DATE: Saturday, March 1, 1997               TAG: 9703010379

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS

DATELINE: ALEXANDRIA                        LENGTH:   76 lines

FBI OFFICIAL ADMITS SPYING FOR RUSSIA

FBI supervisor Earl Pitts pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring and attempting to sell classified secrets to Russia and the former Soviet Union, and a former CIA station chief is expected to plead guilty Monday to spying for Russia.

Pitts, only the second FBI agent ever accused of spying, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit espionage and a second count of attempting to commit espionage in what his attorney said was an effort to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison.

The 43-year-old former FBI counterspy had been charged in 12 counts with accepting more than $224,000 from Moscow for U.S. secrets from 1987 to 1992.

At a news conference after Pitts' hearing, U.S. Attorney Helen Fahey announced, ``We anticipate there will be a guilty plea by (CIA officer Harold) Nicholson on Monday morning.'' She said Nicholson will plead guilty to espionage. His lawyers declined comment.

Nicholson is charged in a three-count indictment with selling secrets to Moscow since 1994 for more than $180,000. But Fahey would not disclose any details of his reported agreement to plead guilty. Nicholson earlier had pleaded not guilty, and his trial was set to begin April 14. Nicholson also faced a top penalty of life in prison. Prosecutors have said they believed that because he was most recently assigned to the CIA's training facility, that Nicholson gave the Soviets the identities of the most recent two years' worth of CIA recruits. That would have limited their ability to be assigned covertly overseas.

Pitts stood at the podium for 40 minutes while U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis questioned him about his plea. In pleading to conspiracy, Pitts said, ``I provided information I believed to be classified to persons I believed to be agents of the USSR and later to persons I believed to be agents of the Russian federation.''

The conspiracy count covered his actions dating back to 1987.

At one point during the plea session, Ellis asked Pitts if had ``an emergency escape plan to flee the country.''

``No, I had no escape plan even though I communicated that to people who were involved,'' he replied.

Pitts also pleaded guilty to a count of attempted espionage in October 1996 when he was dealing with FBI undercover agents he thought were Russian spies. Pitts told the court, ``I delivered a booklet which was marked `Secret' in a sealed envelope to a prearranged drop point where it would be picked up by people I believed to be agents of the Russian government.''

Prosecutors said the document was classified secret, dated September 1989 and titled, ``Counterintelligence Techniques: Identifying an Intelligence Officer.''

Prosecutor Randy Bellows said the document contained ``methodology that remains current today and identifies sources of information that remain secret today.''

Pitts also agreed to forfeit any profits he might make from the sale of his life story for books and movies. He could be sentenced on the two counts to a maximum sentence of two life terms in prison without parole and fined up to $500,000.

Fahey said the plea negotiations with Pitts began after the FBI concluded that it could not prove that he had turned over top-secret information.

In an interview, Assistant FBI Director Thomas Pickard said Pitt had an incentive to plead guilty now because ``he had to worry that someone would come over from Russia defecting and give us the data to show that Pitts deserved a death penalty. We still don't know everything he gave up between 1987 and 1992.''

The death penalty can be sought if espionage costs lives or if certain nuclear or satellite secrets are disclosed.

Pitts' case was the third major Russian spy case since 1994, when CIA officer Aldrich Ames pleaded guilty to spying that has been blamed for the deaths of 10 Western agents.

The only FBI agent previously charged with spying was Richard W. Miller, a Los Angeles agent arrested in 1984. Miller was ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison. ILLUSTRATION: FBI supervisor Earl Pitts is only the second agent

ever accused of spying. Another agent is expected to plead guilty.

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