According to the report, the CIA operative could defect abroad after his release

A CIA operative arrested years ago for espionage is finally about to be released from prison and many expect him to flee to Russia.

(Video Credit: LockDown Documentaries)

Harold ‘Jim’ Nicholson was a career spy at the Central Intelligence Agency. He had practiced his trade for 16 years and was a single father.

The fellow who finally nailed Nicholson was John Maguire, a former Baltimore cop. He was summoned from abroad to take the job which he accepted after a secret meeting in Langley.

“There, in an FBI safe house in an unprecedented collaboration between spy-catching agencies, he learned the details of the question: Someone at the CIA was withholding secrets from the Russians. Nicholson was the likely culprit . Maguire had to get Nicholson to hire him as his right-hand man, spy on him from his own department, and then plant evidence so they could lock Nicholson up for treason.” The Independent reported

In 1996, Maguire sided with the suspected spy, working alongside him.

“There were times when I just wanted to stab him in the neck at his desk and say, ‘Shit, he’s dead.’ Is over. Here,” Maguire told The Independent in an interview.

The spy, now retired, did not give in to his impulse. Within months, a spy would catch a spy at Langley.

“After more than two decades behind bars, Nicholson will be released from prison on November 26. In 1997 he was sentenced to 23 years and 7 months for conspiracy to commit espionage, one of the highest-ranking CIA officers ever convicted of this crime. But the spy wasn’t done; from prison, he tricked his youngest son, a twenty-year-old boy who adored his father and for a long time believed he had been framed, to continue his treacherous relationship with the Russians,” noted The Independent.

Shit, what an idiot and a POS. He remained connected to Russia while in prison and also implicated his son.

— erin (@erinschlick) June 5, 2022

Father and son were captured and convicted. The son took a plea deal and avoided jail time. His father received eight more years and was transferred from a facility in Oregon to Supermax in Colorado.

“Jim Nicholson was what they call a double hitter: there was his first crime, for which he was caught, he went to prison, and then from prison he organized his second,” the author said Bryan Denson, who wrote “Son of the Spy.” The Independent

Nicholson will walk free right after Thanksgiving. He will be 73 years old. Maguire is sure the convicted traitor will “get away.”

“It’s not going to stay here,” Maguire stated. “He’ll be leaving in a couple of weeks.”

Denson also said Nicholson’s next steps remain “a big question for me.”

“Is it that the Russians catch him and he goes back to Moscow, where the money is waiting for him?” he reflected. “Or does he stay here and do what’s good for his family?”

Nicholson worked in military intelligence. He left the military in 1979 and ended up with the CIA.

As he held various positions abroad, his marriage faltered and his ambition grew.

The Independent pointed to his flip to the other side:

Two years later, Nicholson walked into the Russian embassy in Kuala Lumpur, where the CIA was stationed under the impression that he was trying to recruit its intelligence chief. Instead, the veteran operative offered his own services to the SVR (Russia’s foreign intelligence department that preceded the KGB) for payment, just weeks after notorious CIA cover-up Ames was sentenced to prison life without the possibility of parole.

Denson wrote in his book, “he thought that with Ames out of the way, the SVR might be in the market for another highly paid mole within the CIA.”

Nicholson would play as a double agent for over a decade before his downfall.

In 1996, the CIA realized they had a mole in their midst and had to get him out. That’s when Maguire entered the picture.

“You’ve got to catch this bastard within a year; we can’t afford to wait five years,” Maguire claims a superior told him. “You’ve got to catch him doing something.”

Maguire was patient and methodical. Catching a spy isn’t what it looks like in the movies. You can’t afford to be wrong.

“Nicholson’s MO included targeting junior officers and gathering background information on them to share with the Russians, so they would be vulnerable to being convinced to share information later on overseas missions,” he said. write The Independent.

“He was a smart guy and a mercenary son of an ab*tch because he didn’t care what happened to them with those kids, those young officers… they’re working for a guy who created a target package for them because they can be approached. later in their careers,” Maquire explained. “I’ve never seen that before.”

Maguire’s chance came during lunch at Georgetown with Nicholson in October 1996:

He had a six-pack of beer on the floor of his car, and I’m drinking beer in his car on the way back to the building; we’re driving through rural Virginia and I say, “Are you lost?” And he says, “No, no, no, and there’s a place out here, this is one of the days when they put out unique stamp series.”

Maguire notified the FBI that his boss was preparing “to do something operational.”

“They just bet the farm that night and they had a lot of manpower deployed and ready,” Maguire stated during the interview.

“And sure enough, he went out late at night, he left the house, he left his kids home alone and he went out … and he was actually caught in the act sending something, and then this was the stamp he bought, and he licked it, so there was DNA, and he dropped it in the mailbox, and before the sun came up, that thing was processed and into the evidence system, and then the actual postcard went back to the mailbox and went to the overseas address and established a direct link. to the KGB,” he commented.

Nicholson was arrested and sentenced in June 1997 to nearly 24 years in prison.

OTD On June 5, 1997, CIA officer Harold “Jim” Nicholson was convicted of selling US intelligence to Russia for $300,000. Sentenced to 23 years and 7 months in prison. pic.twitter.com/VAq2KIaivd

— SPIES&VESPERS (@SpiesVespers) June 5, 2022

Terresa Monroe-Hamilton is a constitutional conservative who researches and writes extensively on politics and current affairs.

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