Great Spies of the 20th Century

by Patrick Pesnot

  Yet thanks to Ames, the Soviets had the upper hand in the 1980s. He gave them names, and even if the names did not appear in full, he gave them enough detail about the agents in question to ensure that they were easily recognisable. In total, the KGB managed to flush out a good fifteen American or western agents, who were promptly arrested, interrogated and then shot without further ado.

  Christopher Andrew and Vassili Mitrokhine115

  Aldrich Ames, who approached the KGB offering his services in 1985, had worked for the CIA for eighteen years. In the space of two months he would betray twenty agents working in the West (especially in the US), including Dmitri Polyakov, a general in the GRU who worked for both the FBI and CIA for over twenty years. He also gave up AdolfTolkachev, an electronics specialist who had provided excellent information on Soviet avionics, as well as at least eleven KGB and GRU agents around the world, the majority of which would be shot. Together, these agents were part of the most successful infiltration of the Soviet Union by the West since the Bolshevik Revolution. Greed was the main motivation behind Ames’ actions and after his arrest nine years later, he had already received nearly $3m (probably a record in the history of Soviet espionage) from the KGB and its successor, with a further $2m still promised to him.

  Not all the American spies given up by Ames were arrested and at least two were able to escape. One of them, a KGB officer stationed in Athens, was suddenly recalled to Moscow on the pretention that his son was seriously ill. Doubting that this was true, the man contacted the CIA representative in Athens and managed to flee to the United States. The other agent to escape the net was Oleg Gordievsky, whose story is discussed at the end of this chapter.

  When Gorbachev came to power in 1985, there were no fundamental changes to the nature of espionage, although official contact was made for the first time in 1987 between the head of the KGB, Kryuchkov, and the heads of the CIA. The intention behind this was to coordinate actions in a number of areas, such as drugs and terrorism. However, when Kryuchkov came to the United States to meet with his American counterparts, he must have been laughing up his sleeve, fully aware that the CIA had been infiltrated at the highest level by its own agents!

  In the West, the intelligence agencies were quick to let go any spies who were no longer in contact, no doubt the result of them being exposed or arrested.What especially troubled the CIA, however, was the simultaneity of the arrests and the Soviets had no doubt made an error in making the joint arrests. Yet it was not the KGB's decision to do so, but Gorbachev who had personally given the order to arrest the spies who were at risk of exposing their mole, Aldrich Ames. Paradoxically, he was right: the CIA initially was convinced it had a mole in its midst and made a list of the 200 agents who would have access to the files of those spies stationed in the East. Among one of the more prominent names on the list was that of Aldrich Ames. This was not the first time he had come under suspicion and yet each time before he had managed to get away with it - even successfully beating the lie detector on two occasions.

  Thousands of records were scrutinised by CIA agents. However, and this is the paradox of the whole affair, as the head of counterintelligence, Ames also found himself on the side of the investigators and so could easily escape any traps he risked falling into. He was thus able to continue with his dirty work, along with the one or two others who were protecting or manipulating him.

  And so the investigation into the mysterious mole failed, although there were still those in the CIA who wanted to take it further, even suggesting a thorough investigation into the financial situations of all the suspects, in order to see whether or not they had received any secret ‘donations'. However, an important figure in the CIA objected to this, on the grounds that it would violate the rights of those agents involved, before observing that by continuing to hunt the alleged mole, there was a risk of resurrecting the witch hunt climates of the 1960s and 1970s, which at the time had profoundly weakened the agency. The fact remains that if these financial investigations had been carried out, then Aldrich Ames could well have been exposed as he would no doubt have been unable to justify the dramatic improvement in his lifestyle.

  The objector also persuaded the best brains of the CIA to give up on their hunt for the mole on the following grounds: if the Soviets had conducted this series of simultaneous arrests, it was no doubt as a result of information obtained from a mole within the CIA,. However, they would not have taken such a risk if the mole was still active in case the mole in question was unmasked. The conclusion must therefore be that the mole was no longer operational and so the counterintelligence agents began to search through the files of traitors who had already been identified, such as those who had been denounced by the defector, Yurchenko.116 One of these men had already managed to escape back to the USSR, so perhaps it was he who was behind the wave of arrests in Moscow. Consequently, the search for the mole was temporarily abandoned, which is why, ironically, Gorbachev was right to order the mass arrests of all American spies.

  This high-ranking and persuasive CIA objector can only have been the mysterious protector behind Aldrich Ames: a super-spy who has never been revealed and today enjoys a peaceful existence somewhere in Europe, having had a brilliant career as the head of the CIA, especially thanks to his Soviet friends. Yet the activities of this CIA mole did not end with the denunciation of the spies in Moscow: he was also responsible for the failure of dozens of CIA operations and also participated in several cases of providing misinformation.

  Genovefa Etienne and Claude Moniquet117

  Beyond the exceptional size of the case, what is really interesting about Aldrich Ames is that, after being recruited by the KGB in 1985, he was still working for the democratic Russia of Boris Yeltsin in 1991: clearly the regimes may change, but the spies remain the same. Moscow never denied Ames’ activities and General Mikhail Kolesnikov, the Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces, said after Ames’ arrest that he had ‘worked for Russia in the United States’ and had ‘protected Russian interests by unmasking Russian spies who had passed information back to the US’. For the CIA, the most worrying aspect was that Aldrich Ames had managed to stay in his position for so long and was thus able to continually thwart any security investigations, including the sacrosanct lie detector tests, which the men and women of the agency were regularly required to sit. According to James Woolsey, the CIA Director, what was even more serious was that Ames ‘did not have access to all the information that would have allowed the KGB to expose US agents in recent years’. There had to have been other moles within the CIA. In any case, this particular situation cost two of the agency’s top executives their jobs: Deputy Director of Operations, John McGaffney and the Director of Near East Operations, Frank Anderson.

  And so the CIA once more began its search for the mole and the suspicion soon fell on Ames, but also on whoever was protecting him. Aware of the situation, the Russians decided to take matters into their own hands: they sacrificed Ames in order to protect the identity of the other man who, in their eyes, was far more important.

  The head of counterintelligence, who continued to display a shocking lack of judgement, was obviously doomed and the Russians had no hesitancy in denouncing him. Sometimes in the world of intelligence, as in life, you have to make drastic choices: and the Russians had no qualms in doing so. The Americans then began to play their own game after suspecting that there had to be another man even higher than Ames. However, in order not to create an even bigger scandal, they pretended to believe that he was the only mole. So as to hide the truth, they declared that it was his lifestyle that had attracted the attentions of the FBI and even invented the absurd story of him going to the Soviet embassy to offer his services.

  Edouard Sablier118

  The Ames affair clearly exposes the weaknesses within the CIA and thousands of files will have to be opened in order to see the full extent of the damage. Any operations that Ames was privy to, whether near or far, are hopelessly compromised. All CIA agents
, as well as those in other security organisations, who were stationed in Russia are now probably unusable. The anger expressed by Congress is a major threat to not only the future of central intelligence, but also for future relations with the new Russia: ‘we are not carrying the can for the Russians so that traitors like Ames can make millions’, proclaimed a Republican congressman from New York in the House of Representatives. Another declared that ‘given the magnitude of assistance the Russians are asking us and others for, it is incredible that they can still find the money to pay their spies’.

  The Ames case resulted in two important resignations within the CIA: those of Deputy Director of Operations, John McGaffney and the Director of Near East Operations, Frank Anderson. Had one of these men been Ames' protector? The man who is now retired somewhere in Europe? Another name is mentioned in an article written by Pascal Krop that was published in L’Evenement du Jeudi in 1996. The man in question was Milton Bearden, the head of the CIA's eastern European section, who was accused by one of his colleagues of warning Ames that people were beginning to suspect him: an accusation he later admitted to. Now retired, he lived in Bonn and would soon publish a book on the struggle between the CIA and the KGB.

  [Gordievsky’s story:

  Serious, competent, disciplined and intelligent, this officer had shown himself to be the perfect KGB agent until 1973. He had first worked at the headquarters in Moscow, before being sent to Copenhagen where here was responsible for dealing with the ‘illegals', i.e. those agents with no diplomatic status. At the end of the 1960s he returned briefly to Moscow, before going back again to Copenhagen, where in 1973, he made contact with the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) of Great Britain. Like General Polyakov, he was acting out of conviction, rather than monetary reasons, because he could not bear the harshness of the regime, nor the lack of democracy and corruption that went with it. As far as the West was concerned, he was an ideal recruit due to the fact that his various positions meant that he had an intimate knowledge of the KGB and its operatives.

  After another visit back to the USSR in the early 1980s, Colonel Gordievsky (as he was now), was given the role of KGB Resident-designate in to the Soviet embassy in London: the most important posting after that of Washington. However, in May 1985 he was suddenly ordered back to Moscow, on the understanding that his appointment needed to be ‘formalised', and where he was due to meet with several KGB bigwigs. There was no reason for him to be wary as the treachery by Aldrich Ames had not yet produced its full effects. Despite this, however, his mind was certainly not at ease as he prepared to make the journey back to Moscow. After all, being recalled so soon after his appointment seemed very strange, but he left anyway, although without his wife and two children

  Soon after arriving in Moscow, Gordievsky started to have a bad feeling. The official who examined his diplomatic passport was surprisingly slow and for some reason made a phone call before handing back his documents. Gordievsky took a taxi to his Moscow apartment, where there was further evidence that his home had been searched. Luckily, there were no compromising objects or documents hidden away, except some works by Solzhenitsyn. Nevertheless, Gordievsky was worried: he was clearly under suspicion and the next day, he had even more proof of the fact. He had come to Moscow in order to meet the most important members of the KGB, and yet they prevaricated, giving the most ridiculous excuses for not meeting. Then a week later, a KGB car came to collect him, taking him to a dacha owned by service and located a few miles from Moscow. Several senior KGB officers were there waiting for him, including a colonel from the counterintelligence department.

  Gordievsky was not questioned immediately and they first ate and drank - alcohol of course. Despite his misgivings, it was difficult for him to refuse a toast, although he was not to know that his drink had been drugged. In a daze, he was submitted to a barrage of questions from the KGB, which to begin with centred on his collection of banned books in his apartment. They also told him that they knew everything about his family life, including the conversations that he had had with his wife and children. Even under the influence of drugs, Gordievsky realised that his house had been bugged and his interrogators soon came to their main point and accused him of being a spy for the British. Despite his weakened state, he denied the accusations several times, before eventually slipping into unconsciousness. He woke up the following day, still in the dacha. He feared for his life when the counterintelligence officer reappeared and proceeded to interrogate him further, particularly on how he spent his time in London. Suddenly, however, the questions stopped and Gordievsky was escorted home.

  It was clear that the KGB had no hard evidence, only their suspicions, and since there was no way for Gordievsky to escape, they intended to take their time in retrieving his confession. This must have meant that Aldrich Ames had not given them enough specific information on him and so they had no choice but to keep him on a leash. They even announced that his functions abroad had been terminated and that his wife and children would be returning to the USSR. However, as soon as his family returned to Moscow, they became hostages and Gordievsky was trapped. He knew that sooner or later he would be forced to confess and so his only chance was to escape, which was hardly an easy task when he was under constant surveillance by the KGB.

  The British secret services came to his rescue after Gordievsky managed to make contact with them. One day, after setting up a series of false leads, Gordievsky was out jogging when he got into a van that had been hired by the British. Hidden under a secret floor, he managed to cross the border into Finland. Unfortunately, his family remained in the USSR, but now that he had escaped, he was able to be of invaluable service to the West.

  Chapter 23

  Hanssen: the man who never laughed

  They called him ‘the Undertaker'. He was a big man, with a waxy face, always dressed in a black suit and who struggled to smile, never mind laugh. Married to a devout woman, he was a family man and a conservative Catholic: he would not have missed celebrating Sunday Mass in his little church in the residential suburb ofVienna,Virginia, for the world.

  What was his profession? His neighbours assumed that the quiet man who drove a battered Ford Taurus must have been a humble civil servant in the federal government, but they knew little else. ‘The Undertaker' was not very forthcoming: hello, good evening. That was it. Every evening he walked his dog in one of the suburban parks, alone. Always alone.

  The amazement was confounded when it was revealed on 18 February 2001 that Robert Philip Hanssen was an FBI agent and had been arrested for espionage after handing over secret documents to the KGB and then the SVR for the previous fifteen years. This spy hunter had actually been a spy himself. The story seemed to be a perfect replica of the Aldrich Ames case, a man who was also a spy hidden at the heart of the CIA and who was also a counterintelligence expert.119

  However, if this new case sent shockwaves through the US intelligence community, not to mention the federal government, it was because that despite the end of the Cold War, the secret services in Russia were as active as ever. The Hanssen affair was regarded as a real humiliation for the FBI, but have all the secrets been revealed?

  With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the Americans had hoped there would be a lull on the espionage front: after all, Russia was now a friend and it was believed that its state of decay would force many eastern spies to stand down, at least temporarily. But this did not happen.

  The fall of the Berlin Wall and the general disintegration that followed in eastern Europe forced the CIA to change its tactics and it consequently renounced the use of field agents for the benefit of computers. Many ‘illegal' posts that were set up abroad were closed down and the CIA instead chose to rely on its own surveillance systems, as well as those of the NSA (National Security Agency). The rest is common knowledge: without any contacts on the ground, the central office sank under a mountain of paperwork and unfortunately proved unable to prevent acts of terrorism, such as
the attacks on New York in September 2001.

  This evolution had actually been initiated in the mid-1970s, when the government decided to moralise the CIA's activities by prohibiting the assassination of foreign leaders and the collaboration with men of dubious pasts. So in principle, any dirty tactics were now over. However, intelligence cannot be gathered through good sentiments alone, and so a state of paralysis began.

  Robert Hanssen was unmasked in 2001, but before this the CIA had already had to face the Ames affair. This had been an incredibly serious case because it was discovered that not only had the spy caused irreparable damage to the CIA, but many American agents stationed behind the Iron Curtain were arrested and executed because of his actions. Yet this was not the only embarrassing affair. In 1996, for example, a CIA department head was arrested as he was about to leave US soil. Harold Nicholson had apparently been working for the Russians for two years and had been revealed in the simplest way possible: every three years CIA agents must submit to a lie detector test, where they are asked the question ‘Are you secretly in contact with a foreign power?' and Nicholson's reaction did not escape the device. It should be noted that Soviet agents are generally trained to take the test, but this required the agent in question to have some form of physical contact with his case officers. In this case, such an option was too dangerous and so only spies from Russia or the former USSR were trained to deceive the lie detector test.

  And so Nicholson gave himself away; and although this was not enough to be considered as absolute proof, he was nevertheless put under constant surveillance and a camera installed in his office caught him photographing classified documents. He had chosen to betray his country for money: after living abroad for a long time, when he returned home he clearly did not think that his salary was sufficient enough. The case itself was handled by the FBI, who only have the authority to track down spies on American soil, and the agents were delighted to have the chance to bring down one of their CIA rivals. However, they should not have celebrated so soon.