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1997 - 1998     Return to   HOME   DATES   NAMES   ORGANIZATIONS


1997 - 1999

1998 - DAVID SHELDON BOONE, a former Army signals analyst for the National Security Agency, was arrested 10 October and charged with selling Top Secret documents to agents of the Soviet Union from 1988 to 1991, including a 600-page manual describing US reconnaissance programs and a listing of nuclear targets in Russia.

Boone was arrested at a suburban Virginia hotel after being lured from his home in Germany to the United States in a FBI sting operation. He had worked for the NSA for three years before being reassigned to Augsburg, Germany, in 1988, and retired from the Army in 1991. In October 1988, the same month that he separated from his wife and children, Boone walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington and offered his services. According to a FBI counterintelligence agent’s affidavit, Boone was under "severe financial and personal difficulties" when he began spying. His former wife had garnished his Army sergeant’s pay, leaving him with only $250 a month. According to the federal complaint, Boone met with his handler about four times a year from late 1988 until June 1990, when his access to classified information was suspended because of "his lack of personal and professional responsibility." He held a Top Secret clearance from 1971 and gained access to SCI information in 1976. He is alleged to have received payments totaling more than $60,000 from the KGB.

Boone was indicted on three counts: one for conspiracy to commit espionage and the other two related to his alleged passing of two Top Secret documents to his Soviet handler. On 18 December, Boon pleaded guilty to conspiracy, and on 26 February 1999 he was sentenced to 24 years and four months in prison. Under a plea agreement Boone was also required to forfeit $52,000 and a hand-held scanner he used to copy documents.

Washington Post, 6 November 1998, "Ex-NSA Indicted for Spying"
Washington Post, 9 November 1998, "Trial Set for Ex-NSA Analyst"
Washington Post, 27 February, 1999, "Ex-NSA Worker Gets 24 Years for Spying"

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1998 – DOUGLAS F. GROAT, former CIA officer, was arrested on 3 April and charged with passing sensitive intelligence information to two foreign governments and attempting to extort over $500,000 from the CIA in return for not disclosing additional secrets. Groat had been placed on a three-year paid administrative leave in the spring of 1993 after the agency felt he posed a security risk, reportedly involving a discipline or job performance issue. Apparently Groat first attempted to extort money from the CIA in May 1996 and was fired the following October.

During a 16-year career at the CIA, Groat participated in intelligence operations aimed at penetrating the secret codes and communication systems employed by foreign governments. Groat, a cryptographic expert, was reported to have revealed classified information to two undisclosed governments regarding the targeting and compromise of their cryptographic systems in March and April 1997. For Groat, it was "very much a case of pure revenge," said a federal official, explaining that the former intelligence officer had long felt slighted and abused by the CIA because he had never been given the assignments he thought he deserved. Groat is reported to have not received any money from the foreign governments for the information passed.

The former CIA employee pleaded guilty to one count of attempted extortion 27 July, and was sentenced 27 September to five years confinement followed by three years probation. According to news reports, the sharp reduction from the original four-count espionage charge and the limited penalties reflected the government's desire to avoid a trial in which damaging classified information might have been disclosed.

Washington Times, 4 April 1998, "Former CIA Officer Charged with Spying; Pleads Not guilty in  Extortion, Codes Case"
Washington Post, 28 Jul 1998, "Ex-CIA Operative Pleads Guilty to Blackmail Attempt at Agency"
Washington Post, 26 Sep 1998, "Ex-CIA Agent Given 5 Years in Extortion Case; Former Operative   Admitted Demanding $1 Million in Return for Not Disclosing Secrets"

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1997 – PETER H. LEE, a nuclear physicist who worked at key research facilities for more than 30 years, turned himself in to authorities and pleaded guilty on 8 December 1997 to two felony counts, one for passing national defense information and the other for providing false statements to the government. Dr. Lee admitted that in 1985, while working as a research physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, he traveled to the People’s Republic of China. During this visit Lee discussed with a group of approximately 30 Chinese scientists the construction of hohlraums, diagnostic devices used in conjunction with lasers to create microscopic nuclear detonations.

Prosecutors stated Lee acknowledged that he knew the information was classified. The second charge against Lee concerned disclosures he failed to make in 1997 while he was working on classified research projects for TRW. Before he traveled to China on vacation, Lee was required to fill out a security form in which he stated he would not be giving lectures on his work. Upon his return, he had to fill out a second form in which he confirmed that he did not give any lectures of a technical nature.

However, as Lee later confessed to the FBI, he lied on both forms because he intended to and did, in fact, deliver lectures to Chinese scientists that discussed his work on microwave backscattering from the sea surface. Dr. Lee told the FBI that he disclosed the information because he wanted to help his Chinese counterparts and he wanted to enhance his reputation in China. According to US Government sources, Lee did receive compensation for the information he provided to the Chinese in the form of travel and hotel accommodations. The case resulted from an investigation by agents from the FBI's Foreign Counterintelligence Squad. On 26 March 1998, Dr. Lee was sentenced to one year in a community corrections facility, three years of probation, and ordered to perform 3,000 hours of community service and pay $20,000 in fines.

Counterintelligence News Digest, March 1998, "US Physicist Pleads Guilty"
Washington Post, 12 Dec. 1997, "Taiwan Born Scientist Passes Defense Information"
Los Angeles Times, 9 Dec. 1997, "Physicist Admits Passing Laser Secrets to Chinese Scientists."

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1997 – KELLY THERESE WARREN, a former US Army clerk was arrested 10 Jun 1997 and named in a three-count indictment alleging her involvement in the passing of sensitive information to Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the mid-80’s, as a part of the Clyde Lee Conrad spy ring. Warren was charged with conspiracy to aid a foreign government and gathering or delivering classified national defense information. From 1986 to 1988 she had been assigned as an administrative assistant in the section that handled war plans for the Army’s 8th Infantry Division headquarters in Bad Kreuznach, Germany. In 1987 she was recruited into the Conrad ring by then co-worker Roderick James Ramsay.

Among documents Warren gave to Conrad to pass to Hungarian and Czech agents were secret US and NATO plans for the defense of Western Europe in the event of a Soviet bloc attack. The indictment said that Warren met with Conrad on base, at a bowling alley and in a church in Bad Kreuznach, to trade cash for secrets. She earned only $7,000 for her efforts with which she claimed to have paid off debts. Federal agents had suspected her involvement for almost 10 years. According to a plea agreement, Warren pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit espionage on 6 Nov 1998 and on 12 Feb she was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Warren is the seventh US service member to be charged since 1988 with taking part in the Conrad spy ring.

Raleigh News and Observer, 29 July 1997, "Federal agents still tracking members of '80s Army spy ring"
Florida Times-Union, 11 June 1997, "Former soldier arrested; Warner Robins woman charged in espionage case."

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1997 - KURT ALAN STAND, a regional labor union representative along with his wife, THERESE MARIE SQUILLACOTE, a former senior staff lawyer in the office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, and friend JAMES MICHAEL CLARK, a private investigator, were arrested 4 Oct 1997 on charges of spying for East Germany and Russia. Stand reportedly began his spying activities in 1972 after being recruited by East Germany to cultivate other spies in the Washington, DC, area. He was introduced to East German intelligence officers (the Stasi) through his father, Maxmillian Stand, a chemical engineer who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Clark, Squillacote, and Stand attended the University of Wisconsin in the 1970s where they were affiliated with leftist groups, specifically the Progressive Student Forum and the Young Workers Liberation League, the youth arm of the Communist Party USA.

Stand recruited Clark in 1976 and Squillacote about the time the couple was married in 1980. Before obtaining a position at the Pentagon, Therese Squillacote was employed by the National Labor Relations Board and, later, the House Armed Services Committee. She sent numerous photographs to her German handlers. Squillacote reportedly told an undercover FBI agent that she turned to spying to support the progressive anti-imperialist movement. She first came to the attention of the FBI in 1995 when she offered to be a spy in a letter to a South African government official who was a leader of his country's Communist Party.

Stand and Squillacote frequently traveled to Mexico, Germany, and Canada during which time Stand would meet with their East German handlers. When the two Germanys united in 1990, his controllers tried to recruit him to spy for the Soviet Union and then for the Russian Federation. Although he never gained access to classified material, his role in the operation was to recruit agents and to provide information about the non-governmental groups with which he worked. Stand allegedly received $24,650 for his recruiting and coordinating efforts. On 23 Oct 1998, he and Squillacote were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage, attempted espionage, and illegally obtaining national defense documents. On 22 Jan 1999, a US District Judge sentenced Squillacote to 21 years and ten months in prison and Stand to a sentence of 17 years and six months.

Washington Post, 2 Nov 1997, "Cloak and Blabber; A Story of Espionage. And Very Loose Lips"
Washington Post, 24 Oct 1998, "Jury Rejects Entrapment Defense, Convicts DC Couple of Spying"
New York Times, 7 Oct 1997, "Three Onetime Radicals Held in Spy Case"

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1997 – JAMES MICHAEL CLARK , a private investigator, was arrested 4 October along with KURT ALLEN STAND and THERESE MARIE SQUILLACOTE, and charged with spying for East Germany. Clark was recruited by his friend Kurt Stand in 1976 when both were members of the Young Workers Liberation League while attending the University of Wisconsin.

Media sources state that a 1975 FBI report describing Clark's participation in the youth arm of the communist party was the basis on which his subsequent application to the CIA for employment was denied. However, in 1986 Clark received a Secret clearance for his work for a private firm doing contract work for the government. And in 1992, according to media reports, the Army renewed his access after hiring him as a civilian analyst. According to news reports, .as a defense contractor at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Boulder, Colorado, in the 1970s, Clark had access to classified information on chemical warfare. He was also accused of giving East Germany classified State and Commerce Department documents about the Soviet leadership, the Soviet’s strategic nuclear doctrine, and problems in the military of Soviet bloc countries. He reportedly told an undercover agent that, under the guise of needing help with a research report, he obtained these classified documents—including at least one classified as Top Secret—from two State Department employees. Clark admittedly passed information to his German handlers in the form of microfiche.

Law enforcement officials and court documents describe Clark as a radical who fell into spying from 1979 to 1989 as an extension of his Marxist ideology. He received at total of $17,500 from East Germany and spent much of it travelling to meet his handler in Germany, Mexico and Canada. Clark was convicted on 3 June 1998 on a charge of conspiracy to commit espionage and on 4 December was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison. This reduced sentence was a result of his testimony at the trial of Stand and Squillacote that aided in their conviction.

Washington Post, 4 Jun 1998, "Falls Church Man Pleads Guilty to Passing Secrets to East Germany"
Washington Post, 7 Oct 1997, "Three Former Campus Leftists Held in VA on Espionage Charges"
New York Times, 5 Dec 1998, "Spy, in Plea Agreement, Is Given 12-Year Sentence"

 

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