The Herald has learnt of the passing of Michael Agbotui Soussoudis, a famous cousin of the late, President Jerry John Rawlings.
This paper is informed that he passed away in South Africa on Tuesday night.
Details of his passing are sketchy, but it has been attributed to lung failure.
He is famously remembered for the Sharon Scranage espionage scandal, which involved the passing of classified information from Sharon Scranage, a clerk with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to Michael Soussoudis, an intelligence officer with Rawlings’ junta Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC).
Soussoudis formed a romantic relationship with the CIA employee Sharon Scranage sometime between May 27, 1983, and October 1984, eventually getting her to divulge confidential information to him.
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The affair reportedly lasted 18 months. She claimed that she had informed the CIA station chief in Ghana of the relationship and was only told to “be careful.”
Soussoudis was assigned to seduce Scranage and solicit US intelligence from her. Scranage was working in Ghana in the role of operations support assistant at the time.
Soussoudis obtained from Scranage the identities of Ghanaian citizens who were spying for the CIA, as well as plans for a coup against the Ghanaian government by dissidents.
Soussoudis then passed the information to the Ghanaian intelligence Chief, the late Kojo Tsikata, another of cousin of his.
The first indications of the affair occurred in 1983, when an Officer of was at Scranage’s home for dinner and noticed a picture of a man, later identified as Soussoudis on the vanity of her mirror.
The picture showed a shirtless Soussoudis with blankets pulled up to his chest. Upon Scranage’s return to the US in 1985, she failed a routine polygraph test, and further questioning led to the CIA uncovering how much information Soussoudis had obtained from her.
American authorities claimed that Scranage had handed Soussoudis “sensitive documents and the names of virtually everyone working for the C.I.A. in the country”. Soussoudis is an example of employing a successful honey trap to gain classified information.
After an FBI investigation, Scranage cooperated with the authorities, and assisted in the arrest of Soussoudis.
Soussoudis was later released in exchange for the Ghanaians arrested as CIA spies, who were deported to the United States and stripped of their Ghanaian citizenship.
Scranage was charged with espionage and breaching the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. She pleaded guilty to three of the eighteen charges against her, with the others being dropped. Later in 1985, she was sentenced to five years in prison, later reduced to two years. She ultimately served eight months of the original five-year sentence.
After Scranage’s relationship with Soussoudis was discovered, Scranage agreed to help the FBI lure him to the United States.
While on leave back in the US, Soussoudis was also there, Scranage contacted him and asked to meet at a motel in northern Virginia, where Soussoudis was arrested and charged with eight counts of espionage.
During a closed court hearing, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but he was eventually traded in exchange for eight of the agents whose identities he had helped compromise in Ghana.
He was released on condition that he quickly leave the United States. On December 3, 1985, he returned to Ghana and was greeted by thousands of cheering citizens.
The information Soussoudis obtained from Sharon Scranage led to the arrest of eight Ghanaian citizens who had been spying for the CIA.
They received sentences ranging from 25 years in prison with hard labour to life imprisonment. The US government believed that another CIA informant in Ghana who had been exposed was killed.
The intelligence also uncovered a planned coup by Godfrey Osei, of which there are allegations that the CIA supported.
The coup was allegedly already in motion with a boat carrying six tons of heavy weapons when the crew rebelled.
That led to the boat of arms and mercenaries returning to Brazil and the mercenaries being arrested, and later breaking out of prison and making their way back to the United States.
Among the eight arrested in Ghana, included Naval Captain Oppong, Colonel Bray, Abel Edusei, Adu Gyamfi, and Major John Kwaku Awuakye.
They constituted some of the most high-ranking informants that the CIA had in the government of Jerry Rawlings.
These eight CIA spies, were stripped of their Ghanaian citizenship before being deported to the United States, and relocated in the Virginia, DC, area.
According to FBI affidavits and CIA intelligence declassified in 2011, Ghanaian intelligence chief Kojo Tsikata passed intelligence provided by Scranage to Cuba, Libya, and East Germany.
