The final piece of evidence against Harold James Nicholson came into focus for CIA spy catchers on Nov. 12:
Concealed cameras in his CIA office caught him kneeling under his desk photographing secret documents.Four days later, FBI agents who had been trailing and eavesdropping on him for months arrested Nicholson at Washington Dulles International Airport outside the nation's capital. He was charged Monday with spying for Russia since June 1994 - just months after the arrest of Aldrich Ames in the CIA's most damaging security breach.
Federal officials said the Nicholson case is not likely to be the last involving alleged spying by U.S. agents.
"There will be other cases that involve the CIA. There will be other cases that involve other security agencies," CIA Director John Deutch told ABC News.
"We're continuously working on a number of different cases," said FBI Director Louis Freeh. He declined to say whether any arrests are imminent.
Nicholson, 46, of Burke, Va., is the highest-ranking CIA officer to face espionage charges. The FBI suspects he sold the names of all new CIA agent trainees in the past two years, a breach of security that could jeopardize lives.
The case is another blow to an agency that still is recovering from the Ames spy scandal. Ames, arrested in February 1994, not only sold vital secrets to Moscow for years but in managing to avoid detection showed glaring holes in the CIA's internal spy-catching net.
Deutch said there was no indication of a link between Ames and Nicholson; the latter was said to have started his spying a few months after Ames was caught. "We have no reason to believe he wasn't acting alone," Deutch said Monday.
The Nicholson case, if upheld in court, shows that although theCold War is history, Russia's spy network is not. Deutch said the Russian intelligence service known as SVRR, the successor to the old KGB spy agency of the former Soviet Union, paid Nicholson more than $100,000 for his information starting in June 1994.
"The Russian intelligence services remain very active in targeting not only the CIA but other U.S. national security organizations," Deutch said. Of course, the CIA is just as busy chasing Russia's defense, economic and political secrets.
According to an FBI affidavit released Monday, Nicholson provided the Russians not only with identities of CIA officers but also inside information on how the CIA trains its officers to gather secrets abroad.
Nicholson also was accused of selling information about the CIA station in Moscow, including the name of the new chief of station and other staffing details.
Among the evidence against Nicholson cited by the FBI was a computer diskette containing a file with information from what the CIA called "access agents."
These are private individuals who, by the nature of their work, often travel and gain information of interest to the CIA. They are not employed by the agency but voluntarily and secretly provide it with information.
"The identity of these assets (people) is classified, as they could be the target of reprisals if foreign countries were aware of their intelligence gathering activities," the FBI affidavit said.
Deutch would not explain precisely what first raised a red flag about Nicholson. He said several threads of evidence appeared at virtually the same time, including questionable answers on a routine lie-detector test in October 1995.
The FBI said it detected a pattern of twice-yearly trips by Nicholson from 1994 to 1996 to Asia - where he allegedly met with his Russian "handlers" - followed by unexplained deposits and payments to his bank and credit card accounts.
Early this month an FBI search of Nicholson's office at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., found about 40 documents relating to Russia in a black folder on his desk. Some were classified "top secret," and some were at the higher "sensitive compartmented information" classification.
On Nov. 12, Nicholson asked for and received a CIA-issued document camera. He took it to his office, closed the door and placed the camera under his desk, according to the FBI affidavit.
He then took some secret documents from the black folder, placed them under the desk, knelt on the floor and spent about 30 minutes photographing them. He did more of the same that same evening and again on Nov. 13, the FBI said.
He was arrested at Dulles airport on Saturday as he was about to leave for what the FBI called official meetings with "friendly foreign intelligence services." It said he had told his travel companions he planned to go to Switzerland after the official meetings rather than return with them to the United States.