Donald Nichols (spy)

Donald Nichols (18 February 1923 – 2 June 1992) was a United States Air Force intelligence officer during the Korean War. He and his spies found targets in North Korea for the U.S. airforce. Before the war, Nichols had also warned his superiors that North Korea was planning to invade South Korea, although this was ignored. At the start of the war, Nichols and his men broke North Korean battle codes, which helped U.S. forces survive and repel the invasion. Nichols created the Air Force's first covert intelligence unit, Detachment 2 of the 6004th Air Intelligence Service Squadron, which he commanded during most of the war. His intelligence outfit, sometimes known as "Nick," went behind enemy lines to find vulnerabilities in Soviet tanks and aircraft. His intelligence achievements won him the Silver Star and the Distinguished Service Cross.

Nichols's had a personal relationship with South Korean President Syngman Rhee who he met in 1946. Rhee used Nichols to transmit intelligence leaks to senior U.S. commanders, which helped speed Rhee's rise to power in South Korea. As part of his collaboration with the South Korean security forces, Nichols witnessed torture, beheadings, and the mass shootings of alleged communists. He did not report these atrocities to his superiors. Nichols had near-complete autonomy from the Air Force command structure. He reported only to leading Air Force General Earle E. Partridge. Nichols had unsupervised access to large amounts of cash, which he used to pay off agents. He also brought some back to the United States.

The intelligence career of Nichols came to a sudden end in 1957, when the Air Force relieved him of his command and sent him to psychiatric wards at U.S. military hospitals, first in Tachikawa, Japan, and then at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. His military service record indicated no history of mental illness, and Air Force colleagues said he showed no such symptoms, but Air Force doctors diagnosed Nichols as a "deteriorating schizophrenic." He was given large doses of Thorazine and forced to undergo 14 rounds of electroshock. Nichols later told relatives "that the government wanted to erase his brain—because he knew too much."

Nichols was forced to retire from the military on a medical disability in 1962. He was later charged in Florida with repeated sexual assaults on young boys and pleaded nolo contendere (no contest) in 1987 to two felony counts of lewd behavior in the presence of a child. He died in 1992 in the psychiatric ward of a veteran's hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he had gone in lieu of imprisonment in Florida. He was inducted into the Air Commando Hall of Fame in 1981. Nichols wrote an autobiography, How Many Times Can I Die?. A biography entitled King of Spies was published in 2017 by Blaine Harden.