Spy sentenced to 24 years

February 26, 1999 - AP

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (AP) -- A former National Security Agency intelligence analyst was sentenced Friday to 24 years in prison for selling top-secret documents to the Soviet KGB.

David Sheldon Boone, 46, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in December to conspiracy to commit espionage. Boone was arrested in September in a sting operation in which a former FBI agent posing as a member of the Russian spy service asked him to resume spying.

"I regret the actions I took. They were wrong. They overshadowed anything good I've done in my life before and after," Boone said before Judge Albert V. Bryan Jr. sentenced him. "I'm glad its over."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Connolly said Boone, originally from Flint, Michigan, put U.S. pilots at risk of death by selling the documents.

The Justice Department alleged the Soviets paid Boone $60,000 in several installments beginning in 1988 for various top-secret documents. Among them: material on tactical nuclear weapons targeting the Soviet bloc and a 300- to 400-page handbook listing reconnaissance and intelligence-collection systems used by the U.S. military. He was arrested in September in a sting operation in which a former FBI agent posing as a member of the Russian spy service asked him to resume spying.

Boone, who faced up to 30 years in prison under sentencing guidelines, got 24 years, four months. Bryan said the low end of the guidelines was sufficient because of Boone's age.

"It is adequate to meet the seriousness of this offense," Bryan said. "To the extent that sentences of this sort act as a deterrent, it will."

The Justice Department said Boone was trained in cryptoanalysis and the Russian language and was assigned to a U.S. Army field station in Augsburg, Germany, from October 1988 through June 1991, when most of his alleged espionage activity occurred.

The former Army sergeant also worked at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland.


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