Spies like us

The word "spy" conjures up images of James Bond and Mata Hari. But since 1975, half of the spies arrested in the United States have been government employees, a former FBI agent says.

Rusty Capps says that over the last 25 years, the United States has arrested 141 people for espionage-70 of

Capps and partner David Major, another retired agent, run a firm that provides security training and research for government and industry.

According to Major and his colleague, retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin, Soviet KGB agents infiltrated every major federal agency in Washington during the 1940s. In fact, Harry Dexter White, the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury at the time, was a spy for the KGB. Some notable spies who worked for Uncle Sam include John Walker, a Navy warrant officer who provided coded Navy communications to the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1976; Ronald Pelton, a former National Security Agency employee who sold the Soviets sensitive information about U.S. electronic eavesdropping techniques; and Aldrich "Rick" Ames, a GS-14 CIA officer who worked for Soviet and then Russian intelligence from 1985 until his arrest in 1994.

-Kellie Lunney