Edward Lee Howard

Who was Edward Lee Howard?

Edward Lee Victor Howard was a CIA case officer who defected to the Soviet Union.

Howard served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bucaramanga, Colombia. There he met Mary Cedarleaf in 1973, and they were married three years later in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1976, Howard earned a master’s degree in business administration from the American University in Washington, DC and joined USAID. In February 1977, the Howards left for two years in Lima, Peru, where he worked on loan projects. Although the CIA sometimes uses USAID as diplomatic cover, there is no evidence to suggest that Howard was anything but a loan officer. After Peru, the Howards returned to the United States, and he went to work in Chicago for a company doing environmental work. On March 19, 1983, the Howards had a son and named him Lee Howard.