Clayton J. Lonetree
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Clayton J. Lonetree is a Native American who served nine years in prison for espionage.
During the early 1980s, Lonetree was a Marine Security Guard stationed at the United States Embassy in Moscow, USSR.
Clayton J. Lonetree is the first US Marine to be convicted of spying against the United States. Lonetree, who was stationed in Moscow as a guard at the US Embassy in the early 1980s, confessed in 1987 to selling documents to the Soviet Union. These documents included the blueprints of the US Embassy buildings in Moscow and Vienna and the names and identities of US undercover intelligence agents in the Soviet Union. He was tried in a military court in Quantico, Virginia and convicted of espionage in 1987.
In May 1991, Lonetree filed an appeal, asking that his conviction be overturned because he had never learned the identity of one accuser, but this was denied. He initially received a 30-year sentence with a reduction in rank from E-5 to E-1, a fine of $5,000, the loss of all military pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge. The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Alfred M. Gray Jr., recommended to the Secretary of the Navy that Lonetree's sentence be reduced from 30 to 15 years in a letter written in 1989 that said that the effect of Private Lonetree's actions "was minimal." In addition, he said, the marine's motivation "was not treason or greed, but rather the lovesick response of a naive, young, immature and lonely troop in a lonely and hostile environment." His sentence was reduced to 15 years, but he was released after serving only nine years at the United States Disciplinary Barracks and was released in 1996.
An excerpt from Time magazine on January 26, 1987, reads:
Marine Sergeant Clayton Lonetree, 25, was so highly regarded at his job as security guard at the U.S. embassy in Moscow that in November 1985 he was detached for special duty at the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Geneva. Last week Lonetree sat in a brig at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, suspected by his superiors of helping the Soviet KGB filch classified U.S. documents from diplomatic offices in Moscow and Vienna. Lonetree, authorities said, had an affair with a female KGB agent who was reportedly working as a translator at the embassy.
He allegedly provided the Soviets with classified papers, revealed the names of CIA personnel, detailed the work habits of embassy staff, sketched the layout of the Moscow and Vienna embassy offices, and allowed Soviet spies to wander through the embassy after-hours. The harsh sentence was given in light of serious security breaches at the embassy, some of which later were found to have been the result of the Aldrich Ames case.
