Alleged Mole to Plead Not Guilty

Harold J. Nicholson will plead not guilty to allegations that he spied for the Russians and is “going to fight the charges strenuously,” the career CIA officer’s attorney said Wednesday.

Defense lawyer Jonathan Shapiro disclosed the intended plea after a court hearing in nearby Alexandria, Va. Nicholson probably will enter the plea at a detention hearing Monday.

Nicholson was arrested by the FBI on Saturday and charged with betraying American spies in Russia and passing along to Moscow a wide range of top-secret information. The FBI asserted that he began receiving the first of $120,000 from his Russian contacts in 1994, when he was in the midst of a divorce and child custody fight.

Nicholson, 46, appeared in court wearing loose-fitting, olive-drab prison fatigues with “Alexandria Jail” stenciled on the back. The father of three showed no emotion and did not speak aloud during the 30-minute session, although he occasionally whispered to Shapiro.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Rawles Jones Jr. agreed to defense requests to appoint a second lawyer to help defend Nicholson. Jones also said he would consider approving “a short-term budget” to finance investigative work by the defense team.

Jones, however, put off ruling on Shapiro’s request to obtain a CIA tape recording of a lie-detector test that the agency gave Nicholson last year in which the defendant allegedly showed some deception.

The judge also postponed ruling on Shapiro’s request for government funds to enable supporters of Nicholson to travel from Oregon, his home state, next week to testify at his bail hearing.

“Certainly the defendant has no funds that he can use to pay their travel expenses,” Shapiro said of witnesses who may want to testify for Nicholson’s integrity or put up collateral for a possible bond.

Jones told Shapiro, who was appointed by the court earlier this week to defend Nicholson, that he would consider government reimbursement of expenses only after they were incurred.

Asked later to describe his client’s mood, Shapiro told reporters: “He’s distressed--he’s quite distressed about his children,” who range in age from 12 to 18.

Nicholson’s former wife, who has changed her name since the divorce, from Laura Sue Nicholson to Al-Aura Jusme, is planning to seek custody of the children. Since Nicholson’s arrest, the children have stayed with relatives in the Washington area.

The highest-ranking CIA officer ever charged with espionage, Nicholson was the agency’s station chief in Bucharest from 1990 to 1992 and later served as deputy station chief in Malaysia from 1992 to 1994, allegedly going on the Russian payroll near the conclusion of that assignment.

In more recent years, he trained CIA spies for overseas duty, a position that gave him “access to biographic information and assignments for every CIA case officer trained during his two-year tenure” at the agency’s Camp Peary, Va., training site, according to an FBI affidavit.

Nicholson is suspected of having compromised the identities of many of these agents, putting their lives in danger, as well as disclosing to the Russians the names of many U.S. and foreign business people who have cooperated with the CIA.

Authorities have said Nicholson passed along “a significant amount of classified information” to the Russians, although they said the severity of damage to national security still is being analyzed and will not be known for months.

Officials stressed, however, that the damage is not believed to be nearly as great as that caused by Aldrich H. Ames, the CIA mole arrested two years ago--shortly before Nicholson allegedly began his spying--who is now serving a sentence of life imprisonment.

CIA Director John M. Deutch sought to minimize the damage Wednesday to American and other business travelers who occasionally have assisted his agency.

“I don’t think that business is at any great jeopardy here,” Deutch said in a CNN television interview. “I think that this will be quite easily managed for U.S. business and other businesses.”

But Deutch said Nicholson’s conduct has had “a pronouncedly negative effect” on morale at the agency.