Become a traitor . Its just unbelievable. He committed espionage on the behalf of a hostile country and used people like poker chips. I dont know how you do that if you have a conscience. As a former fbi agent and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee i had oversight of all 16 of our nations intelligence agencies. My name is mike rogers. I have access to classified information gathered by our operatives. People who risked everything for the United States and our families. You dont know their faces or their names. You dont know the real stories from the people who live the fear and the pressure until now. There is no doubt in washington tonight this is an intelligence disaster. Cia director james woelsey faced an audience of congressmen anxious to know why it took nine years to learn ames was working for the kgb. When the ames case broke open, that was a water shed event. We had a high ranking case officer working for an extended period of time for the russians inside the building. For the agency that triggered an introspective moment on how did this happen . For many years we didnt believe it was possible. That myth was shattered. I felt a lot of anger because i knew what james had access to. I know there are eight to 10 agents executed as a result of information. One was one i was directly involved with. There was a great deal of anger in the Senate Intelligence community. The cia, they wanted to find them themselves but finally he had already done most of the damage. The ames case is perhaps the most graphic and vivid example of the need to make structural changes in the operation of our Intelligence Community. When alder james was arrested, we knew he did significant damage to the Intelligence Community and we had other cases he was not involved in that went bad. You assume at that point that somebody else is trying to steal secret information and give it to the russians. And this is not a one off event and weve got to make sure if theres anymore we have to find them. As soon as ames is brought to justice inordered a comprehensive examination of both internal and external studies of our counterintelligence operation. A president ial decision was issued that basically said take a person with experience and seniority, send them to the cia, hes still fbi but hell run their Counterespionage Group responsible for uncovering spies. I got a call when i was in los angeles. We want you to come back and run this group. When i went over to the Counterespionage Group i asked if i could bring an assistant with me, somebody from the fbi and john i had worked with previously in los angeles. This opportunity to be the first fbi agents inserted in like cover in the cia was a singular opportunity. I tend to value those more and ive never regretted it. Most of the people in the cia did not know i was there looking for a spy. Did you have a cia badge or cia badge. So they didnt know you were from the fbi . Within the first week everybody in that building knew i was from the fbi. They didnt particularly care for me being there but they definitely knew who i was. Inside the cia Headquarters Building people were whining and bitching about all kinds of things, the fbi this and that. They have a job to do, just like we do. We clearly had a serious problem. Now i get all my briefings and i learned i had over 300 cases in the cia where cia employees had failed its counterintelligence polygraph. That means you had 300 potential spies in the cia that had never been resolved. At the time if you fail a cia polygraph, nothing ever happens to you. Alstrj aims failed the pallograph several times and nothing was ever done. When i came in, i put a stop to that. I had my own polygraph examiner. We ordered our own tests and we basically said youre going to resolve this or youre not going anywhere. We had to resolve it one by one. You must have been quite unpopular. Very unpopular. You had this pool of unresolv unresolved polygraphs. So you want to push and get those resolved as quickly as possible. When you start from 300, it takes a long time to get down to half a dozen. Unfortunately a lot of the reasons people are having trouble wasnt because they were a spy, its that they had been playing loose with the rules when theyre in the field. But its not espionage. Are you a spy . Thats what im interested in. I dont care if you didnt pay your income tax and 98 of the cases we were able to resolve that had nothing to do with espionage. Then in the summer of 1986 out of the herd one individual particularly emerges. That was james harold nicholson. He had failed a polygraph and was assigned to various areas where cases went bad. So he was a suspect, a strong suspect at that time. Jim nicholson was an instructor at the cias training facility, the farm. He was one of the instructors to train spies. So he knew the identity of every agent we were going to send overseas and he could have provided this information to russians and thats what concerned us the most. When you expose a spy working in a hostile country thats not allied for us, for them thats a death sentence. Youre accused, tortured and murdered. His experience is devastating. Even worse than ames. I cant believe the potential damage he could have done. What started as a passion. Has grown into an enterprise. Thats why i switched to the spark cash card from capital one. Now, im earning unlimited 2 cash back on every purchase i make. Everything. Whats in your wallet . Wemost familiar companies,s but we make more than our name suggests. Were an organic tea company. A premium juice company. A Coconut Water company. Weve got drinks for long days. For birthdays. For turning over new leaves. And we make them for every moment in every corner of the country. We are the cocacola company, and were proud to offer so much more. About to see progressives new home quote explorer. Where you can compare multiple quote options online and choose whats right for you. Woah. Flo and jamie here to see hqx. Flo and jamie request entry. Slovakia. Triceratops. Tapioca. Racquetball. Staccato. Me llamo jamie. Pumpernickel. Pudding. Employee hey, guys home quote explorer. Its Home Insurance made easy. Password was hey guys. Ames was not involved in that went bad. You assume at that point that somebody else is trying to steal secret information and give it to the russians. This is not a one off event. If theres anymore, we have to find them. In the summer of 1986 the fbi team had already whittled down their cast of possible candidates. And one of those was Jim Nicholson. Jim nicholson was working as a single dad and had custody of his three children. For jim i think the divorce clearly precipitated some financial strains that werent there before. Now being a single father, having to pay alimony, all of those pressures were coming to have to bear together with his expensive tastes. Tailored suits as opposed to off the rack. It looked like he might be interested in making more money. Its one thing to go after a spy with one course in counterintelligence. Its another thing to know youre going up with the senior varsity. He was an extremely well trained spy with a great deal of previous experience. We all knew if we make one mistake with this guy, hes gone. So with that information in hand, certain opportunities came up. One of them was jims announced vacation to singapore. So the discussion then came down with director of Central Intelligence do we let him go . Dont we let him go . Decision was made that we would inform the Singapore Intelligence Service and Jim Nicholson would go to singapore. When he got off the plane in singapore hes under surveillance. And he almost immediately begins what we call dry cleaning. Surveillance detection runs designed to pick up anybody trying to surveil or follow you. Thats where the term dry cleaning comes from. Youre stripping or cleansing yourself from all these unwanted attachments. Turning down a set of stairs and immediately turning around and going back up. So if anyones following you, youre likely to run right into them. Looking in the pane glass windows of Large Department stores. Hes looking at the reflections in the glass. But doing surveillance detection runs is not what one usually does on a vacation. But youre still only suspecting him because you dont have that last link. You havent made your case yet. But on the third day of surveillance, the proverbial black limo pulls up to the curb and jim hops in and our Surveillance Team looks down to the license plate. Russian embassy. Once he went in that embassy, he was a bad guy. There was no suspect anymore. He is a subject of an fbi investigation. Now you focus all your attention on building a case against him. So after identifying jim in singapore as our spy. The next challenge is where do we position him so he can do the least amount of damage . So after discussion, the decision was made to put him as a branch chief in the Counter Terrorism center. Given the environment at the time, pre9 11, thats where we could most effectively detain him. Youre letting him know he can do what he wants because nobodys watching me. So its finally in june 1996 that jim began his new duties as a branch chief in counterterrorism. Now you have to collect the evidence and present it for an arrest warrant. We have to monitor his activities when hes outside of langly 24 hours a day. That means every time he steps foot outside his house, surveillance. Anytime hes in the house, we have to know who hes talking to. We had to get a human source in his office so that we know every time he gets up from his desk, he walks out, our guy goes out with him. We had to get somebody right next to him. 1996 i get a cable in the field that says youre assigned to human resources. It was something i didnt want to do, and i clearly thought i passed my division chief off. But i processed out of the Division Field i was in ov overseas, and then i came back. I did not want be to in human resources. Because thats like the kiss of death for a case officer. So sitting in my brand new desk in h. R. And one morning i got a call from the front offices, and the boss called up and said dont tell anybody where youre going, speak to nobody, get up in front of my desk right now. I said okay. Sat down, chief explained to him we want to put you on a very special assignment, but were not going to tell you what its about. And you have to give me an answer yes or no right now. And if its no, your career is over. I didnt say that, but that was implied. There was a long pause where i didnt say anything and neither did he. The only variable i have in the room was there was a man i didnt recognize. I said can i ask one question . He said you can ask, i dont know if ill answer. I get up and walk over and shook his hand. And introduced himself as the highest ranking fbi agent assigned inside cia. My mind was racing at that point. He said you got to give me an answer now. If you say no, go back to h. R. , if you say yes, well tell you what this is all about and i say yeah, ill take it. Ill do it. Once he accepted the the assignment, i said go outside now, dont stop, dont say anything to anybody and two people will meet you. And i said yes, sir and left the building. And they took me to a safe house in Northern Virginia. The case agents then briefed me on what the issue was, and they told me we have a spy inside the building and we want you to help us catch him. Initially it was like getting kicked in the stomach. Another major espionage case inside of cia. It was a devastating piece of information. We had to have someone as close up as possible to nicholson, and john hopefully was going to be that candidate but you couldnt thrust john on jim or jim would be suspicious. You had to do it in a way that jim would think its his choice, his selection that brought john in the game. The first step was go through the interview process and get him to the pick. And that was job was the deputy chief of the unit that was run by nicholson. The interview wasnt particularly long, but i got along well with him. It was clear he didnt have a lot of good things to say about the structure of the leadership covering the agency. My views of h. R. Were a good laughter in the interview and he understood completely that i thought i was going to die if i stayed there. Whenever you have an interaction with anybody thats a planned activity, you always come back and reflect on what you did. And i came away with the opinion that it went pretty good. Jim did an excellent job as a manager choosing the best person for that job and ultimately he chose mcguire. Unbeknownst to jim, john was a spy, and probably the last person he wanted to have next to him. And ended up sitting in the desk right next to nicholsons and then it was game on. Its a big, big risk. Now youre going outside your perimeter. This is the person close to say nicholson. Youre going to lunch, going to talk about cases. So that person could do something stupid and nicholson would be alerted somethings wrong here. Basically you have a onestrike scenario. If you mess up or give away something, you could derail the entire investigation. Everyones got to listen to mom. When it comes to reducing the sugar in your familys diet coke, dr. 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I was brought in as an undercover guy to work against Jim Nicholson. My job was to catch him doing an espionage act that would directly tie him to the russians. So in the spring of 1996 i started as nicholsons deputy in the counterterrorism center. At that time radical islamic terrorism was on the rise. So there was a lot of real work stuff going on that you had to focus on. They were looking at critical players who eventually became known post 9 11. So it was very critical stuff they were doing. In the middle of all that youre trying to catch your boss compiling information hes going to give to the russians. To have someone in human source in touch with him every day. Its invaluable. Getting to know him was part of the exercise. I spent a lot of time going to lunch with him, drinking beer with him. My goal with the investigation was to immerse myself in him, but it was mentally draining every day. Because i describe him as a flawed personality, a flawed man. Over time that became very apparent that he had a special view of himself. A ruthless narcissistic guy that didnt care about anybody. And youre with him all the time. There was no retreat from it. Jim nicholson is the most formidable opponent you could possibly go up against as a counterespionage agent because hes so welltrained in the craft. And mcguire provided personality assessment back to the fbi. Whats he thinking, hows he thinking. And john was very, very good at it. And even with john, as close as john was to him, thats still not giving us the exact intel and insights to what is he doing minute by minute, second by second. Thats why we knew we had to get a fiber optic camera into his office. Youve seen the tile ceilings with the thousands of pin holes in them. It was no bigger than one of those pinholes. At one point nicholson got up on his chair and was rooting around in the ceiling. He was getting up and actually reaching up into the ceiling and pushing tiles. What did you do . John, move your butt. Hes shifting tiles. So i just barged into his office and he was standing on the chair and i said what the hell are you doing in here . And he said i thought something was loose. I was just taking a look. I said okay. He didnt find anything, he didnt disrupt anything so there was no compromise and everybody breathed a huge sigh of relief. Next thing we needed was to get access to his van that he parks in the parking lot. That was the big thing. He was like a Northern Virginia soccer mom. He had a minivan. He was playing a role. He didnt want to attract any attention to himself. A single dad driving a minivan with three kids. Invisible guy in Northern Virginia. We managed to manipulate him in a way he would go on a business trip, leave his van as opposed to parking in his driveway at home. Then of course we didnt want to get careless or lazy. Theres still eyes on the langly compound. So we did it really, really late at night. We had to pick up that van, physically pick it up, you know, forklift it because he may have checked the odometer reading on it. And the fbi went through the whole van. Some people say isnt that a little extreme putting it on a flat bed so the odometer wasnt changed . Not if you were trained like he was trained. He knows surveillance. He knows all these techniques. You underestimate him at your own peril is what we felt. They went through that van and they got significant data, intelligence data. He had left his computer in there, everything. We were able to image that laptop and do a quick initial assessment as to what was on there, and we found the tasking order from his russian handler and thats even before we did the really indepth analysis we were able to do in the off site. We discovered he had given a true name and identity of the spies that went through the cia Training Program with him to his russian handler. That was a line that really frosted me at that point. Because thats a mercenary activity that i dont think any other spy has ever done. The question at that point is do you have enough for a resting conviction. We didnt have that at that time. I wanted to shoot him at his desk, truth be told. But i wanted to catch him. And in october we had the first major break in the case. I had gone off campus and had lunch with nicholson and nicholson was driving erratica