Clyde Lee Conrad
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Clyde Lee Conrad (b.1948 - January 8, 1998) was an American non-commissioned officer who, from 1974 until his arrest on August 23rd 1988, sold top secret classified information to the Hungarian military intelligence service, including top secret NATO war plans. He was convicted of espionage and high treason in a German court in 1990, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Among the documents sold by Conrad were the wartime general defense plans (GDP) of many units. These contained the precise description of where every unit was to go in case of war, and how they would defend. Conrad was originally recruited by Zoltan Szabo, a Hungarian émigré who served in the U.S. army as both an officer and an NCO. Szabo was also a colonel in the Hungarian Military Intelligence Service. Szabo recruited Conrad shortly before retiring from the U.S. military.
It is still unknown today how many people participated in the Szabo Conrad spy ring, but it is known that their espionage activities lasted for several decades. Conrad had several accomplices, including Roderick Ramsay, Kelly Warren, Jeffrey Rondeau, and Jeffrey Gregory. Conrad's method of recruitment was usually attempts to appeal to poorly paid enlisted Army personnel, promising them large amounts of money for supplying him with intelligence reports.
Chief Judge Ferdinand Schuth, who presided over the case against Conrad, concluded in the verdict that because of Conrad's treason:
- "If war had broken out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the West would have faced certain defeat. NATO would have quickly been forced to choose between capitulation or the use of nuclear weapons on German territory. Conrad's treason had doomed the Federal Republic to become a nuclear battlefield."
Conrad died of a heart attack, 50 years old, in Diez prison on January 8, 1998.
Of all Americans convicted of espionage, Conrad is one of only five spies to have been considered to have made "big money" ($1 million or more for spying). Aldrich Ames, Larry Wu-Tai Chin, Robert Hanssen, and John Walker are the other four.
