FBI Says Lipka Spied ‘Strictly for Money’

MILLERSVILLE, Pa. —  Sitting in his blue-green Chevy van three years ago, talking to an undercover FBI agent he believed to be a Russian intelligence official, Robert Lipka allegedly confided his reason for betraying his nation during one of the most frigid stages of the Cold War: “I worked strictly for money.”

The life Lipka led in Pennsylvania before FBI agents arrested him Friday on charges of espionage lends credence to that claim.

Lipka, according to people who know him, has two obsessions: trading rare coins and betting on horses. Although he worked briefly as a high school history teacher after supposedly financing a college education with espionage earnings, Lipka essentially dropped out of the work force in his late 20s.

Since then, authorities and acquaintances say, his only steady occupations appear to have been dealing coins and placing bets.

Over the past year, Lipka spent much of his time at an off-track betting facility in York, Pa., about a 30-minute drive from his home in Pennsylvania’s Amish country.

On almost any afternoon, the hefty, loquacious betting enthusiast could be found placing wagers on horses and talking to friends at the Penn National Race Course’s off-track betting parlor in a York strip mall, according to manager Rob Marella.

“He’s one of our regulars,” Marella said. “Most of the time he was laughing and jovial. Most of the people around here were surprised to hear he’s accused of spying. He’s closer to Oscar Madison than James Bond.”

What authorities believe to be his biggest gamble ever--smuggling classified documents out of the National Security Agency headquarters at Ft. Meade, Md., and selling them to the Soviet KGB--apparently came due 20 years after the fact: His first wife, Patricia, helped authorities build the case against him.

She provided key information on Lipka’s alleged contacts with Soviet agents, who paid him $500 to $1,000 every time he provided them with U.S. documents, the sources said. She was approached by FBI agents who were investigating Lipka after following leads provided in 1993 by a KGB defector.

Authorities say Lipka himself corroborated much of the government case against him during four meetings in 1993 with an FBI official who posed as a Russian spy trying to resume contact. In the recorded meetings, Lipka allegedly described his former espionage activity, expressed willingness to work for the new Russian intelligence agency and complained that he was paid too little when he worked for the KGB.

In addition, the FBI says, Lipka went so far as to request $5,000 for classified documents he said he had kept since leaving the NSA in 1967. The government gave him the money but he never produced the material, according to the affidavit for his arrest.

Lipka told the undercover FBI agent that he had used his rare-coin business as a front to launder money, according to the affidavit.

Lipka’s declaration to the FBI three years ago seems to place him in the same category as other spies prosecuted since the mid-1980s who appear to have been motivated more by greed than by ideology. Government officials believe that financial gain was the primary consideration in the espionage activities of Aldrich H. Ames, the CIA counterintelligence official who pleaded guilty in 1994 to spying for the Soviet Union, and retired Navy Warrant Officer John A. Walker Jr., who headed a family spy ring that sold secrets to the Soviets.

The fact that Lipka might take his place in the same rogues’ gallery of traitors has stunned his neighbors along the neat, upper-middle-class street where he lives with his second wife and two sons, ages 10 and 13. The Lipkas’ modern, spacious, brick ranch-style home is in Manor Township, a residential community surrounded by farmland.

The FBI says Lipka turned over highly classified information to the Soviets during his military service in the 1960s, when the Army assigned him to work as a clerk at the super-secret NSA. Lipka allegedly continued to supply Soviet agents with material after leaving the military in 1967 to attend college at nearby Millersville University.

“I was just telling my husband today: Who would have ever thought we would wake up and find out that someone like this was living right beside us?” said Vickie Dunk, 38, who lives next door to the Lipkas. “They seemed like the typical American family.”

Neighbors say the couple generally kept to themselves after moving in about 18 months ago. Lipka, 50, told some neighbors he was a former coin dealer who retired because of a back injury and received disability checks. His wife is a postal worker.

Some of the college professors who knew Lipka at the time he was allegedly selling secret documents to Soviet agents say the espionage accusations could shed light on his behavior.

“No wonder he was so arrogant,” said Terry Madonna, a professor of political science at Millersville University.

“I always thought his stories about being in military intelligence were exaggeration,” said Jack Fischel, chairman of the history department. Madonna and Fischel taught classes attended by Lipka.

Several Millersville faculty members say Lipka stands out in their memories mainly because he was a loudmouth.

“He is a difficult personality. Argumentative. Obstreperous,” Madonna said. “But there’s nothing I could see in his ideology that indicated he was an America-hater.”

Madonna speculated that it was “outright greed” that led Lipka into his current difficulties, a theory that rings true with others who knew him.

Several professors say they would describe Lipka’s views during his college years as somewhat libertarian. While he tended to take strong positions on many topics, they say, his opinions did not seem to conform with any traditional ideology. No one recalls him expressing sympathy with communism.

Lipka’s penchant for airing his views extended well beyond college. Over the years, he supplied local newspapers with a steady stream of commentary on a wide range of issues.

As recently as last week, the Lancaster Sunday News published a letter from Lipka criticizing radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh for allowing callers to make false accusations without any rebuttal. Past letters supported the opening of an off-track betting hall in Lancaster and defended former President Bush’s pardons of Iran-Contra figures.

For several years beginning in 1975, Lipka wrote a column about coins for the Sunday News. For a time during the 1970s, he ran a storefront coin shop in Lancaster.

Lipka’s intense interest in coins was evident while he was in college, his professors say. But he showed no signs of lavish living at the time.

Times staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow in Washington contributed to this story.