美国国家公共电台 NPR How Misspellings Caught A Spy

How Misspellings Caught A Spy

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And now we're going to hear a story that sounds just too bizarre to be true. More than a decade before Edward Snowden famously leaked thousands of classified records to the world, another U.S. government contractor² tried a similar move the old-fashioned way. His name is Brian Regan. And in 1999 and 2000, he smuggled³ classified documents out of his office and buried them in the woods hoping to sell them to a foreign government. But he was foiled in part by his own terrible spelling.

This thrilling story is out this month in a new book called "The Spy Who Couldn't Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor⁴, An Unbreakable Code And The FBI's Hunt For America's Stolen Secrets." Michel Martin talked with author Yudhijit Bhattacharjee about the strange story of Brian Regan.

MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE⁵: Why do you think most people have never heard of this story?

YUDHIJIT BHATTACHARJEE: The main reason is that Brian Regan was arrested just two weeks before 9/11. And so his story got completely overshadowed by the coverage⁶ of what was arguably the biggest story of the last 20 years.

MARTIN: So how did this all - how did he do it?

BHATTACHARJEE: So Brian Regan had access to Intelink which is the intelligence community's version of the Internet. It's a purely⁷ classified and closed-off network of government servers. And Brian Regan saw an opportunity in accessing hundreds and thousands of classified documents that were on these servers, print out satellite images, top secret documents which he then smuggled out of the building of the National Reconnaissance Office, hid in his basement and then ultimately went out to the forest and buried in several packages out in Virginia and in Maryland.

MARTIN: And so the plan was that once he got paid, he would tell people how to get the information.

BHATTACHARJEE: Exactly. His plan was a very meticulous⁸ and detailed⁹ plan and a rather complicated one. Once he buried these secrets, he read out the GPS coordinates¹⁰, the geo coordinates of these hiding locations, and he encrypted them. And so what he was left with were these sheets of paper with numbers and letters that nobody would have understood had he gotten caught. And, in fact, that's what happened later on. His plan was to offer a sample of these secrets to foreign governments in order to induce them, and then once he got paid $13 million, he was going to provide these sites so that these intelligence services could dig up the information and use it.

MARTIN: So take us back to the beginning. Who is Brian Regan and why did he do this?

BHATTACHARJEE: In 1995, Brian Regan joined the NRO which is the National Reconnaissance Office which is the agency that manages all of the spy satellites. Brian Regan - sometime in 1998 because of his severe debts and because of his feeling of being disrespected at the workplace and just in general in society - decided¹¹ that he was going to betray the country in order to try and make some money.

MARTIN: But he did have - you know, he had a family. He was married. He had kids. He did seem to be respected within his field, even though he did have a significant learning disability, and yet he didn't see himself that way. Do you know why?

BHATTACHARJEE: Brian Regan had a very difficult childhood. And I think it left a deep impact on him. Because of his dyslexia and his odd personality, he got ridiculed¹² at school. He got made fun of by his neighborhood friends. And despite his success, he still felt that more respect was due to him, and one way to put it is that Brian Regan was underestimated by everybody else and overestimated¹³ by himself, and that mismatch kind of sums up his psychology¹⁴.

MARTIN: So the first break in the case, at least for the U.S. government, was the fact that somebody informed on him.

BHATTACHARJEE: That's exactly right.

MARTIN: But they didn't know who they were informing on, correct? They just knew that somebody was passing information and an informant told - somebody who was an informant on the receiving side let the government know - the U.S. government know - that somebody was trying to pass these secrets, so they were kind of on their trail. What was the relevance¹⁵ of the fact that he couldn't spell? How did that become important?

BHATTACHARJEE: His misspellings were, in fact, one of the clues that allowed the FBI to narrow down the list of suspects because, you know, Brian Regan used to misspell words in his email communications, in his internal reports. And because the government had found so many misspellings in this intercepted¹⁶ package, investigators¹⁷ went looking for somebody who was a bad speller.

MARTIN: Ultimately, Regan was - I mean, this is not a spoiler. This is a matter of public record. He was convicted and sentenced to life. Why was the punishment so severe?

BHATTACHARJEE: The punishment was very severe because Brian Regan attempted to blackmail¹⁸ the government. He tried to ask the government to give him a reduced sentence in exchange for his willingness to tell them where he had hidden the secrets that he had stolen. What the government had at that point was simply these sheets of encrypted sites which the government didn't know what they meant, and he wasn't going to tell them. If he had come clean right after he was arrested, if he had cooperated, I believe he might have gotten away with a shorter sentence.

MARTIN: So what can we learn from this? I mean, the fact that the government had an example of a person who engaged in this conduct - and he thankfully from the governor's perspective was stopped in time before he was able to actually transfer any secrets. But is there something we should learn from this?

BHATTACHARJEE: After the Brian Regan case, there was considerable reform undertaken at the National Reconnaissance Office, but many in the intelligence community and the broader intelligence community still to this day don't know anything about the Brian Regan case, although, it was the perfect sort of example of an insider threat, and anybody studying that case could have foreseen the possibility of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. So it was sort of unfortunate that this important case got lost in history, and I'm glad that I was able to bring that story out.

MARTIN: Yudhijit Bhattacharjee's latest book is "The Spy Who Couldn't Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, An Unbreakable Code And The FBI's Hunt For America's Stolen Secrets." Yudhijit Bhattacharjee was in our studios in Washington, D.C., to talk with us about this. Thank you so much for joining us.

BHATTACHARJEE: Thank you, Michel.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 contractor   

n.订约人，承包人，收缩肌

参考例句：

• The Tokyo contractor was asked to kick $ 6000 back as commission.那个东京的承包商被要求退还6000美元作为佣金。
• The style of house the contractor builds depends partly on the lay of the land.承包商所建房屋的式样，有几分要看地势而定。

3 smuggled   

水货

参考例句：

• The customs officer confiscated the smuggled goods. 海关官员没收了走私品。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Those smuggled goods have been detained by the port office. 那些走私货物被港务局扣押了。 来自互联网

4 traitor   

n.叛徒，卖国贼

参考例句：

• The traitor was finally found out and put in prison.那个卖国贼终于被人发现并被监禁了起来。
• He was sold out by a traitor and arrested.他被叛徒出卖而被捕了。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 coverage   

n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖

参考例句：

• There's little coverage of foreign news in the newspaper.报纸上几乎没有国外新闻报道。
• This is an insurance policy with extensive coverage.这是一项承保范围广泛的保险。

7 purely   

adv.纯粹地，完全地

参考例句：

• I helped him purely and simply out of friendship.我帮他纯粹是出于友情。
• This disproves the theory that children are purely imitative.这证明认为儿童只会单纯地模仿的理论是站不住脚的。

8 meticulous   

adj.极其仔细的，一丝不苟的

参考例句：

• We'll have to handle the matter with meticulous care.这事一点不能含糊。
• She is meticulous in her presentation of facts.她介绍事实十分详细。

9 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。

10 coordinates   

n.相配之衣物；坐标( coordinate的名词复数 )；（颜色协调的）配套服装；[复数]女套服；同等重要的人（或物）v.使协调，使调和( coordinate的第三人称单数 )；协调；协同；成为同等

参考例句：

• The town coordinates on this map are 695037. 该镇在这幅地图上的坐标是695037。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, headed by the Emergency Relief Coordinator, coordinates all UN emergency relief. 联合国人道主义事务协调厅在紧急救济协调员领导下，负责协调联合国的所有紧急救济工作。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

12 ridiculed   

v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Biosphere 2 was ultimately ridiculed as a research debade, as exfravagant pseudoscience. 生物圈2号最终被讥讽为科研上的大失败，代价是昂贵的伪科学。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She ridiculed his insatiable greed. 她嘲笑他的贪得无厌。 来自《简明英汉词典》

13 overestimated   

对（数量）估计过高，对…作过高的评价( overestimate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They overestimated his ability when they promoted him. 他们提拔他的时候高估了他的能力。
• The Ministry of Finance consistently overestimated its budget deficits. 财政部一贯高估预算赤字。

14 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

15 relevance   

n.中肯，适当，关联，相关性

参考例句：

• Politicians' private lives have no relevance to their public roles.政治家的私生活与他们的公众角色不相关。
• Her ideas have lost all relevance to the modern world.她的想法与现代社会完全脱节。

16 intercepted   

拦截( intercept的过去式和过去分词 )； 截住； 截击； 拦阻

参考例句：

• Reporters intercepted him as he tried to leave the hotel. 他正要离开旅馆，记者们把他拦截住了。
• Reporters intercepted him as he tried to leave by the rear entrance. 他想从后门溜走，记者把他截住了。

17 investigators   

n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• This memo could be the smoking gun that investigators have been looking for. 这份备忘录可能是调查人员一直在寻找的证据。
• The team consisted of six investigators and two secretaries. 这个团队由六个调查人员和两个秘书组成。 来自《简明英汉词典》

18 blackmail   

n.讹诈，敲诈，勒索，胁迫，恫吓

参考例句：

• She demanded ＄1000 blackmail from him.她向他敲诈了1000美元。
• The journalist used blackmail to make the lawyer give him the documents.记者讹诈那名律师交给他文件。