PORTLAND -- A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced the son of an imprisoned spy to five years of probation for helping his father contact his old Russian handlers in a scheme to collect money from them while behind bars.
Nathan Nicholson, son of ex-CIA agent Harold "Jim" Nicholson, had pleaded guilty to a pair of conspiracy charges and could have faced a prison term.
But federal prosecutors say the 26-year-old son helped them build a case against his father on charges that the older Nicholson used his son as a courier to contact Russian agents from prison so that he could try to get a "pension" from them.
In a sentencing memo, prosecutors recommended probation for the younger Nicholson because of his "extraordinary early cooperation against his father" and because he had been manipulated and groomed by his dad.
Nathan Nicholson apologized to U.S. District Judge Anna Brown at his hearing, adding he was "terribly embarrassed" by his actions and wanted to move forward and earn his college degree in computer science.
He told The Associated Press that the sentencing was a "huge relief" and he was looking forward to a good night's sleep, but that the experience has had an enormous impact on him and his family.
"After this, I want to be my own man now. I don't want to live in someone's shadow," Nathan Nicholson said. "I want to restore the honor that was lost."
In a case that seemed like a fictional spy thriller, Nathan Nicholson last year pleaded guilty to conspiring with his father to launder money and act as an agent of a foreign government. Prosecutors say Nathan Nicholson jetted to Mexico, Peru and Cyprus between 2006 and 2008 to meet with Russian agents and collect money from them.
Prosecutors say those agents agreed to meet with the younger Nicholson because they wanted to learn how the FBI caught his father and to obtain information about the CIA.
Harold Nicholson is one of the highest-ranking CIA officers ever convicted of espionage. He had been a CIA station chief before he was assigned as an instructor at a CIA training camp in Williamsburg, Va., in 1994.
Nathan Nicholson told The Associated Press that it was the move to that camp at about age 10 that he first learned his father worked for the CIA. He rarely saw his father but he "was my hero," he said.
The younger Nicholson joined the Army and trained as a paratrooper, hoping to follow his father's military career, but was injured when his parachute partially failed during his 13th jump. He eventually was honorably discharged.
His father was arrested in November 1996 at Dulles International Airport in Virginia with 10 rolls of film he had intended to hand over to Russian agents. Federal officials say that before his arrest, he had been trotting around the globe to hand off documents to the Russians and that he was paid for his work.
According to the sentencing memo for Nathan Nicholson, in the summer of 2006 Harold Nicholson asked his son to help him contact the Russian government for "financial assistance." Nathan Nicholson was a 22-year-old student at Lane Community College at the time.
The younger Nicholson was "excited" about the prospect of doing clandestine work for his father, according to the document. Harold Nicholson told his son to go to the nearest Russian consulate to make initial contact, and over the next two years, the son met with Russian agents six times.
During those meetings, the Russians asked Nicholson to obtain information from his father about how Harold Nicholson's espionage in the 1990s was discovered, who interrogated him after his arrest, and the timing of his transfers as a CIA officer before his arrest, according to the memo.
The scheme began to unravel when a "concerned citizen" alerted the FBI that the imprisoned ex-spy may have tried to communicate with Russian agents through other inmates, according to an affidavit filed by the FBI in December 2008.
Harold Nicholson was set to be sentenced Jan. 18.
