Brian Patrick Regan
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Brian Patrick Regan is a former Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force who was convicted of offering to sell secret information to foreign governments.
Regan worked at the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Virginia, and was a signals intelligence specialist. He is reported to have been heavily in debt, and sought to gain money by selling information to Iraq, Libya, and China. Regan is claimed to have written a letter to Saddam Hussein, in which he expresses the view that his services are not adequately appreciated ("I feel that I deserve more than the small pension I will receive for all the years of service at the CIA"), and offers to sell secret information for US$13 million in Swiss francs. Another letter is alleged to have been sent to Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya.
In August 2001, Regan was arrested by the FBI at Dulles International Airport in Washington, preparing to board a flight to Zurich in Switzerland. He was carrying classified documents and contact information for Iraqi, Libyan, and Chinese embassies in Switzerland. His trial began in January 2003, and prosecutors sought the death penalty (the first time it would have been used for espionage since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were hanged in 1953). The following month, he was found guilty on three counts of attempted espionage, but the jury declined to impose the death penalty. Instead, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in March.
