Not all would-be spies see success

Former sergeant posed little threat, espionage experts say; Bowie man held without bond

Brian P. Regan joined the Air Force when he was 17, rose to the rank of master sergeant and, after putting in his 20 years, retired last year at 37 - able to collect his government pension and still pursue other work.

Federal authorities alleged Friday that Regan, with $53,000 in debts, extensive military training in encryption and access to top-secret satellite intelligence documents, decided to try his hand at the spy game.

It just happened that he wasn't very good at it, according to details of the FBI investigation that led to the Bowie man's arrest and interviews with intelligence experts who said the activity appeared to have been detected so quickly that it likely caused minimal national security damage.

"In general, these espionage cases kind of quickly divide into major-league and minor-league kinds of cases," said John Pike, an intelligence and defense policy analyst in Alexandria, Va. "For every major-league spy, there's probably a handful of guys like this."

Regan, 38, was charged Friday with conspiring to commit espionage while working at the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Va., which builds and operates U.S. satellite systems. He appeared Friday in federal court in Alexandria and was ordered held without bond.

Federal authorities said they have linked Regan to a number of secret documents that were obtained last fall by a foreign country, which they declined to identify. The Associated Press, quoting an unnamed government source, identified the country as Libya.

Intelligence experts and private analysts said yesterday that Libya could have been hoping to learn from the documents what countries like the United States and its allies knew about Libyan chemical- and missile-defense systems.

An affidavit sworn to by Steven A. Carr, an FBI counterintelligence agent, said most of the documents turned over to a foreign nation, identified only as "Country A," were classified as "secret" and included U.S. satellite photos, portions of a Central Intelligence Agency report and information about another unidentified country's satellite capability.

Analysts said that information could have been related to Israel or Russia. Either would have been valuable to Libya, which has had historically poor relations with neighboring countries and has been accused by the United States of backing international terrorism.

The FBI affidavit said Country A also received cover pages and tables of contents for more-sensitive "top secret" reports - offering a sort of "shopping list or menu" to foreign governments that might be willing to pay to get the actual documents, said Jeffrey T. Richelson, a senior fellow at the private National Security Archive in Washington.

Because the alleged activity was discovered relatively quickly, experts said, it likely caused far less damage than other recent, high-profile spy cases such as the arrest of former FBI counterintelligence agent Robert P. Hanssen, who acknowledged a 15-year spying career that included providing Moscow officials with information about U.S. nuclear secrets.

"Certainly, the less time he was involved, the less damaging it would be, all things being equal," Richelson said.

The detailed FBI affidavit in Regan's case also portrays the activities of the Brooklyn, N.Y., native and father of four as a series of events that were at turns circumspect and cartoonish.

Pursuit began last year

The investigation that led authorities to Regan began last fall, after federal agents learned about the documents obtained by Country A. The documents included several pages of encrypted messages that sought to establish the American source's bona fides and gave directions to contact him through a free e-mail account assigned to a "Steven Jacobs" in Alexandria.

FBI investigators learned that the e-mail account had been established in August 2000 and was being accessed from public libraries in Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties and in Falls Church, Va. - all locations near Regan's home or along his commute to work.

Agents conducting surveillance on Regan often saw him use the public Internet access at the library branches. In one instance in June, Regan failed to sign off of a library computer, allowing agents to find out that Regan had looked up the address of a diplomatic office in Switzerland and checked on a hotel in Zurich, the affidavit said.

As the summer wore on, Regan showed signs that he knew he was being followed, the affidavit said. Several times, FBI agents watched as Regan made sharp U-turns while driving or abruptly pulled to the side of the road and looked around.

The surveillance persisted. Regan made two trips to Europe in recent months, including one June 26 to Munich, Germany, where FBI agents secretly searched his suitcase and discovered glue and packing tape inside.

Regan was planning another trip to Zurich on Thursday, though he had told colleagues he was taking his family to Walt Disney World and wrote, "Orlando, Florida," on an office bulletin board to indicate his whereabouts, the FBI affidavit said. FBI agents saw him looking at secret documents on his office computer while taking notes in a small, spiral notebook he kept in his pants pocket before he left for Washington Dulles International Airport on Thursday.

That morning, while Regan attended an NRO meeting, agents also searched his Dodge minivan in the office parking lot and found several pages of coded messages along with a one-page decryption key.

Agents took Regan into custody late Thursday at Dulles as he passed through a security checkpoint to board a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, Germany, en route to Zurich.

He was still carrying the spiral notebook, and agents found a hand-held global positioning system in his carry-on luggage, and a piece of paper with the names and addresses of European contacts tucked inside one of his shoes, the affidavit said.

Under questioning, Regan denied knowledge of cryptology, coding and decoding, according to the affidavit. But when shown photos of the coded materials found earlier in his luggage, Regan replied: "That's my stuff."

Family declines to speak

Regan's wife of 17 years, Anette K. Regan, and his family in New York have declined to talk since his arrest. At the Regans' townhouse in Bowie, which they bought in 1993 for $115,900, a woman who answered the door yesterday afternoon said the family did not want to comment.

Intelligence analysts said the FBI appeared to have built a tight case against Regan, who has received a number of military honors, including a distinguished service award for his work as an intelligence analyst after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The experience did not appear to make Regan an espionage ace, experts said.

"I gather he falls into the spies-that-are-stupid category," Richelson said yesterday. "In a sense, though, they all are, given the risks they take and the fact they all end up spending the rest of their lives in prison.

"But some are able to keep doing it a bit longer than others," he said.

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