Jeffrey Carney

Jeffrey Martin Carney is a former

Carney was finally apprehended after the fall of the

In the ZDF film Informationen um jeden Preis, Carney admitted his homosexuality was the primary reason he became a spy.^[4] Carney quickly became disillusioned with the Air Force and its intelligence gathering operations, and there are several stories of him attempting to turn in his badge and quit in protest. His first-hand experiences during the NATO exercise Able Archer 83 strengthened his resolve to help avoid a nuclear conflict. Later, lonely, alienated, and under psychological stress, and he felt he had no one to talk to about his problems. He had intended to defect to East Germany on his first crossing, but he allowed himself to be drawn into espionage by East German intelligence agents who expertly manipulated him and claimed his complete loyalty.^[5]

Spying

While working at the Marienfelde Field Site in Berlin, Carney began copying classified documents which he then provided to the Stasi by repeatedly crossing back and forth into East Germany. In 1984 he was involuntarily transferred to Goodfellow Air Force Base in

During the course of his spying, Carney provided Stasi and other Eastern Bloc intelligence services with more than one hundred top-secret U.S. military documents. For his services to East Germany, he was awarded the NVA service medal in bronze and the medal of "Waffenbrüderschaft (Brotherhood in Arms)" in gold.^[2] His internal Stasi file shows the value of the work he performed for the Stasi and the KGB, earning praise from KGB General Chebrikov as well as from General Zaitsev of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSFG).

Capture

A break in the case came after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, when many Stasi records became available to foreign investigators and journalists. In April, 1991, Carney was located with the help of at least two former Stasi

Carney pleaded guilty to charges of espionage, conspiracy, and desertion and was sentenced in December 1991 to 38 years in prison. Carney served the mandatory portion of his sentence at both Quantico, Virginia, and, later, the United States Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Carney was released in 2002, after serving 11 years, seven months, and twenty days on a twenty-year sentence in accordance with his pretrial agreement.^[6]

Later life

After his release from prison, Carney attempted to return to Germany claiming to be a German citizen. However, as East Germany never naturalized him as a citizen and thus he had obtained his German passport fraudulently, German authorities refused to grant him a passport.^[8] He is reported to be living in Ohio.^[2][9] In November 2011 Carney submitted a lengthy manuscript detailing his life as a spy to the United States Air Force for security review. After numerous delays, the manuscript was finally cleared on July 26, 2012. The book, Against All Enemies: An American's Cold War Journey, was published in 2013.^[10][11]

References