US spy faces life sentence

A former United States intelligence agent was convicted yesterday of spying for the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

A federal jury in Tampa found George Trofimoff, aged 74, guilty of espionage for selling thousands of secret US military documents to the Soviet KGB while he was chief of the US Army Joint Interrogation Centre in Nuremberg, Germany, from 1969 to 1994.

He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. Sentencing was set for September 27.

Trofimoff was born in Germany to Russian parents.

He became a US citizen and retired from the US Army reserves as a colonel, making him the highest ranking officer ever charged with espionage.