Coded Messages Add to Mystery Of a Failed Spy

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: William Knowles <wk () c4i org>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46209-2003Apr27.html

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 28, 2003

Deputies sweeping through the Alexandria jail last fall came across an 
odd-looking collection of papers held together by two toilet paper 
tubes and a pen. They appeared to be written in code.

When the deputies confronted the prisoner in the cell -- Brian P. 
Regan, a former Air Force intelligence analyst with the highest 
security clearance -- he flushed the papers down the toilet.

Less than a month later, the jailers discovered more items Regan 
wasn't supposed to have: a map of a park indicating where items were 
buried and letters to his wife and family accompanied by a page of 
coded numbers and letters interspersed with superscripts.

Regan wrote those letters -- which also were encrypted -- at the 
federal courthouse in Alexandria while preparing to go on trial for 
espionage. In fact, they were written on a computer paid for by the 
same U.S. attorney's office that was prosecuting him.

Some of the FBI's best encryption experts are just now cracking the 
code on those documents and that computer.

"There is probable cause to believe that the documents may contain 
coded messages, which have not yet been decoded," an alarmed federal 
judge said last month in issuing an order sealing those documents 
forever. The documents, the judge said, "may reveal the location of 
classified national security information, which if they reached the 
intended recipients may harm" the country.

The bizarre series of jailhouse incidents, revealed in newly unsealed 
court records, is unexplained and adds to the enduring mystery of 
convicted spy Brian Patrick Regan.

One month after he accepted a life sentence for trying to spy for 
Saddam Hussein, Regan remains, in many ways, the spy who flew under 
the radar. His case never generated the headlines of more storied 
espionage defendants, such as Robert P. Hanssen, and his crimes -- 
trying to sell secrets to Iraq and China but not quite succeeding -- 
seemed almost shabby by comparison. His own attorneys portrayed him as 
an odd and bumbling loner, an impression shared by some of his 
co-workers at the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly.

Yet those same workers say Regan was much smarter than he appeared. 
And as federal agents debrief Regan in prison, they are still 
assessing the damage he caused -- and could have caused -- to national 
security.

"It was a very serious case," said Van Harp, head of the FBI's 
Washington Field Office, whose agents investigated Regan.

Jonathan Shapiro, one of Regan's defense attorneys, characterized 
Regan's espionage as "never anything more than an attempt, which was 
doomed to failure from the start." He called the concerns about 
Regan's behavior in jail "much ado about nothing."

U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty, whose office prosecuted the case, 
cautions that while "Regan's actions were extremely serious and 
potentially very damaging, this is a case of the attempt to engage in 
espionage."

Yet McNulty's own prosecutors have said in court documents that they 
suspect Regan removed "far more" than the 800 pages of classified 
documents he admits stealing and that he may have buried documents at 
a variety of secret locations. And everyone from the FBI's 
cryptanalysis group to other intelligence agencies are only now 
breaking the code in the letters found in Regan's cell and on some of 
the documents Regan was carrying in a fan-shaped folder when he was 
arrested in August 2001. The government has learned enough to say that 
the letters to Regan's family refer to "buried items."

Where those items are buried and what they might contain remain a 
mystery. Since Regan's security clearance was above top secret, the 
range of sensitive materials he had access to is breathtaking, 
officials say.

Adding to the mystery of what is the question of why. Why would a 
father of four from suburban Maryland, a military lifer who enlisted 
right out of high school, betray the country he served for two 
decades?

Clues can be found in the trial testimony, where prosecutors said 
Regan faced more than $100,000 in debt and defense attorneys called 
him a James Bond wannabe with an active fantasy life. Former 
co-workers and neighbors add another element, describing a reclusive 
man who complained frequently about his job and station in life.

Those explanations don't quite work for some. "What was the ultimate 
motivation here?" said one law enforcement official. "That's still not 
known."

Even his wife is at a loss. "I don't know anything about this. I never 
did," Anette Regan said in a brief interview in the toy-strewn yard of 
the small brick house in Bowie where she is now raising the couple's 
four children alone.

"I can't even talk to him about it when I visit him," she said. Anette 
Regan was under investigation for obstruction of justice for allegedly 
helping Regan cover up his actions. The government agreed not to 
prosecute her if Regan accepted the life sentence and cooperated.

"I don't think the investigating in this case is over," she said 
before cryptically adding that more "digging" needed to be done.

Regan, 40, was convicted in February of trying to sell classified 
documents to Iraq and China and of gathering national defense 
information. He was acquitted of trying to spy for Libya.

Prosecutors argued all along that Regan had done major damage to 
national security and tried to make him the first espionage defendant 
executed in the United States in half a century. Defense attorneys 
objected to the death penalty, saying that more renowned spies, such 
as the FBI's Hanssen and the CIA's Harold J. Nicholson, did not face 
execution even though they committed actual espionage.

The jury determined that Regan's crimes did not rise to a capital 
offense. In a sudden deal with prosecutors, Regan agreed to the life 
term last month. Speaking in a hushed voice, he told U.S. District 
Judge Gerald Bruce Lee that he was accepting the sentence, with no 
chance of parole, to stop the government from prosecuting his wife.

Regan, who also told the judge he was taking antipsychotic medication 
and Prozac for depression, said he had not discussed his decision with 
Anette.

Little is known about the imprisoned spy. Born in Queens, N.Y., Regan 
enlisted in the Air Force in August 1980 and served until he retired 
Aug. 31, 2000. 

 From 1991 to 1994, Regan was assigned to the Air Force Intelligence 
Support Group at the Pentagon. A former colleague recalls his 
complaining about everything from his job to his work hours. "He 
thought he wasn't being appreciated," this former co-worker said.

Regan hinted at the dissatisfaction in a letter he would later write 
to Hussein that was featured prominently at his trial. "I feel that I 
deserve more than the small pension I will receive for all of the 
years of service," he wrote in seeking $13 million for highly 
classified information. "There are many people from movie stars to 
athletes in the U.S. who are receiving tens of millions of dollars a 
year for their trivial contributions."

As a career noncommissioned officer, the highest rank Regan could have 
achieved was chief master sergeant. He never rose above master 
sergeant, two levels below that. Regan's final Air Force salary was 
about $50,000 a year, including a housing allowance.

In 1993, the Regans spent $115,900 on the house in Bowie, property 
records show. Neighbors describe Brian Regan as a loner who was 
frequently away on business. "He was not one of those handy-dandy kind 
of guys who would come out and help when it snowed," said one 
neighbor, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Colleagues at the National Reconnaissance Office, where Regan began 
working in 1995, recall a similarly quiet demeanor. Regan and his 
family rarely socialized. He spent most of his after-hours energy 
weightlifting at the office gym.

"He was this big lumbering guy, and he didn't open his mouth a lot," a 
colleague said.

But that wasn't the whole story. One day when Regan spoke in front of 
a large group, "he really knew his stuff, and the way he was talking, 
I suddenly realized he was smarter than this image he gave off," the 
colleague said. "He was like two different guys."

At the NRO, which oversees operation and construction of the nation's 
reconnaissance satellites, Regan's specialty was signals intelligence 
-- analyzing radio frequencies and other signals emitted from enemy 
radar or surface-to-air missiles and helping U.S. forces evade them. 
With the highest security clearance -- top secret plus an additional 
level of clearance known as Sensitive Compartmented Information -- 
Regan had access to details about everything from nuclear weapons and 
early warning systems to chemical and biological weapons facilities. 
In his letter to Hussein, Regan bragged that he could see documents 
from every U.S. intelligence agency, which was confirmed by law 
enforcement sources.

After his retirement from the Air Force, Regan was hired by defense 
contractor TRW Inc. and resumed work for it at the reconnaissance 
office July 30, 2001. By that time, the FBI had started daily 
surveillance, according to trial testimony.

Regan drew the attention of investigators after the United States 
learned that an unnamed country had obtained classified U.S. documents 
and that officials from that country had received encrypted messages 
telling them to contact a free e-mail account under the name "Steve 
Jacobs." FBI agents determined that the Jacobs account had been 
accessed from public libraries in Crofton, Falls Church and Prince 
George's County. The two Maryland libraries are within five miles of 
Regan's home; the Falls Church library was on his commuting route.

In August 2001, Regan was arrested at Dulles International Airport as 
he boarded a plane to Switzerland. He was carrying the encrypted 
coordinates for a Chinese missile site and an Iraqi surface-to-air 
missile site, along with the phone numbers of Iraqi and Chinese 
embassies in Europe.

Last month, Judge Lee allowed the government to view the copied 
contents of Regan's hard drive and said the letters to his wife and 
children and the coded document must be sealed forever.

Officials would not say what else has been found on Regan's hard drive 
and whether any wayward classified information has been located.

Regan and the FBI are now locked in the painstaking debriefing 
process. Even that has been difficult. "It's a challenge to get the 
information. It doesn't just come flowing forth," one government 
official said. "You are asking someone who is removed in terms of time 
sequence from that part of his life, and he has to recall things. . . 
. But over time, it works out." 


 
*==============================================================*
"Communications without intelligence is noise;  Intelligence
without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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