James Hall III James W . Hall , III is a former United States Army warrant officer and signals intelligence analyst in Germany who sold eavesdropping and code secrets to East Germany and the Soviet Union from 1983 to 1988 . Hall was convicted of espionage on July 20 , 1989 ; he was fined $ 50 , 000 and given a dishonorable discharge and is currently serving a 40 - year sentence for those activities at the United States Disciplinary Barracks , Fort Leavenworth , Kansas . Activities . Hall was assigned to the NSA Field Station Berlin Teufelsberg , one of the premier listening posts of the cold war , between 1982 – 1985 and he spied for both East Germany and the Soviet Union . Between 1983 and 1988 , Hall betrayed hundreds of military secrets , which includes the Project Trojan , a worldwide electronic network with the ability to pinpoint armored vehicles , missiles and aircraft by recording their signal emissions during wartime and the complete National SIGINT Requirements List ( NSRL ) , a 4258 page document about NSA activities , government requirements and SIGINT capabilities by country . Hall sometimes spent up to two hours of his workday reproducing classified documents to provide to the Soviets and East Germans . Concerned that he was not putting in his regular duty time , he consistently worked late to complete his regular assignments . He smuggled out originals of the documents in shopping bags which he then photocopied in a Frankfurt flat with the help of an East - Berlin associate . Using his illegal income , Hall paid cash for a brand new Volvo and a new truck . He also made a large down payment on a home and took flying lessons . He is said to have given his military colleagues at least six conflicting stories to explain his lavish life style . In 1986 , Hall was stationed at Fort Monmouth , New Jersey , and was returning to Germany . Passed over for promotion to Sergeant First Class that year , Hall was also applying for an appointment as a warrant officer . As a part of the routine background investigation associated with the warrant appointment , one of his supervisors , a major ( Hall was , at the time , a staff sergeant ) , commented to the investigator that he found it strange that Hall could drive a car , the Volvo , that the major couldn ' t afford . The major went on to explain that he had , himself , asked Hall about this apparent disparity . Hall responded that he had a wealthy aunt who died and left him a large trust from which he received $ 30 , 000 annually . The major found the story plausible but reiterated it to the investigators during their visit with him . The investigators thanked the major for the information and told him they already knew about the " trust . " Hall ' s co - workers were fully taken in by his duplicity and his unusual activities never drew much attention . He was the epitome of a hard - working non - commissioned officer . After returning from Germany to the U . S . , he traveled to Vienna , Austria , to meet with his Soviet handler . His co - workers wondered why he would re - enlist , and become a warrant officer , after several times conveying to them his dissatisfaction with army life . Of course , the Warrant Officer rank allowed him greater access to classified material . During his 1977 - 1981 tour at Detachment Schneeberg , an intelligence gathering outpost for the VII Corps ' 326th ASA ( Army Security Agency ) Company on what was the West German - Czechoslovakian border during the Cold War , Hall had a generally good working relationship with his peers , but would sometimes erupt and become upset over trivial day - to - day problems . However , for the most part he was considered a competent analyst and sociable companion , and also quickly picked up a working knowledge of the German language . James also met his future wife , who worked at a local restaurant / hotel in Bischofsgruen , a popular tourist town where the majority of the Detachment soldiers lived . Hall was eventually arrested on December 21 , 1988 , in Savannah , Georgia , after bragging to an undercover FBI agent that over a period of six years he had sold Top Secret intelligence data to East Germany and the Soviet Union . At the time , Hall believed that he was speaking to a Soviet contact . During this conversation he claimed that he had been motivated only by money . He told the FBI agent posing as a Soviet intelligence officer , " I wasn ' t terribly short of money . I just decided I didn ' t ever want to worry where my next dollar was coming from . I ' m not anti - American . I wave the flag as much as anybody else . " The case against Hall apparently began based on a tip from a Central Intelligence Agency source inside the East German government . Officials said this source defected to the West and is in hiding . After his arrest , Hall said there were many indicators visible to those around him that he was involved in questionable activity . Hall ' s activities inflicted grave damage on U . S . signals intelligence and he is considered the " perpetrator of one of the most costly and damaging breaches of security of the long Cold War " Hall confessed to giving his handlers information on the U . S . Military Liaison Mission ( USMLM ) ' s tank photography on New Year ' s Eve in 1984 . On March 24 , 1985 , while on a legal inspection tour of Soviet military facilities in Ludwigslust , German Democratic Republic , US Army Major Arthur D . Nicholson , Jr . , an unarmed member of the USMLM , was shot to death by a Soviet sentry . Hall believes himself only to be " a treasonous bastard , not a Cold War spy . " The FBI also arrested Huseyin Yildirim , a Turk who served as a conduit between Hall and East German intelligence officers . Hall received over $ 100 , 000 in payments . After the reunification of Germany , on July 24 , 1992 almost all of the documents Hall had copied and handed over to the Stasi ( 13 , 088 pages in total ) were given back to the NSA by the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives , then led by the current President of Germany Joachim Gauck . This was ordered by the Federal Ministry of the Interior after US government pressure without consulting or informing the German Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Committee ( ) , which was a prerequisite for giving files away required by law ( ) . Only a few hundred pages were retained and kept Top Secret . Gauck as well as the then director of the agency Hansjörg Geiger both later claimed to not remember having ordered the return of the documents . See also . Other agents in place in the US government or military who worked as a mole for either the KGB or the SVR include :