WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Undetected: Brian Regan

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

This week, Megan and Alessia dive into the story of Brian Regan and his plot to sell classified information to America's enemies.

Welcome to Undetected on Radio Free Hillsdale. Go undercover with your hosts, Alessia Sandala and Megan Lee, as they uncover the stories of spies from every country and time. The most thrilling yet the most secret of lives in history. Hello again. This week, we are excited to continue our recent trend of modern spies. Alessia, who are we talking about today? Hi, Megan.

We're going to be exploring the fascinating yet strange story of Brian Regan and his anti-American espionage work. Regan was born on October 23rd, 1962 in New York City. His childhood was nothing out of the ordinary, except he suffered from the challenges that come with the learning disability, dyslexia. That's right. Regan was often bullied by his peers and considered odd. Unlike many of the spies we have talked about on this show, Regan showed no signs that he would fit into a career of espionage. He was unassuming and struggled in areas spies usually excel in. However, Regan's life took a turn in a new direction when he was.

was enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1980 at age 17. Reagan worked in signal intelligence analysis, meaning he combed through foreign communications to find information that could prove useful for the United States. This quickly became Regan's area of expertise. He was then stationed at the Pentagon working for the Air Force Intelligence Support Group from 1991 to 1994. It was in this position that he grew familiar with the air defense systems of America's enemies.

After this position, Regan attended the general. Joint Military Intelligence College for a year. Upon his completion at the college, Regan was assigned to the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO, in Virginia. Well, Megan, at this point, Regan was in the perfect position to obtain top secret information. That's right, Alessia. But what exactly happened from here? Despite Regan's relatively successful career, he faced many challenges in his personal

life. Ever since he was a child, he had struggled to make friends. This trend continued into his adult years. Regan felt as though he was overlooked, both at his workplace and in the community. However, this was not the only motivation Regan had to betray his country. Regan had actually racked up a great deal of debt. The FBI's first clue that someone was stealing documents and planning on selling them to foreign governments came from an anonymous letter sent from the Libyan consulate.

One of the decoded letters said, I am a Middle East North African analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. I am willing to commit espionage against the U.S. by providing your country with highly classified information. I have a top secret clearance and have access to documents of all U.S. intelligence agencies, national security agency,

defense intelligence agency, Central Command, as well as smaller agencies. This was no joke. The FBI was now on high alert for the turncoat who they definitely knew had top secret clearance. The first clue to the trader's identity was several misspellings in the letters.

For example, the word confirmed was spelled C-O-N-F-R-I-M-D. Hmm, confirmed. That's a pretty glaring mistake. So how exactly was the information helpful? Well, Regan's dyslexia reveals how the misspellings connected to him, but within the letters was an email address the spy insisted they used for future contact. Let's listen to this clip of Yudhijit Badachari, author of The Spy Who Couldn't Spell, talk about how the FBI tracked Regan down. The breakthrough came from the documents, these printouts that I had mentioned, that were included. in these three packages. And the FBI was through digital forensics was able to determine where and when these documents had been printed. And the main suspect turned out to be a man

named Brian Patrick Regan who worked at one of the most secretive of the intelligence agencies, the National Reconnaissance Office, which is the agency that manages all of the spy side, satellites that provide an enormous technological advantage to the United States military. The FBI was able to view the account that the spy had created from a Maryland public library. The account had been accessed from other libraries in the Washington, D.C. area. Regan had been caught on camera in the NRO downloading classified documents from the Interlink database. The database was a place for people with top secret clearance to find information and take notes. This quickly raised red flags.

In August of 2001, just a few weeks before 9-11, Regan was arrested attempting to board a plane to Switzerland. Now, let's listen to U.S. Attorney Kenneth Melson announced Regan's arrest and charges. Last night, the FBI arrested Ryan Regan at Dulles International Airport as he was about to leave the country. Today, we have formally charged Mr. Regan with conspiracy to commit espionionion. At the initial hearing, just minutes ago, we asked the court to detain Mr. Regan pending trial in this case. Regan pleaded not guilty, but when he went to trial in 2003, he was sentenced to life in prison, narrowly escaping the death penalty. After the trial had concluded, the FBI searched for the documents Regan had stolen. With Regan's help, they eventually found about 20,000 pages of classified information, videotapes, and CDs buried around Maryland and Virginia.

He had planned to sell them for $13 million to China, Iraq, and Libya. What a strange story of espionage. Reagan was brilliant in his theory, but incredibly sloppy in the execution of his plan. Lucky for America, I guess. I'm Megan. And I'm Alessia. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Undetected. Tune in next week for the story of the famed children's author, Ralladal, and his espionage activities on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.