Bryan Denson - The Spys Son: The True Story of the Highest-Ranking CIA Officer Ever Convicted of Espionage and the Son He Trained to Spy for Russia

The True Story of the Highest-Ranking CIA
Officer Ever Convicted of Espionage and
the Son He Trained to Spy for Russia

Bryan Denson

Atlantic Monthly Press

New York

Copyright 2015 by Bryan Denson

Jacket design by Royce M. Becker

Author photograph Beth Nakamura

The author owes a great debt of thanks to The Oregonian , which published The Spys Kid story in its original form in May 2011.

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Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-8021-2358-9

eISBN 978-0-8021-9131-1

Atlantic Monthly Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

In memory of my father,
Kenneth Earl Denson,

and dedicated to Holden Miles Denson,

my son, my wingman, my pride and joy

I used to advertise my loyalty and I dont believe there is a single person I loved that I didnt eventually betray.

Albert Camus, The Fall

Contents

Suspected Spies in Chains

Hola Nancy

First CIA Tour, Manila Station

Batman Switches Teams

A New Counterspy Collaboration

We Have Another Aldrich Ames

Spy vs. Spy Under Langleys Roof

FBI Takedown at Dulles

Forsaken All Allegiance to His Homeland

A New Cellblock Celebrity

A Fall into Blackness

The Russian Consulate, San Francisco

A Spy Named George

Faith, Prosperity, and The Door

CIA Detects Codes, Espionage, Again

Keep Looking Through Your New Eyes

FBI Offers a Mulligan

Inmate 734520

A Spy Swap and Reparations

The Last Asset

Prologue

Suspected Spies in Chains

Portland, Oregon, January 29, 2009

Im sitting in Satans Pew, the name Ive conferred upon the torturously narrow courtroom benches in the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse. As I squirm in my seat, reporters notebook dandling on my lap, I notice a curiously high number of deputy U.S. marshals in the gallery, mostly buff guys with steely gazes and Glocks under their sports coats. Behind me, wearing blazers and striped clip-on ties, stands a knot of court security officers. Next to them, FBI agents squeeze together on a bench against the back wall. I havent witnessed court security this tight since the feds rolled up Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and hauled him before a judge in Helena, Montana. A courthouse contact has already tipped me that today Ill witness something groundbreaking here in the cheap seats of American justice.

Keys jangle behind a paneled wall to my right, where I can hear the clank of a metal door. Deputy marshals are queuing todays prisoners, who will appear one by one to face their charges before a magistrate judge. The weekday parade of pathos, known to courthouse denizens as Mag Court, normally features a tedious cast of freshly arrested miscreants, some scratching from withdrawal. Now and again the show comes alive with stone killers, cops gone bad, diamond thieves, outlaw bikers, cockfighting impresarios, ecoterrorists, grave robbers, or the corner-cutting captains of industry.

On this foggy Thursday afternoon, Ive come to write about two suspectsan international spy, and the son who joined him in the family business of espionage.

My editors at The Oregonian , the daily newspaper several blocks away, are holding space on the front page for my father-son spy story. But the duowhose names Id never heard until this morningwill be arraigned separately, consigning me to a hellish deadline. I look at my watch and silently curse the docket gods. A hapless bunch of schnooks are scheduled ahead of my spy suspects, and the judge will take her good old time reading them their rights.

First up today is an accused scam artist from California who sold central home vacuum cleaning units across North America; apparently he was brilliant at sales and collecting money, but not at delivering the goods. Now comes another genius, a career bank robber arrested yesterday just twenty-one minutes after knocking off a Bank of America for a lousy $700; hes already calculating how much time hell serve in prison. Up next is a guy who drank himself stupid out on the Umatilla Indian Reservation and threw some playful karate kicks at a buddy, who hurled him to the ground, whereupon Junior Jackie Chan blew a gasket, picked up two knives, and stabbed his pal nearly to death. Then come two men accused of illegally harboring a luckless El Salvadoran woman; she turned up, like so many, on the wrong side of the U.S. border.

Todays guest of honor is Harold James Jim Nicholson, who in 1997 became the highest-ranking Central Intelligence Agency officer ever convicted of espionage. Nicholson, serving time at the federal prison fifty miles from where I sit, sold the identities of hundreds of CIA trainees to Russian spies. Now hes accused of betraying his country againthis time from behind bars. The Rolex-wearing spy nicknamed Batman, having recruited countless foreign assets to betray their own countries for the CIA, is suspected of sending the Russians his youngest son, twenty-four-year-old Nathaniel James Nicholson, as his emissary. Nathan, a partially disabled Army veteran, took basic lessons in spycraft from the old man, then smuggled his dads secret messages out of the prison visiting room to Russian spies on three continents. For the trophy-conscious FBI, securing another conviction against Jim Nicholson would be a major prize.

A heavy door swings open, and here he is.

Jim wears a khaki prison uniform and a faded T-shirt the color of broiled salmon. His pale blue eyes sweep the room with an expression that shifts abruptly, as if hed expected something grander than this feckless rabble of court staffers, lawyers, and a few scribbling journalists. Jim moves for the defense table with the short-step shuffle of a man who knows the sting of a jaunty stride in ankle chains. He eases into a high-back chair. Jim sports a soul patch and mustache, gray hair sweeping over the tops of his ears. I take a mental note. This guy would look right at home playing tenor sax in a jazz quartet.

Ive gazed at hundreds and hundreds of suspected felons in courtrooms across the country, but Jim Nicholson carries himself differently. Hes not eye-fucking the prosecutors or sneaking glances into the gallery for a friendly face. Theres no swagger, no tapping foot, no nervous smile that might offer some kind of tell. The man doesnt even appear to be breathing. He wears an expression of captive resignation, like a golfer on a tee box watching the foursome in front of him swat cattails in search of a lost ball.