Grandson of Pulitzer Prize Naval Historian Guilty of Theft

>>News Alerts: Subscribe to a free email newsletter: ANNAPOLIS • EDGEWATER • ODENTON

A Crofton man pardoned over a decade ago for espionage -- then arrested in June 2014 for stealing government property that had once belonged to his famous grandfather -- pleaded guilty Thursday to theft.

Samuel Loring Morison, 70, is the grandson of former naval historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Samuel Eliot Morison, who died in 1976. The younger Morison admitted this week that he stole 34 boxes of maps, charts, photos and other materials from the Navy Archives in Washington, D.C.

According to The Capital Gazette, some of the stolen documents included research and files that had belonged to Samuel L. Morison’s grandfather.

According to a biography written about him on the Naval History and Heritage website, the elder Morison was a professor at Harvard University in 1925, then served as a lieutenant commander of the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II and was promoted to rear admiral after he retired.

He received two Pulitzer Prizes, both in the category of biography for his works Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1943), a biography of Christopher Columbus, and John Paul Jones -- written in 1959, awarded in 1960).

CBS DC reports that Samuel L. Morison was convicted of espionage and stealing government property in 1985.

Morison had leaked three spy satellite photographs, depicting the Soviet Navy’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, to British military magazine Jane’s Defence Weekly, CBS DC reports. At the time, he was employed as an intelligence analyst for the Navy. Morison was sentenced to two years in prison and was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001.

The Capital Gazette reports that charging documents state Morison was a part-time researcher at the Navy Archives between July 2010 and February 2013 and had extensive access to the files.

Morison was involved in producing a history of the Navy’s role in the war on terror, according to The Baltimore Sun. The materials in question were missing for a year and were first reported as missing in February 2013. The newspaper reports the first tip to the documents’ whereabouts came a year later when “Morison had contacted a bookseller who agreed to take $5,000 worth of the papers and sell them on a consignment basis at his shop and through eBay.”

Morison had faced up to 10 years in prison for stealing government property, but was sentenced to two years probation.