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Edward Lee Howard (1951 - 2002) was a CIA case officer who defected to the Soviet Union.

He was hired by the CIA in 1980 and was later joined by his wife, Mary, where they were both trained in intelligence and counter-intelligence methods. Shortly after the end of their training and before going on their first assignment, a routine polygraph (which is not legally admissible in court) test indicated that he had lied about past drug use, and he was fired by the CIA in 1983 shortly before he was to report to the CIA's station at the American embassy in Moscow.^[1]

Disgruntled over the perceived unfairness of having been dismissed over accusations of drug use, petty theft and deception, he began to abuse alcohol. He then began making mysterious phone calls to some former colleagues, both in Washington and in Moscow. At some point he began providing classified information to the KGB.

In 1985, the CIA was being shaken by several security leaks that led to exposure of agents and assets. In the investigation of these leaks, a KGB defector Vitaly Yurchenko marked Howard as a traitor. While living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Howard used his CIA training to evade the FBI and fled the US for Russia before he could be arrested. He spent most of the rest of his life there. He died in 2002 at his Russian dacha from a broken neck. Cursory investigation of the cause of his death has been inconclusive, with assassination and murder being the possible causes.

1. ^ Howard describes this experience in Chapter 4 of Safe House: The Compelling Story of the Only CIA Operative to Seek Asylum in Russia (Bethesda, MD: National Press Books, 1995). [1]