Edward Lee Howard
| Edward Lee Howard | |
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Howard’s 1986 FBI wanted poster
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| Born |
27 October 1951 Alamogordo, New Mexico |
| Died | 12 July 2002 (aged 50) |
| Height | 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m) |
| Nationality | American |
Edward Lee Victor Howard (27 October 1951 – 12 July 2002) was a CIA case officer who defected to the Soviet Union.
Howard served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bucaramanga, Colombia. There he met Mary Cedarleaf in 1973, and they were married three years later in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1976, Howard earned a master's degree in business administration from the American University in Washington, DC, and joined USAID. In February 1977, the Howards left for two years in Lima, Peru, where he worked on loan projects. Although the CIA sometimes uses USAID as diplomatic cover, there is no evidence to suggest that Howard was anything but a loan officer. After Peru, the Howards returned to the United States, and he went to work in Chicago for a company doing environmental work. On March 19, 1983, the Howards had a son and named him Lee Howard.
Howard 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 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.
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. In February 1984 after a drunken brawl he was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon. The charges were later reduced to aggravated assault.
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Wikipedia