S. Attorney Helen Fahey said "Nicholson had 'betrayed his country for money, not ideology.' John Deutch, CIA director, said Nicholson, an agent for 16 years, had revealed a 'covert position' the agency was planning to set up in Moscow."
Davies,
Hugh. "Spy Caught after He Failed CIA Lie Tests." Electronic
Telegraph, 19 Nov. 1996. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk]
"[T]he audacity of Harold Nicholson in carrying on betraying the CIA while every inch of the place was supposedly under scrutiny [because of the Aldrich Ames spy case] may rank him an even more dangerous turncoat than Ames.... Nicholson's treachery was apparently discovered through a lie detector, although the CIA director stressed that this was not 'the essential element' that led to his capture."
New York Times.
"[Editorial:] Another C.I.A. Betrayal." 20 Nov. 1996, A14 (N).
"Compared with the years they spent fumbling the Aldrich Ames case, the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation pursued suspicions about Harold Nicholson with alacrity and admirable coordination.... But progress in these matters is relative. It still took too long ... to detect and investigate Mr. Nicholson's activities.... The C.I.A. and F.B.I. must improve their response time on espionage cases, and the agency should not presume that reforms instituted after the Ames fiasco are adequate."
Weiner, Tim. "C.I.A.'s
Latest Security Breach Puts Many Careers in Jeopardy: Agency's Operations
and Morale Likely to Suffer." New York Times, 20 Nov. 1996,
A1, C21 (N).
Initial damage assessments of Harold Nicholson's spying for Moscow suggest that at a minimum the careers of a number of young officers who were trained at Camp Peary from 1994 to 1996 will be blighted by the likelihood that their names rest someplace in a Russian safe. In addition, it is believed that the identities of U.S. businessmen in Russia who volunteer information to the CIA have been exposed. Nicholson taught the Agency's 16-week training course to prospective CIA operations officers.
Davies,
Hugh. "CIA Spy 'Needed Money for Love.'" Electronic Telegraph, 20 Nov. 1996. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk]
U.S. intelligence officials are working on a theory that Harold Nicholson's obsession for a woman living in Thailand "was so intense that he blindly took foolish risks to keep her happy."
Johnston, David, and
Tim Weiner. "On the Trail of a C.I.A. Official, from Asia Travel to
Bank Files: Spies' Trainer Seemed to Ignore Rules He Taught." New
York Times, 21 Nov. 1996, A1, A14 (N).
This article provides some of the details from the 31-page FBI affidavit filed against suspected spy Harold Nicholson. "The affidavit says Mr. Nicholson left a trail of damning evidence nearly everywhere he went during the 30 months he is said to have spied.... It was as if he had learned nothing from the case of Aldrich H. Ames,... unmasked only weeks before Mr. Nicholson is said to have begun his career as a turncoat.
Johnston, David. "Single
Indictment Against Accused Spy in C.I.A." New York Times, 22
Nov. 1996, A16 (N).
A Federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, on 21 November 1996 returned an indictment against Harold J. Nicholson for conspiracy to commit espionage. The one-count indictment is "a tactical step designed to streamline the prosecution of the accused spy." The possibility of a broader espionage indictment at a later date remains.
Evans-Pritchard,
Ambrose. "Bored CIA Spies Go Moonlighting." Electronic Telegraph,
24 Nov. 1996. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk]
Evans-Pritchard's hypothesis of boredom as an explanation of traitorous behavior (in this instance, Harold Nicholson's) scarcely seems the most astute analysis.
Pincus, Walter, and
Roberto Suro. "Rooting Out the 'Sour Apples' Inside the CIA: The Latest
Arrest Calls into Question the Effectiveness of Reforms after the Ames Embarrassment."
Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 25 Nov.-1 Dec. 1996, 30.
"Nicholson operated as a Russian spy for at least a year and a half before counterintelligence investigators formally opened a probe of his activities... The failure of the post-Ames reforms to deter Nicholson may mean that there are still spies to be caught."
Thomas, Evan, and Gregory
L. Vistica. "The Spy Who Sold Out." Newsweek, 2 Dec. 1996,
35.
This rehashes most of the publicly known aspects of the Nicholson case, mixed together with a few gratuitous slaps (masquerading as analysis) at the Agency: "Nicholson ... is more accurately described as a clever careerist, a common breed at Langley since the 1980s"; "case officers spend many hours waiting around in bars"; "just as Ames was not the first CIA mole [sic] -- only the first to be caught -- Nicholson's case is almost surely not the last."
Smith, R. Jeffrey,
and Roberto Suro. "Waiting to Close the Trap: For More Than a Year,
FBI Agents Patiently Built Their Case Against a CIA Officer." Washington
Post National Weekly Edition, 2-8 Dec. 1996, 8-9.
This article details the FBI's investigation that led to Nicholson's arrest. Among other matters, it notes that in early 1996 the investigators sent "national security letters" to Nicholson's financial institutions, requesting a record of his transactions. These requests "can be made even without a court-ordered warrant" and prohibit the institutions from telling the person involved that they have received such a request.
Washington Post.
"[Editorial:] One More Bad Apple at the CIA." Washington Post
National Weekly Edition, 2-8 Dec. 1996, 25.
Nicholson's "contempt for the new counterintelligence controls ... is significant. Perhaps it was necessary to take extra time to build a case against him, but this is far from obvious."
Hall, Charles W., and
Walter Pincus. "Spy Suspects Refusing to Go Quietly." Washington
Post, 23 Jan. 1997, A9.
Robert C. Kim, Harold Nicholson, and Earl Edwin Pitts cases.
Grier, Peter. “Ex-Wife’s View of Life with an Accused CIA Spy.” Christian Science Monitor, 27 Jan. 1997.
The Nicholson case "is one of the strangest and most troubling incidents of alleged espionage that US intelligence has faced since the end of the cold war. The reason: Nicholson was a hard-working man on the rise. He was one of the last people co-workers would have picked out as a possible turncoat…. A look at Nicholson's life -- including a lengthy, exclusive interview with his longtime spouse -- reveals a man that some might judge tightly wrapped. He pursued work instead of vacations, advancement instead of family relations, and after his divorce struggled with the demands of being an expatriate single father.”
Gertz, Bill. "Ex-CIA
Official Pleads Guilty." Washington Times, 4 Mar. 1997, A3.
Masters, Brooke A.
"CIA Spy Admits Guilt, Says He'll Reveal Damage." Washington
Post, 4 Mar. 1997, A1, A7.
Weiner, Tim. "C.I.A.
Official Pleads Guilty to Spying for the Russians." New York Times,
4 Mar. 1997, A11 (N).
Under a plea bargain agreement, Harold J. Nicholson on 3 March 1997 "pleaded guilty to selling secrets to Moscow." He is the highest-ranking CIA officer ever charged with espionage.
Washington Times.
"Ex-CIA Officer Gets 23 Years for Selling Secrets to Russia."
5 Jun. 1997, A8.
Harold J. Nicholson has been sentenced to 23 years and seven months in prison.
Masters, Brooke A. "Convicted Spy Says He Did It for His Family." Washington Post, 6 Jun. 1997, A1, A6.
Weiner, Tim. "C.I.A.
Traitor, Saying He Wanted Cash for Family, Gets 23 Years." New York
Times, 6 Jun. 1997, A19.
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