American Notes California

Although Airman First Class Bruce Ott, 25, earned a military salary of just $817 a month, he sat down with an insurance agent in Yuba City, Calif., some three weeks ago to discuss how to invest a windfall of $200,000 that he expected to get. Ott, a clerk at Beale Air Force Base near Sacramento, and a newlywed, said he would soon be collecting $165,000 from the sale of a business, and spoke of $40,000 more that he might receive--for openers. Said the agent: "He implied he had a well that wasn't going to go dry." Less than a week later, Ott was arrested by military authorities and charged with espionage. He had apparently tried to sell national defense information to U.S. agents posing as Soviet spies.

Ott was accused of trying to sell two documents, including one on tactics to be followed by crews of the SR-71 reconnaissance plane, dubbed the Blackbird, which Ott's squadron flies. The supersonic jet, routinely used for intelligence gathering, can reach altitudes of 80,000 ft. and is equipped to photograph up to 100,000 sq. mi. of territory in an hour. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the maximum penalty for two of the four counts against Ott is death.