1. Ronald William Pelton was a National Security Agency intelligence analyst who was convicted in 1986 of spying for and selling secrets to the Soviet Union.
11 Facts About Ronald Pelton
1. 2.
Ronald Pelton was taught the Russian language by the Air Force and served for a time in the early 1960s in Peshawar, Pakistan, as a voice intercept processing specialist.
3.
Ronald Pelton filed for personal bankruptcy in 1979 and resigned from his $24,500-a-year job with the NSA A Group.
4.
In 1984, Ronald Pelton faced financial difficulties due to increasing homeowners' taxes and a mounting series of necessary repairs on his private residence.
5.
Ronald Pelton contacted the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC, on January 14,1980, and arranged for a meeting at the embassy.
6.
Ronald Pelton was debriefed by KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko and disclosed Operation Ivy Bells, an NSA and United States Navy program to surreptitiously wiretap undersea communication cables to monitor Soviet military communications and track Soviet submarines.
7.
On trips to Vienna in 1980 and 1983, Ronald Pelton stayed at the residence of the Soviet Ambassador to Austria and underwent debriefing sessions that sometimes lasted eight hours a day with KGB officer Anatoly Slavnov.
8.
Ronald Pelton had no classified documents to offer but relied on his memory to provide information.
9.
Therefore, the FBI decided to confront Ronald Pelton directly, playing the tape of his conversation with the Soviet embassy.
10.
Ronald Pelton was tried and convicted of espionage in 1986 and sentenced to three concurrent life sentences plus ten years.
11.
Ronald Pelton died in Frederick, Maryland, on September 6,2022, at the age of 80.