Americans Committing Espionage against America Quiz

Answer: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Julius and Ethel were dedicated to passing top-secret information about the US atomic bomb program to the Soviets. Included in the ring were David Greenglass, Harry Gold, Morton Sobell, and the German scientist Klaus Fuchs. Julius was recruited by the Soviets as early as 1942, and passed information to them throughout World War II, concerning work at Los Alamos that he received from Greenglass. He is believed to have turned over classified documents to the Soviets regarding the fledgling atomic program, including sketches of an atomic bomb in 1945. The results of the information provided is believed to have advanced the Soviet nuclear program by years, and helped them achieve the atomic bomb much earlier than would have otherwise been the case.

The result is that both were convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917, and sentenced to death. They were both executed by electrocution in 1953.

Answer: John A. Walker, Jr.

John Walker started his spying career in 1968 by walking into the Soviet embassy in Washington D.C. and selling them a few classified codes he had access to. What followed was over a million U.S. Naval codes that allowed the USSR to know were all U.S. submarines were at all times.

When it came time for Walker to retire he recruited his older brother Arthur, a close friend, Senior Chief Petty Officer Jerry Whitworth, his son Michael and even tried to get his daughter, but she was being discharged from the army to have a baby.

John A. Walker, Jr. was finally arrested after his ex-wife turned him in. Walker was convicted of espionage and sentenced to life in prison.

Answer: George Trofimoff

George Trofimoff provided classified information to the USSR and Russia for 25 years before he was finally arrested. In his position as Chief of the United States Army Element with the Nuremberg Joint Interrogation Center (a NATO operation located in then West Germany), he held top-level security clearances and had access to information about Soviet and Warsaw pact defectors, as well as other relevant classified intelligence. Trofimoff was recruited during the early '70s by the KGB using one of their agents to befriend the colonel while he was stationed in Germany. In total, Trofimoff was paid about $250,000 for the information he passed on, which is said to have amounted to over 50,000 pages of data.

Trofimoff was initially suspected of spying as the result of information obtained from a KGB defector in 1992. He was questioned, but released for lack of evidence. The colonel retired and left Germany for Florida after his close call. George Trofimoff was not forgotten however, and the FBI ran a sting in 1997 that tricked the colonel into revealing his once-covert activities. He was subsequently convicted of espionage charges in 2001, and sentenced to life in prison.

Answer: Robert Hanssen

Robert Hanssen committed espionage against the U.S. from 1979 until he was finally apprehended in 2001.

Hanssen worked in various FBI counter-intelligence units, which meant that the Soviets had the inside track on what the FBI was doing to catch Soviet spies. Hanssen is the individual who gave up the CIA's prized mole in the Soviet Army, General Dmitri Polyakov (who was subsequently executed as a result.) Hanssen would go on to divulge such secrets as the names of double agents working for the US, hindering FBI investigations attempting to identify Russian agents who had penetrated US intelligence agencies.

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The amount of information that Hanssen divulged has led many counter-intelligence experts to declare the case the worst in FBI history.

Answer: James W. Hall III

Beginning in 1983, James Hall provided top-secret information about Project Trojan Horse program - a program created to afford NATO with the capability to detect land specific targets, such as tanks, utilizing their signal signatures.

Hall re-enlisted in the Army for the explicit reason of continued payment for secrets.

When all the damage of Hall's espionage were tallied, his activities are considered one of the most damaging to U.S. Cold War capabilities.

James Hall was convicted of espionage in July 1989, sentenced to 40-years at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, fined $50,000 and given a dishonorable discharge.

I have read that James Hall III was paroled in 2011.

Answer: Jonathan Pollard

Pollard was arrested for selling classified information to Israel that was mainly regional specific to the Middle East, such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, continually updated intelligence concerning bordering nations like Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria.

Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987, and is eligible to be paroled in 2015.

Answer: Sergeant Clayton Lonetree

Sergeant Lonetree was a United States Marine assigned to the prestigious post of U.S. Embassy security in the early part of the 1984. While stationed in Moscow he met a young civilian woman (KGB) during the annual Marine Corps Ball at the embassy who worked in the embassy switchboard office.

Lonetree continued to see her after the initial contact (against Marine Corps regulations) when she had Lonetree meet her "Uncle Sasha" (another KGB agent) who setup the sex for secrets with his niece. Lonetree could only see her under those circumstances. Once was enough and Lonetree was now in it for real.

Sergeant Lonetree began passing secret documents and information to the KGB, which included the inner workings of U.S. embassies, including floor plans. He also was able to identify the personnel in the embassies who were actually U.S. intelligence agents. Lonetree continued with the espionage after being moved to the U.S. Embassy in Vienna.

In the end Sergeant Lonetree turned himself in to the CIA at the Vienna Embassy, confessing what he had done.

Though the damage that he caused was termed "minimal," in August 1987 Sergeant Clayton Lonetree was convicted of 12 of 13 counts by a military court, and was sentenced 30 years imprisonment, fined $5,000, loss of all pay and allowances, reduced to the rank of private, and given a dishonorable discharge.

After two reductions in sentencing, Lonetree was released in February 1996, after serving over nine years in prison.

For more information on Lonetree: "Dancing with the Devil: Sex, Espionage, and the U.S. Marines: The Clayton Lonetree Story", by Rodney Barker, Ivy Books, 1996.

Answer: Aldrich H. Ames

Aldrich H. Ames, while working as a counterintelligence agent for the CIA was known to have given up every operative working for the CIA that he knew of. This led to at least 10 operatives he identified being executed by the Soviets as a direct result, and hundreds of CIA intelligence operations were thwarted.

Aldrich Ames was sentenced to incarceration for life without the possibility of parole, forfeiture of all his assets to the United States, with $547,000 was turned over to the Justice Department's Victims Assistance Fund. Ames is serving his sentence in the federal prison system.

Answer: Harold J. Nicholson

Harold Nicholson joined the agency in 1980 after a stint in the US Army, and was a rising star within the CIA. He served in various foreign posts as a counter-intelligence officer. Nicholson rose to chief of station in Romania, and later as a branch chief with the Counter-Terrorism Center.

It's believed that Nicholson was recruited by the Russian Intelligence Service in June 1994 as he was completing a tour of duty as deputy station chief in Malaysia. During the relatively short time he was worked for the Russians, 1994 until his arrest in 1996, Nicholson passed along national defense information, including sensitive photos and computer data that he had access to.

Harold Nicholson was arrested on 16 November 1996 at Dulles International Airport while he was about to board a flight to Switzerland. When he was searched there were found rolls of film bearing images of Top Secret documents.

Nicholson was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 23 years in prison in 1997 and was the highest-ranking CIA official to be convicted of espionage in the 20th century.

Answer: Private First Class Bradley Manning

Private First Class Manning decided to leak hundreds of thousands pieces of classified information, and while doing so Manning did disclose what he was doing to an on-line associate of his, Adrian Lamo. When Lamo was made aware of what Manning was up to he informed Army Counterintelligence, resulting in the arrest of Manning in May 2010.

The classified information included videos of United States airstrikes, United States Diplomatic Cables, and thousands of military reports that came to be known as Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs.

In July 2013, Private First Class Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years' hard labor at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, reduced in rank to private, dishonorably discharged from the Army and to forfeiture of all pay and allowances.