Earl Edwin Pitts

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

Earl Edwin Pitts (born September 23, 1953) was an FBI special agent 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. The FBI gained knowledge of Pitts as a Soviet spy through the use of human intelligence (His KGB handler, Alexsandr Karpov, later defected to the United States and named Pitts as a Soviet mole in the FBI during his debriefings.) 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 offered his services to the Soviets in 1987 while he was assigned 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. Pitts was discovered after a Soviet defector identified him to the FBI and assisted the FBI in their sting operation. After the sting began, Pitts' ex-wife, Mary Columbaro Pitts, also a former FBI employee, told the FBI that she suspected her husband was a spy, but he never shared it with her. When he was convicted of espionage and asked why he engaged in that act; Pitts cited numerous grievances with the FBI and said he wanted to "pay them back". Pitts' plea bargain required him to submit to FBI debriefings. During a 1997 debriefing Pitts warned the FBI that Robert Philip Hanssen presented security concerns. The FBI did not act on Pitts' warning and Hanssen's espionage continued until 2001.