As one of the CIA’s top counterintelligence officers, Brian Kelley spent his career rooting out double agents and Russian moles. But in August 1999, Kelley found himself labeled a turncoat. FBI agents hauled him into an interrogation room and accused him of passing secrets to Moscow. “They said, ‘We know who you are. We know what you’ve been doing,’” Kelley recalled in 2003. His leaks, investigators alleged, had led to the deaths of three FBI agents in Russia. But as the FBI later discovered—after almost wrecking his life and career—Kelley wasn’t a traitor. In fact, the real double agent wasn’t working at the CIA, but within the FBI itself.
Until that summer, Kelley had been one of the intelligence community’s stars. Born in Waterbury, Conn., he served in the U.S. Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations for 20 years before moving to the CIA in 1984. Five years later, Kelley “figured out a still-classified method used by Moscow to clandestinely communicate with deep-cover agents called ‘illegals’,” said The Washington Times. That discovery resulted in the unmasking of U.S. diplomat Felix Bloch, who was photographed exchanging a briefcase with a KGB “illegal” in Vienna. Kelley came under suspicion of having alerted Bloch to the investigation, said The New York Times, because the FBI was convinced that the mole had to be in the CIA. “They couldn’t conceive it was one of their own,” said intelligence historian David Wise.
Kelley was suspended for 21 months, and his friends and family were confronted and questioned by the FBI. His daughter—who’d followed Kelley into the CIA—was taken into an interview room and told that her father was a spy. Kelley was exonerated in November 2000, when the FBI secured audiotapes of the real mole talking to his handler. The voice on the recordings belonged to senior FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who was later sentenced to life in prison.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Until his death, Kelley worked as a consultant for U.S. intelligence agencies, lecturing on the dangers of focusing on the wrong man, said The Washington Post. “I just want to make sure that what happened to me never happens again to anyone,” he said in 2006.
-
Will California tax its billionaires?Talking Points Proposed one-time levy would shore up education, Medicaid
-
Blue Origin launches Mars probes in NASA debutSpeed Read The New Glenn rocket is carrying small twin spacecraft toward Mars as part of NASA’s Escapade mission
-
Trump DOJ sues to block California redistrictingSpeed Read California’s new congressional map was drawn by Democrats to flip Republican-held House seats
-
R&B singer D’AngeloFeature A reclusive visionary who transformed the genre
-
Kiss guitarist Ace FrehleyFeature The rocker who shot fireworks from his guitar
-
Robert Redford: the Hollywood icon who founded the Sundance Film FestivalFeature Redford’s most lasting influence may have been as the man who ‘invigorated American independent cinema’ through Sundance
-
Patrick Hemingway: The Hemingway son who tended to his father’s legacyFeature He was comfortable in the shadow of his famous father, Ernest Hemingway
-
Giorgio Armani obituary: designer revolutionised the business of fashionIn the Spotlight ‘King Giorgio’ came from humble beginnings to become a titan of the fashion industry and redefine 20th-century clothing
-
Ozzy Osbourne obituary: heavy metal wildman and lovable reality TV dadIn the Spotlight For Osbourne, metal was 'not the music of hell but rather the music of Earth, not a fantasy but a survival guide'
-
Brian Wilson: the troubled genius who powered the Beach BoysFeature The musical giant passed away at 82
-
Sly Stone: The funk-rock visionary who became an addict and recluseFeature Stone, an eccentric whose songs of uplift were tempered by darker themes of struggle and disillusionment, had a fall as steep as his rise
