Suspected CIA Traitor Pleads Not Guilty

Accused CIA spy Harold James Nicholson, entering a formal plea of not guilty to charges of espionage, will face trial March 10, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Before that date, however, Nicholson’s court-appointed attorneys must be given security clearances to study hundreds of classified documents that could figure in his case.

Because granting these clearances and access to sensitive records is a slow process, some legal experts said the March court date may have to be pushed back.

U.S. District Judge James Cacheris, who accepted Nicholson’s plea in his Alexandria, Va., courtroom, also approved a gag order restricting further public statements by the government and defense.

Nicholson’s chief lawyer, Jonathan Shapiro, sought the order, complaining that he was “shocked at the daily deluge of extraordinarily prejudicial comment, speculation and innuendo coming from the mouths of high law enforcement officials.”

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Shapiro said CIA Director John M. Deutch and others who have given televised interviews “seem bent on putting the best spin possible on their embarrassment about alleged security breaches at the CIA so close on the heels of the [Aldrich H.] Ames case.”

He was referring to the agency’s most damaging mole, Ames, whose celebrated arrest and guilty plea in 1994 occurred two months before Nicholson is charged with initiating his own spying for Russia.

Ames betrayed up to a dozen valuable CIA Russian contacts, most of whom were subsequently executed by Moscow. He provided their identities and additional sensitive data to his Russian handlers over nine years in return for more than $2 million.

Nicholson’s espionage lasted only about two years before his detection, an activity for which he was paid $180,000, according to FBI charges. He mainly compromised some American and foreign business contacts in Moscow and fingered new CIA agents he had helped train, an FBI affidavit says.

Standing before Judge Cacheris in loose-fitting prison coveralls, the 46-year-old defendant answered “not guilty” in a firm voice when asked how he pleaded. He responded “yes” and “yes, I do” to a series of questions about whether he understood his legal rights.

His plea came two days after U.S. Magistrate Thomas Rawles Jones Jr. denied his request to be released on bond. Jones said Nicholson, a 16-year CIA veteran, posed a risk of flight, and may possess other information he could transmit to Moscow.

Meanwhile, responding to FBI charges that Nicholson had concealed $61,000 in a Zurich bank account, Swiss authorities said they have frozen the account.

Peter Lehmann, a spokesman for the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office, told the Associated Press that Nicholson is the subject of their own investigation on grounds he may have violated Switzerland’s espionage law through contacts with Russian agents.

Nicholson, if convicted of U.S. espionage, faces as much as a life term in prison. Officials predicted the Swiss investigation will mainly result in a tug-of-war over which country has the right to seize his bank account.