TAMPA, Fla. — A jury began deliberations Tuesday in the trial of a former U.S. intelligence agent accused of spying for the Soviet Union.
Federal prosecutors say George Trofimoff, 74, sold thousands of secret U.S. military documents to the Soviet KGB while he was chief of the U.S. Army Joint Interrogation Center in Nuremberg, Germany, from 1969 to 1994.
Trofimoff, who moved to Melbourne, Fla., in 1995, denies he was a spy. He faces life in prison if convicted. U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew told the 12 jurors they each must find the prosecution proved its case against Trofimoff beyond a reasonable doubt in order to convict him.
"You must not be influenced by either sympathy or prejudice for either the government or the defendant," Bucklew told the six men and six women.
The key evidence against Trofimoff is a videotape of a meeting he had in 1999 with an FBI undercover agent posing as a Russian spy.
In the videotape, which was shown to the jury, Trofimoff described how he took documents from his office to his home, photographed them and sold the film to the KGB.
At the trial, Trofimoff testified that he lied about being a spy at the meeting in hopes of getting money from the Russians.
"The whole story was a lie," Trofimoff said Monday.
Prosecutors said Trofimoff was lying now.
A former KGB officer identified Trofimoff at the trial and said he met with Trofimoff twice during the 1970s to discuss his espionage activity.
Trofimoff was born in Germany to Russian parents. He became a U.S. citizen and retired from the U.S. Army Reserves as a colonel, making him the highest ranking officer ever charged with espionage.