by Doug Raber
“Let’s go upstairs, Tim.”
• • • • •
During the following year, my network became extremely active. There had long been interest in and information about Iran’s nuclear program. The Iranians were highly secretive about their program, and suspicions abounded that their long-term goal was a nuclear weapon.
When an Iranian exile group made a public claim that Iran had built nuclear facilities in the cities of Natanz and Arak,* a wave of unease spread around the world. Unease was particularly high in the various intelligence services, not so much because the knowledge was new as because it had been made public. The two facilities had been a secret, but they had been disclosed.
Some feared they would have to face another nuclear opponent, while others agonized that sensitive negotiations would be thrown off course by the disclosure. Most were unsure whether the disclosure was accurate or only an effort to discredit the Iranian regime by its political opponents. That concern was especially worrisome to those who understood that the information came from the Mujahideen-e Khalq, headquartered some fifty miles inside Iraq. The U.S. subsequently signed a cease-fire agreement with the MEK, even though it previously had been labeled as a terrorist organization. They were the enemy of Iran, yet it was not clear if they could be trusted by anyone.
During that same time frame, the U.S. and its coalition partners were attempting to withdraw from their occupation of Iraq, and that created yet another set of hurdles. The nuclear threat and ongoing war were not the only issues confounding international relations at that time. Politics and economic policies were also out in full force. And that confluence of events was my windfall.
Amanda’s dissertation would sketch out a pathway for a future nuclear program in Iran, if the issues related to nuclear proliferation could first be resolved. The P5+1 discussions on Iran had recently started, which engaged the five original members of the UN Security Council as well as Germany, which was Iran’s largest trading partner. Russia was another member of the group, so I had access to the discussions through both Dieter and Vasili.
When Amanda told me one day that she had been reassigned to monitor the P5+1 talks* as her primary assignment for the State Department, I realized that I would have even greater access to the information being discussed. Access and control. I would have the opportunity to decide what information was passed on and who would receive it. I would be able to control the flow of information involving the U.S., Russia, and Germany. Moreover, my network would give me something that was not available to the actual negotiators. I would have a flow of information to and from the heart of Iran that only Reza could provide.
The first goal of the P5+1 talks was a proposal for formal negotiations with Iran. And establishing that framework was not easy, because nearly every participant had a different and not fully congruent set of objectives. It means there was always a lot of pretending, if not outright denial.
Iran continued to claim that it had never had a weapons program, and they would quote from the treaty in support of their claim that they had an ‘inalienable right’ to conduct nuclear research and development for peaceful purposes.* The problem was that they were early signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and they formally agreed to follow a protocol for verification. When they secretly developed those two sites, they were in violation of the NPT obligations. They also lost credibility in the international community, because it made no sense to operate in secrecy if nothing untoward were taking place.
One of the first pieces of information Amanda gave me was a report on our efforts to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was a remarkable document, describing how we came to believe faulty intelligence in the lead-up to the invasion and then listing in painstaking detail how we scoured the Iraqi countryside hoping desperately to find chemical, biological, or nuclear materials.
The information was classified at the highest possible levels, but I decided there could be no point in having such secrets if I did not put them to some use. They quickly became shared secrets, and after that they became what I have called open secrets. You will remember that I defined that to describe the exact situation. Each of the parties in the negotiations would have the information while thinking it remained a secret to all the others. They believed they had an obligation to me, and it gave me leverage.
When the formal P5+1 discussions started up, my role remained very much in the background. I’d had my fill of flying around the world for such negotiations, and I had my network in place to interact directly. Amanda traveled to several of the sessions, but that was mainly to provide an extra pair of eyes from home. Our negotiators knew what their positions needed to be long before they got on an airplane.
The countries, the negotiators, and the organizations involved in talks over the several years presented anyone new to the process with an incomprehensible labyrinth. A proposal had been negotiated, and Iran subsequently accepted it, agreeing to suspend their enrichment program. But the inspection team was not given full access, and the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a letter of rebuke. Iran responded by announcing the revocation of its agreement to suspend enrichment. Years of hard work, and everything was back to zero.*
I may have been the only one who was not devastated by this turn of events, which meant that my efforts to control information were working as I expected. I knew better than to think such a complex issue could be resolved in a short time, and after five months I would be proven correct.
In the course of the next year, several things happened with key partners. First, Russia concluded a deal to supply Iran’s new reactor with nuclear fuel. That pleased me, and at an embassy reception, Vasili pulled me into a side room to share a toast with the best vodka available. However, it was only another six months before Iran started a chemical process that had no reason to exist if not to enrich uranium.
The International Atomic Energy Agency again declared Iran to be in violation of its treaty obligations, and Iran responded within several months by announcing that they had begun the actual process of uranium enrichment. The diplomatic dance began to go in cycles. International criticism would start as a nonbinding report from the inspectors, move to a formal report, and finally go to the UN Security Council. Iran would respond with intransigence, and finally international sanctions were imposed. That was back in 2006.
I frequently tried to explain to our partners, and even to our own negotiators, that a carrot would work much better than a stick with the regime in Teheran. My network knew this, and Amanda knew it. She tried to convince her fellow diplomats of the need to offer incentives, but the hard line against Iran had stiffened. There was a drumbeat for war. Through Reza, I passed information that should have caused the Iranian leadership to abandon its position, yet they seemed to think that would show weakness, a perception they could not tolerate.
Slow progress ensued for several years, although one could debate whether the progress was real. After Obama was elected, the U.S. backed away from the prior administration’s refusal to participate directly in the P5+1 talks unless Iran first agreed to our terms. Many of our partners had been unable to make sense of that approach.
“Isn’t that what negotiations are for?” a diplomat asked me at one of my soirees. “If they agreed beforehand, you wouldn’t need negotiations.”
I didn’t argue with him.
Meanwhile, Teheran remained obstinate, sanctions were increased both by the U.S. and the UN, and war clouds remained visible on the horizon. Fortunately for all, negotiations continued via back channels, and eventually direct meetings between the P5+1 and Iran began. These meetings led to an interim agreement that was codified by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly called the Iran nuclear deal.* The agreement is greatly reviled by the hardliners in both Washington and Teheran, which I have always thought to be a good thing. What could be better for a peace agreement than to have it be hated by those who want war?
During the several years that these
negotiations were ongoing, Iran began to experience difficulties with its enrichment program. Specifically, their gas centrifuges were breaking down repeatedly, sometimes resulting in significant physical damage to the machinery, and in one case causing what has been described as a nuclear accident.* They did not at first determine the cause of these failures, but it was eventually traced to a computer worm that had reached the operating computers of the plant by means of small flash drives.
Nobody stepped forward to claim responsibility for the cyberattack, and I considered that a good thing. It would have put my people at risk if anyone suspected. Reza would have been an obvious candidate, but we had provided Teheran with so much useful intelligence that I thought he would remain safe. Dieter also remained safely on the edge of the problem. The centrifuges had been manufactured by the German company Siemens, but they were covered by the embargo, so they were purchased secretly by Iran with no links to Dieter.
The years encompassing the Iran nuclear deal and the cyberattack on the Iranian enrichment facilities were unquestionably the highlight of my professional career. Nothing could have been done without my expertise in international trade. None of it would have happened without my network. And none of it would have come about without my Amanda.
It was a tour de force. I was able to bring about a lasting peace while simultaneously doing what I liked most. Sharing secrets. My network benefited constantly, and they could use the secrets I gave them to bargain for other things of value to them. Amanda finished her dissertation and turned it into a best-selling book. We stayed out of war. Everybody won.
* * *
35
Retirement
I am approaching the end of this rather lengthy letter, and I feel it is appropriate to make some personal remarks. I suppose some might argue that they describe my thoughts, emotions, and philosophy, rather than being limited to historical facts. That would not be unreasonable, given that I have written this letter entirely for you, John.
People say that all good things must come to an end, and that appears to be particularly apt with respect to my career. I don’t think I was ready, but most likely I would never have been ready. That would imply that I wanted it to happen. I didn’t. On the other hand, it became necessary, so now it is time for me to retire.
And I never will be caught, because nobody knows what I did. There is no trace. No evidence. You and I are the only ones who know. And you will never tell. I am confident of that, because you are the son I never had. We share an important bond, for we each had a father we never knew.
You should appreciate the context when I state my claim that I was the best. It is not an attempt at vainglory but a simple reminder of the truth. To help you understand, I will summarize some of what I would, for lack of a better term, refer to as my competition. These are the people who are well known, both in the profession and in the general population, as the best. Or the worst. Which modifier is selected almost certainly depends on the perspective of the evaluator.
I will go through the names chronologically, which I think will provide a helpful perspective.
• • • • •
The first was Alger Hiss,* a government lawyer during the FDR administration, who was accused of being a communist by Whittaker Chambers. Chambers, a journalist and editor for national magazines, made a public accusation that Hiss was a communist, and Hiss filed suit for libel. The effort by Hiss to prove his innocence in this way backfired, however, and investigators for the House Unamerican Activities Committee pushed for his indictment on a charge of perjury regarding his testimony before HUAC.
Chambers also claimed that Hiss had spied for the Soviets, but no charges were filed on that allegation. Hiss was convicted after complex legal proceedings, and he served three years in federal prison. Why do I choose Hiss as one of my competitors? Certainly, we did not work together, and his conviction came five years before I was born. On the other hand, his life and career trajectory had some intriguing parallels to my own, and the overall story includes some delicious ironies.
Hiss was raised by a single mother from the time he was two. He was a good student and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1929. In the late thirties, and then during the war years, Hiss served in the State Department. As the war neared its end, he was a member of the delegation to the Yalta Conference, where Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill decided the new postwar borders of territory around the world.
He claimed that it had been his responsibility to assemble background information and documentation for the conference, and you can no doubt recognize that he had access to all the key secrets of the day. He also had control over how the information was used. When I first learned about that in my readings, I realized that we were two peas in a pod.
Returning to the ironies in his story, one need only ask the name of the congressman seeking to pillory Hiss. That man’s name was Richard Nixon, and he encountered his own legal troubles some years later.
I cannot say that Hiss ever shared any of his secrets, and I think nearly all the accusations made against him were unprovable, at least in the absence of fabricated evidence. He was accused of being a communist and a Soviet spy. He was a liberal, without question, and people of that ilk frequently encountered individuals with communist sympathies during the twenties and thirties. But a communist himself? Someone who would serve the Soviets? Such notions appear utterly preposterous, and much more reasonable is the conclusion that he made powerful enemies when he worked for the liberal Roosevelt administration.
As much as I appreciate the similarities with my own experience, Hiss was a different animal. There were skeletons to be found, but there is no indication they were communist bones.
• • • • •
Next, I turn to John Anthony Walker,* a chief warrant officer in the U.S. Navy, who first enlisted as way to avoid prosecution in his late teens when he was arrested for burglary. After ten years, he was serving in the communications center for the Navy’s Atlantic Submarine Fleet, where he had broad access to classified materials.
In 1967, he went to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., and offered to sell them a top-secret document with radio codes used by the Navy. The Soviets negotiated an ongoing arrangement, and Walker became a paid spy for the soviets for two decades. He eventually involved other family members in his espionage activity, in particular his son, who had also joined the Navy.
Walker was a successful spy from the perspective of the damage he caused to the United States. The code cards he gave the Soviets were believed to be used in conjunction with code machines they obtained when the North Koreans seized the U.S.S. Pueblo shortly afterward. Walker was also understood to have told the Soviets that the U.S. was tracking their submarines through the noise from cavitation produced by propellers, a disclosure that caused the Soviets to modify their submarine fleet.
His achievements can also be measured in both longevity and remuneration. His espionage career continued for nearly twenty years, and he received payments from the Soviets at a rate of some $50,000 per year. Some consider him to be one of the most highly compensated spies in history.
Despite these accomplishments, I cannot conclude that Walker was, in the final aggregate, a success in the world of secrets. In large part, I say this because he did it only for the money and not for the love of secrecy. And even more compelling in my analysis was his decision to involve his family. The world of secrecy is by definition one of solitude, and he violated its most fundamental principle.
• • • • •
Mark Felt,* in marked contrast, was one of the great success stories in the world of spycraft. After completing college and law school just prior to World War II, he joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and was assigned to the bureau’s Domestic Intelligence Division for the purpose of finding enemy spies and saboteurs. He was a spy from the start.
When J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972, Felt was named Associate Director after President Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray as F
BI Director. At a time of enormous political upheaval, Felt knew the secrets, and he decided that he needed to share them. He became the anonymous source behind the Washington Post’s series of articles that ultimately tied Nixon to the Watergate break-in and led to the President’s resignation.
Throughout the tumult of the Presidential crisis, and for the next thirty years, Felt never divulged his greatest secret. Not even his personal confrontation with the legal system over the course of ten years was enough to end his silence. His supervision during the 1970s of illegal FBI surveillance of the Weather Underground and other radical groups led to his indictment and conviction on federal charges, although he was not sentenced to any prison time, and President Reagan subsequently granted him a pardon.
Another twenty years passed before Felt revealed his identity as ‘deep throat,’ the anonymous source in the Watergate investigation. For a period of more than thirty years, Felt was a quintessential keeper of his secret. The information he had revealed to journalists in the early 1970s was not for his personal aggrandizement, nor was there any compensation for the personal and professional risks he undertook. It was all done in the loyal service of his country.
• • • • •
The 1980s saw several major spy cases in the United States. One of the most intriguing, at least from my own point of view, was that of Jonathan Pollard,* an intelligence analyst in the Naval Intelligence Command. Later investigations revealed that his background was replete with examples of behavior that should have been flagged by his superiors. After a request from a more senior official that Pollard be terminated, his supervisor instead reassigned him to the position that enabled him to begin his espionage career.