Convicted spy gets life in prison

TAMPA, Fla., Sept. 27 (UPI) -- U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew sentenced retired U.S. Army Reserve Col. George Trofimoff to life in prison Thursday for spying on the United States for the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The 74-year-old Trofimoff showed no emotion when the sentence was read in a Tampa courtroom.

Justice Department prosecutor Laura Ingersoll said during the trial in June that Trofimoff gave the Soviet Union thousands of classified documents and other information over a 25-year period and received $250,000 for it. Defense attorney Daniel Hernandez said he was never a spy and never had anything to do with any spies.

Trofimoff denied on the witness stand he ever met any spy handlers, despite earlier testimony by a former high official in the KGB, the Soviet espionage agency, that they had met.

He said he never gave them any of the secret military documents he was trusted to handle in his post as head of an Army intelligence center in Nuremberg, Germany, where refugees from the Soviet bloc were interviewed He said he in fact hated the Soviets.

Former KBG Gen. Oleg Kalugin said he met with Trofimoff in Austria 20 years ago. Kalugin said he was worried about Trofimoff's Soviet contact, who had a drinking problem; about his request for more money for his intelligence; and about reports Trofimoff was in love with a German woman 30 years younger than he was.

Kalugin said he left the meeting with confidence that Trofimoff was a loyal spy.

Kalugin was the first KGB official to testify in any U.S. Court. Other notable witnesses included an unidentified British intelligence officer who helped put together the "Mitrikhin files," named after a KGB archivist who smuggled out detailed notes from KGB files when he defected to Britain.

Also testifying for the prosection was Clayton Lone Tree, who was convicted of passing secrets to the Soviets when he was a U.S. Marine guard in Moscow.

Trofimoff is one of the highest ranking U.S. military officers to be tried for espionage He was visiting Tampa when he was arrested last year, but has been living in Melbourne, Fla., where he was a bag boy at a supermarket and lived with his wife in a $235,000 home in a development for retired military officers.