The Wrong Man Is Sitting in Prison

Re: David Sheldon Boone Case (Article follows)

The claim that Pollard had compromised nuclear targeting data and secret codes were false charges leveled against a man who did not even have access to this kind of information.

The charge that Pollard had compromised nuclear targeting data surfaced in the book THE SAMSON OPTION. The author, Seymour Hirsch, was apparently fed this disinformation by elements within the intelligence community, hostile to Israel.

The truth, long hidden from view, has finally materialized, and the true culprits, people like David Boone and Aldrich Ames have now been apprehended.

Falsely accused of these crimes and never indicted, Jonathan Pollard continues to rot in prison...

Ex-NSA analyst charged in spy case

October 14, 1998 - USA Today - Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The FBI charged a former analyst with the Pentagon's supersecret National Security Agency with selling top defense secrets to the Soviet Union during 1988-1991 for $60,000.

The former employee of the government's top eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, David Sheldon Boone, 46, who has been living in Germany, was arrested after being lured here by an FBI sting in which agents posed as spies for Russia trying to get him to resume spying, the Justice Department said.

Boone was to make an initial appearance Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Welton C. Sewell in Alexandria, Va.

The government said the information he delivered to a Soviet KGB agent he knew as "Igor" included details of U.S. targeting of tactical nuclear weapons in case of a Soviet nuclear attack and of the U.S. military's interception of signals intelligence, the Justice Department said.

In addition, he provided the Soviets with U.S. documents describing the movement and capabilities of Soviet forces and about Soviet tactical nuclear weapons, the government said. This included data designated "top secret" and the even more secret "sensitive compartmented information," which the government said "could potentially cause grave harm to the national security of the United States."

The Justice Department gave this account: Boone volunteered to spy for the Soviets when he walked into their embassy here in 1988. At that time, he got $300 from them in return for a classified document he had written based on decoded NSA intercepts of electronic transmissions by a foreign government.

He arranged to continue spying for them while he was assigned as a cryptoanalyst for the Army in Augsberg, Germany, during 1988-1991, when he left the service. During those years, he met about four times a year with Igor and was paid $5,000 to $7,000 at each meeting, for a total of more than $60,000.

Before his assignment to Germany, he spent three years as a senior cryptologic traffic analyst at the NSA's headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., in the Washington suburbs.

Boone spent most of his Army service as a signals intelligence analyst, dissecting foreign electronic communications overheard abroad and decoded by the NSA. He had joined the Army in October 1970 and got top- secret clearance within months. He was trained to handle sensitive compartmented information in 1976.

On Sept. 5 of this year, an individual cooperating with the FBI telephoned Boone at his home in Germany and posed as a spy for the SVRR, the Russian successor to the Soviet KGB spy agency. The phony Russian spy said he wanted Boone to resume spying and set up a meeting with him in London on Sept. 12.

The government said that at the London meeting, Boone recounted his career as a spy for the KGB, accepted $9,000 cash and agreed to meet again in Virginia this month.

The FBI said Boone flew to Dulles International Airport in Washington's Virginia suburbs Friday as planned and checked into the Dulles Airport Marriott Hotel.

He was arrested at that hotel Saturday and has been held at the Alexandria City Jail since then, the FBI said.