by Bryan Denson
Five days after Dudayev’s death, Jim drove up from The Farm to CIA headquarters and went door to door asking colleagues to provide him with background information on Chechnya. He pretended to be collecting details about the troubled region’s struggles as part of a training exercise for students at The Farm. He drove home with a package of papers.
Jim’s request, juxtaposed against the SVR’s interest in Chechnya, ramped up concerns that Jim might be a mole. CIA officials told FBI investigators they had not planned any training exercises at The Farm that involved Chechnya. Instructors at the covert training center had to submit curriculum changes well in advance of training exercises to a board of review. Jim hadn’t taken any such steps.
Investigators now worried that Jim would poke through the daily churn of overseas cables at The Farm and print sensitive files for his Russian pals. Those leading the counterespionage probe decided they couldn’t afford to let Jim operate out of their sight any longer. They talked CIA superiors into quietly canceling Jim’s request to take a chief-of-station job in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he could meet at will with Russian spies. Investigators cooked up a plan for the CIA to give Jim a promotion, installing him as a branch chief inside the Counterterrorist Center at Langley. They wanted Jim close enough to feel his pulse, a play right out of The Godfather II—“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”
Then came trouble.
As Jim readied to move to the town house in Burke with the kids, he cabled vacation plans to CIA superiors: Before starting in the new job at Langley, he wanted to take a trip to Singapore and Bangkok, where the SVR’s spies were as thick as the local mosquitoes.
Jim’s trip to Singapore marked a crossroads for the counterintelligence team at Langley. Investigators knew that if Jim really was leaking secrets to Moscow, he’d probably take the opportunity to meet with the SVR. They also knew that if they could tail Jim, catch him in the act, they’d be one step closer to rolling him up for espionage.
What kept investigators up at night was the possibility that Jim had figured out he was under investigation. If he was onto them, it was over: They were convinced Jim would travel overseas and bolt for the nearest Russian embassy. Once in Russian hands, Moscow would shuttle Jim off to the motherland, where intelligence officers would pluck him clean for every U.S. secret he kept in his skull. Maybe they’d send him off to a nice dacha on the Black Sea to live out his days on the dime of a grateful nation. Jim would never set foot in a U.S. court.
Curran and Redmond both knew they needed more evidence to make the case rock-solid. They would have to find a way to tail Jim in Singapore to see whom he was meeting.
Redmond was a tough, sharp-elbowed leader, a diminutive Harvard man given to bow ties and profanity. He grew up in Southborough, thirty miles west of Boston, one of those small, sweet, New England towns once surrounded by apple orchards and now—as Redmond often complains—choked with McMansions and annoying people from New Jersey. He grew up like most New Englanders with an aversion to Rs, a young man of privilege accustomed to cracking lobsta and running up sailboat sheets with halya’ds. Some of the friends Redmond sailed with in his youth had parents who worked in the CIA. The agency had attracted generations of well-bred Ivy Leaguers since World War II. Inspired by John F. Kennedy’s famous words—“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”—Redmond took the Foreign Service exam. But he bombed the oral. So he joined the Army, which shuttled him off to California to study Russian. It was a good language to learn at the midpoint of the Cold War, and it paid off for Redmond. On or about April Fools’ Day 1965, he entered duty with the CIA.
Redmond and Curran rose to senior management positions in their respective agencies through grit and the power of their personalities. They were smart, cocky managers who had the good sense to build teams of talented investigators that produced results. Now, suddenly comingled as spy-catching allies, they pretended to like each other.
Curran didn’t think the CIA knew the first thing about counterintelligence. He knew they were great spies, highly trained at human intelligence gathering. But he considered them lousy spy catchers. In his opinion, Redmond’s counterintelligence group had convincingly proved the point by bungling the Ames case. For his part, Redmond didn’t want the FBI meddling in the agency’s counterspy operations. The problem with the bureau guys, he said, was that they couldn’t get it through their thick heads that working spy cases was far more nuanced than pinching drug dealers in Newark. There was nothing wrong with bringing the FBI in to make the collar in a spy case, Redmond figured. Let them take the credit and swagger, for all he cared. But in his opinion, the bureau didn’t belong in his counterintelligence group.
To their credit, Redmond and Curran put their differences aside to confront a cold fact: Jim was flying to Singapore on personal business—most likely to meet his Russian handler. They knew Jim’s travels corresponded with cash deposits way beyond his means into multiple bank accounts. They knew he was surfing the CIA’s computers for information he didn’t need. They knew he was friendly with the SVR rezident in Malaysia. And they knew Jim had a motive to sell his country’s secrets: He was a single dad with expensive tastes, one son in college, two kids under his roof, and an ex-wife demanding money. But they would need a lot more evidence to prove Jim was selling the Russians secrets.
“We didn’t have a case at that point,” Curran said. “We could not prove an espionage case.”
Redmond and Curran both knew Singapore presented them the best chance to catch Jim in the act. But they argued bitterly about whom they’d assign to put eyeballs on their target. Curran was steadfast in the FBI’s capabilities. His agents were cops, after all, and surveillance was their bread and butter. Redmond was convinced the CIA knew the turf and was better equipped to keep eyes on Jim. As the clock ticked toward Jim’s departure for Singapore, neither man would budge.
They decided to break the impasse by bringing in the CIA’s chief of station in Singapore to ask him the smartest way to tail Jim on his turf. The timing was perfect, since Rich Smylie was at The Farm for the agency’s annual chief-of-station conference. He’d be driving up from the training center to glad-hand with the bosses at headquarters and meet with other staffers. His boss, the chief of the East Asia Division, asked him to meet the following day to discuss “an issue.” Smylie knew there was no such thing as a good “issue” in the agency.
“We need your help,” his boss told him. “We need you to take a polygraph.”
Smylie figured he’d pop into headquarters early for his turn on the box. But his boss asked him to report instead to an FBI office in Arlington. There Smylie found himself wired up for a standard counterintelligence polygraph to find out if he’d had unreported contacts with foreign intelligence officials. After he passed the test, agents briefed him on their case. They were investigating a CIA officer suspected of moonlighting for the Russians. Their target was heading to Singapore. His name was Jim Nicholson.
Smylie grimaced. He remembered Jim because they had served together in Manila back in the 1980s. Now Smylie’s old friend was accused of espionage, a stunning turn of events that left him feeling betrayed and pissed off, but not altogether surprised.
“Jim,” he told me, “was always out for himself.”
Smylie made his way to Curran’s office at Langley, where Redmond joined them to discuss surveillance options in Singapore. Curran liked Smylie right away. The CIA’s man in Singapore seemed like a pro with a lot of self-confidence. Curran told his guest that he thought the joint FBI-CIA team should tell Singapore’s intelligence service that the U.S. would be running surveillance operations in their backyard. Redmond thought it was a terrible idea to share information with the locals.
“What’s your opinion?” Curran asked.
Smylie explained to the senior spy catchers that the CIA enjoyed an excellent relation
ship with Singapore’s Internal Security Department. The ISD, as it was known, had been up and running at a high level since 1970, and Smylie had huge respect for its work. Its intelligence officers were smart, agile, and trustworthy. He recommended that investigators from the FBI and CIA sit this one out.
“If you do this on your own,” Smylie told them, “you’ll fuck it up.”
The island nation of Singapore was just a little larger than the city of Chicago, with tightly restricted borders. The ISD knew every inch of the place, and could identify anyone who set foot in the country. Singapore was populated almost entirely by people of Chinese, Malay, and Indian descent. Smylie believed that putting tall, serious-looking white guys on the streets to tail Jim would draw attention they didn’t want. He also knew that even if the CIA or FBI put together a surveillance team of Asian-Americans, they’d still look out of place, because Americans walked, talked, and dressed differently than the locals. Smylie was certain U.S. investigators, with only a superficial understanding of the venue, wouldn’t have the skills to run such a complex eavesdropping operation on a professional spy.
Curran and Redmond both worried that Singapore’s intelligence service might have been penetrated by the SVR. Moscow’s foreign spy service had its eyes and ears in a lot of faraway places. Every man in the room knew that if the Russians had a contact inside the ISD, their case against Nicholson was toast. The Russians would alert their mole, and quicker than you could say “Na zdorovie,” he’d be gone forever. They asked Smylie if he thought Singapore’s intelligence service might leak news of the investigation to the Russians.
Negative, he said. He trusted the ISD.
When Smylie left Curran’s office, Redmond blew up. He told Curran he wasn’t going to risk the fate of the Nicholson case by putting a major surveillance operation in the hands of a foreign intelligence service that might include a Russian mole. Curran fought back, saying that if the CIA’s own station chief in Singapore had confidence in the ISD, so did he. The two were just reaching a rolling boil when another man walked into the office.
They looked up to find George Tenet, the CIA’s deputy director. Tenet was the number two man in the agency, a legend in the building. He was an intense man with dark hair who was trying to break his cigar habit, an unlit stogie perpetually clamped between his lips. By year’s end, President Clinton would appoint Tenet director of the CIA. But on that summer day, the deputy director turned mediator. He knew the clock was ticking. Decisions about how to eavesdrop on Jim Nicholson needed to be made.
Tenet asked Curran and Redmond to state their positions on the surveillance operation in Singapore, and he listened carefully to each. When they were done, he stood up.
“I agree with Curran,” Tenet said. “We’re gonna let the Singaporeans handle it.”
He walked out. End of discussion.
Curran knew one thing: If they got this wrong, it would be his ass.
Singapore, summer 1996
On June 26, Jim checked into a $300-a-night room in the Shangri-La Hotel, a luxury high-rise that jutted out of a lush lawn full of banyan trees and koi ponds north of central downtown Singapore. The hotel, with its massive white columns, overlooked a bustling city and its famed Botanic Gardens. Jim’s room was in the Garden Wing, which featured marble-floored bathrooms and personal balconies. The U.S. Embassy sat a few hundred yards away.
The ISD put a tail on Jim at 10:11 the next morning, a Thursday, when he strolled out of the Shangri-La past towering palms. They kept watch for the next four hours as Jim toured the Lion City, camera bag on his shoulder. The CIA man would walk down a street, appearing committed to a single course, then suddenly whirl around in the other direction. He stopped to stare into shop windows, using them as mirrors to look behind him. At one point, he traipsed down a set of stairs into the bowels of the subway and sprang back up in a moment, giving the appearance that he was a slightly confused tourist.
Singaporean intelligence watched Jim return to the Shangri-La after about four hours, having shot nary a photo of his exotic surroundings. The ISD briefed Smylie on his moves. Smylie and a joint FBI-CIA team in Singapore concluded that their target had taken a surveillance detection route. Jim had practiced this “dry cleaning” all over the world. For Smylie, this was the first clear indication his old friend might be working for the Russians.
Back in D.C., FBI investigators tried to determine what Jim might have brought with him to Singapore. Agents at Dulles had secretly poked through Jim’s checked bags, but found no sign of secret files. They thought he might be carrying government papers in the camera bag constantly tethered to his shoulder.
At 6:15 that night, Jim was on the move again, walking out of the Shangri-La still carrying the camera bag. He followed the same route he had taken that morning. Precisely three minutes after sunset, he stepped into the subway station and stood on an elevated platform. He seemed to be waiting for the rush-hour crowd to move downstairs to the trains that would carry them home. When the bulk of the human traffic dispersed, Jim caught an escalator down and sat on a stone bench. He waited for a few moments before heading up to the main concourse.
There he found his old friend Polyakov.
The spy and his handler strolled out to the street, where a car pulled up to a taxi stand and stopped. The lid of its trunk popped open; Jim dropped his camera bag inside and pushed it shut. He climbed into the backseat with Polyakov, and the car pulled away. The ISD took note: The car bore diplomatic plates from the embassy of the Russian Federation. The Singaporeans tailed Jim as the car headed northwest, past the Shangri-La.
The ISD updated Smylie, who cabled headquarters, where Redmond, Curran, and management of the East Asia Division were on the edge of their seats. When Smylie’s phone rang a few minutes later, it was one of his ISD contacts. Intelligence officers had just witnessed the car that carried Jim drive through the gates of a white compound at 51 Nassim Road, the Russian Embassy. Smylie phoned his division chief at Langley.
“Nicholson is with the Russians as we speak,” he said.
“We jumped out of our chairs,” Curran recalled. “We jumped out of our chairs!”
Smylie kept the updates flowing.
A senior ISD officer phoned him later that day to come see him immediately at the Ministry of Home Affairs in New Phoenix Park. Within fifteen minutes, Smylie found himself in a private meeting with several of his most trusted contacts. They told the station chief that Nicholson was still in his meeting with the Russian. The ISD officers wanted to know if Smylie should tell the FBI about this or let the CIA handle it on its own. It took Smylie a moment to grasp what they meant.
“They thought we’d go out and whack him,” he recalled.
Smylie told the ISD officers he wanted the FBI looped in, assuring them that the American justice system would handle Jim.
That evening, Jim handed over the latest packet of secrets to Polyakov and walked away with a cool $50,000 in a plastic bag.
The following day, the Singaporeans, who’d stayed in covert lockstep with Jim for two days, watched discreetly as their target walked into an American Express Travel Services Center to pay $8,300 toward his well-used Amex card.
Jim had cabled Smylie before his trip to tell him about his plans to be in Singapore. CIA officers who travel abroad, even on vacations, are obliged to let the station chief in whatever nation they’re visiting know they’ll be in the country. The old friends talked on the phone and made plans for lunch. Both the CIA and FBI approved the meet. They didn’t want to give Jim any hint that things were amiss.
Smylie’s driver picked him up in the station’s forest green Rover sedan and drove over to the Shangri-La. Jim climbed in carrying a plastic bag. Smylie had to wonder if it was the same bag Jim had used to carry his money from the Russians. They were seated together in the back when Jim reached into the bag and pulled out a four-inch-tall pewter figurine of a laughing
Buddha.
“A present for you,” Jim said. “Just my way of saying hello.”
It was an odd gesture. Fellow officers rarely gave gifts to one another. This present was probably worth fifty bucks. Smylie thanked him and set the heavy figurine on the floor as they made their way toward the Singapore Island Country Club, an exclusive golf resort along the MacRitchie Reservoir. There they settled in for plates of Singaporean chicken rice. Smylie would later recall sitting outdoors across the white-linen table from Nicholson and feeling proud of himself for acting naturally and not betraying the fact that he’d just as soon shoot the sonofabitch. After lunch, they drove to the U.S. Embassy and settled into Smylie’s private office in the station.
As Jim sat on the other side of Smylie’s desk, he contemplated what biographical information to jot down on one of the agency’s field reassignment questionnaires, known as FRQs. Jim was desperate to get an overseas job as a station chief. Smylie, unbeknownst to Jim, was cabling Langley from his desktop computer. He let the investigation team know their suspect was right there with him.
Jim asked his old friend what skills he might include on the FRQ to improve his chances.
Smylie couldn’t help himself.
“Jim, how are you at countersurveillance?”