The Main Enemy

by Milton Bearden

  For his part, Medanich had come to respect Yurchenko; he seemed a cut above the other Soviet defectors he had handled during his career. Yurchenko had a puritanical streak and adhered to a spartan (if very odd) diet. He enjoyed cooking beef tongue and other Russian specialties he believed would soothe his ailing stomach. He never expressed interest in having the CIA procure women for him or in indulging himself in other vices. The recent death of his mother from stomach cancer had convinced Yurchenko that he was living on borrowed time, and while the loss seemed to have spurred him on to his impulsive decision to defect, it didn’t mean he was a man of uncontrollable urges. He was, Medanich concluded, a man of honor. He had been happily telling the CIA everything he knew about KGB operations, had provided the tip that had led the CIA and FBI to Howard, and now all he hoped for was a reunion with the woman he loved and a fresh life on the American side of the Cold War.

  For Yurchenko, the night before the trip to Montreal was like the night before the junior prom. Medanich arranged for a haircut and a new suit so he would look his best for his girl.

  Yurchenko flew from Washington with Medanich and a CIA security detail to a military base near Plattsburgh, New York. The small group then drove across the border to rendezvous with the CIA’s station chief in Canada and one of Yurchenko’s main CIA debriefers, Colin Thompson, a Soviet Division officer in charge of Eastern European counterintelligence. The Canadian government provided security and logistical support for the visit, to make sure the KGB didn’t try to grab Yurchenko while he was out of the United States.

  Yurchenko and his entourage spent one night in a Montreal hotel under the watchful eyes of the Canadian security personnel. The Canadians didn’t want Yurchenko to go out on the streets during the evening, but Medanich realized that he was so nervous, endlessly pacing in his room, that he needed to get out. Medanich finally overruled the Canadians and took him out for a walk, while a tense Canadian security detail followed close on their heels.

  Valentina had returned from home leave in Moscow just before Yurchenko and his CIA detail arrived in Montreal. The CIA tried to arrange for Yurchenko to approach her as soon as she returned, just in case the Soviets knew about their relationship. The CIA figured that if they moved quickly, the Soviets wouldn’t have enough time to plan an ambush.

  The plan was simple: Yurchenko would go to Valentina’s apartment at lunchtime, while her husband was at the office and when she would most likely be one of the few people in the building. Canadian security personnel had the site covered, with lookouts across the street radioing back to a makeshift command post and undercover personnel posing as maintenance workers just down the hall. They were poised to move in quickly at the first sign of trouble.

  When Yurchenko knocked on the apartment door, Valentina seemed to be expecting him. But his dreams were quickly shattered. When he asked her to come with him, she sternly said no. Later, Yurchenko confided to Medanich what she had said. She told him that she had loved a KGB colonel, not a traitor.

  I have loved two men in my life, she told him. My father and you. My father is dead, and now you are dead in my eyes. You are nothing but a traitor.

  The rejection was very dramatic, very Russian, and absolutely devastating. Valentina never let Yurchenko inside her apartment; the entire exchange took place at her door and lasted just two or three minutes. His head spinning, Yurchenko found his way back downstairs, back to the car and Medanich, back to a life now empty of dreams.

  Colin Thompson left Montreal uncertain whether Valentina had ever really shared Yurchenko’s dream of a life together. Thompson never warmed to Yurchenko, at least not the way Medanich did, and he wondered if Yurchenko’s idea of having Valentina run away with him was merely a fantasy to avoid a lonely existence as a Russian defector in the United States.

  After a brief countersurveillance run to make sure they weren’t being followed, Yurchenko’s driver headed for the border. The Canadians made the exit from downtown Montreal easier by blocking off traffic.

  Yurchenko said little in the car as they sped away from the scene of his heartbreak. Matter-of-factly, he told Medanich what Valentina had said but added little about his own thoughts. Yurchenko, ever the KGB officer, didn’t want to say much in front of a driver he didn’t know well. And Medanich didn’t pry; the pain was evident.

  It was raining hard by the time they got back to Plattsburgh; the remnants of a tropical storm were pounding the Northeast. The weather fit Yurchenko’s foul mood. While he was in Montreal, the story about his defection had broken in The Washington Times, and the rest of the Washington press corps was chasing the story. Some CIA officers had an awful feeling that the leaks might have come directly from CIA Director William Casey, who was eager for some positive press now that controversy was mounting over the CIA’s aggressive activities in Central America, particularly the mining of Nicaraguan harbors.

  Yurchenko had discovered the leaks in the worst possible way: He picked up a Montreal newspaper and saw a story about himself, just as he was being rejected by Valentina. He lost his love and his anonymity at the same time, and his bitterness about his fate deepened.

  That night, at the officers club, Yurchenko had a drink; it was the only time he did so in front of Medanich. Even then, he stopped at one.

  The weather cleared the next morning, and they boarded their plane for Washington in brilliant sunshine. Yurchenko’s spirits seemed to lift briefly as he stood in the door of the plane, breathing in the morning air. But on the flight back to Washington, he seemed to be wrestling with his fate. He was convinced that the KGB had brainwashed Valentina, that they had turned her against him. Now, for the first time, he had to think about life without her.

  He turned to Medanich. You are single, Yurchenko observed. What is it like to be a bachelor?

  “I’ve been married and I’ve been single,” Medanich said carefully, not knowing what answer Yurchenko wanted. “There are advantages both ways.”

  Back in Washington, Yurchenko’s mood grew worse. Without Valentina, he found it harder to accept the slights he perceived. His anger over the media leaks mounted, and he felt his handlers were showing him off to the world—and cutting off his options.

  By mid-October, Medanich and others at the CIA realized that Yurchenko needed a break. Maybe a trip out west would take his mind off his troubles, off Valentina. This time, Medanich would not be along to help soothe Yurchenko’s nerves. Colin Thompson took his place, joining Yurchenko and the rest of his detail on a tour of the West. Thompson and Yurchenko didn’t get along, which doomed the trip almost from the start.

  After flying to Phoenix, Yurchenko and his escorts drove to the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and Bryce Canyon, Utah. The idea was to let him relax and see the country, but the trip only reconfirmed his fear that he didn’t fit into this strange culture. Far from Washington, Yurchenko found it harder to make himself understood by Americans unfamiliar with his heavily accented English. Coached to ask for oatmeal instead of porridge for breakfast, he was embarrassed when a waitress was puzzled by his request for “houtmeal.” It was his first exposure to life outside his CIA-created bubble, and he found it bewildering. He later confessed to Medanich that he felt like a baby, a proud KGB officer now unable to do things for himself.

  In Las Vegas, Yurchenko was put off when his minders offered to find him a prostitute. It was clear that the pleasures of Las Vegas—gambling, sex, and liquor—were lost on Yurchenko.

  The highlight of the trip came when the group was flagged down in rural Arizona and met by an FBI agent carrying a book of mug shots for Yurchenko to plow through. The FBI was anxious to track down the NSA spy, since he had told the Soviets about one of the most costly eavesdropping operations in American history. Yurchenko had already gone through a series of other mug books of NSA employees and had come up dry. But this time, the FBI widened the net to include a photo of a former NSA employee. It didn’t take long for Yurchenko to identify Ronald Pelton, who had left the NSA before he
began spying, as the man who had visited the Soviet embassy.

  But as soon as Yurchenko picked Pelton out of the mug book, Thompson saw a change in him. Suddenly, Yurchenko realized that by fingering Pelton, he might have to testify in court, and he would thus publicly confirm the fact that he had defected. Such an open display would almost certainly prompt the Soviet authorities to move against his family and make it impossible for him to ever return home. Thompson later believed it was at that moment that Yurchenko began to think about finding a way out of his new life.

  Medanich could see after Yurchenko returned from the trip that it had done nothing to improve his outlook. By late October, he was concerned that Yurchenko was slipping away mentally and emotionally. Medanich was an instinctive man, and his gut had been warning him about the Yurchenko case for some time. He had always had a slightly spooky feeling whenever he drove down to the Coventry safe house near Fredericksburg to visit Yurchenko. He could never quite put his finger on it, but during their walks by the beaver pond on the property, he sometimes felt as if they were being watched. There were minor incidents—strangers driving down the lane leading up to the safe house, for instance—that heightened his suspicions. There was never any evidence that the strangers were there to watch Yurchenko, but Medanich just didn’t like so many coincidences.

  Now, Yurchenko’s mood was changing rapidly. Medanich finally wrote a memo detailing his fears, warning that unless something was done and done fast, Yurchenko would end his cooperation with the United States government. The memo was sitting on Burton Gerber’s desk by the beginning of November. Later, Medanich wished he had used stronger language in his memo and had warned that Yurchenko might redefect.

  Even before Gerber saw Medanich’s memo, he had also begun to see signs of trouble. In mid-October, Gerber went to see Yurchenko at the Coventry safe house. Gerber was accompanied by Murat Natirboff, who happened to be in Washington and had asked to meet Yurchenko. Natirboff told Gerber that he was interested in talking to Yurchenko about KGB operations in Moscow.

  Leaving Natirboff behind, Gerber and Yurchenko took a walk on the grounds of the safe house by themselves, and Yurchenko calmly but firmly told Gerber how he felt about the leaks, which by then had reached flood stage. “Mr. Gerber, how can I trust your service when everything I tell you ends up in the newspaper?”

  The next day, Gerber told his colleagues what Yurchenko had asked him, and Gerber said that he had no answer. The Russian was right: The CIA had failed him. Gerber wrote a memo for his superiors, warning that Yurchenko’s mood had darkened and that the case could be in trouble.

  14

  Alexandria, Virginia, October 4, 1985

  As he went through his mail at home, Viktor M. Degtyar, a Line PR officer in the KGB’s Washington Rezidentura, found an intriguing letter addressed to him and postmarked “Oct. 1, Prince George’s County, Md.” Inside was a second envelope, marked “DO NOT OPEN. TAKE THIS ENVELOPE UNOPENED TO VICTOR I. CHERKASHIN.” There was no name or return address on either envelope, but whoever had sent this letter knew something about KGB operations in Washington. Mailing a letter to the home of a KGB officer bypassed the dangers of a more direct means of approaching Soviet intelligence officers under the watchful eyes of the FBI. And the very fact that the sender knew the name and home address of a KGB officer—and knew the name of the man in charge of counterintelligence for the Rezidentura—strongly suggested that this letter was to be taken seriously.

  Once the letter was delivered to the Rezidentura, opened, and read, any doubts that the KGB might have had about its significance evaporated:

  Dear Mr. Cherkashin:

  Soon, I will send a box of documents to Mr. Degtyar. They are from certain of the most sensitive and highly compartmented projects of the U.S. intelligence community. All are originals to aid in verifying their authenticity. Please recognize for our long-term interests that there are a limited number of persons with this array of clearances. As a collection they point to me. I trust that an officer of your experience will handle them appropriately. I believe they are sufficient to justify a $100,000 payment to me.

  I must warn of certain risks to my security of which you may not be aware. Your service has recently suffered some setbacks. I warn that Mr. Boris Yuzhin (Line PR, SF), Mr. Sergey Motorin (Line PR, Wash.), and Mr. Valeriy Martynov (Line X, Wash.) have been recruited by our “special services.”

  . . . Details regarding payment and future contact will be sent to you personally. My identity and actual position in the community must be left unstated to ensure my security. I am open to commo suggestions but want no specialized tradecraft. I will add 6 (you subtract 6) from stated months, days and times in both directions of our future communications.

  As if his letter wasn’t already intriguing enough, the volunteer also passed on information about recent Soviet defectors to the United States, as well as some of the government’s most sensitive technical operations targeting Soviet intelligence activities in the United States.

  Stanislov Androsov, the KGB Rezident, and Viktor Cherkashin, chief of counterintelligence in the Rezidentura, knew immediately that this volunteer was genuine. The letter corroborated some of the information that Cherkashin had received from Aldrich Ames a few months earlier, and the KGB was already quite satisfied that Ames was not a double agent. He had provided too much information to be a double. Like this new volunteer, Ames had also fingered Martynov, Motorin, and Yuzhin, and as a result they were all already under suspicion. To be sure, Martynov had been allowed to take his summer home leave—and then return to the United States—after Ames had identified him as a spy, perhaps because the Soviets were not yet certain what to make of Ames or his information. But this new source was providing corroboration.

  The letter writer did not reveal his identity, but to an experienced counterintelligence officer like Cherkashin, the letter offered plenty of clues about where he worked. From Ames, the KGB knew that the Russian spies inside the Washington Rezidentura and other stations in the United States were handled jointly by the CIA and the FBI. But a CIA officer like Ames with broad access to the agency’s Soviet programs might also be aware of Russian agents in Moscow and other locations overseas. An FBI agent would not. By contrast, an FBI agent involved in counterintelligence would have greater detailed knowledge of collection operations targeted against the Soviets in the United States. “I think it would have taken Cherkashin about thirty seconds to figure out that the letter was from an FBI agent,” Paul Redmond would later observe.

  The letter writer was smart enough to realize that the secrets he was planning to hand over to the Soviets could finger him, even if he never gave the KGB his name. He acknowledged in his letter that the “box of documents” he planned to send to Degtyar would “as a collection . . . point to me.”

  Androsov and Cherkashin knew how to protect this volunteer. Earlier in the year, both had flown back to Moscow, rather than send a cable, to inform Center about Ames. Now, the KGB code-named this new volunteer B and slowly created an operational environment in which he could begin to thrive. On October 15, Degtyar received a package at his home containing a large number of classified documents from B. Androsov and Cherkashin could hardly believe their luck; just five months after Ames, this new, anonymous volunteer was providing equally astounding material from the heart of the U.S. intelligence community. The KGB’s Washington Rezidentura, knocked off balance by John Walker’s arrest earlier in the year, was now tapping into the mother lode.

  At 8:35 A.M. on October 16, FBI surveillance personnel routinely monitoring the Soviet embassy watched Degtyar arrive for work with a large black canvas bag that he didn’t normally carry. They duly noted that detail in their logs, and that tiny shard of information lay in the FBI surveillance files for years afterward, unexplained and seemingly unimportant.

  Meanwhile, Viktor Cherkashin began thinking of ways to convince Valeriy Martynov to return to Moscow without making him suspicious.

  New York, Ear
ly October 1985

  He had done it. He had mailed the letter on his way back to Washington for a meeting at FBI headquarters. Even if the KGB concluded that it came from someone in the bureau, it would be difficult to trace back to a supervisory agent in the New York Field Office. Mailing it to Degtyar at his home had added another layer of protection; Robert Hanssen knew that the FBI didn’t routinely go through personal mail addressed to KGB officers at their homes. After all, the only people who knew where KGB officers lived were a few CIA officers and FBI agents. No reason to cover their personal mail.

  Hanssen had been transferred to New York ten days earlier. This would be his second tour of duty in New York—and his second stint as a Soviet spy. In 1979, a few months after he was first assigned to counterintelligence in New York, Hanssen had walked into the New York office of AMTORG, a Soviet trade organization that served as a front for the GRU, and offered his services as a spy. As a junior FBI special agent, Hanssen had limited access to the bureau’s secrets. Still, he was able to reveal to the Soviets the identity of one of the most important and longest-surviving spies within the Soviet hierarchy, a source known inside the FBI as TOP HAT—and at the CIA as BOURBON. TOP HAT was GRU General Dmitri Polyakov, who had first been recruited by the FBI while he was in New York in the early 1960s. Hanssen also handed over the FBI’s classified listing of Soviet diplomats believed to be intelligence officers, letting the Soviets know how much the FBI knew about its intelligence operations in the United States—and which of its officers had so far eluded detection.

  The Soviets reacted in an odd manner to Hanssen’s information about Polyakov. At the time Hanssen betrayed him, Polyakov was serving in India. He was recalled to Moscow by the GRU in 1980 and apparently retired soon after that—the CIA lost contact with him in Moscow. Polyakov was not arrested until 1986, years after his retirement, by which time he had also been identified by Aldrich Ames. The Soviets felt they needed corroboration before arresting a general.