FBI Unearths Convicted Spy's Buried Booty

07/30/03

What did former Air Force intelligence analyst and convicted spy Brian P. Regan do when he couldn't sell the classified materials he'd stolen from the National Reconnaissance Office? He buried them. Deep. He wrote their locations on a note, stuffed the note in a tooth brush holder, and buried it under the I-95 exit sign near Fredericksburg, Virginia.

What secrets had he stolen? Photographs of Iraqi missile sites and encoded tactical information accessed through Regan's classified Internet network. Who did he try to sell them to? Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Chinese government for the proposed price of $13 million. Having failed in this, he desperately sought other buyers at various foreign embassies in Switzerland.

Finally, following his arrest in August, 2002, Regan agreed on March 20 of this year to offer the government his full cooperation as part of his plea agreement, in addition to a sentence of life imprisonment. That cooperation included disclosing the whereabouts of all materials he had stolen. And the FBI dug them up: Some 20,000 pages of highly classified documents, and a variety of videotapes and computer compact disks, all underground in Maryland and Virginia's state parks.