Marine Gets 15 Years in Espionage Case

CAMP PENDLETON — A Marine corporal was convicted Friday of espionage and other crimes in what the government claimed was a wayward plot to sell military secrets to the Soviet Union.

Cpl. Charles Anzalone was sentenced to 15 years in prison and was given a dishonorable discharge, reduction in rank to private and loss of pay following a four-day general court-martial and his mother’s tearful plea for mercy.

Anzalone, who had been a wireman at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, was found guilty of calling the Soviet Embassy in Washington last November, under the pretext of asking about a college scholarship, to offer himself as a spy.

His overture was discovered by the FBI, which had Special Agent Jan Zawitkowski pose as a KGB intelligence officer and contact Anzalone. During their association, Anzalone passed over two technical manuals about cryptographic equipment, a security badge and guard schedules.

“Cpl. Anzalone was a traitor,” the government’s attorney, Marine Lt. Col. C.A. Ryan, said during closing statements Friday.

Anzalone had said during a videotaped meeting with Zawitkowski in a Yuma hotel room that he hated capitalism and the American government, professing a grudge against the nation’s treatment of Indians. He is part Mohawk.

In later testimony, he said he only condemned the United States to win Zawitkowski’s favor and the college scholarship. He also said his videotaped offer to repay the scholarship by eventually getting a government job and spying for the Soviets was just a lie to get money.

“He wanted to be the next despicable person to ingratiate himself into the American system and turn on it,” Ryan said.

The government claimed Anzalone, who was badly in debt, acted purely for money, but the defense attorney, Marine Capt. Paul McBride, contended Anzalone naively but genuinely contacted the embassy about a possible scholarship and was entrapped by the FBI and pressured by Zawitkowski to give information.

In his summation, McBride said: “Agent Zawitkowski went into (conversations) convinced in his mind Cpl. Anzalone was a spy. He simply hammered away at him until he got what he wanted.”

Anzalone, 24, from Jamestown, N.Y., was arrested Feb. 12 after a joint probe by the FBI and the Naval Investigative Service. He awaited trial in Camp Pendleton’s brig.

The tall, weight-lifting Marine appealed to the military judge, Marine Col. Edwin Welch, for leniency, saying he wanted to make up to his family for the suffering he had caused them and noting that he has decided to “pursue the ministry.”

“I want to preach God’s word and lead a quiet life,” Anzalone said. “I want to be the husband my wife deserves, the father my son deserves, the son my parents deserve.”

Among other charges, Anzalone was convicted of adultery with the wife of another Marine who was deployed to the Persian Gulf while his own wife, Candy, was pregnant and in New York tending to her dying father. Anzalone has been married five years, the couple has a son, and another child is due any day.

“I feel like my crime is against my wife, not against the Marine Corps,” Anzalone said. “I want to make it up to my wife.”

His mother, Barbara Sharp, who sat through the court-martial praying and sometimes sobbing, took the witness stand in an emotional appeal to Welch for mercy.

She said Anzalone had been born out of wedlock and endured lifelong pain because his father, whom she later married, abandoned him.

Sharp said her son is smart, but has low self-esteem and had never finished anything or lived up to his potential until he surprised the family by joining the Marine Corps. When he graduated from boot camp, he told her: “ ‘I completed something, I feel so good about it.’ ”

Halting and crying, she told the judge: “I do believe my son never intended to betray his country or become a spy.”

She added: “I ask you, sir, please have mercy. He wasn’t always like that. There’s a lot of good left in him. Please, I beg you, sir.”

But prosecutor Ryan insisted that Anzalone should receive the maximum sentence of life in prison to show that espionage won’t be tolerated and will be “dealt with in the most severe fashion.”

McBride said there would be little purpose in the maximum sentence except to deprive Anzalone’s own son and unborn second child of their father, as he was by his father.

“Sir, what we see here is history about to repeat itself,” McBride said.

Welch deliberated and returned with a verdict, saying that while he “sincerely regrets” the effects on Anzalone’s family, “I must also consider these very serious offenses.”

Anzalone had decided when his court-martial began Monday to have Welch decide the verdict rather than a jury that would have included enlisted Marines.

He was specifically convicted of attempted conspiracy to commit espionage; attempted espionage; failure to report that he had contacted the Soviet Embassy; disclosing sensitive information without proper authority, and unlawful use of the mail.

Also, he was convicted of possession and use of marijuana.

Anzalone’s sentence will go before Brig. Gen. Michael Neil, who commands Camp Pendleton and may affirm the penalty or reduce it. The sentence will then be reviewed by the military appeals court.

In the meantime, Anzalone will remain in the Camp Pendleton brig.

Anzalone is the first Marine to be convicted of espionage since 1987, when Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, a guard at the American Embassy in Moscow, was found guilty of passing documents to KGB agents. Lonetree was the first Marine ever convicted of espionage in the Marine Corps’ 212-year history.