Convicted Of Espionage & Theft Of Government Property And Then Pardoned By Clinton, Samuel Morison Is Now Accused of Stealing U.S. Navy Files of Famed Historian Grandfather

Ian Duncan at the Baltimore Sun reports on the arrest of Samuel L. Morison (seen in the above photo from his Facebook page) for the theft of U.S. Navy historical records.

A grandson of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Samuel Eliot Morison has been charged with stealing nearly three boxes of documents that his grandfather used to write a 15-volume history of World War II commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Authorities found some of the documents when they raided the Crofton home of Samuel L. Morison in May, according to federal charges unsealed Tuesday. Others had been put up for sale. They had been missing for more than a year.

Morison, 69, appeared briefly in court following his arrest Tuesday morning, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Morison's lawyer said the case is only in its very beginning stages.

... Morison was convicted in the 1980s on charges that he leaked classified satellite images of a Soviet aircraft carrier then under construction to a British magazine. He was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001.

... Both Morison and his late grandfather served in the Navy. The younger Morison served in Vietnam. The elder Morison, a professor of history at Harvard and author of the two-volume "Oxford History of the United States," at the outbreak of World War II pitched the idea of writing a history of the conflict to Roosevelt, was commissioned a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve and sent to fight.

Samuel Eliot Morison was eventually promoted to rear admiral. He published his history of the war at sea between 1947 and 1962.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bs-md-navy-document-theft-20140610,0,751933.story

You can read more about Samuel L. Morison in my Crime Beat column on the U.S. Navy's Cold War traitors and spies via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/07/us-navys-cold-war-spies-traitors.html

Two Women CIA Officers Who Brought Down The Traitor Aldrich Ames

Susan Reimer at the Baltimore Sun wrote an interesting column about an interesting book called  Circle of Treason: A CIA Account of Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed (Naval Institute Press). 

Jeanne Vertefeuille and Sandra Grimes could be George Smiley's people.

They were recruited on their college campuses by the Central Intelligence Agency during the height of the Cold War. Jeanne wanted travel and adventure. Sandy didn't know much about the CIA; she just needed a job.

Jeanne and Sandy. That's how they refer to themselves in the book they co-authored, "Circle of Treason."

It tells the story of these two women — Jeanne worked her way up from the equivalent of the steno pool, while Sandy was immediately in the Soviet division (and over her head) because she could speak Russian — and how they brought down the most devastating traitor in the history of the agency: Aldrich Ames.

Their meticulous investigation and combing of records also revealed losses that could not have come from Mr. Ames. They pointed more to the FBI and eventually led to a traitor in its midst, Robert Hanssen, who spied for the Soviets for 22 years, doing damage that more than rivaled that done by Mr. Ames. Both men are serving life terms for espionage. Those they betrayed were executed.
"Circle of Treason" is the first book about the decade-long mole hunt not written by academics or journalists but by members of the team that uncovered the spying of Messrs. Ames and Hanssen.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-reimer-aldrich-ames-20121217,0,3484978.column

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U.S. Postal Service Celebrates John Huston - And Baltmore's Dashiell Hammett - With A Classic-Filmmaker Stamp

 

The late, great film director John Huston was honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a stamp.

The Classic-Filmmaker stamp also honors the late, great crime writer Dashiell Hammett, as Hammett's character Sam Spade, holding the Maltese Falcon, is behind Huston.

Huston, of course, directed the classic film version of Dashiell Hammett's classic crime novel The Maltese Falcon.

You can read the Baltimore Sun's report on the Huston stamp via the below link:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/movies/blog/2011/08/huston.html