The Main Enemy

by Milton Bearden

  CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, 1410 Hours, August 5, 1985

  Bill Casey was leaning so far back in his chair that I thought he might actually topple over. Gerber and I were sitting in two straight-backed chairs in front of Casey’s desk in the DCI’s birch-paneled seventh-floor office. Behind us, through floor-to-ceiling windows, lay the lush, wooded panorama of the Virginia side of the Potomac. On the corner of Casey’s desk was a stack of books with titles ranging from Middle East oil politics to history and the stock market. Casey was a voracious reader. He would devour books all weekend, returning on Monday to tell his closest aides which ones they should read, perhaps even how to read them.

  Gerber and I were in Casey’s office to brief the DCI on the initial counterintelligence take from Yurchenko. Gerber confirmed that he was convinced Yurchenko’s Mr. Robert, a dismissed CIA employee who had turned to the KGB, was Edward Lee Howard.

  “What do you think about the Howard thing, Milt?” Casey asked.

  “Sometimes we get what we deserve,” I said.

  I felt, more than saw, Gerber bristle beside me. “I can’t imagine anyone thinking we deserve this kind of treachery,” Gerber said tensely.

  “What I mean is that Howard’s firing and the way it was handled is driving his revenge. The agency can’t say it was uninvolved in pushing him over the edge. I’m not saying that minimizes in any way what he’s done, Burton.”

  Casey stopped the exchange with one of his standard throwaway lines. “Hey, so we make mistakes.” Turning back to the subject of Yurchenko, he was almost gleeful. “How’s it goin’ with him?” Casey had almost given up on trying to pronounce Yurchenko’s name.

  “He’s running on nervous energy,” I said. “But Chuck Medanich, our psychologist, doesn’t think he’s in a higher than usual state of agitation for someone who’s done what he’s just done.”

  “So you want me to call him?” Casey asked, looking at the typed note in front of him.

  “Just call him and welcome him aboard,” I said, handing Casey the suggested talking points on a pair of three-by-five cards. “Here’s some language that will go a long way with him right now.”

  Casey glanced at the cards as he dialed the number himself, waiting until Yurchenko came on the line.

  “Alex”—Casey tilted his head back and peered through his bifocals at the three-by-five cards—“this is Bill Casey.” He paused to listen to the stream of words from Yurchenko. “Yeah, sure. I couldn’t agree more. I just wanted to welcome you personally to the United States. Together we can accomplish much.”

  Casey listened to Yurchenko for a few moments, then added, “Alex, when you’ve rested a little and talked to our colleagues, you and I can get together for a quiet dinner. In the meantime, you can always get a message to me through Tom Fannin. . . . Yeah. . . . Yeah. . . . And thank you again for coming to us to help with the struggle.”

  Casey flipped the three-by-five cards on his desk and winked at me.

  Vienna, Austria, August 9, 1985

  Edward Lee Howard flew from Albuquerque to Zurich on August 7 and on to Vienna two days later. He had arranged for a hurried leave from his job at the New Mexico state capitol. He told his boss that his grandmother, who had been ill, had suddenly died.

  Howard would spend only two days in Vienna, returning to Santa Fe on August 12. It would later be learned that Howard’s grandmother was neither dead nor living in Austria or Switzerland. It was not his first trip to Austria, either. He had traveled there in September 1984, when he first met his KGB contacts. It was either during that meeting or at a subsequent one that he betrayed Adolf Tolkachev. He probably also compromised the TAW operation at about the same time.

  Whether he knew Tolkachev’s real name or not, Howard certainly provided the key information the KGB needed to identify him. Rem Krassilnikov later insisted that the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate was already investigating Tolkachev before the First Chief Directorate provided information about Tolkachev from a source. But while the Second Chief Directorate had conducted a security probe of Tolkachev’s institute in 1983—before receiving Howard’s information—the KGB had not focused on Tolkachev specifically until Howard betrayed him.

  9

  Lefortovo District, Moscow, 0930 Hours, August 10, 1985

  The white Volga sedan wound its way through the Lefortovo district of old Moscow, a once elegant section of the city built on the Yauza River. Named after Franz Lefort, its Swiss planner, who had been a confidant of Peter the Great, it had once been a posh residential district of cobblestone streets reserved for foreigners. The original Lefortovo Palace, which had dominated the district, had been designed with three intersecting wings forming a letter K, a tribute by its architect, so the story went, to his demanding and fleeting lover Catherine the Great.

  By now, however, the palace’s name had become synonymous with the mystery and despair of what it had become—the Lefortovo pretrial and investigation prison. Lefortovo and its blood-soaked history had long since tempered the Russian soul. It is not known precisely how many of the Soviet Union’s elite died inside the prison in the late 1930s, giving Lefortovo the dubious honor of being Stalin’s premier “shooting prison.” The long cell-block corridors of the old palace had been painted an eerie flat black, and scuppers had been cut deep along the seams of walls and floors in some spots for quick pressure-hose cleanups after a busy night of shooting. In addition to the long line of Soviet officials purged after falling from Stalin’s grace, Lefortovo had also held Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish savior of thousands of Hungarian Jews in the 1940s, and, more recently, Natan Sharansky, the irrepressible Jewish dissident who had eventually been allowed to immigrate to Israel as part of a spy trade.

  Rem Krassilnikov’s Volga pulled to a halt before the high brown metal gate in front of an ocher building marked 3A.

  Krassilnikov knew Lefortovo’s history but thought it unrelated to his honorable work of catching spies. Krassilnikov was a true believer in the Soviet system and couldn’t understand the questioning attitude of the younger generations. To his mind, the job of extracting confessions from traitors could not be compared to the purges of the past. The only shootings that took place in Lefortovo now were by judicial decree. It just so happened that business was booming these days.

  Krassilnikov currently had two “guests” in separate isolation cells. One, the now resigned and courteous Adolf Tolkachev, had come to terms with the irreversibility of his situation. He was being most helpful, Krassilnikov thought.

  But this new one that Sharavatov’s men had netted was still in the indignant, tough-guy defensive stage. He was still searching desperately for that single snappy answer that would turn the game against his tormentors and make his awful problem vanish in a burst of overwhelming logic. But finding a harmless explanation for why he had been caught in the act of unloading an American dead drop full of cash was turning out to be more than even Colonel Leonid Georgiyevich Polyshchuk could handle.

  Polyshchuk was a KGB counterintelligence colonel in Moscow on leave from his posting in Lagos, Nigeria. When Sharavatov’s men had arrested him three days earlier, he had put a patchy, theatrical defense on the spot. He said he’d come to meet a woman at the Severyanin station and that he’d stepped into the field only to relieve himself and had been mistakenly arrested. While pissing on the stones around the electric pylon, he said, he’d suddenly remembered he ought to get a substantial rock to place under the rear wheel of his car to keep it from rolling down the sloping street where he had parked it. His parking brake was faulty, he explained, expecting that to clear up the little “misunderstanding” on the spot. But when pressed, Polyshchuk couldn’t remember the woman’s name, and when he led Sharavatov, who by this time had arrived on the scene, to his parked car, Sharavatov found two wooden chock blocks in the car’s trunk. Why didn’t he use these? Sharavatov asked. All Polyshchuk could conjure up was that he had forgotten he had them. He’d been off on a diplomatic assignment for a l
ong time and hadn’t inventoried the contents of his car trunk.

  Later that night, a thorough search of Polyshchuk and his car sealed the KGB colonel’s fate. The hand-drawn sketch of the field where the dead drop was located contained an error in a street name, one of several Krassilnikov knew appeared in an American-produced Moscow city plan used by the CIA. Polyshchuk also carried with him another map with a spot marked on Gorky Street where he was to leave his “have unloaded dead drop” signal, so that the American special services would know their package had been safely retrieved. And as the methodical search continued, a detailed communications plan printed on water-soluble paper was found sealed inside the lining of his glasses case.

  Krassilnikov knew he had his man. Just two days earlier, he’d brought the KGB colonel before the KGB Chairman, Viktor Chebrikov, who had made a simple demand of the haggard prisoner. “Remember your officer’s honor,” Chebrikov had demanded. “Do the right thing.” Krassilnikov had then left Polyshchuk with his own thoughts for a few days. He’d become helpful sooner or later, Krassilnikov thought. They all did, eventually—and there was plenty of time.

  Now, in the cold light of day, Krassilnikov waited in the second-floor interrogation room of Lefortovo’s newer wing. The time for a cover story defense has passed, he thought as he rose to answer the knock on the door that signaled Polyshchuk’s arrival. Krassilnikov carefully signed the jailer’s receipt for his ward, flipped a switch at the door that lit a red light in the hallway to signal an interrogation in progress, and let Polyshchuk into the sparsely furnished interrogation room. The KGB colonel had showered but not shaved. He would get a visit from the Lefortovo barber in a few days. His eyes still had traces of red from either the alcohol of the night before or a sleepless night with his thoughts. The ill-fitting blue Lefortovo running suit, and the shoes with the laces removed, further diminished his presence.

  Laid out on a conference table jutting off at right angles from Krassilnikov’s desk were the materials Sharavatov’s men had seized the night before. The effect was shattering. There could be no denial when faced with the maps, the money, the secret messages, the high-tech concealment, and all the incriminating evidence Polyshchuk had carried on his person. Krassilnikov let the enormity of the display sink in for a few minutes. He knew that once again he had his man cold.

  Colonel Leonid Georgiyevich Polyshchuk’s life as a CIA spy had actually begun eleven years earlier. He had come to the CIA’s attention in 1974 during the first years of détente; under more relaxed rules of engagement, Soviet intelligence officers were allowed to have greater contact with American diplomats and even CIA officers. Polyshchuk, taking advantage of the new opportunities, had started to cruise the watering holes of his backwater posting in Katmandu, Nepal. He quickly popped up on the radar screen of the CIA’s chief in Katmandu, who picked up on the man’s taste for liquor and the local casino. He soon learned that Polyshchuk had worked himself into a classic fix—he’d run through his KGB cash by trying to make a killing at the tables. Polyshchuk desperately needed cash to balance his books before his bosses discovered the money was missing. Polyshchuk agreed to take a “personal loan” from the American, and the transition from their personal agreement to the next step was easy. Polyshchuk would become a spy and cancel his debt.

  As Polyshchuk’s tour in Katmandu came to an end, he agreed to be trained in clandestine communications for “internal handling” by the CIA in Moscow. SE Division officer Sandy Grimes traveled to Katmandu and trained him in the skills needed for secure internal operations. With clandestine communications materials, Polyshchuk was sent on his way to Moscow. He was told not to do anything for the CIA for the next year, to cool off, and to work his way into a job with the most interesting access. In a year, Polyshchuk would give a “sign of life” in Moscow, standing at a specific corner wearing a fur hat he had bought in Katmandu, with a special leather bag over his shoulder. A CIA drive-by would spot him and confirm that he was alive. Then the operation would resume.

  There were alternate dates for the sign of life, plus a few preaddressed postcards Polyshchuk could mail as backups to signal that he was ready to begin receiving his encrypted radio broadcasts. The CIA knew that Polyshchuk could perform all these tasks and still be under KGB control. But that was one of the risks of running a spy in Moscow.

  Polyshchuk was a no-show at all of his sign of life sites in Moscow, and not one of his postcards was ever received by the CIA.

  Back home, Polyshchuk had destroyed the incriminating equipment given him by the CIA and hoped his relationship with the Americans would be dropped and forgotten. He burned everything that would burn and buried the rest, thinking that no one would ever know.

  SE Division assumed he got cold feet. It was possible he had been compromised, but there was no evidence of that. At the CIA, he was listed as “INACTIVE/WATCHLISTED.” The agency would be watching for the next time that Polyshchuk was posted overseas.

  The operation came back to life eleven years later, in February 1985, when Polyshchuk was assigned to Nigeria as the Line KR counterintelligence officer in the Soviet Rezidentura. Before long, he was back in business. Most of the CIA’s contacts with Polyshchuk in Lagos were brief “car pickups,” where the CIA officers would talk to him on the run, but the Americans also arranged a few more lengthy debriefings in one of their local safe houses.

  As in Katmandu, Polyshchuk’s information on the KGB’s local operations in Lagos was not of great interest to the Americans. Still, the CIA once again hoped that their agent could be convinced to spy from inside Moscow.

  The opportunity came in April 1985. Polyshchuk reported that he had received a letter from his parents telling him of a stroke of luck. A condominium apartment near their home in Moscow had come onto the market, and Polyshchuk could buy it for 20,000 rubles. Polyshchuk told the CIA that he had been looking for just such an apartment near his parents for years and had asked his parents to keep up the search while he was away in Africa. Concerned that he had to move fast or lose the apartment, Polyshchuk said that he had already requested leave to go home to Moscow to close the deal. He explained that this was commonplace for KGB or Foreign Ministry officers living abroad; the difficulties of finding and purchasing apartments in overcrowded Moscow were shared by many of his colleagues. His request was approved by Moscow Center, but only on condition that he take his full annual home leave, to save travel costs and time away from the job. Again, Polyshchuk told his CIA case officers that such an arrangement was routine. The only problem was that he didn’t have the 20,000 rubles.

  The CIA could give him the money, he said, and he’d carry it with him to Moscow. He would never be searched.

  SE Division accepted Polyshchuk’s explanation with few reservations. The story made sense. For the CIA, there seemed to be an added benefit; here was another chance to coax Polyshchuk into working in Moscow. He had given a variety of excuses about why he had failed to reestablish contact after he had returned to Moscow from Katmandu. But it was clear that he had been afraid of the risks.

  This time, the CIA believed it had a great way to convince Polyshchuk to unload a dead drop in Moscow and, in effect, get his operational feet wet. To get his 20,000 rubles, then worth about $30,000, Polyshchuk would have to get it at a Moscow dead drop.

  The CIA officers persuaded Polyshchuk that it would be too risky to carry the cash through customs at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. He’d be much safer picking it up after he arrived clean in Moscow. Polyshchuk finally agreed, and by May 10, the CIA had identified a dead drop site in Moscow that could be used in the operation.

  Polyshchuk left his last meeting with his handlers in Lagos in high spirits.

  Krassilnikov thought back over Polyshchuk’s arrest. He recalled how officers of the Seventh Chief Directorate, acting under the direction of the Second Directorate, had arrested Polyshchuk while he was picking up the money-filled rock at the Moscow dead drop site. The Americans must be second-guessing the decision to
have him pick up his money in Moscow. They would be wondering what went wrong for quite some time.

  Krassilnikov would forever insist that the men of the Second and Seventh Directorates deserved the credit. One of his subordinates had come to him and said that his men could feel that the Americans were about to go operational. Krassilnikov had agreed to put whatever resources were necessary on the Americans and deferred to his number two, Valentin Klimenko, to manage those resources.

  On the night that a CIA officer had placed a rock full of rubles near a pylon, leaving it there for Polyshchuk to pick up later, Klimenko had more than twenty surveillance vehicles and forty surveillance personnel following him. With so many resources, the men of the Second and Seventh Directorates were able to stand off more than five hundred meters at all times. After watching the CIA officer leave the cash-filled rock, it was just a matter of waiting and watching at the dead drop site to see who showed up.

  The KGB would make certain that the CIA got the message that Polyshchuk had been unmasked thanks solely to solid legwork by the Second and Seventh Chief Directorates. In Washington and Bonn, and perhaps elsewhere in the West, KGB officers were told that a drunken KGB colonel had been arrested after he was followed and watched, and the news soon got to the CIA from its agents inside those KGB Rezidenturas.

  But the CIA never quite believed it. Was the story KGB disinformation? What about the fact that Polyshchuk’s long-sought apartment in Moscow had suddenly become available? Had it been a ruse to lure him back to Moscow?

  10

  Coventry, Virginia, August 15, 1985

  Moving Yurchenko to a secluded safe house near Fredericksburg, Virginia, well outside the twenty-five-mile travel limit for Soviet diplomats posted in Washington, brought a sense of order to his debriefings. The large, single-family house, isolated on several waterfront acres, offered an ideal setting for the case. In Oakton, Medanich had grown frustrated with the espionage tourists, but they were unlikely to make the long drive to Fredericksburg. Now, only the intelligence officials who had real business with Yurchenko would show up.