Norman John Rees, ( – February 29, 1976) was an Italian-American oil engineer who was an agent for Soviet intelligence, then became a

double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...

for the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

. Rees committed suicide when a newspaper revealed his spying activities.Special to NYTimes front page (March 2, 1976)
"Spy Said He'd Kill Himself If Exposed, Then Did So"
''The New York Times,'' p. 1

Early life and career

Rees was born Nuncio Ruisi in Sicily . He worked as an engineer for the M.W. Kellogg Company and then the Socony Mobil Oil Company where he specialized in metallurgy, piping and pressurized tanks for oil.

Patents

In 1956, Rees received credit for the co-patent of the

gas lift A gas lift or bubble pump is a type of pump that can raise fluid between elevations by introducing gas bubbles into a vertical outlet tube; as the bubbles rise within the tube they cause a drop in the hydrostatic pressure behind them, causing t ...

Spying

According to Rees, he became a " communist sympathizer" during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

and began supplying oil industry trade secrets to the USSR in 1942. In 1950, he gave the Soviets a newly developed design for a catalytic cracking converter for which he earned a Soviet medal. In addition, he said he supplied Soviet agents with designs for a petroleum plant, natural gas processes and pressurized holding tanks. A newspaper report said he earned $30,000 over the years for providing information. After the

approached him about his activities, Rees worked as a

for the FBI from 1971 to 1975.

Exposure and death

In 1976, during a three-month-long investigation, the ''

Dallas Times Herald The ''Dallas Times Herald'', founded in 1888 by a merger of the '' Dallas Times'' and the '' Dallas Herald'', was once one of two major daily newspapers serving the Dallas, Texas ( USA) area. It won three Pulitzer Prizes, all for photography, an ...

'' newspaper twice flew Rees to Dallas for interviews. After the investigative journalist Kenneth P. Johnson told Rees that the newspaper planned to print a story that would expose his activity as a double agent, Rees asked Johnson not to run the story or else Rees would commit suicide. Ten hours after the story was published, Rees died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In the aftermath, newspapers debated whether the threat of suicide should supersede the right of the journalist to publish the story.

References

1900s births 1976 suicides 1976 deaths Year of birth uncertain Espionage in the United States American spies for the Soviet Union Federal Bureau of Investigation informants 20th-century American engineers Suicides by firearm in Texas {{espionage-bio-stub