Ex-NSA Analyst Pleads to Spying

December 19, 1998 - Associated Press

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A former Army and National Security Agency code analyst faces up to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to selling top-secret documents to the KGB, including a description of U.S. nuclear targets in Russia.

David Sheldon Boone pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy to commit espionage in U.S. District Court. He agreed to forfeit $52,000, including his retirement fund and a hand-held scanner he used to copy documents.

Boone, 46, was indicted last month on charges he spied for theSoviet's security and espionage agency in the late 1980s. He was arrested in September in a sting operation in which a former FBI agent posing as a member of the Russian spy service asked him to resume spying.

According to a statement of facts filed with his written plea agreement, Boone admitted to FBI agents who arrested him in October to giving Moscow a 400-page manual listing reconnaissance and intelligence-collection systems used by the U.S. military. He also turned over documents on tactical nuclear weapons targeting the Soviet bloc.

He could be sentenced to between 24 and 30 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. U.S. District Judge Albert Bryan Jr. set sentencing for Feb. 26.

A native of Flint, Mich., Boone was living in Germany at the time of his arrest. He was trained in cryptoanalysis and the Russian language and was assigned to a U.S. Army field station in Augsburg, Germany, for three tours from October 1988 through June 1991, when most of his alleged espionage activity occurred, according to court documents.

The Soviets paid Boone $60,000 in several installments beginningin the fall of 1988 for the top-secret documents, according to the documents. The former Army sergeant also worked at the NSA's headquarters at Fort Meade, Md.

Justice for JP Note:

For more precise details of Boone's spying see Washington Post December 1998 article.