Our nation has long faced the threat of our own people, with access to extremely sensitive information, turning on us. As this list – which is certainly not comprehensive – indicates, it has happened far too often and subsequently highly sensitive US operations and the security of our nation have been compromised. Oh, and sorry Reality Winner, as a Snowden wannabe you do not make the list. You’re actions were damaging, but you are just an everyday loser.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
One of the most famous cases of the cold war was a couple of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The couple was accused and convicted on the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage. They were accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs vigorously protested their innocence, but after a brief trial in March 1951, they were convicted. This was during the era of the Red Scare that permeated the thoughts of US society. Spearheaded by Senator Joesph Marcarthy, from 1947 to 1956 he was the embodiment of heightened political repression as well as a campaign spreading fear of influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. The Rosenbergs, one of McCarthy’s many targets, always maintained they were innocent but on April 5, 1951, a judge sentenced them to death.
Noshir Gowadia
Gowadia immigrated to the United States and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He joined Northrop in November 1968 and continued to work there until April 1986. As a design engineer and was instrumental in developing the propulsion system used in the then secret B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.
Gowadia was an entrepreneur and was working to develop his own business. Greed drove him to transmit classified information to at least eight different and unauthorized countries in an attempt to establish the technological credibility with the potential customers for future business.
He was sentenced to 32 years in prison. Gowadia is currently incarcerated in the ADX Florence, with a release date of September 11, 2033.
Chi Mak
Chi Mak is a Chinese-born naturalized American citizen who worked as an engineer for California-based defense contractor Power Paragon, a part of L-3 Communications.
A Sleeper Agent
Chi Mak acknowledged that he had been placed in the United States more than 20 years earlier, to burrow into the defense-industrial establishment to steal secrets,” Joel Brenner, the head of counterintelligence for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in an interview. “It speaks of deep patience,” he said and is part of a pattern.
In 2007, Mak was found guilty of conspiring to export sensitive defense technology to China. On March 24, 2008, he was sentenced to 24 years and four months in federal prison.
Ana Montes
Ana Belén Montes is a former senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency and a convicted spy.
For 16 years, Ana Belen Montes spied for Cuba from increasingly responsible positions at the Defense Intelligence Agency. If Havana has ever run a higher level or more valuable mole inside the American defense establishment, it has never been revealed.
On September 21, 2001, she was arrested and subsequently charged with conspiracy to commit espionage for the government of Cuba. After her arrest, Montes insisted that she had the “moral right” to provide information to Cuba. As far as I am concerned she had no morals at all. She was a trader from the outset and still is.
Montes eventually pleaded guilty to spying and in October 2002, was sentenced to a 25-year prison term followed by five years’ probation.
Robert Hanssen
Robert Philip Hanssen is a former U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States for 22 years from 1979 to 2001.
Few names bring such disdain within the FBI than Robert Hanssen. He is considered to have orchestrated the worst intelligence disaster in US history. Hanssen exposed the names of about 50 people within the Soviet system that were either recruited by the U.S. to spy or were being developed as sources. At least three of those were executed, including Dimitri Polyakov who was the greatest agent the U.S. ever had inside that system.
Hanssen is currently serving 15 consecutive life sentences at ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison near Florence, Colorado.
Aldrich Ames
Aldrich Hazen Ames is a former American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst turned KGB mole, who was convicted of espionage in 1994.
What Robert Hanssen was to the FBI, Aldrich Ames was to CIA.
In court, Ames admitted that he had compromised “virtually all Soviet agents of the CIA and other American and foreign services known to me” and had provided the USSR and Russia with a “huge quantity of information on the United States foreign, defense and security policies. It is estimated that information Ames provided to the Soviets led to the compromise of at least a hundred US intelligence operations and to the execution of at least ten US sources. Furthermore, Ames’ betrayal of CIA methods allowed the KGB to use “controlled agents” to feed the US both genuine intelligence and disinformation from 1986 to 1993.
He is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana
John Walker Lindh, The American Taliban
John Phillip Walker Lindh is a U.S. citizen who was captured as an enemy combatant during the United States’ 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. He was captured and detained at Qala-i-Jangi fortress, used as a prison. He took part in the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi, a violent uprising of the Taliban prisoners.
During the battle at the prison CIA officer Johnny “Mike,” Spann was killed, together with all but 86 of the estimated 300–500 prisoners. Johnny Mike Spann was the first American killed in combat in Afghanistan. Johnny Micheal Spann’s star was the 79th carved on the Agency’s Memorial Wall, and his name appears in the CIA Book of Honor. He received the Intelligence Star and the Exceptional Service Medallion posthumously.
Lindh was brought to trial in United States federal court in February 2002 and accepted a plea bargain; he pleaded guilty to two charges and was sentenced to 20 years in prison without parole. I hope he enjoys his new digs.
