Sharon Scranage

Sharon Scranage is a former CIA employee who was convicted and imprisoned for spying for Ghana.

Scranage, who worked in Ghana in the role of Operations Support Assistant, passed classified information to her boyfriend, Michael Soussoudis. Soussoudis, a Ghanaian citizen with permanent residence in the United States, was a Ghanaian intelligence officer who had been assigned to seduce Scranage and solicit US intelligence from her. Soussoudis obtained from Scranage the identities of eight 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 intelligence chief Kojo Tsikata. The Ghanaians exposed as CIA spies by the intelligence were subsequently arrested. Tsikata is alleged to have shared the information with several countries in the Soviet bloc.

Scranage is said to have come under suspicion when, upon her return to the United States in 1985, she failed a routine polygraph test. After an 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 with breaking the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. She pleaded guilty to three of the eighteen charges against her, with the others being dropped. She was sentenced to five years in prison, later reduced to two years. She was previously the only person convicted of breaking the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. The second individual, John Kiriakou, was sentenced to 30 months in prison on January 25, 2013.