Two Turncoats in One Family : In 1997, CIA Officer Jim Nicholson Was Jailed for Spying for Russia But his Betrayals Had Just Begun.By Joel Millman
http://www.wsj.com/articles/two-turncoats-in-one-family-1431990231
It is December 2008 in Nicosia, the sun-drenched capital of Cyprus. A stocky Russian approaches a young American: “Do you know the way to the federal post office?” he asks. Except it’s not a question; it’s a prearranged password. And the American isn’t a tourist: He’s a recently discharged U.S. Army infantryman offering to sell secrets to Russians on behalf of his disgraced father, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer. Moments later, the American is being driven in a sleek sedan along ancient streets toward the Russian Embassy. Soon after that, he’s flying home to Eugene, Ore., bearing $12,000 in crisp new $100 bills.
So begins Bryan Denson’s engaging “The Spy’s Son,” a noirish thriller that happens to be true.
ENLARGE The Spy’s Son
By Bryan Denson
Grove/Atlantic, 365 pages, $26
Mr. Denson, a reporter for the Oregonian newspaper, recounts a saga that he first discovered in 2009 in a Portland, Ore., courtroom. There he came face-to-face with Harold James Nicholson, the disgraced former spy who was the “highest ranking” CIA officer ever convicted of espionage—though he wasn’t offering nuclear codes or news of a new weapons system. “Jim” Nicholson gave the Russians information on some 300 CIA trainees whose files he had perused at “the Farm,” the CIA training academy where he worked between 1994 and 1996.
On the day Mr. Denson first laid eyes on Nicholson, the operative was a defendant facing new charges of espionage—for the alleged spying that he was doing for the Russians while inside a federal penitentiary in nearby Sheridan. In fact, Mr. Denson soon learned that Nicholson was one of two family members arraigned that day. The other defendant facing federal charges was the former spy’s alleged courier: his own son, Nathan, who had done his father’s bidding in Cyprus and various cities around the world.
Jim Nicholson, nicknamed “Batman” by his CIA mates for his daring, started training at the agency in October 1980, during the final months of the Carter administration. That was a heady time for Cold War spies: The Soviets had recently invaded Afghanistan, and the incoming Reagan administration would soon sponsor “proxy” warriors to counter Soviet expansionism everywhere from Afghanistan to Angola.
Jim Nicholson got a bellyful of all that action, dodging Khmer Rouge bullets on the Thai-Cambodian border and rising to become deputy chief of the CIA station in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Throughout, he specialized in trolling for “developmentals,” i.e., Soviet intelligence agents to put on the CIA’s payroll, in places like Bangkok, Bucharest and Manila.
In Malaysia, while “hanging out a shingle” with a Russian he was recruiting in June 1994, Nicholson instead decided to switch sides, agreeing to work with the Russians for cash. When facing sentencing in 1997 for his first conviction on espionage charges, Nicholson tried to justify taking money from the Russians. He did it, he said, “for my children—to make up for putting my country’s needs above my family’s needs and for failing to keep my marriage together.” A less generous explanation is that Nicholson was a public servant whose career arc peaked and so decided to serve his wallet instead.
The prosaic nature of his choice creates a dilemma for a reporter looking to inject suspense into Nicholson’s case. He may have been the highest ranking CIA officer convicted of espionage, but his crimes—primarily turning over information about the trainees—were not close to the magnitude of earlier traitors such as Aldrich Ames, who, according to the CIA, compromised at least 100 operations, and Robert Hanssen, an FBI man who was one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history. Both men confessed to receiving millions of dollars in exchange for years of collaboration with the Soviet Union.
This presents another obstacle for the author: By the time Nicholson chose treason, he was dealing with the former Soviet Union and spies whose main interest was in getting advance word on what new U.S. agents might be coming their way. And later, while Nicholson was in prison, most of what he passed along to the Russians through his son dealt with his own case—“the Russians were on a mole hunt to determine which of its spies or former spies had helped point the way toward Jim back in the 1990s.”
Compared to Ames, who received millions for his years of service to Moscow, Nicholson was a piker. He admitted to receiving $300,000 for a relatively brief betrayal, one that the CIA was tracking almost from its inception—Internal Affairs guys at the Farm bugged his office and put an agent in as Nicholson’s assistant—and to which he pleaded guilty to avoid trial.
Mr. Denson gets decent mileage out of the caper by focusing on Nicholson’s son, a former soldier who peddled his father’s secrets at Russian embassies in Cyrpus, Mexico and Peru between 2006 and 2008. Yet if Nicholson the elder comes off as a disgruntled narcissist, then his son is a patsy. Nathan’s take was less than $40,000 for a stint of treachery even briefer than his father’s—which authorities were also on to almost from its start.
Much of “The Spy’s Son” focuses on how Jim Nicholson could pass on information to the Russians from jail. Mostly he scribbled notes on napkins that he mixed with the vending-machine garbage that he and Nathan piled up on trays during visiting days. Unlike the Supermax joints that Nicholson would later be moved to—and where he remains today—the penitentiary in Sheridan lacked the rigid surveillance that might have stopped such note-passing.
Mr. Denson makes much of his access to Nathan Nicholson, who met freely with the author over many years. This lets the author cast his tale as one of an egomaniacal father’s seduction of his son, who yearned for paternal attention. Deeply depressed after injuries forced his discharge from the Army, Nathan drifted through a series of dead-end jobs and equally unpromising romances. At one point, before he was doing his father’s bidding, he contemplated suicide. He dropped the knife he was planning to open his wrists with only when he picked up his phone to hear a recording: “This call is from a federal inmate.”
Mr. Millman covered Oregon for the Journal from 2006 to 2014.
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