Earl Edwin Pitts

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This article describes Earl Pitts, the Russian spy. For the radio character, see Earl Pitts Uhmerikun.

Earl Edwin Pitts was a member of the FBI who, in 1996, was arrested at the FBI Academy. Pitts was charged with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. On April 30, 1997, he pled guilty.

[edit] History

On June 27, 1997, Earl Pitts was sentenced to 27 years in prison for spying for Moscow before and after the fall of the Soviet Union. (Prosecutors had requested only 24½ years.) A former FBI agent, Pitts had been charged with selling U.S. intelligence secrets to the Russians for more than $224,000 from 1987 to 1992. Pitts was snared in a 16-month FBI sting that ended with his arrest while he was stationed at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. The FBI caught Pitts by convincing him that the Russian government wanted to reactivate him as a spy. Pitts sought out a Soviet agent and offered his services while stationed in Moscow in 1987, then moved later that year to the FBI's New York office, where he was assigned to hunt and recruit KGB officers. The FBI said Pitts turned over a secret computerized FBI list of all Soviet officials in the United States with their known or suspected posts in Soviet Spy agencies.