White, Josh. "Translator Who Faked Identity Pleads Guilty To Having Secret Data." Washington Post, 15 Feb. 2007, A3. [http://www.washingtonpost.com]1. "Abu Hakim" (and other aliases)
2. Amerasia Case
3. Michael Allen
4. Carlos Alvarez
White, Josh. "Translator Who Faked Identity Pleads Guilty To Having Secret Data." Washington Post, 15 Feb. 2007, A3. [http://www.washingtonpost.com]
"An Arabic translator who used an assumed identity to get work as a contractor for the U.S. Army in Iraq pleaded guilty" on 14 February 2007 in federal court in New York to "charges of possessing classified national defense documents.... Authorities said ... that they do not even know the translator's real name." They referred "to him in court documents under several of his aliases, including 'Abu Hakim' and 'Abdulhakeem Nour.'" He was an employee with secret and top-secret clearances with the "Titan Corp., which supplied translators to the U.S. military to aid in fighting the war in Iraq."
In 1945, six people, including three government employees, involved in producing or supplying information to the magazine Amerasia were arrested and accused of espionage on behalf of the Chinese Communists. Two of the accused eventually plea bargained convictions for unauthorized possession of government documents and were fined; the others, including John Stewart Service, were cleared. See Petersen, p. 182, for materials on this case from the 1950s-1970s.
De
Toledano, Ralph. Spies, Dupes, and Diplomats. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1967.
Wilcox: "Special emphasis on the 'Amerasia' case and John Stewart Service, suspected Red spy."
George, Willis. Surreptitious
Entry. New York: Appleton-Century, 1946.
Disgruntled second-story man for OSS and ONI tells all.
Constantinides sees the book as "a good handbook on clandestine techniques of entry ... and on surveillance.... George headed the OSS team that made entry into Amerasia's offices."
Klehr,
Harvey, and Ronald Radosh. The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,1996.
Unsinger, IJI&C 10.2, notes that Klehr and Radosh "supply "an expanded view of the familiar case, made possible by greater access to the documents of the period."
For Schmitt, APSR 91.3, this is "the most definitive account to date of both the case itself and its place in the domestic political turmoil over anticommunism which followed." The book's focus really is not espionage, but the authors "provide a good if somewhat untidy overview of the intelligence and counterintelligence aspects of the case."
Wannell, WIR 15.4, finds the book to be a "very readable and understandable" presentation of a complicated case. The book both explains the Amerasia case itself and portrays its aftermath, including "two highly politicized congressional hearings."
Michael Allen, "a retired naval senior chief radioman, was arrested for selling classified information in 1986. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to eight years in prison, a fine of $10,000, and forfeiture of his retirement pay." Watson, et al, eds., United States Intelligence, p. 16.
4. Carlos Alvarez
Weaver, Jay. "FIU Couple Plead Guilty in Cuba Spy Case." Miami Herald, 19 Dec. 2006. [http://www.miami.com]
"[F]ormer Florida International University [FIU] professor Carlos Alvarez pleaded guilty [on 19 December 2006] to conspiring to be an unregistered agent who informed on the Cuban exile community for the communist government of Fidel Castro. His wife, Elsa, an FIU counselor on leave, also pleaded guilty in Miami federal court to being aware of his illegal activity, harboring him and failing to disclose it to authorities.... The plea agreements ... mean that Carlos Alvarez faces up to five years in prison and his wife, Elsa, up to three years at their sentencing," which is set for 27 February 2007. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Axelrod "said Carlos Alvarez's involvement with the Cuba intelligence service began in 1977, noting he gathered information in Miami 'on prominent people, community attitudes, political developments and current events of interest to the Cuban government.'"
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