Intelligence: Emailing Russian Secrets To The Pentagon

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May 19, 2010:  In Russia, a local man, Gennady Sipachev, was convicted of espionage, for emailing classified Russian military maps to a Department of Defense organization. The prosecution asserted that these maps could be used to select targets for cruise missile attacks. Sipachev was sentenced to four years in prison. There was no comment from anyone in the U.S. government.

While American photo-satellites have scoured Russia for decades, Russian military maps may have revealed installations that the Russians were known to have built to deceive satellite observation. At the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Unit had thousands of troops in units that specialized in deceiving American spy satellites. Some of the expertise, and specially built installations, remain.