"There are folks in every veterans hospital and [grave] markers from here to Europe to Asia that you have dishonored. ... You did it in part out of simple greed," U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said before he gave Pitts nearly three more years in prison than prosecutors had requested.
The Spotsylvania resident will serve three more years in prison than ex-CIA case officer Harold James Nicholson, who was convicted in March of giving Moscow more damaging information.
Pitts' lawyers said their client had anticipated a long period of incarceration but they would appeal the sentence.
"He was expecting to get hung," lawyer Frank Dunham said. "He figured that the fact he was an FBI agent would make his crime worse."
Pitts pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy to commit espionage for turning over secret documents to first Soviet and then Russian intelligence agents from 1987 to 1992. As part of his plea, he acknowledged receiving $124,000. Pitts also pleaded guilty to attempted espionage for passing classified information to FBI agents posing as Russians during a 16-month sting.
While working in the FBI's counterintelligence office in New York and later in the Washington headquarters, Pitts had access to classified information about the agency's efforts to monitor and counteract foreign spying efforts, according to a sentencing memo filed by prosecutors.
"What I did was very wrong and harmful," Pitts told the judge. "To my country, colleagues and community which deserved more than was received ... I will say simply, but with the deepest sincerity, I am sorry."
But Ellis chided Pitts, saying, "I don't think your expression of remorse is very profound."
Ellis' decision to send Pitts to prison for 27 years hinged on two key rulings. Pitts was punished separately for spying for Moscow and for participating in the FBI sting. Ellis also gave Pitts additional time for abusing his position, likening the counterintelligence agent's cooperation with Moscow to a prison guard working with drug dealers.
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