Brian Patrick Regan

Brian Patrick Regan (born October 23, 1962, in New York, New York) is an American convict and former intelligence officer serving a life sentence for espionage. As a United States Air Force master sergeant, he was a signals intelligence (SIGINT) specialist assigned to the National Reconnaissance Office. His severe lifelong dyslexia played a role in his identification and capture, which led the media to dub him "the spy who couldn't spell".

In 1999, amid mounting debts and a deteriorating personal life, Regan began exfiltrating large quantities of classified information from the Intelligence Community intranet, Intelink. After failing to deploy as required, he was forced into retirement by the Air Force in 2000 but soon returned to NRO as a contractor for TRW and continued to steal secrets. At the same time, Regan was shopping the intelligence to the governments of Iraq, Libya and China, going as far as writing a letter to Saddam Hussein.

By December 2000, the FBI had become aware of Regan's activities. He was arrested at Dulles International Airport while attempting to board a flight to Zürich, Switzerland, with classified documents concealed in his shoes. Caches of additional documents were found buried in wooded areas in Virginia and Maryland. Regan was charged under the Espionage Act and pled not guilty in February 2002. He was convicted on two counts of attempted espionage and one of unlawful retention of national defense information.

In sentencing, the government requested the death penalty in what would have been the first capital case for espionage since those of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, however in sentencing the jury did not reach the unanimous consensus required to impose it, and as a result he was instead sentenced to life without parole. He is currently imprisoned at Federal Correctional Institution, Cumberland in Maryland.