In 1985, eight Americans were arrested for spying on the country, earning the moniker of “The Year of the Spy,” only it wasn’t a year, as nearly as many arrests were made in 1984.
John Walker sold cryptographic secrets that enabled the Soviets to read over one million classified Navy messages. Jonathan Pollard stole intelligence for Israel. Arguably the most famous of these cases, a middling analyst named Aldrich Ames, a problem employee who was kicked down the road rather than being disciplined, revealed every CIA asset to the Soviet Union, many of them executed.
Ames’s case should have been a wake-up call, but it was not. FBI Director Kash Patel just announced the arrest of Courtney Williams, who knew she could be arrested for what she was doing, having stated on one message that she was "probably going to jail for life." Yet, she still disclosed classified information, breaking her oath to protect our nation’s secrets.
This is not a Trump problem or a Biden problem or an Obama problem… It is deeply rooted in a failed system that does not properly vet or monitor employees at all levels who hold our national security in the palm of their hands.
Everyone always points to 1985 as “The Year of the Spy,” but the roots of this issue were embedded far earlier than 1985, and we continued to see the repercussions of sloppy vetting and monitoring for many years afterward.
Intelligence officials will tell you it was the decade of the spy, but it stretched ever further than that, as the roots for some of these cases were set in the 1970s, and the damage done set us back decades.
The seal was broken by Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee, who sold satellite secrets from the CIA. That was a single drop of water from the dam that should have created more urgency, but it took another four years before the leaks had grown so steady that our government finally became wise to the leaks.
James Harper, Thomas Cavanagh, Richard Miller, Samuel Morison, John Walker, and Ronald Pelton, just to name a few, were selling out our country. They were embedded in every aspect of our defense, from contractors to our intelligence agencies, to our military intelligence and operational communities.
One of the most damaging of all these was Aldrich Ames. By all accounts, he was an unspectacular employee who likely should have been fired. The problem was that his supervisors didn’t want to deal with him, so he was often promoted instead. They just kicked the can down the road to let their problem become someone else's problem.
Overcome by personal debt, he decided to start selling national secrets to the Soviets. After all those arrests in the mid-1980s, one would think this could not happen, but Ames did not start spying until 1985, then did so successfully for nearly a decade before being caught. Ames received more than $2 million from the Soviets for his information, including revealing CIA operatives, a list that included highly ranked military members. At least 10 of them were executed, reported Time Magazine.
As you can see from the table below, our government was not just penetrated, but rather saturated during this era:
| Year | Spy | Agency/Branch | Spied For | What They Compromised | Fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Christopher Boyce & Andrew Daulton Lee | TRW (CIA contractor) | Soviet Union | Sold satellite and surveillance secrets from a CIA-contracted defense firm. Case began in 1977, trial/sentencing continued into the 1980s. | Boyce: 40 years. Lee: Life. Boyce escaped prison in 1980, recaptured 1981. |
| 1981 | Joseph Helmich | Army | Soviet Union | Sold cryptographic codes and key lists for encoding machines while stationed in Paris. Spied from 1963-1966, caught in 1981. | Life in prison. Died in prison 1986. |
| 1984 | James Harper | Defense contractor | Poland (Soviet bloc) | Sold classified ballistic missile defense documents. | Life in prison. |
| 1984 | Thomas Cavanagh | Northrop (defense contractor) | Soviet Union | Attempted to sell stealth bomber technology to Soviet agents (who were actually FBI undercover). | Life in prison. |
| 1984 | Richard Miller | FBI | Soviet Union | First FBI agent ever charged with espionage. Passed classified documents to a Soviet emigre/KGB asset he was having an affair with. | Life in prison (later reduced to 20 years). |
| 1984 | Samuel Morison | Navy Intelligence | UK (Jane's Defence Weekly) | Leaked classified satellite photos of a Soviet aircraft carrier under construction to a British defense publication. | 2 years in prison. Pardoned by Clinton in 2001. |
| 1985 | John Walker | Navy | Soviet Union | Compromised 1M+ classified messages over 17 years. Recruited brother, son, and friend into spy ring. | Life in prison. Died in prison 2014. |
| 1985 | Arthur Walker | Navy (ret.) | Soviet Union | Part of Walker spy ring. Passed classified documents on ship design and weapons systems. | Life in prison. Died in prison 2014. |
| 1985 | Michael Walker | Navy | Soviet Union | Part of Walker spy ring. Youngest member, passed classified documents from aboard USS Nimitz. | 25 years. Paroled 2000. |
| 1985 | Jerry Whitworth | Navy (ret.) | Soviet Union | Part of Walker spy ring. Key cryptographic communications specialist. | 365 years and $410,000 fine. |
| 1985 | Jonathan Pollard | Navy Intelligence | Israel | Sold enough classified materials to fill a 10x6x6 room to Israeli intelligence. Compromised sources across the Middle East. | Life in prison. Released on parole 2015 after 30 years. Moved to Israel. |
| 1985 | Ronald Pelton | NSA | Soviet Union | Sold classified information on US signals intelligence collection programs targeting the Soviets. Had a photographic memory. | Life in prison. Released 2015. |
| 1985 | Larry Wu-Tai Chin | CIA | China | Spied for China for over 30 years as a CIA translator. Told China Nixon's secret diplomatic goals before his historic visit. | Convicted. Committed suicide before sentencing. |
| 1985 | Sharon Scranage | CIA | Ghana | Disclosed identities of CIA informants in Ghana. Eight Ghanaian CIA assets arrested, one reportedly killed. Recruited via honey trap. | 5 years in prison. Paroled after 18 months. |
| 1985 | Edward Lee Howard | CIA | Soviet Union | Sold intelligence to KGB after being fired from CIA. Compromised CIA operations in Moscow. | Fled to Soviet Union. Died in Russia 2002. |
| 1985 | Richard Kelly Smyth | Defense contractor/NASA consultant | Israel | Illegally exported krytrons (nuclear weapon triggers) to Israel through Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan. | Arrested 1985, fled country. Recaptured in Spain 2001. 40 months in prison. |
| 1985 | Randy Miles Jeffries | Government messenger | Soviet Union | Sold classified documents he transported as a government courier to Soviet agents. | 3 to 9 years in prison. |
| 1985 | Aldrich Ames | CIA | Soviet Union | Began spying in 1985 but not caught until 1994. Compromised virtually all CIA active Soviet agents. At least 10 were executed. Received $2.5M+ from the Soviets. | Life in prison without parole. |
| 1986 | Glenn Souther | Navy Intelligence | Soviet Union | Navy Intelligence photographer who spied for the Soviets while stationed at Norfolk Naval Base. | Defected to Moscow 1986. Committed suicide in Russia 1989. |
| 1986 | Robert Berman | NSA | Soviet Union | NSA analyst who attempted to sell classified satellite intelligence to the Soviets. | Convicted. Sentenced to prison. |
| 1988 | James Hall III | Army Intelligence | Soviet Union/East Germany | Sold signals intelligence secrets from a listening post in West Berlin. One of the most damaging Army spy cases. | 40 years in prison. |
| 1988 | Clyde Conrad | Army (ret.) | Hungary/Soviet bloc | Recruited ring of soldiers to steal NATO war plans. Compromised NATO's entire defense strategy for Central Europe. | Life in prison (sentenced by West German court). Died in prison 1998. |
That was a dark time for this country, but then every agency, defense contractor, and the military branches buttoned up, and then it started again.
In 2001, FBI Agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for spying for the Russians for more than two decades. Again, this was an issue rooted in the 1980s that was somehow missed. As bad as Ames was, Hansen was worse, easily considered the worst intelligence disaster in the history of the United States.
The problem started to resurface during the early days of the Obama administration, when Chelsea Manning leaked 750,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks, as was reported by the BBC at the time.
In 2013, Edward Snowden was charged but had already fled the country. Snowden was an NSA contractor who leaked surveillance programs, now considered a bit of a cult hero, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Then, in 2017, Reality Winner, another NSA contractor, leaked information about Russian election interference to The Intercept.
There were signs that this was becoming a problem again, yet major leaks were still occurring. For example, in 2015, there were 18 referrals for leaks, 37 in 2016, then 120 in 2017, and 88 in 2018. Was the Obama administration ignoring the problem? Was the Trump administration more diligent in seeking out leaks to prevent them? These are questions that will likely never be answered because nobody takes accountability; they just like to point fingers.
In my opinion, the Russian collusion investigation into Trump and his impeachments fueled a surge in government leaks. It suddenly became fashionable to leak information under the guise of a whistleblower. People like Snowden and Manning had become heroes of a sort, as did Winner, for that matter.
That leads to Daniel Hale, another “whistleblower” who was an intelligence analyst. Hale sent classified drone warfare information to the media. Hale served this country for four years in the Air Force, then went to work in our intelligence sector. On the surface, this was a patriot, but somewhere, a wire was crossed.
Again, it was The Intercept that was the beneficiary of the leak. The publication made Hale out to be a hero, even announcing that Hale had been awarded the International Whistleblower Award.
In April 2023, Jack Teixeira was arrested for having removed and disclosed hundreds of classified Pentagon documents on Telegram. The New York Times was the first publication to report the leak. Far more disturbing than the leak was how his superiors seemingly ignored all the signs that enabled Teixeira to steal these documents.
These problems continued after Trump took office, but in a far different way. There were still cases of leaks, but the most damaging for the administration were the avoidable leaks by top officials.
The Signal chat leak involving Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other top officials was completely avoidable and never should have happened. This was downplayed by the administration, but it showed a far deeper problem that was rooted back in the Biden administration. During his time in office, USAID had updated its policy to allow third-party programs, such as Signal and Telegram, for communications.
The fact that we had officials using a third-party application to discuss a classified strike still baffles me, and it was something that never should have been brushed under the rug. In fact, at the time this took place, I had stated that I would have fired either Hegseth or National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, if not both of them, over this leak.
To its credit, the administration appeared to learn from its mistake, and things were relatively quiet until the arrest of Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, a Maryland-based government contractor with top-secret clearance, who was indicted for transmitting classified national defense information, according to the DOJ. This leak divulged information directly related to our operations in Venezuela.
After the arrest, FBI Director Kash Patel stated:
“Perez-Lugones allegedly printed and removed classified documents from his workplace on multiple occasions, took them home, and later passed them to a reporter who used the information in news articles. Protecting our country’s secrets is essential to the safety of our most sensitive intelligence, military, and law enforcement operations. The FBI will continue to aggressively investigate everyone who seeks to undermine our national security and hold them accountable.”
Earlier this month, a former Fort Bragg employee and Army veteran, Courtney Williams, was arrested for having leaked military tactics to a journalist, reported Fox News.
After her arrest, Patel stated:
"Let this serve as a message to any would-be leakers: we’re working these cases, and we’re making arrests. This FBI will not tolerate those who seek to betray our country and put Americans in harm’s way."
The journalist was never named, but it is believed to be Seth Harp, who wrote, “The Fort Bragg Cartel.” An excerpt from the book was published on Politico, titled "My Life Became a Living Hell: One Woman’s Career in Delta Force, the Army’s Most Elite Unit.” This was about Williams’ allegations of sexual harassment while serving.
Harp was livid over the arrest, stating:
"Former Delta Force operators disclose national defense information’ on podcasts and YouTube shows every day, but the government is going after Courtney for the sole reason that she exposed sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the unit. This is a vindictive act of retaliation, plain and simple.”
According to a Breitbart report, Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division also commented on her arrest, stating:
“Courtney Williams swore an oath to safeguard our nation’s secrets as an employee supporting a Special Military Unit of the Army, but she allegedly betrayed that oath by sharing classified information with a media outlet and putting our nation, our warfighters, and our allies at risk.”
Let’s fast forward to Operation Epic Fury, where a leak could have cost the downed F-15 airman his life. The pilot was recovered almost immediately, but his Weapons Systems Officer (WSO, or Wizzo) was missing. This was not supposed to be information for public consumption, but it was leaked to the media.
President Trump was furious, according to an NBC News report, responding:
“We think we’ll be able to find it out. Because we’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘National security. Give it up or go to jail.’”
Patel has clearly made these leaks a priority, and rightfully so. We have government employees in these roles who have become political activists and conscientious objectors. Rather than follow the chain of command or go to their respective senators or congressmen, they are running to the media to become the latest “whistleblower” star.
What they are really doing is putting the security of this nation at risk. They are traitors, not heroes.
From John Walker to Aldrich Ames to Courtney Williams, the oath has never changed. The consequences should not change either.
