Oone of the greatest spies!

Essay by JrzPakiKingUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, November 2004

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Is George Trofimoff one of the greatest spies ever to betray America, or a loyal army officer who spent a career defending this country?

One thing is sure: Trofimoff, retired from the U.S. Army Reserve, is the highest ranking American officer ever convicted of espionage. Last summer, a federal judge sent him to prison for life.

During his trial, prosecutors called Trofimoff the perfect spy. He was perfect, they said, because of the extraordinary crime he managed to pull off without ever getting caught.

He in a Florida prison, Trofimoff, 74, calls himself "a patriot that served this country for 46 years and a half or 47 years."

His story is intertwined with the bloody history of Europe. The Trofimoff family was Russian. He says his grandparents were murdered in the revolution and, as a boy in World War II, he was rescued by American GIs. When Trofimoff joined the U.S.

army to fight the communists that murdered his grandparents, he left behind a brother, Igor, who became a clergyman and was a cardinal in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Then in 1992, a Soviet KGB clerk named Vasili Mitrokhin defected and claimed that one of the U.S. interrogation centers was being looted by a spy. He handed over KGB records that showed the stolen American secrets exceeded 80 volumes - 50,000 pages taken over 25 years.

Christopher Andrew, a Cambridge University professor who helped British intelligence analyze Mitrokhin's revelations, says the information included military intelligence operations planned and carried out by the United States against the Soviet Union.

Mitrokhin didn't have the name of the traitor, but the Soviet files he delivered described the spy as a "career American intelligence officer." And the courier who carried the secrets was a "clergyman" in the Russian Orthodox church.

"An American officer...