jim and nathan nicholson

In 2009, the FBI announced the arrest of 24-year-old Nathan Nicholson, an Oregon college student accused of carrying secrets to the Russians.

Any spy case draws worldwide attention. But this one was extraordinary for its utter nerve. The young operative turned out to be the son of one of the nation's worst embarrassments: imprisoned spy Jim Nicholson, the highest-ranking CIA officer convicted of espionage. "At the end of the day," Oregon's top FBI official said at the time, "this will prove to be a story of family, trust and betrayal."

For the next week, The Oregonian tells that story as it played out on three continents.

Nathan Nicholson strolled out of a Hilton hotel on Cyprus, map in hand, looking like any other hayseed American waiting to be wowed by the Mediterranean isle. But his was no sightseeing excursion.

The young man from Oregon zigzagged the ancient cobblestone lanes of Nicosia, pausing to scan the traffic and palm-lined sidewalks for signs someone was tailing him. He ducked down so many unfamiliar avenues that he blundered off course.

The Spy’s Kid

Part 1

Profile

Part 2

Part 3





Part 4





Part 5





Part 6





He reached the rendezvous spot, 12 Diagarou Ave., on that cool December night in 2008 and looked at his watch. He was so keyed up for his next meeting with the Russian spy he knew as George that he'd arrived an hour early.

The Russian deserved bonus points for sheer whimsy. He summoned Nathan 10 time zones from home, to a city known for its world-class cuisine, only to stand him in front of the familiar red-and-white-striped awning of a T.G.I. Friday's.

Just as George instructed, Nathan clutched a black-and-gray backpack in his right hand and wore the khaki baseball cap the Russian had given him at their last meeting in Lima, Peru.

At precisely 7 p.m., Nathan caught a glimpse of the gray-headed Russian walking up the sidewalk. He pretended not to notice and waited for George to speak.

"Can you show me the way to the federal post office?" George's English was excellent as always.

Nathan raised his map. He felt ridiculous reciting his end of their rehearsed dialogue. They had met face to face three times and both knew why they were there. But he didn't want to disappoint George.

"It should be around here somewhere," he said. "Let me show you the way."

Across the street, agents of the U.S. government shot video of the two men and their coded exchange.

For more than a year, the FBI had shadowed Nathan, tapping his cellphone and email accounts with permission from a secretive court in Washington, D.C., that handles warrants in spy cases. Agents had covertly searched his Eugene apartment three times, planted a GPS tracker on his Chevy Cavalier and tailed him across Oregon.

Yet for all their gumshoe efforts, Nathaniel James Nicholson was scarcely the prize they sought. Their primary target was his dad, Jim Nicholson, the highest-ranking CIA officer convicted of espionage.

Jim had spent the mid-1990s selling U.S. secrets to Russian spies in exotic locales from Singapore to Switzerland. The spy with the Rolex watch, the tailored suits and the .40-caliber Glock gave up classified files, including the identities of CIA trainees, some he had taught himself. His breaches forced the CIA to cancel sensitive operations and yank highly trained spies out of the field.

Now Jim was serving the back end of a 23-year prison stretch in his native Oregon. From behind bars, the FBI suspected, he had sent Nathan to cash in old chips from Moscow. Agents found evidence in Jim's letters to his youngest son.

"You have been brave enough to step into this new unseen world that is sometimes dangerous but always fascinating," he wrote to Nathan on his 24th birthday. "God leads us on our greatest adventures. Keep looking through your new eyes."

But Jim was preaching to the converted. Nathan remembered Jim's nickname in the agency -- "Batman" -- and thrilled at the chance to become his dad's spy kid.

On that night in Nicosia, Nathan found himself lying across the back seat of a foreign sedan with two Russians yakking in their native tongue as they bumped along the old streets into an underground garage.

George led him up a narrow stairwell into a room with thick walls. There, Nathan shared a six-page letter from his dad and collected $12,000 in U.S. 100-dollar bills.

The Russian ended the meeting by showing Nathan a black-and-white photo of an abstract sculpture. It was supposed to be a pregnant woman. But Nathan thought it looked more like a wooden pole some angry logger had attacked with a few artless swings of an axe.

The two men shared a laugh and agreed to meet a year later near the statue in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Nathan paid his hotel bill, wired $500 to his dad's girlfriend in Thailand and flew home with $9,500. His plane touched down at PDX early on Dec. 15, 2008, and he drove home to Eugene as snow threw a blanket over the shoulders of the Willamette Valley.

The Spy's Kid 29 Gallery: The Spy's Kid

Another night long ago

He reached the Heron Meadows Apartments at 3:30 a.m. and stashed the money in his nightstand. Then he collapsed in the loopy delirium known only to those who've flown halfway around the world in coach.

At 1:20 p.m., a loud pounding startled him awake. He stumbled out of bed to find two FBI agents at his door.

The sight took Nathan back a dozen years to one of the most punishing days of his life. It was a chilly November Saturday in northern Virginia, 1996, when he was a towheaded 12-year-old.

That morning, he and his big sister, Star, had piled into their dad's '94 Chevy Lumina Sports Van with their uncle. The minivan's custom plates read "8888BAT," a wink to Jim's nickname. They dropped Jim, then a branch chief in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, at Dulles International Airport for an overseas business trip.

Hours later, Nathan heard a fist pounding on the door of their cream-colored town home in the D.C. suburb of Burke, Va. He thumped down the stairs and found two unsmiling adults on the stoop. They asked for his uncle.

The two visitors told Rob Nicholson they were FBI agents and that his brother had been arrested for espionage. At first, Rob thought some of Jim's cronies were playing a joke on the bumpkin brother from Oregon. But the agents soon produced warrants to search the townhouse and minivan.

Rob Nicholson called to Star and Nathan. He told them to pack overnight bags and not ask any questions. Agents drove them to a nearby hotel, where Rob broke the news to his niece and nephew that their father was in jail, accused of spying.

He recalls Nathan's next words: "But Uncle Rob, that's what they pay my dad to do."

Nathan felt like he was losing the father he had just come to know. The CIA job had kept his dad away from home for weeks at a time. But things changed after his parents split up and Jim got primary custody of the kids. Jim finally began to balance his career and his role as father, Boy Scout adviser, soccer coach and chauffeur.

Jim had spent the last few years spoiling his kids with milkshakes and movies, Sega video games, marathons of Monopoly and treks to Busch Gardens. Now he wasn't coming home.

Three months later, Jim took a government deal. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage in exchange for a lighter prison term. He was allowed to serve his time in Oregon, where his children had moved.

The former CIA man told a court official that he hoped, before he died, to offer his children a positive example.

A father's guilt

Jim reached the prison in Sheridan in July 1997, a week before Nathan's 13th birthday. A few months later, he sat his children down to clear the air about his crime.

Nathan vividly recalls the way his dad hunched in his chair, telling them how embarrassed he was for them to see him in such a place. He told his kids how proud they made him by doing well in school and holding things together while he was away.

Jim spoke bitterly of his blind devotion to the CIA and his long absences -- weeks at a time -- that fractured his marriage and family.

In a soft voice with his chin dropped nearly to his chest, he admitted he had indeed sold U.S. secrets to the Russians for money. Nathan recalls his words: "I just wanted to help you kids out."

The three kids hugged their dad and jokingly warned him not to do it again. In the years ahead, they would log hundreds of hours in the prison visiting room, sharing the ups and downs of their teens and 20s. Car troubles. Love interests. College loans. No subject was off limits.

But Jim's words on that weekend churned in Nathan's mind long afterward. He was convinced the government had set up his dad, forcing him to confess -- even to his kids -- that he was a turncoat.

Nathan was determined not to believe a word of it.

A son's devotion

He was desperate to make his dad proud of him.

Nathan enlisted in the Army after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and shipped off to Fort Benning, Ga., the same muggy hellhole where Jim took basic training. For Nathan, humping rucksacks and rifles over the same grounds that his old man once cursed left him wistful.

Sometimes, he missed his dad real hard. He had to share many of his proudest moments, such as earning his infantry cord, by mail. Responses took time. His dad's letters went through the CIA, where they were reviewed and copied before being forwarded.

On June 14, 2004, Nathan took his 13th parachute jump, a nighttime leap out of a C-130 over Fort Bragg, N.C. He learned the hard way -- 1,700 feet in the air -- that someone had improperly packed his static-line chute. It fluttered above him like a big cigarette.

Nathan pulled on the risers and pedaled his feet, partly untangling the parachute. But he got only half the lift he needed and was too low to pull his reserve. He landed on his back and skipped across hard-packed earth, fracturing a lower backbone.

His injuries jeopardized his chances of deploying with his buddies to Iraq. He flew home to Oregon feeling morose and looking for comfort. Instead he got into a bitter argument with his stepdad over money and had a testy exchange with his mom.

There were times when Nathan needed to hear his dad's voice. Jim sometimes seemed the only one capable of pulling his son's spirits out of his boots. But the prison in Sheridan allows just outgoing calls, so they talked only when Jim phoned. And the CIA recorded those conversations.

Nathan flew back to Fort Bragg. When he reached his room in the barracks, he found himself alone on his bed with a sheath knife in his hand. He sat for long time thinking about slitting his wrists, when the phone rang.

It was Jim, telling his boy how much he loved him.

The call left Nathan with a lump in his throat, and he put the knife away. He didn't tell his dad what he'd been up to.

A few months after his parachute accident, at age 20, Nathan received a discharge from the Army, later getting a partial disability rating. There would be no Ranger tab, no chance of matching his father's military service.

Nathan headed back to Oregon, enrolled at Lane Community College and took a part-time job as a Pizza Hut delivery man. Every other Saturday, he drove to Sheridan to visit his dad.

A family struggling

Jim confided to an inmate in his prayer circle that he felt like a failure because of his children's financial miseries. He had wanted to send them to college. But his job as a quality assurance inspector at the prison furniture shop paid about $1 an hour.

By the middle of 2006, Jim's oldest son, Jeremi, was sweating college loans on the pay of an Air Force senior airman. Star faced car problems and a student loan debt of $50,000. Nathan was struggling to make payments on his rent, car and credit card.

One day, as Nathan sat shoulder to shoulder with his dad in the prison visiting room, Jim said he had a plan.

He whispered to Nathan that his old friends in Moscow might give them financial assistance. The way Jim figured it, he had lost his freedom helping the Russian Federation; it seemed only fitting for the Russians to help his kids while he was away. Jim's plan was to slip messages to Nathan, who would carry them to a Russian consulate.

"It's dangerous," he said.

Over the next few months, father and son devised an audacious plan. Nathan would drive to San Francisco and walk into the Russian consulate, sight unseen, and present the head of security with notes from his dad.

Nathan knew his dad's CIA days were peppered with such élan and he couldn't wait to prove his mettle. Jim described the days ahead as risky, but not illegal -- and Nathan believed him.

That fall, Jim slipped him two notes. The first began with a greeting to Jim's friends in the Russian intelligence world and introduced Nathan as his son. The note held personal data about his family -- and a father-son photo taken at the prison -- as proof it came from Jim.

The second note was sealed with tape. Nathan never read it. But Jim told him it was a solicitation for money.

A plot launched

Moments before midnight on Oct. 13, 2006, Nathan climbed behind the wheel of his blue Chevy and drove south on Interstate 5 into northern California. He turned off at a rest stop, where he shaved in a washroom and put on a charcoal gray suit from the Men's Wearhouse. Jim had paid for it out of his prison earnings.

About 10 a.m., Nathan opened the heavy wooden door of a tan-brick building. On the roof, the Russian Federation's red, white and blue flag rustled in a light breeze.

Nathan walked over to a receptionist behind a window and slid her his dad's introductory note. She read it slowly, asked him to take a seat and walked away.

Nearly an hour passed before a man walked up and said, "Follow me." The man had a thick Russian accent, a dark mustache and close-cropped hair with flecks of gray. They walked briskly down passageways to a room with thick walls.

Inside, the Russian looked Nathan over suspiciously and offered his hand in a way that seemed to suggest formality rather than goodwill. Then he spoke. "I'm to understand you want to speak to me?"

NEXT: Nathan makes new Russian friends.

-- Bryan Denson