FBI Agent Pleads Innocent on Soviet Spying Charges

Earl Edwin Pitts, 43, pleaded innocent Monday in federal court to charges that he sold secrets to Moscow for more than $224,000 between 1987 and 1992, before and after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The 13-year bureau veteran, arrested Dec. 18 after an undercover investigation, is the second FBI agent ever charged with spying. He could get up to life in prison.

Pitts’ trial was set for April 21. Federal law required that a trial take place before the end of February, but defense attorney Nina Ginsberg said Pitts waived his right to a speedy trial because of the volume of evidence.

“I don’t think given the scope of what I expect the evidence to be that that would be sufficient” time to prepare, Ginsberg said.

Prosecutors told her there are more than 5,700 instances of Pitts being taped or observed during FBI surveillance, Ginsberg said.

The FBI has said that during a 16-month investigation it filmed Pitts making illicit copies of secret documents and taped him negotiating his fee with a Russian contact, who actually was cooperating with the bureau.

He is accused of turning over an FBI list of all Soviet officials in the U.S. with their known or suspected posts in Soviet intelligence.

From 1987 to 1989, Pitts was in the FBI’s New York office, assigned to hunt and recruit KGB officers.

Between 1989 and 1992 he worked on top-secret records and personnel security at FBI headquarters in Washington.