|
07/30/03
 What did former Air Force intelligence analyst and convicted
spy Brian P. Regan do when he couldn't sell the classified
materials he'd stolen from the National Reconnaissance Office?
He buried them. Deep. He wrote their locations on a note,
stuffed the note in a tooth brush holder, and buried it under
the I-95 exit sign near Fredericksburg, Virginia.
What secrets had he stolen? Photographs of Iraqi missile
sites and encoded tactical information accessed through Regan's
classified Internet network. Who did he try to sell them
to? Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Chinese
government for the proposed price of $13 million. Having
failed in this, he desperately sought other buyers at various
foreign embassies in Switzerland.
Finally, following his arrest in August, 2002, Regan agreed
on March 20 of this year to offer the government his full
cooperation as part of his plea agreement, in addition to
a sentence of life imprisonment. That cooperation included
disclosing the whereabouts of all materials he had stolen.
And the FBI dug them up: Some 20,000 pages of highly classified
documents, and a variety of videotapes and computer compact
disks, all underground in Maryland and Virginia's state parks.
|
