His name is Frank Arnold Nesbitt, and his act of espionage for which he was sentenced on this date, April 27, 1990, serves to evidence insider threat realities of the last century which continue to have applicability in 2023. Nesbitt passed Top Secret information to the Soviet Union.
Nesbitt told the Washington Post in 1989 that he served in the Air Force Electronic Security Command from 1963 to 1966, specializing in communications. He then attended Eastern Oregon College for two years and worked as a deputy sheriff. In 1969 he enlisted in the Marine Corps, where he served as a “communications intercept” officer until 1979. He continued how he had a Top-Secret clearance during both of his military sojourns. In 1983 he obtained a position in Los Alamos, where he claimed he worked in non-classified positions, while awaiting his security Top Secret clearance, which was granted right before he quit after 18 months in 1984, citing a conflict with a supervisor as his rationale for exiting.
There are several variations on Nesbitt’s perfidy and whether he was a source of the Soviet Union during his military years. It appears that his engagement with the Soviet Union’s intelligence services post-dates his military service years and his time at Los Alamos. Indeed, Nesbitt was working in Memphis, Tennessee for the law firm of Waring Cox as a computer systems manager. When he inexplicably decided in June 1989 his life was boring.
Nesbitt wants excitement
He made his own excitement. He walked out of his job, and left Waring Cox high and dry. He did the same to his spouse of 11 years. He left her a note, attached to a weed-whacker, which said, “I’m gone. Don’t look for me.”
Over the course of six months, Nesbitt traveled first to Belize, then on to Guatemala, and next to Sucre, Bolivia where he apparently serendipitously encountered, Fedor M. Timofeev, a Soviet intelligence officer on September 6, 1989. Timofeev digested Nesbitt’s tale and then fed Nesbitt’s desire for adventure.
He shuttled Nesbitt on to La Paz, where at the Soviet embassy he secured Nesbitt’s cooperation to act as clandestine agent of the Soviet Union. Nesbitt filled out an application for Soviet citizenship and agreed to an arrangement which would provide to him $50,000-$100,000 for his “long-term cooperation.” Specifically, according to Nesbitt, the KGB wanted him to allegedly funnel secrets from Los Alamos to the KGB.
Soviets Union assess Nesbitt
With the potential of being able to direct Nesbitt to acquire a position within Los Alamos, the Soviet’s wasted no time at trying to determine if Nesbitt was a controlled-dangle (as offensive double-agent operations are not uncommon) or an individual who fell into their lap. The indictment tells us that Nesbitt was given a plane tickets which took him to Peru, Cuba, Ireland and then on to Moscow.
In Moscow he was shuttled to an apartment (safe house) where from memory he passed along “defense-related information” many dozen pages worth of information. Not information he had squirreled away in hard copy, rather, information he squirreled away in his memory. (If this conures up memory of Ana Belen Montes it should, she used the same technique to provide defense secrets to the Cubans.)
The KGB debriefed Nesbitt over the course of 11 days, during which he was given the equivalent of a single-scope polygraph which focused on their counterintelligence concerns – was or wasn’t Nesbitt under the control of the United States or any other entity and being targeted against the Soviets. They determined he wasn’t under anyone’s control and then moved to place him under their control. They gave him $2,000 and promised many more thousands. He was given a plane ticket to Jamaica and from there he eventually returned to the United States in October 1989.
Nesbitt wants to be a double agent for the FBI
Upon his return, whether he got cold feet or decided he needed even more excitement, he reached out to the FBI and was met by the FBI in a Tysons Corner, VA-hotel, where he offered his services as a “double-agent.” He did not like the way he was treated by the FBI and reached out to the Washington Post. On October 13, the Post interviewed/debriefed Nesbitt and reserved a room in his hotel to continue the interviews over the weekend. Those interviews didn’t happen. Nesbitt was arrested the next day by the FBI, who had confirmed the information he recalled from memory remained classified, and thus he was charged with sharing classified information with the Soviet Union.
Initially he pleaded innocent to the charges and then adjusted his plea to “guilty.”
On April 27, 1990, he was sentenced to 10 years in a psychiatric treatment facility within the federal prison system. He was released in 1998.
And what about his application for Soviet citizenship? Apparently a Soviet foreign ministry spokesman said at that time that he was denied citizenship because a check of his background uncovered his “possible connection to the underworld.”
