Spy Suspect Was in Divorce Battle, Documents Show

CIA officer and suspected spy Harold J. Nicholson was in the middle of a divorce and custody fight in 1994, at the time the FBI alleges he began receiving money for selling U.S. government secrets to the Russian government, court documents show.

The man, who federal officials say, is the highest-ranking CIA officer charged with espionage was ordered on Aug. 31, 1994, to pay $650 a month from his gross monthly income of $3,418.18 to his wife of 21 years, Laura Sue Nicholson. The order came two months after Nicholson allegedly began spying for cash.

But the judge in Mason County, Wash., also awarded Nicholson, 46, custody of the couple’s three children because his wife, then a full-time student, was “unsettled in her personal growth at this time and not able to provide a stable environment.” Laura Nicholson had returned to school after the couple separated in 1992.

Documents from the lengthy divorce battle and from interviews Tuesday shed new light on the personal life of a suspected spy, who authorities say, caused the most damage to U.S. intelligence since the notorious Aldrich H. Ames two years ago. Nicholson was arrested at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., on Saturday as he prepared to board a flight for Zurich, where investigators alleged, he was to meet with his Russian handlers. He is charged with espionage and conspiracy.

On June 30, 1994, two months before the final divorce order, Nicholson secretly wired $12,000 to his account at the Selco Credit Union in Eugene, according to an FBI affidavit filed in Virginia as part of the case against him. The FBI believes the money was the first payment Nicholson received from Russian intelligence, and thus marked the start of his double life as a spy for Moscow.

Nicholson, an Oregon native who had been serving as the CIA’s deputy station chief in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, wired the money to his Oregon account from Malaysia immediately after meeting with Russian intelligence officials at the Russian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, U.S. officials said.

The Selco Credit Union is a small concern that operates three branches, all in Lane County, Oregon. Alex Pawlowski, a Selco branch manager, said Tuesday that the credit union is primarily for teachers, but also serves some military veterans and federal and municipal employees.

Pawlowski voiced disbelief that the tiny institution would be a repository for espionage payoffs. “The CIA, that’s like the movies, Harrison Ford,” he said. “It’s like someone in the Mafia--you don’t want to know them.”

The attorney for Laura Nicholson, Richard Adamson of Shelton, Wash., said the custody award came “over our vehement objection.” But the judge ordered that Harold Nicholson gain sole custody in 1994, after a two-day court hearing in which he claimed he was better suited to care for the children.

At the time of the final divorce decree, Laura Nicholson, whose last known address was in Corvallis, Ore., had returned to college at her husband’s alma mater of Oregon State University, while her former husband proved himself a polished and believable witness in court.

“He was what trial lawyers call a wind-up witness,” Adamson said. “He did a good job of presenting a good picture of himself.”

In an interview, Adamson said the Nicholsons’ three children would be reunited with Laura Nicholson. The children had been living with their father in Burke, Va. The oldest son, Jeremiah, is 18. Their daughter, Astralena, is 15, and their youngest son, Nathaniel, is 12.

“Her primary concern is getting her kids,” Adamson said. “She is doing an excellent job of holding up. Like any mother, her main concern is with the kids.”

Adamson said he intends to file an application to have the custody order reversed. Harold Nicholson’s divorce attorney could not be reached.

In the custody ruling, Mason County Superior Court Judge Toni Shelton held that “both parents have close relationships with the children and both parents are good parents.”

“The father at this time,” Shelton ruled, “is more able to provide the children with a stable environment and an environment to which they have become accustomed as children of a U.S. government foreign service employee.” A court-appointed guardian at the time argued that Laura Nicholson had taken a “scattered” approach to her plans and was not as able as her husband to care for the children.

The Nicholsons were married in June 1973 in Eugene, shortly after he received a degree in geography from Oregon State.

Nicholson, who had been in the ROTC at Oregon State, entered the Army immediately after college in 1973, serving first in the 101st Airborne Division and later in Army intelligence as a cryptologist based in Japan and at Ft. Ord in California. He rose to the rank of captain before leaving the Army in 1979. He then worked for about a year at Hallmark Cards before being accepted by the CIA in October 1980.

Nicholson’s military and CIA careers were clearly hard on his marriage and family; the court records note that “since the parties married, they have moved at least 19 times.”

In Corvallis, professors in the geography department could not recall Nicholson, but noted that the CIA had recruited from among the school’s geography graduates many times.

“We have quite a few who enter that kind of service where information is accumulated and analyzed,” retired professor Granville Jensen said.

Geography students are schooled in such skills as cartography, remote sensing and satellite imaging, analysis of natural resources and how people relate to their environment. “We have quite a few [graduates] in Central Intelligence,” Jensen said. “It’s a natural [major] for that type of work.”

Nicholson’s parents, who could not be reached Tuesday, lived in the Eugene area until the 1990s. As late as 1990, Nicholson gave his parents’ home address as his own, a common practice among people who live overseas.

Laura Nicholson first contacted Adamson in 1992, after she came to stay with relatives in Mason County. She filed for divorce in June 1992. Her husband was in Virginia at the time, preparing for his posting to Kuala Lumpur.

Nicholson took his children to live with him in Malaysia without his wife, who noted in their custody battle that Nicholson “had to delegate a lot of the child care to a maid and other personnel, due to the demands of his job” in Malaysia.

The stated reason for the divorce was that the marriage was “irretrievably broken.” Adamson said there were no indications of spousal abuse.

Nicholson was ordered to pay the $650 a month for two years. In addition, he was directed to pay $4,062 to settle the division of property, plus $2,000 in attorneys fees.

At the time of the divorce, the couple had relatively few assets--a townhouse in Virginia, a lot worth about $4,000 in Long Beach, Wash., and a time-share. She ended up with the car, a Volkswagen Golf, either a 1991 or 1992 model.

“There was nothing of extraordinary value,” Adamson said.

By this year, Nicholson had a Thai girlfriend, and he notified the CIA in August that he intended to marry her. On Tuesday, the FBI said that it intends to question the woman, as well as Nicholson’s ex-wife, about his alleged espionage activities.

Meantime on Tuesday, the United States lodged a formal protest with Russia over Nicholson and reserved the right to retaliate.

“We’ve already had conversations with Russia,” President Clinton told reporters today in Australia, his first stop on a trip to Asia.

Clinton said Nicholson’s arrest is the outcome of “a tightening of the system” that he ordered after the Aldrich H. Ames spy scandal in 1994. “This arrest comes as a result of the new cooperation that I ordered between the CIA and the FBI,” Clinton said. “I’m glad that it happened and I think that it ought to be a signal that we’re going to continue to do this.”

Times staff writer James Risen in Washington contributed to this story.