14 Crazy Stories of Russian Spies in the US That Will Freak You Out

Harold James Nicholson was born in Oregon in 1950, right in the meaty heart of the baby boom. He joined the Army and eventually became captain of an intelligence unit, tasked with monitoring Soviet intelligence services. In 1980, he made the move to the CIA, with which organization he worked in Thailand, the Philippines, and Japan, while making connections with Soviet officials.

By 1990, Nicholson was CIA Chief of Station in Bucharest, Romania, right up against the Iron Curtain (which actually wasn't so much a curtain as it was a rug by that point). In 1992, he became Deputy Chief of Station/Operations Officer in Malaysia, in which position he met with Russian officials, hoping to conscript them. He also got involved in espionage for financial gain.

The story goes something like this: Nicholson met with a Russian intelligence officer three times with permission from the CIA. He then met him a fourth time, off of the record. It's assumed Nicholson was given money in exchange for handing over sensitive information at this meeting.  

In 1995, Nicholson failed three standard lie detector tests, unsatisfactorily answering questions like, “Are you hiding involvement with a Foreign Intelligence Service?” and,  “Have you had unauthorized contact with a Foreign Intelligence Service?” This, in addition to a $12,000 bank deposit that could not be sourced as legitimate income, instigated an internal investigation, part of which entailed placing Nicholson under surveillance.

Thanks to said surveillance, Nicholson was caught meeting Russian intelligence officers in New Delhi, Jakarta, Zurich, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia. Talk about brazen. But the CIA didn't fire him. Rather, he was brought back to the US and given a position in counterterrorism, while the FBI monitored his mailbox and found letters addressed to handlers in Switzerland. When Nicholson requested time off to travel to Switzerland, in 1996, he was arrested in possession of top secret documents. 

During his time working with Russia, Nicholson is believed to have released information regarding the identities of US officers in Russia and other classified information. Due to cooperation following arrest, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison, rather than life. 

Christopher Boyce grew up in Palos Verdes CA, the son of an FBI agent. He began working at aerospace company TRW in 1974 and, despite his limited experience and young age (21), was given access to the black vault, which contained secret US defense information. A party animal, Boyce by chance reunited with childhood friend and cocaine trafficker Andrew Daulton Lee. One day, after a coke binge, the two devised a plan to sell the information in the black vault to the Russians.

Nicknamed Falcon and the Snowman, Boyce and Lee carried out their plan, selling US satellite technology info to Russian officials. They made serious money, which Lee used primarily to aid his drug business. The operation came to a halt when Lee was arrested in Mexico City in 1976. Somewhat ironically, Lee was mistakenly arrested; the police thought he was a cop killer. They quickly realized they had accidentally arrested a spy - he had CIA films in his possession and was caught outside the Soviet embassy - but tortured Lee anyway, to get him to confess to cop killing.

Lee confessed to being a spy and was handed over to US officials. He then outed Boyce as his co-conspirator. Boyce was arrested in 1977 and sentenced to 40 years for espionage. He escaped in 1980 from Lompoc Correctional, only to be recaptured by US Marshals in 1981. Their story was made into a film, The Falcon and the Snowman, starring Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton.

Earl Pitts was born in Urbana, MO in 1953. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Missouri, Kansas City and was on active duty in the Army from 1975 to 1980. In 1983, he got a job at the FBI field office in Alexandria, VA, and, in 1987, was transferred to the New York City office, where he was tasked with investigating Soviet intelligence officers posing as diplomats at the United Nations. In this position, he was given a list of all known Soviet officers in such positions, which he promptly sold to Aleksandr Vasilyevich Karpov, Russia's top spy in its diplomatic mission. 

From his initial contact with Soviet intelligence officials, Pitts's story comes across like a convoluted screwball comedy filled with harebrained mishaps and double crosses. Take, for example, this: Pitts was eventually arrested, in 1995, when a Russian-diplomat-turned-US-informant participated in a sting operation against him. This diplomat was the person who first received a letter Pitt wrote to the Russian embassy offering his services as an informant. 

When the diplomat became an FBI informant seven years later, the first thing he told the feds about was the letter. The story set off an investigation that led to Pitts's arrest. All told, Pitt received $224,000 in payments from the Russians for information. At the time of his arrest, he was working as a lawyer in a post that afforded access to no useful information. But the FBI knew something had gone wrong in New York in the late '80s, and, after putting the pieces together (which included Pitts's wife informing on him after finding a suspicious letter), fingered Pitt as the culprit. Somehow, Pitt didn't realize his days were numbered, despite finding an FBI camera in his office ceiling. He even started hiding money in the same ceiling after finding the camera.

In a final bit of bizarre comedy, the first attempt at a sting to bring Pitt down failed because he forgot where he was supposed to meet his contact - he wandered around the wrong room of the New York Public Library for 30 minutes before leaving. Pitt was sentenced to 27 years in an FBI correctional facility. During his trial, he said he had grievances with the FBI, and sold information to get back at them.

Born Harold AR Philby in India in 1912, the man better known as Kim was the son of famed explorer St. John Philby. He attended Trinity College at Cambridge, studying history and getting involved in extracurricular activities the Cambridge Five, a Soviet espionage group. After college, he traveled to areas of growing unrest in Europe and worked briefly as a journalist before being recruited by MI6 in 1940. By the end of WWII, Philby was in charge of counterespionage at MI6, charged with suppressing Soviet subversion in Western Europe.

In 1949, Philby transferred to Washington DC, to act as the top liaison between US and UK intelligence. During this time, he turned over classified details about the inner workings of the CIA and MI6 to Soviet intelligence. He also warned the Soviets of an Allied attack on communists in Albania in 1950. His warning caused two double agents to defect.

Philby was suspected of playing a part in the defections and was released from the CIA and MI6. He expected impending capture and trial, so fled the country, ending up in the Soviet Union in 1963. The information Philby leaked to the Soviets during the '40s and '50s led to the deaths of many agents who were exposed to and captured by the Soviets.

Both Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were born into Jewish families in New York City. The two met as members of a Young Communist League in 1936 and were married soon after. In July 1950, after 11 years of marriage, Julius was arrested. Ethel joined him in police custody a month later. They were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage.

The allegations against the Rosenbergs were serious - they were accused of running an organization that passed plans for the atomic bomb to the Soviets. They were convicted 1951 and sent to Sing Sing, a maximum security correctional facility in New York. After two years of imprisonment, the Rosenbergs were executed by electric chair. Their sons, Michael and Robert, were 11 and seven when Ethel and Julius were put to death. Co-conspirators such as Ethel's brother received lengthy prison sentences. 

Ethel and Julius proclaimed their innocence until death, and some historians support this claim. However, declassified KGB files indicate not only that Ethel and Julius were guilty of espionage, but that Ethel was extremely cunning as a spy, and made a number of key decisions. Still, many believe the execution of the Rosenbergs was unnecessary, and tainted America's global reputation. 

Robert Hanssen was born in Chicago in 1944 and joined the Chicago Police Department, where his father also worked, in 1972. In 1976, he made the leap to the FBI. After a two year stint as a criminal investigator in Indiana, Hanssen transferred to New York, to work in Soviet counterintelligence. His spy career began in 1979, when he sold a package to the Soviet Main Intelligence Agency (GRU). The package contained the name of an undercover FBI agent in the GRU's ranks.

Hanssen continued to sell information to the GRU for two years, until his wife uncovered his secret, at which point he swore off spying. That is, until he was transferred to Washington DC and became part of the Soviet Analytical Unit. In 1985, he began selling information about US counterintelligence to the KGB, identifying undercover FBI agents who had penetrated the Soviet intel system. This led to executions by the Soviets. Hanssen was paid in cash and jewelry for his work, which he spent on gifts and travel.

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and Hanssen stopped his espionage work until 1999, when he signed on with the SVR, successor of the KGB. By this time, the FBI was looking for a spy in its ranks, and thought it might be Hanssen after a recording of him was turned in by a defected KGB operative.

The FBI began monitoring Hanssen and caught him dead dropping a bag full of secret information intended for Russian handlers. He plead guilty to 15 counts of conspiracy and espionage and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Hanssen's work is considered the most damaging case of espionage in the US to date, and he has been the subject of two movies, a made-for-TV picture and Breach, starring Chris Cooper as Hanssen.