Ronald William Pelton (November 18, 1941 – September 6, 2022) was a National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence analyst who was convicted in 1986 of spying for and selling secrets to the Soviet Union.

He was taught the Russian language by the Air Force and served for a time in the early 1960s in Peshawar, Pakistan, as a voice intercept processing specialist.

[2] In 1984, Pelton faced financial difficulties due to increasing homeowners' taxes and a mounting series of necessary repairs on his private residence.

[4] On trips to Vienna in 1980 and 1983, Pelton stayed at the residence of the Soviet Ambassador to Austria and underwent debriefing sessions that sometimes lasted eight hours a day with KGB officer Anatoly Slavnov.

Even though Pelton had left the NSA, he may have continued to be valuable to the Soviets as an intelligence consultant, helping them interpret data obtained from other sources.

[2][6] In 1985, KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko defected to the United States and, among other things, recalled that he had met with a former NSA analyst in 1980 and described him as red-haired.