Portia Anyamba, a former official of South Africa’s State Security Agency, pleaded guilty in a US court to acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. The charge was section 951 of the US Criminal Code. She was not charged under the Espionage Act, and that gap has started an argument among South African intelligence figures over how her case should be described.
The two laws go after different conduct. The Espionage Act covers unlawfully obtaining, keeping or passing on national defence information, and it is the tool for alleged theft or disclosure of state secrets. Section 951 is a counter-intelligence statute. It requires anyone operating in the US under a foreign government’s direction or control to notify the US attorney-general. Prosecutors do not have to show that classified material was taken or handed over. The offence is failing to disclose the relationship.
The FBI said Anyamba’s conduct “placed US national security at risk.” Prosecutors still did not bring espionage charges, even though the case has been widely described as that of a South African “spy”. Former intelligence officials say the difference matters, since not every counter-intelligence investigation ends in an espionage prosecution.
Views from inside the intelligence community
A senior South African intelligence source set the case against the wider business of spying. “At the US embassy in South Africa there are CIA agents. They come in as diplomats. We know this and we do the same,” the source said. Officers serving under diplomatic cover are a longstanding fixture of international relations, the source added, and most major services use them.
A second source questioned the FBI’s investigation, saying there had been “an element of entrapment.” US prosecutors have not made that allegation, and it does not appear in court records. The same source thought the sentence was light. “It was not a heavy sentence for someone found guilty of being a spy,” the source said.
Washington has leaned on section 951 more in recent years. It has been used in cases involving Russia, China, Iran and other countries as the US widened its counterintelligence work to cover covert foreign influence alongside traditional spying. Legal experts note that the FBI’s counterintelligence division often investigates such cases, yet they remain separate from Espionage Act prosecutions. US authorities presented Anyamba’s case as a significant counter-intelligence success. The charge that reached the court was acting as an unregistered foreign agent.
