Credit Card Debt Is Cited in Spy Trial

An FBI agent testified Thursday that Brian Patrick Regan had run up credit card debt of almost $117,000, which prosecutors say provided a financial incentive for the retired Air Force master sergeant to offer to sell classified information to Iraq, Libya and China.

Prosecutors have said Regan planned to offer Iraqi President Saddam Hussein secret details about American satellite surveillance that could help Iraq hide its anti-aircraft missiles for $13 million in Swiss francs. He also is accused of plotting to sell similar information to China and Libya.

Special agent Laura Pino, a former accountant, said the Regans owed $116,902 on their credit cards. The credit card debt was rising faster than Regan’s salary, and he either made the minimum payment or transferred balances from one card to another, she said.

But defense attorney Jonathan Shapiro said some debt was college tuition that predated the FBI’s analysis, which looked at records from 1997. And he said Regan’s new job at defense contractor TRW, which would pay him more than $60,000, plus his Air Force pension and the fact that his wife was studying to become a nurse, would reverse the family’s financial fortunes.

Pino concluded the government’s first week of testimony against Regan, 40, who worked at the National Reconnaissance Office, a government spy agency, for the Air Force and then for TRW.

He has pleaded not guilty to attempted espionage. If convicted, he could be the first American executed for spying since 1953, when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death after being convicted of conspiring to steal U.S. atomic secrets for the Soviet Union.