20 December 1998. Thanks to Anonymous.
The Washington Post, Saturday 19 December 1998, Page A04 Ex-Analyst For NSA Pleads to Espionage By Brooke A. Masters Washington Post Staff Writer A former National Security Agency code analyst pleaded guilty yesterday to selling top-secret documents to the KGB, including a comprehensive list of U.S. reconnaissance programs and a description of nuclear targets in Russia. At a 10-minute hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, David Sheldon Boone pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and agreed to forfeit $52,000, including his retirement fund and a hand-held scanner he used to copy documents. Boone, who served in the Army from 1970 to 1991, faces between 24 and 30 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. That range reflects the fact that Boone passed documents that were more sensitive than those passed by most spies who have been convicted in the past four years, officials said. But Boone's betrayal was less serious than that of two former CIA officials -- Aldrich H. Ames, whose spying led to deaths of U.S. agents, and Harold J. Nicholson, who revealed the identities of new CIA recruits, officials said. Boone, who lived in Germany until his Oct. 10 arrest, freely admitted his wrongdoing after FBI agents arrested him at Dulles International Airport, according to a statement of facts filed with his plea agreement. He waived his rights and immediately confessed that he had given Moscow a 400-page manual listing all U.S. reconnaissance programs and signal collection systems. He also admitted turning over documents detailing where U.S. nuclear missiles were aimed in case of a showdown with the Soviet Union. The Flint, Mich., native ended his written confession by stating, "I'm glad it is finally over," according to court documents. One of Boone's attorneys, James C. Clarke, said his client decided to plead guilty because "he has chosen to accept responsibility for what he did and pay whatever price the court deems necessary." For most of his Army career, Boone, 46, was a signals analyst. He worked for three years as a senior cryptologic traffic analyst for the highly secret NSA at Fort Meade before being reassigned to Augsburg, Germany, in 1988, according to the statement of facts. Shortly before that transfer, Boone, strapped for cash and disgruntled with the American legal system because of a divorce case, walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington and volunteered his services. Over the next four years, he was paid nearly $60,000 for handing over a variety of classified information to a KGB officer he knew as "Igor." Over the years, he used Soviet-issued disguises -- including a wig and mustache -- and a gym bag and a gasoline can to conceal his spying, court documents said. Boone retired from the Army in 1991, remarried and settled in Germany. He was lured back to the United States by a paid FBI contact who was posing as a Russian agent. Boone agreed to resume spying and agreed to meet the contact in the Washington area. The FBI declined to comment. U.S. District Judge Albert V. Bryan Jr. set sentencing for Feb. 26. Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
Associated Press, 19 December 1998, 19:20 EST Suspect To Be Extradited to U.S. By The Associated Press HAMBURG, Germany (AP) -- A suspected top aide to Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire accused of organizing the deadly bombings at U.S. embassies in Africa this summer, will soon be extradited to the United States from Germany, a government spokesman said Saturday. A report by the Hamburg-based Welt am Sonntag newspaper said Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who is jailed in Munich, would be extradited Monday. However, the spokesman in Bonn, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he could not confirm when the extradition would take place. Salim, 40, has been jailed since his arrest in Bavaria three months ago on a U.S. warrant. A Munich state court approved his extradition on Nov. 27. The Federal Constitutional Court threw out Salim's appeal on Dec. 11, and the Justice Ministry said extradition would be approved when the U.S. government gave assurances that Salim would not face the death penalty, which is forbidden by the German constitution. U.S. officials claim Salim is Bin Laden's finance chief and have charged him in New York with murder conspiracy and the use of weapons of mass destruction in an international plot to kill U.S. citizens. Three other alleged accomplices of Bin Laden already are jailed in the United States. The Aug. 7 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Copyright 1998 The Associated Press.
Associated Press, 19 December 1998, 15:58 EST Poison Cited in Korea Spy Boat Body By The Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Military investigators found traces of poison in a body recovered from a suspected North Korean spy boat sunk by South Korea's navy, officials said Saturday. The finding indicated that some of the boat's crewmen may have killed themselves before their vessel was sunk Friday, Defense Ministry officials said. The low-slung speedboat, carrying an estimated four people, was spotted as it approached Yosu, a small port on the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula. It was pursued until it was hemmed in and sunk in a gunbattle. The body of a crewman armed with a hand grenade and knife was found shortly after the vessel sank. "We found evidence that the man bit an ampul of poison. We also found injuries from gun shrapnel," said Lt. Col. Lee Woon-se, a ministry spokesman. Lee added that North Korean agents were trained to commit suicide before being caught by South Korean troops. Navy ships and planes continued a sea and air search for more bodies and wreckage of the boat, which went down in waters 110 yards deep. In a separate operation, Japan's Self-Defense Forces assisted South Korean warships and planes searching international waters for a larger ship believed to have launched the speedboat, Lee said. He refused to give further details. South Korean officials believe the boat was on a mission to land or pick up North Korean spies in the South. "We are shocked and enraged by the North's continued provocative infiltrations," Seoul's Defense Ministry said in a statement. "We demand the North offer a responsible and convincing explanation." The Koreas were divided into the communist North and the pro-Western South in 1945. They are still technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The U.N. Command, which oversees the armistice, will demand a meeting with North Korean officials at the truce village of Panmunjom to protest the incident, the Defense Ministry said. North Korea's government accused Seoul of fabricating the incident to raise tension and carry out a U.S. plan to trigger a second war on the divided Korean peninsula. The latest incident came despite South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's "sunshine policy," under which Seoul is pushing economic exchanges to bring the two Koreas closer to peace on the divided peninsula. President Kim's office said the gunbattle will not derail its policy towards the North. Copyright 1998 The Associated Press.