The Nation - News from Dec. 15, 1986

Prosecutors hoped that Ronald W. Pelton, a former National Security Agency employee who tried to sell U.S. military secrets to the Soviet Union, will get a life sentence Tuesday in Baltimore. The spying, which led the communications expert to secret meetings in Vienna and phone calls from a Virginia pizza parlor to Soviet operatives between 1980 and 1985, caused “extraordinary damage” to the United States, the prosecutors said. Pelton’s lawyer, Fred W. Bennett, recommended a 30-year sentence because, he said, his client has cooperated with prosecutors since his conviction in June, and is repentant.