 … For that I deserved to go to prison.”

Banham was submitted by "The Journal of Commerce" for the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism.The nomination honored a series of articles he wrote disputing government reports that the Soviet Union had bugged the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.Banham contended that the government had purchased a secret insurance policy underwritten by American International Group, Inc., and reinsured by Ingosstrakh, the Russian state insurer.