For Love of Money and Adventure

The FBI cracks a case of missile secrets, a mole and a windfall

If it were the plot of a Le Carré thriller, the story might be dismissed as a mass of melodramatic clichés. But it happened in real life, and as related in the flat legalistic prose of an FBI affidavit filed in federal court in San Francisco and from the account of a West Coast lawyer, it goes like this: An American engineer who already had sold some low-grade U.S. defense secrets to Polish intelligence marries an alcoholic secretary who has one thing he needs: a security clearance to handle...

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