A former National Security Agency employee convicted of selling defence and communication secrets he gained during his career to the Soviet Union has been released from US custody 30 years after his arrest.
The sentence for Cold war-era spy Ronald Pelton, 74, ended on Tuesday. He had been placed on home confinement several months ago to serve out the final stretch of his sentence and was released on uesday from the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, agency spokesman Ed Ross said.
Pelton, a former NSA intelligence communications specialist, was arrested in November 1985 on charges of selling information to the Soviets about signals intelligence between 1980 and 1985 for US$35,000 plus expenses. Prosecutors have said a Soviet KGB agent who defected and later returned to Moscow tipped investigators to Pelton.
Among the secrets Pelton gave up was information about Operation Ivy Bells, an effort by the NSA and the Navy to tap Soviet communications cables that were laid under the ocean.
He was sentenced to three life terms in 1986 by a federal judge who said he had betrayed a “special position of trust”, compromised citizens of the United States and endangered US agents.
Under sentencing rules in place at the time, Pelton was presumptively entitled to release on parole this month after 30 years in custody.