Espionage

JERUSALEM - Israeli officials rushed yesterday to deny allegations of spying on the United States as they tried to head off a potentially embarrassing episode that threatens to strain relations between the two allies. U.S. law enforcement officials have confirmed an FBI espionage investigation to determine whether an analyst working in the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld passed a secret report on Iran to Israel through an influential lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.

MOSCOW - In what was widely seen as an attempt to crack down on researchers and academics, the Russian Supreme Court upheld yesterday a 15-year prison term for a nuclear scientist convicted of passing military secrets to foreigners. The court's ruling ended the respected researcher's domestic appeals and appeared to guarantee that Igor V. Sutyagin, whose case has attracted the attention of scientists and human rights groups worldwide, will be sent to a prison labor camp. Sutyagin is one of several Russians recently accused of espionage in what critics say is an attempt by hard-liners in the government to assert greater control over academics, writers, environmentalists and journalists.

International Spy Museum Handbook of Practical Spying. Introduction by Peter Earnest, text by Jack Barth. National Geographic. 191 pages. $14.95. Former spies and those who aspire to the trade can equally enjoy this pint-sized guide to espionage. Learn helpful tricks to improve the memory, befriend a possible target, extract useful information during an interrogation and (best of all) know how to avoid giving up too much information under hostile questioning. A favorite tidbit is in the "disguise" chapter: A spy pretending to have a limp should place a marble in his shoe.

Baltimore-born Alger Hiss (1904-1996) was the central figure in one of the Cold War's most sensational espionage cases. Raised in Bolton Hill and educated at City College, Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Law School, Hiss was a New Dealer who served in the departments of Agriculture, Justice and State. After World War II, he helped draft the United Nations charter and was president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a self-professed one-time communist spy, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that Hiss had been a member of his espionage ring and had given him classified State Department documents.

WASHINGTON - The military said last night that it was dropping all charges, including one of mishandling classified information, against Army Capt. James J. Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The case against Yee, who officials once suggested was part of an espionage ring, had become a lingering embarrassment for the Pentagon. In a statement released from the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, the military said it did not want to proceed with a trial on the charge of mishandling classified data because to do so could expose sensitive evidence to public view.

Campaigners for human rights in Russia call it "spy mania": In the past eight years, perhaps a dozen people, including environmentalists, scientists and journalists, have been charged with spying. The arrests began in 1996, when Alexander Nikitin, a retired Russian navy captain, was charged with espionage and treason for helping to write a report for Bellona, a Norwegian environmental organization. Nikitin, who had served with Russia's northern fleet, helped document the danger of deteriorating nuclear reactors on Russian submarines.

TEHRAN, Iran - Hard-liners have refused to release a jailed University of California lecturer despite demands from government officials, a top lawmaker said yesterday, expressing fears that the man could meet the same fate as a Canadian photojournalist who was killed while in custody. Dariush Zahedi, an Iranian-born American citizen who lectures at UC-Berkeley, has been held since July, when he was detained on suspicion of espionage activities while visiting relatives in Iran. Mohsen Mirdamadi, head of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said the Intelligence Ministry, which is dominated by reformists, has requested his release.

Imagine that a former CIA agent sold bomb-making supplies to Osama bin Laden. Or had provided military equipment and terrorist training for Saddam Hussein's regime. That was the level of traitorous activity that Edwin P. Wilson, the CIA agent turned international arms dealer, was charged with for exporting explosives to Libya during the 1970s, a time when that country was considered the face of international terrorism. While Wilson had long claimed that his Libyan deals were a cover for gathering intelligence for the CIA, a jury convicted him in 1983, largely on the basis of an affidavit by a top agency official denying any connection with the former spy. But last week, after 20 years that Wilson has spent in prison, a federal judge in Texas overturned the conviction.

WASHINGTON - In a setback for the Justice Department yesterday, a federal jury spared attempted spy Brian Patrick Regan the death penalty for his role in trying to sell "vital secrets" to the governments of China and Iraq. Regan, 40, was convicted last Thursday of attempted espionage in the first U.S. spy trial in a half-century that could have resulted in an execution. For that penalty to be imposed, jurors had to also find that he provided specified military secrets to Iraq. Yesterday, they determined that Regan had not offered Iraq documents related to nuclear weaponry, military satellites, war plans or other U.S. weapons systems.

Sandwiched between a Metro supermarket and a Chinese restaurant along Route 3, the old Crofton public library sits vacant, its windows broken and its glass doors locked. Only a ratty yellow chair inside and a silver book depository in the brick remind the few passers-by that the place was once a thriving learning center. All of which makes it one of the most unlikely spy destinations since Whittaker Chambers' pumpkin patch led to the downfall of Alger Hiss during the Cold War. It was in the old Crofton library two summers ago -- between children's storytelling hours and evening community meetings -- that FBI agents say they watched retired Air Force Master Sgt. Brian Patrick Regan search the Internet for Iraqi embassies in Switzerland, Germany and France.