This CIA turncoat is about to stroll free. Will he defect to Russia?

The handoff was fast and seamless, a espresso cup containing the DNA of a suspected Russian spy swapped for an an identical one in a hallway trade between a CIA operative and an FBI agent.

The transfer was textbook spycraft, however every thing else concerning the state of affairs was extraordinary: The handoff went down throughout the bowels of CIA headquarters, and the suspected mole was one of many company’s personal – however so was the person tasked with catching him.

The goal was Harold ‘Jim’ Nicholson, a charismatic profession spy and devoted single dad who’d been working for the CIA for 16 years.

The CIA colleague who’d swiped the espresso cup from his desk was John Maguire, a former Baltimore cop who’d carved out a counterrorism area of interest throughout the spy company.

Maguire had been recalled from abroad by CIA superiors – banished to HR as punishment, he’d thought, for rejecting a posting in Pakistan in autumn 1995  – earlier than being known as right into a secret assembly at Langley, requested if he’d settle for an unidentified job, then whisked to an off-site location.

There, in an FBI protected home in an unprecedented interagency spy-catching collaboration, he discovered the small print of the ask: Somebody throughout the CIA was sneaking secrets and techniques to the Russians. Nicholson was the possible offender. Maguire was to get Nicholson to rent him as his righthand man, spy on him from inside his personal division, then nail him with proof so they may lock Nicholson up for treason.

By the summer season of 1996, Maguire was working subsequent to the suspected spy.

“There have been instances after I simply needed to stab him within the neck at his desk and simply say, ‘F*** it, he’s lifeless. It’s over. Right here,’” Maguire, now retired from the company, tells The Impartial.

He resisted the urge, nonetheless – and in only a matter of months, utilizing an arsenal of tips from old-school detective work to info-seeking liquid lunches, Maguire pulled it off. A spy had by no means been used to catch a spy at Langley earlier than, and there’s been no public announcement of any such feat since.

After greater than twenty years behind bars, Nicholson shall be launched from jail on 26 November. He was sentenced in 1997 to 23 years and seven months for conspiracy to commit espionage – one of many highest-ranking CIA officers ever convicted of the offence. However the turncoat spy wasn’t achieved; from jail, he duped his youngest little one – a son in his mid-20s who worshipped his dad and lengthy believed he’d been railroaded – into persevering with his traitorous relationship with the Russians.

They have been caught and each convicted, the youthful Nicholson avoiding jail time with a plea deal whereas his father was slapped with eight extra years. The disgraced CIA man was additionally transferred from his comfortable Oregon facility to the hardcore Colorado jail colloquially often called Supermax – from which he’s scheduled to stroll free after Thanksgiving.

“Jim Nicholson was what they name a double hitter: There was his first crime, which he acquired caught for, went to jail, after which from jail organized his second one,” creator Bryan Denson, who interviewed Nathaniel Nicholson, Maguire and different gamers extensively for his 2015 guide The Spy’s Son, tells The Impartial.

Denson believes the discharge shall be a “gut-check second” for the spy, who turns 73 simply days earlier than he’s scheduled to stroll free.

“Possibly Jim is a greater particular person than he proved himself to be there for a bit, and possibly he’ll present fealty for his household and wish to, , put his grandchildren on his knee and be that man … however he’s going to be a pauper if he does it,” Denson tells The Impartial, noting that Nicholson, like all convicted spy, shall be legally barred from profiting off of his crimes.

Maguire, who has extra firsthand expertise of Nicholson and his character, is satisfied “he’s going to run.”

“He’s not going to remain right here,” says Maguire, who stays incredulous that the US authorities by no means used Nicholson as a bargaining chip to get again People imprisoned in russia like Brittany Griner and Paul Whelan. “He’ll be gone in a few weeks.”

Nicholson’s lawyer, contacted by The Impartial, stated neither he nor his consumer may remark earlier than the discharge.

Only a few turncoats have been launched from jail lately — Robert Hanssen died behind bars earlier this yr and Aldrich Ames stays serving a life sentence with out parole. Ana Montes, who spied for Cuba and was launched in January, moved to Puerto Rico, and Jonathan Pollard, who spied for Israel, moved there after his 2015 launch.

After overlaying Nicholson for years and actually writing the guide on him, Denson says the spy’s subsequent steps stay “a giant query to me.”

“Does he simply get himself plucked by the Russians and return to Moscow the place the cash’s ready for him?” Denson says. “Or does he keep right here and do proper by his household?”

As a result of Nicholson, when it comes all the way down to it, betrayed everybody and every thing in his life that he purported to carry expensive: His nation, his colleagues, his profession and, most significantly, his household and his kids.

It’s all a far cry from the life Nicholson imagined as he idolized James Bond whereas rising up on Air Power bases with a former Military cryptographer mom, Betty, and Air Power serviceman stepfather, Marvin “Nick” Nicholson. Betty’s first husband and Jim’s organic father had walked away from the household, and Marvin married her when Jim was seven, formally adopting the kid.

Impressed by his household’s army historical past and the spy tales he devoured, a younger Nicholson enrolled in ROTC throughout faculty at Oregon State, the place he met his future spouse, Laurie, who would later give delivery to the couple’s three kids. Nicholson labored in army intelligence however left the Military in 1979 and held a civilian job briefly, earlier than becoming a member of the CIA the next yr.

He hauled his rising household to varied posts overseas. From the Philippines to Romania to Thailand, his marriage grew ever extra tumultuous with allegations of dishonest on either side; by 1992, Laurie, fed up along with her husband’s egocentric ambition and infidelity, had returned to the US and filed divorce papers. She later advised Denson that “considered one of Jim’s biggest faults … was that he had one way or the other accustomed himself to champagne tastes on a Budweiser funds,” he writes in The Spy’s Son.

Two years later, Nicholson walked into the Russian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, the place he was stationed, the CIA beneath the impression he was attempting to recruit their intelligence chief. As a substitute, the veteran operative provided his personal companies to the SVR (the Russian international intelligence division that preceded the KGB) for cost – simply weeks after notorious CIA turncoat Ames was sentenced to life in jail with out the opportunity of parole.

Nicholson, Denson writes in his guide, “figured that with Ames out of the way in which, the SVR is perhaps available in the market for one more extremely paid mole contained in the CIA.”

They have been. So started a deeply damaging double-cross that might proceed, in numerous guises, for greater than a decade.

Within the rapid, nonetheless, Nicholson pulled off a few of his most damaging work. With major custody of his kids, he moved the household again to Virginia in 1994 and commenced working as an teacher on the CIA’s coaching facility, colloquially known as “The Farm.” There, he gathered intelligence on the upcoming recruits and bought it to the Russians, rendering the longer term US spies successfully ineffective going ahead. He was additionally photographing and summarizing top-secret recordsdata and reviews to cross alongside, every thing from details about US coverage to international cables to debriefings of Ames that might show helpful to the Russians.

By 1996, US intelligence had realised it had an issue and was frantically attempting to root out the mole.

That’s when the higher-ups tapped Maguire, who was depressing at his non permanent Langley desk task after years of thrilling and efficacious area work. He’d been recalled from abroad as authorities zeroed in on Nicholson because the mole – unaware that higher-ups have been readying him for a mammoth in-house espionage problem, he says.

“There’s a motive that HR is barely on the second flooring,” he jokes “You’ll be able to’t even soar out of the window excessive sufficient; you’ll land within the bushes, break your legs and you then’ll be in HR in a wheelchair.”

He’s the kind of no-nonsense man who cracks these jokes in between explaining how he took down one of the crucial damaging spies in historical past. He discovered the small print within the protected home after passing a polygraph from the “first-string, varsity officers … those who know their s***.”

Ultimately, says Maguire, “The lead agent stated, ‘We’ve acquired one other Ames.’”

He was instructed to “get [Nicholson] to select you to be his deputy” and use the place to surveil and snare him – and quick.

“You’ve acquired to catch that f****r in a yr; we are able to’t afford to attend 5 years,’” Maguire says one other high-ranking superior advised him at a later assembly. “You’ve acquired to catch him doing one thing.”

Actual-life espionage, he says, is “not some swashbuckling James Bond factor,” though he famous that Nicholson, who was enamoured with 007 as a toddler, himself was “an actual womanizer,” recognized for being tall, darkish, good-looking, and “very easy, very, very, artful.”

The spywork itself was extra mundane, “a methodical thoughts sport of four-dimensional chess, and it’s a must to plan and function play,” Maguire says.

“What I needed to do for this was basically an operational assembly for eight to 9 hours a day and never make a mistake and never mess up,” says Maguire – on a regular basis expecting clues that Nicholson is perhaps readying to “do one thing operational.”

“I wanted to ensure I didn’t miss something,” he tells The Impartial. “It was very worrying …an enormously straining psychological train.”

Nicholson’s MO included focusing on youthful officers and amassing background info on them to share with the Russians, in order that they might be weak to being satisfied to share info themselves later down the observe on abroad missions.

“He was a intelligent man and a mercenary son of a bitch, as a result of he didn’t care what occurred to these children, these younger officers … they’re working for a man who’s arrange a goal bundle on them to allow them to be approached later of their careers,” he says. “I’ve by no means seen that earlier than.”

Nicholson’s predecessor, Ames, executed “horrible” crimes, Maguire says – “however he didn’t headhunt within the constructing,”

“And we all know Jim was headhunting within the constructing.”

So was Maguire, although – and his efforts paid off after a liquid lunch in Georgetown in October 1996, not lengthy earlier than Nicholson was scheduled to make an abroad journey.

“He had a six-pack of beer on the ground of the automobile, and I’m ingesting beer in his automobile on the way in which again to the constructing; we’re driving round in rural Virginia, and I say, ‘Are you misplaced?’ And he goes, ‘No, no, no, and there’s a spot out right here, this is likely one of the days once they launch distinctive runs of stamps.’”

Nicholson hopped out at a rural put up workplace, purchased stamps, acquired again within the automobile, they usually returned to Langley, Maguire triggering a gathering with the FBI to tip them off that it appeared his boss was readying “to do one thing operational.”

“They simply guess the farm on that evening, they usually had an incredible quantity of manpower deployed and ready,” Maguire says. “And certain sufficient, he went out late at evening, left his home, left his children at residence alone and went out … they usually really caught him within the act mailing one thing, after which that was the stamp that he purchased – and he licked it, so there was DNA on it. And he threw it within the mailbox, and earlier than the solar got here up that factor was processed and within the proof system, after which the actual postcard went again within the mailbox and went on its strategy to the abroad deal with, and he established a direct hyperlink to the KGB.”

Nicholson was arrested on the eve of his forty sixth birthday and sentenced in June 1997 to 23 years and 7 months in jail. His kids’s lives had been uprooted unceremoniously, the household residence in Virginia turned the wrong way up earlier than the oldest, Jeremi, who was in faculty in Oregon, flew his youthful sister, Star, and brother, Nathaniel, again to the West Coast.

The youngest Nicholson was simply 12 when his father was arrested, and the spy’s mom and stepfather refused to imagine their feted, patriotic scion had achieved any unsuitable. Together with the kids, they’d go to the imprisoned ex-CIA officer on the Oregon facility the place he was despatched, and it was there that Nathan recalled his father apologising – and explaining that he’d “simply needed that will help you children out,” Denson writes in The Spy’s Son.

“Nathan by no means let go of the reminiscence of that painful heart-to-heart,” Denson writes. “Seeing his dad so sorrowful, head actually hung low, churned in his younger thoughts. He satisfied himself that the federal government should have pressured him to admit – even to his personal children – that he spied for russia.”

Nathan adopted his father’s footsteps into the Military, however an damage sidelined his army profession and he returned to Oregon, the place he enrolled in group faculty in 2005, visiting his father in jail each different Saturday. Nicholson had been cooking up methods to renew contact with the Russians, and it wasn’t lengthy earlier than he enlisted his son.

Throughout one go to, he advised Nathan “that his outdated associates in Moscow have been holding an account open in his identify, and that collectively they could be capable to make some early withdrawals,” Denson writes. “Jim had misplaced his freedom in service to the Russian Federation, and now he felt it was russia’s flip to assist assist his children whereas he was away. He needed to know if Nathan was prepared to serve in his stead on the skin.”

His youngest agreed “on the spot” – quickly establishing contact with the Russians by strolling into the consulate in San Francisco, earlier than travelling to conferences in far-away locales from Mexico to Cyprus, passing messages and accepting cash between 2006 and 2008 earlier than he was caught. The youthful Nicholson, at 26 years outdated, narrowly averted jail in a plea deal that helped him construct the prosecution’s case towards his father, who acquired a further eight years.

“I feel his coronary heart was actually, for a time, damaged when he realized, lastly, what his dad had achieved,” Denson, a fellow Oregonian who now considers Nathan a buddy after extensively interviewing him for the 2015 guide. “His dad made it sound prefer it was no massive deal – and that is, after all, coming from Nathan himself. [His dad] made it sound like he was simply doing him slightly favour, however he needed to be secretive.

“I feel, in his coronary heart, Nathan in all probability knew that it was unsuitable, however … he’s a man who’s a pleaser,” Denson says. “He loves his shut circle of family and friends and reveals it … Nathan Nicholson is a essentially respectable man.”

Denson and Maguire, each fathers, couldn’t imagine the spy had coopted his son into crime.

“That was essentially the most mercenary factor,” Maguire says, including: “He used his son and destroyed the premise of belief {that a} child has with their father.”

That ruthless streak and demonstrated fairweather loyalty solely helps Maguire’s principle that Nicholson will high-tail it out of America as fast as his treasonous ft can carry him.

“He’ll behave himself for a few weeks, he’ll get a plan collectively and work out what he needed to do,” says Maguire, including that each officer has a “long-term contact break plan” that investigators by no means uncovered amongst Nicholson’s issues.

“He’s a traitor …he made his mattress. He’s a spy. He doesn’t imagine within the nation. He hates the system, and he signed up with an enemy nation,” he says. “And if that’s the place he desires to have his allegiance, then ship him there and get a great harmless man again.”