TAMPA, Fla. — The trial of a former Army colonel convicted of funneling secret documents to the Soviet Union should act as a warning to any other Americans who might consider spying, federal prosecutors said.
George Trofimoff became the highest-ranking U.S. officer to be convicted of espionage when the jury returned its verdict Tuesday after less than two hours of deliberations. The single count of conspiracy to commit espionage carries a possible life sentence for the 74-year-old retiree from Melbourne, Fla.
"What this case should do is send a message to those to whom we entrust our secrets that if you sell those secrets, if you spy against the United States, we'll pull out all the stops to catch you, to bring you to justice and to convict you," said assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Ingersoll.
The jury foreman said a videotape of a six-hour meeting with an undercover FBI agent in 1999 sealed Trofimoff's fate. During the meeting, Trofimoff detailed his spying career, including naming KGB agents he had worked with and the quaint Austrian towns where they had met.
The four-week trial featured a parade of former KGB officers and the unprecedented use of secret KGB and U.S. intelligence documents in a criminal case.
Trofimoff was working a part-time job bagging groceries when he was arrested, unable to live on his $71,000-a-year Army pensions. He insisted that he never was a spy, but pretended to be one because he needed money.
But jurors laughed at Trofimoff when he testified it was a coincidence that he was able to name several Soviet spies when shown them by the undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian diplomat.
"He was adamant he was the victim of someone trying to get him to say things when he was in need of money," said defense attorney Daniel Hernandez, who vowed to appeal the verdict.
The German-born son of Russian emigres, Trofimoff became a U.S. citizen and was appointed head of an Army interrogation center in Nuremberg, Germany. There he had unfettered access to volumes of secret documents that detailed what the United States knew about its Soviet adversaries.
A former KGB general testified that Trofimoff was such a valued spy that his name was at the top of a list of important KGB sources given to then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in the 1970s. Sentencing was set for Sept. 27.
King said jurors didn't buy Trofimoff's explanation, saying his ability to name and identify the agents was too much evidence to brush off as coincidence.
"He was adamant he was the victim of someone trying to get him to say things when he was in need of money," said defense attorney Daniel Hernandez, who vowed to appeal the verdict.
The German-born son of Russian emigres, Trofimoff became a U.S. citizen and was appointed head of an Army interrogation center in Nuremberg, Germany. There he had unfettered access to volumes of secret documents that detailed what the United States knew about its Soviet adversaries.
A former KGB general testified that Trofimoff was such a valued spy that his name was at the top of a list of important KGB sources given to then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in the 1970s.
Trofimoff was arrested in 1994 in Germany along with the man prosecutors believe was his conduit to the KGB, Igor Susemihl, an archbishop of Vienna who rose to the rank of metropolitan, the equivalent of a cardinal in the Russian church.
Charges against the two were dropped because of Germany's five-year statute of limitations and Susemihl died in 1999. There is no statute of limitations on espionage in the United States.
"This guy was a major spy," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter Furr of Trofimoff. "He needed being caught. He needed being convicted and we are all a lot safer.
"The message should go out that you can't run far enough or fast enough to get away," he added.
Sentencing was set for Sept. 27.