A week later, I presented the memo to Bill Webster. He asked me if we had denied the Soviet agent’s request the requisite three times. I told him yes, we had. Can the man use the device on another person? he asked. I assured him that anything was possible, but that the delivery system did not easily lend itself to murder. Without hesitation, and without further question, Judge Webster signed the memo.
Foros, Crimea, Sunday, August 18, 1991
Mikhail Gorbachev was ready to wrap up his vacation at the picturesque resort town of Foros on the Crimean coast of the Black Sea, where he’d gone for his August break and a much needed rest with his wife, and return to the political intrigue of Moscow. Despite his earlier misgivings, he was planning to sign the All-Union Treaty as soon as he returned to the capital. The treaty represented a historic devolution of power from the Soviet central government to Russia and the other republics. Despite his agreement to sign the treaty, Gorbachev knew that he had not yet developed a clear political accommodation with Russia’s new President, Boris Yeltsin. The pugnacious former Party boss from Sverdlovsk clearly had political momentum behind him, thanks to his sweeping victory in Russia’s June elections, but Gorbachev still controlled the national security apparatus of the Soviet Union, so the battle for political dominance between the Soviet Union and the republics remained unresolved.
Gorbachev’s vacation was shattered just before 5:00 P.M. on August 18, a quiet Sunday afternoon, when surprise visitors arrived from Moscow. The delegation included Oleg Baklanov, head of the Soviet Union’s Military Industrial Commission; General Valentin Varennikov, chief of Soviet Ground Forces; Oleg Shenin, a Central Committee and Politburo apparatchik; and Valery Boldin, Gorbachev’s own chief of staff. They were backed up by Yuri Plekhanov, chief of the KGB’s Ninth Chief Directorate, in charge of the security of the Soviet leadership.
Gorbachev’s unexpected visitors told him that they were representatives of an emergency committee that had taken control of the Soviet government. Just as they arrived, the phone lines into the vacation compound went dead, including the communications link that allowed the Soviet leader to command his country’s nuclear forces. Gorbachev was now cut off from the outside world.
It soon became apparent that the delegation that had traveled to Foros was actually made up of backbenchers. The real driving force behind the coup was KGB Chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, whom Gorbachev had disastrously considered an ally.
Gorbachev angrily rejected the delegation’s request that he endorse the emergency committee and join their effort to turn back the clock. Early Monday morning, Soviet television and radio announced the creation of a new emergency committee, which claimed that it had acted in part because Gorbachev was suddenly ill. Gorbachev, along with his family and a few close aides, remained isolated at Foros, uncertain whether they were to be executed, sharing the fate of the Romanovs at the beginning of the Soviet experiment.
Moscow, 0700 Hours, Monday, August 19, 1991
Dave Rolph’s drive into work at the U.S. embassy from his southern Moscow apartment seemed no different from any other early Monday morning commute. As he guided his BMW through Moscow’s streets, he saw nothing that would alert him to the events that were already under way. He had gone to sleep early the night before and hadn’t listened to the news before leaving for the office. As far as he was concerned, it was just another sultry August morning in the Soviet capital.
Walking into the office at 7:00 A.M., he ran into other embassy officials who told him that some kind of an emergency had just been announced on the radio and that there were reports that the military had been called into Moscow. That’s how the CIA’s Moscow station chief found out about the coup that changed the twentieth century. The CIA simply did not have any assets inside the Kremlin who were in a position to give the Americans detailed and timely information about when or where a coup might take place. So when David Rolph walked into the embassy Monday morning, he did not realize that the coup had actually been under way since the day before, did not know that Mikhail Gorbachev and his family had been surrounded and cut off from all communications.
But Rolph moved quickly to catch up and scrambled his case officers out onto the streets; it was still the middle of the night in Washington, so he could wait until about noon to have his first cable waiting on the desks of senior CIA officials when they arrived at work. Rolph realized that he would once again be in a race with CNN, just as he had been in Berlin. He was, in fact, already playing catch-up with the media. At 11:30 Sunday night in Washington, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft learned from CNN reports that a coup might be in the works in Moscow.
As Rolph began to hear back from the case officers fanned out across the city, something quite remarkable was becoming clear. There were no roadblocks, no checkpoints established to restrict movement around the city. In fact, after driving out to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, one officer reported that not only was the road to the airport open, but the airport itself had not been closed down. Meanwhile, the television and radio stations didn’t appear to have been commandeered by the leaders of the coup, at least not effectively. They were still reporting on what was going on. There were Army units in the streets, mostly armored units with tanks and armored personnel carriers, but they didn’t seem to be taking any action.
As the morning wore on, a question formed in Dave Rolph’s head: What the hell kind of a coup is this?
After dashing off his first cables, Rolph picked up a phone and dialed a number at Lubyanka.
“May I speak with Gavrilov?” he asked the anonymous KGB officer who answered his call. When he heard the smooth and familiar voice of Rem Krassilnikov, Rolph didn’t mince words. “How soon can we meet?”
First Chief Directorate Headquarters, Yasenevo, 0900 Hours, Monday, August 19, 1991
Leonid Shebarshin saw it all coming together now. As he sat in his corner office in the First Chief Directorate’s leadership suite, reading the announcement of the new “emergency committee,” he had a sense of foreboding. All through the summer he had picked up murmurings that something was brewing, some bold move would make things right again, and he had studiously avoided getting drawn in. He knew enough to know he didn’t want to know more.
It had begun in June, when Yeltsin won the presidential elections in Russia. At that moment it was clear to Shebarshin that the die was cast for the Soviet Union. The idea of the putsch now unfolding had begun even before Yeltsin’s victory, and he had picked up on it then. But his personal decision to distance himself from such an ill-fated enterprise had been easy. Now, looking down at the text of the emergency committee’s announcement, he saw that there was not a single new idea in it—it was a hodgepodge of fuzzy ideas about going back to the way things were. Shebarshin thought it would fail. And he suspected that the costs of that failure would be high.
Moscow, 1200 Hours, August 19, 1991
As tanks from the Taman Guards Division and other units lined the streets of Moscow, Rolph drove out of the American embassy compound. He headed north along the Garden Ring Road and then parked just off Mayakovskaya Square. He walked to a black Volga parked nearby and slid into the backseat next to the white-haired Krassilnikov. As he got in, the KGB driver quietly opened his door, got out, and walked across the square for a cigarette, leaving Rolph and Krassilnikov alone. On the first full day of the coup, the CIA and the KGB had a lot to talk about.
Rolph tried to probe Krassilnikov to find out what he knew about the situation, particularly about the KGB’s role in the putsch.
Krassilnikov responded defensively, arguing that the actions of the emergency committee were lawful and constitutional. Gorbachev was sick and unable to act, Krassilnikov insisted, but the Supreme Soviet would soon meet to review the actions of the emergency committee to make sure they complied with the law. Without providing any real information about the KGB’s involvement, Krassilnikov sounded a tone of support. It is a mistake for Yeltsin to defy the emergency committee, Krassilnikov sa
id. But if Yeltsin wants a confrontation, the KGB general added in a slightly menacing tone, he’s going to get one.
Krassilnikov stressed that there was no reason why the coup should harm relations between the KGB and the CIA, which had been improving in recent months. The SE chief and a delegation of senior officers had just been to Moscow to meet with the KGB, and now a meeting between the two agencies was scheduled for October in Helsinki, Krassilnikov reminded Rolph. He insisted that the Helsinki meeting go on as planned. After all, the coup was purely an internal matter, he noted dryly.
While the aging spymaster hadn’t shed much light on the degree of KGB complicity in the coup, he had certainly made clear his own position of support. As Rolph stepped out of the Volga and headed back to the office, he toyed with a difficult but essential question: Was Krassilnikov speaking for himself or for the entire officer corps of the KGB?
Rolph sat in his office that night firing cables back to Langley as thousands of Russians stood vigil outside the White House, guarding the man they now viewed as their salvation—Boris Yeltsin. There was still no sign that the plotters were prepared to wade through the crowds and their handmade barricades and move against Yeltsin. And every hour they waited gave the democrats more time to gain strength and confidence. While Yeltsin and his band of Russian reformers stood at the ramparts, Mikhail Gorbachev, still trapped and isolated in his villa on the Black Sea, was rapidly becoming irrelevant.
Lewinsville Park, McLean, Virginia, Monday, August 19, 1991
While the CIA was scrambling to try to make sense of the crisis unfolding in Moscow, the KGB was conducting a secret operation just a few miles from CIA headquarters.
Robert Hanssen made his way on August 19 to a dead drop site code-named FLO, which was the space underneath a footbridge on the wooded edge of Lewinsville Park, a few steps from a residential street in the upscale suburb of McLean. That Hanssen and his KGB handlers were willing to carry out an exchange almost in the shadow of CIA headquarters also revealed the level of confidence they had in their ability to counter American counterintelligence efforts at the time. Of course, Hanssen had over the years helped the KGB learn how to defeat FBI surveillance, since he had betrayed many of the techniques the FBI used to monitor the Soviets.
In fact, at the FLO dead drop that day, Hanssen left a package that contained a new FBI memorandum about the methods the bureau was using to conduct surveillance of a particular Soviet intelligence officer. In addition to other classified documents crammed onto a computer diskette, Hanssen included an essay that he had crafted for the private benefit of his Soviet handlers.
Given the political instability that the Soviet Union was experiencing, he suggested that the KGB review the history of Chicago. In particular, he wrote that the Soviets could benefit from a thorough study of Chicago’s legendary mayor Richard J. Daley and how he had used an iron fist and a well-oiled political machine to turn Chicago into the “city that works.” Maybe the Soviets needed a little infusion of Chicago-style politics to regain order and stability.
In October, the KGB responded with thanks to “B,” marveling that the “magical history tour” to Chicago was mysteriously well timed.
“Have you ever thought of foretelling the things?” they wrote. “After your retirement, for instance, in some sort of your own cristall ball and intelligence agency (CBIA)? There are always so many people in this world eager to get a glimpse of the future.”
Cairo, 2000 Hours, Monday, August 19, 1991
I had just arrived in Cairo from Tel Aviv for a series of meetings. The telephone was ringing as I stepped into my hotel room.
“Milt? Bill Piekney.” Piekney was now chief in Cairo. “It looks like things have come unstuck in Moscow,” he said. “A gang of the old guard have seized power from Gorbachev. I’m sending an officer with a reading file and have already booked you on the next plane to Washington if you want to head back tonight.”
“Oh, shit,” I said, flipping to CNN.
Two hours later I was on a flight to Washington.
10
Langley, 0800 Hours, Tuesday, August 20, 1991
There was a buzz of excitement in SE Division and throughout the Directorate of Operations when I arrived home from Cairo the next morning. Some of the old guard felt a delicious sense of vindication, particularly those I had moved out of the division. They had been right—and I had been wrong. So much for Bearden’s ideas of historic change in the Soviet Union. And so much for his notions about overhauling the division to adapt to the new realities. Happy days were here again!
“You’re fucked, chief,” O’Reilly said as I passed his office.
I turned back and slumped into a chair across from his desk. I picked up his Buddhist prayer wheel and began to twirl it. “Tell me about it,” I said.
“There were whispers all yesterday,” O’Reilly said. “Bearden furled his colors too soon, they said. Some of them were pretty happy about it.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
“They’re wrong,” he said, handing me a stack of cable traffic. “Look at this stuff, and you’ll see the ones who’re really fucked are Kryuchkov and his gang.”
By the afternoon of August 20, the heady feelings of vindication had dissolved. As the intelligence and overt reporting flowed in, the coup appeared to be bogged down and was looking more and more like a slapdash affair. Something was definitely going wrong.
The intelligence on the specially screened cadre of volunteers in the Red Army’s Western Group of Forces in Germany bore out that assessment. The Army volunteers had been handpicked months earlier for possible action, and now we learned that though they had been alerted, they were still sitting in their barracks as confused as the rest of the world. Stand by, they had been ordered. A little later, almost as an afterthought, they were told that instead of leaving immediately, they might be asked on short notice to report to their assigned train stations. After waiting for orders that never came, most of the personnel simply went back into the routine of spreading rumors like everybody else.
Moscow, 0900 Hours, Wednesday, August 21, 1991
Like the Red Army volunteers in Germany, Leonid Shebarshin had been sitting by the telephone since Monday, waiting for orders to act that had never come. Early on Monday morning, KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov had called him and asked him to put all of his directorate’s resources at the disposal of the emergency committee. Shebarshin had agreed and had then ordered the nation’s foreign intelligence service to begin spying on Moscow.
Over the course of the rest of that day, he had passed on reports from his officers to Kryuchkov. Shebarshin had also agreed to order the First Chief Directorate’s paramilitary team to gather at the KGB’s central club in downtown Moscow. Kryuchkov, a former chief of the First Directorate himself, wanted a loyal unit in place when the time came to storm the White House and crush the ragtag forces now protecting the defiant Boris Yeltsin. But since that initial flurry of activity on Monday, Shebarshin had done little but wait patiently through an odd silence. Kryuchkov never called back.
That silence was the best evidence Shebarshin had that something was very wrong. Shebarshin was a man of the KGB, and if Kryuchkov had told him to send in the paramilitary unit on Monday, he would have followed the Chairman’s orders. But obedience had its limits. By Wednesday morning, it was clear to him that the coup was collapsing into a farce; and he told himself that if Kryuchkov called him into action now, he would not obey the chairman’s orders.
So he called the commanding officer of the paramilitary unit still standing by at the KGB club and told him not to accept any orders from anyone except himself. And he had decided that he wasn’t going to be issuing any orders. It had become obvious to Shebarshin that Kryuchkov and his cohorts had suffered from a fatal lack of will.
Across Moscow, other military, intelligence, and political leaders were all coming to the same conclusion. The plotters had lacked the conviction to follow up their drunken grab for power w
ith an immediate show of ruthless action and instead had bumbled at every turn. Men like Leonid Shebarshin—the people in the upper tiers of the bureaucracy who really controlled the levers of power in the Soviet system—calculated the odds and in the end simply stopped returning calls.
Moscow, 1200 Hours, Wednesday, August 21, 1991
As he slid into the backseat of the black Volga for another meeting with Rem Krassilnikov, David Rolph saw that the KGB general looked exhausted and disheveled, as if he hadn’t slept since the coup began. The confidence and bravado that Krassilnikov had displayed in their meeting on Monday was gone, replaced by a more tentative attitude toward the crisis that was now moving to its whimpering conclusion. This time it was Rolph who had a message to deliver from the CIA to the KGB.
The Helsinki meeting, planned for October, was being postponed, Rolph told Krassilnikov. So was a proposed visit by a KGB delegation to the United States. The CIA was sending a message to the KGB—the new relationship between the two intelligence services, which had seemed so promising just a few weeks earlier, was being put on hold. With Kryuchkov’s coup failing, the KGB that he led was now on the wrong side of history. The CIA was looking to the new leaders of Russia.
The Main Enemy Page 54