A Former Spy Gives Thanks

No, the former spy in question is not me

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone is as stuffed as yesterday’s turkey and enjoying the holiday weekend and not getting stampeded at some Black Friday event.

Mark your calendars: VESPERS! Thursday December 7 with special guest Casey Michel, author of American Kleptocracy and the soon-to-be-published Foreign Agents. Noon Eastern, 6pm Central Europe. I hope to see you there! Reminder: VESPERS is for paid subscribers only. Don’t miss out!

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ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT

Jim Nicholson has a reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving. The former CIA officer who was convicted of espionage for spying for Russia is slated to be released from Florence ADX, a supermax prison in Colorado, on November 26, after serving 26 years in prison (he was actually sentenced to nearly 32 years; I don’t know why he gets out now or how that works. The judicial system is a mystery to me).

For those who don’t know the history:

Nicholson joined the Agency in 1980 as a case officer. He served in numerous posts around the world, often going against Soviet—and later Russian—targets. But then, in 1994, his colleague Aldrich Ames was convicted of spying for the USSR and Russia, and Nicholson thought: what a fucking idiot. Not in the way you and I thought Ames was a fucking idiot, like, “What an idiot to hand over all our secrets to the Russians!” but rather like, “What a fucking idiot because he got caught and I bet I can do that without getting caught.”

For those following my Foreign Influence Operations course, that’s pretty solid EGO in the MICE acronym. For those not familiar, see Class 1: Spying 101.

Over the next two years, Nicholson handed the Russians enormoous amounts of national defense information, including the identities of all CIA officers stationed in Russia, including those under deep cover, and the identities of CIA case officer trainees for the years 1994, 1995, and 1996, including his own students.

It turns out, though, Nicholson’s ego was wrong. He wasn’t better at not getting caught than Ames. By the end of 1995, the FBI was on his tail and on November 16, 1996, he was arrested. Unlike Ames, who received life in prison with no chance of parole, Nicholson was sentenced to 23 years and 7 months. Prosecutors felt he had been forthcoming with information once he was arrested, so they did not push for the harshest sentence.

The Price Of A Soul

Along with Ego, Nicholson was motivated by Money. Although, not much. Or at least, never as much as you would think it would take to get an intelligence officer to cause enormous damage their country. Nicholson did this for $300,000.

But he didn’t manage to collect it all. He was scooped up by the feds too quickly. So, after he was incarcerated, he enlisted the help of his youngest son to collect the rest of the money. Talk about generational wealth.

The son traveled and met with Russian officials in various locations in an effort to get the remaining $47,000 Nicholson was owed. Sure, he had been convicted, but he had worked hard for that cash and like hell if he was going to let that slide, even if it meant putting his son at risk.

The Russians paid, but the son was arrested. He made a plea deal to build the case against his dad, and Nicholson got eight years tacked on to his sentence, which he has been serving out mostly in solitary confinement.

Cold War—>Global War on Terror—>Great Power Competition

What strikes me is that Nicholson went into prison as the Cold War ended and America was staking its role as the world’s superpower, and he is being released just as Great Power Competition takes over and Russia is once again seen as a threat. He completely missed the Global War on Terror.

Or, rather, he experienced it in a very different way, because many of his neighbors in Florence ADX are characters from the GWOT, including:

• Ramzi Yousef, the guy behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing

• Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the helpers of 9/11

• Richard Reid, the shoe bomber

• Umar Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber

• Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber

He had White Power guys, too, including Terry Nichols and the now deceased Timothy McVeigh (both responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing). El Chapo is also there, as was former FBI agent and Russian mole Robert Hanssen before his death. Pizza and movie night must be fun.

Congratulations On Your Release From Prison!

Before Nicholson joined the Agency, he worked briefly at Hallmark Cards. I thought it would be fitting, then, to greet him back into the world with some inspirational cards. Feel free to create your own card for him and post it in the comments section.

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THE WEEK’S LINKS

A roundup of stories you should be reading

RUSSIA

Poland Charges 16 Foreigners With Spying For Russia (Radio Free Europe)

Putin’s Ninth and Tenth Luxury Yachts Tracked Down in Istanbul (Kyiv Post)

How the Czech Republic wants to shut European borders to Russian agents (FT)

DISINFORMATION

How Community Notes on Twitter Are Failing to Combat Israel-Hamas War Misinformation (Bloomberg)

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Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?

Look at that beautiful smile! I look pretty happy, too.