Ronald William Pelton was an NSA spy who was convicted in 1986 of spying for and selling secrets to the Soviet Union. He reportedly has a photographic memory as he passed no documents to the Soviets. One operation he compromised was Operation Ivy Bells.

Prior to his employment by the NSA, Pelton served in the United States Air Force. He was taught the Russian language by the Air Force and served for a time in the early 1960s in Peshawar, Pakistan as a voice intercept processing specialist, which required a Top Secret Crypto security clearance. After that 15 month tour he was transferred to NSA, where he continued as a civilian employee upon discharge. Ron had a serious interest in gambling, often playing cards in the day room for 72 hours at a time while stationed in Peshawar as part of Able Flight.

In 1980, Pelton retired from NSA. From the years of 1980 to 1984 he held a different series of jobs, none of which required him to have a security clearance and thus those jobs had nothing to do with the intelligence community. In 1984, Pelton had faced financial difficulties as a result of increasing homeowners' taxes and a mounting series of necessary repairs on his private residence, to which he felt his employment was insufficient to meet those monetary demands.