Cassidy's Run

by David Wise

  As a retired career military man, Cassidy, as he had explained to the Russians, had a sticker on his car that gave him access to any base in the country, whether army, navy, air force, or marine. He, Marie, and the dog could drive right in.

  Cassidy used the special carbons that the Russians had supplied to record his observations in secret writing. When done, he steamed the pages to seal in the chemicals, then folded them several times to make them as small as possible in order to fit inside the fake rocks he passed to the Soviets.

  Cassidy had already demonstrated that he was a good actor, and his handwritten memos proved him a good reporter as well, with a clear writing style and a trained eye. His report from the air force base at Charleston was a typical example.

  The 437th Military Airlift Wing of the Military Airlift Command is stationed here. Inquiries revealed they provide airlift services, combat equipment and troops, to all parts of the world for all of the Dept. of Defense. They employ C-141 Starlifters but I did see a few other types of planes. Takeoffs and landings were numerous throughout the days I was there—so much so I thought there must be a training mission also but could not confirm.

  There are about 8000 military and civilian personnel assigned. I roamed the base at will but found no ammo dumps. About 8 miles southeast of this base (see #2 on map), I located a U.S. Navy base. . . . I saw 10–15 large warships, several large landing crafts, at least 3 submarines which I was told were nuclear powered. These ships were anchored on the Cooper River. The roadway on the Cooper River side was fenced the entire length and all entrances to this area manned by guards. . . . A badge was required to gain admittance to any area on this side of the road.

  Signs on buildings and fence of this area read “Mine Assembly Group” “Fleet and Marine Warfare Training Center” “Missile Submarine Training Center” “Submarine Squadron Four” “Nuclear Material Supply Center” and “Mercury Exclusion Area.”

  Eight miles north of the base, Cassidy’s report continued, he found an installation with a sign at the entrance that read POLARIS MISSILE FACILITY ATLANTIC. He added: “I could not gain admission to this place but could only see large administration building and a few smaller buildings within. . . . A military shopping area was located for the next ½ mile and was outside fenced area.” Nearby, he reported he saw a sign for the General Dynamics Corporation, “indicating government contractors were active in the area.”

  Next, Cassidy came upon a nearby naval weapons facility. “I proceeded to this facility and [in] about 1/2 mile I came to the guard gate (see #6 on map). Because of the military sticker on my car I am never questioned on entering a military base,” Cassidy reported. “But at this one I was stopped and asked the nature of my business.”

  Now, for the first time on his trip, Cassidy was in a potentially tight spot. He knew he might have had some difficulty explaining matters. Well, you see, I’m a Russian spy, but I’m not really a Russian spy, because I’m actually working for the FBI, and no, I have no way to prove what I’m saying, but please, fellows, I’m not making this up, you’ve got to believe me. Cassidy also knew it might be a trifle awkward to explain away the map in the car on which he had pinpointed the location of every military base for miles around.

  He need not have worried; security was loose as a goose. “I did not identify myself,” he wrote, “but explained I happened to be in the area and would like to see the base. He waved me through.” With a sigh of relief, Cassidy drove through the gate. Inside, “there were several guarded roads leading to interior of this area. As I left the facility returning to Route 52 I noticed the whole length of the south side of area along road was fenced and signs reading ‘Gov’t Property’ (See #7 on map). About 1½ miles there was a gate with guard shacks inside and sign reading ‘Munitions Trucks Entrance.’ There was some activity inside and several Navy pickup trucks were observed. . . . On one fence was sign ‘Group 8.’ ”

  At Slidell, Cassidy had disappointing news for the Soviets, who had hoped he would find evidence of a clandestine nerve-gas storage area. There were no signs of the kind that warned “No Admittance—Gov’t Property,” and he added, “The whole area seemed a very unlikely place for 20 semi-underground repositories.” At Dugway, Cassidy had reported seeing the mounds with pipes sticking up out of them. There were no mounds at Slidell, nor did the base have roads of the sort that the army might use for transporting a cargo as delicate as nerve gas. “The road to the city airport, dump and golf course is one of the better ones in the area,” Cassidy reported, “but it is partially dirt and all chuck-holes.”

  As a consolation prize, Cassidy told the GRU that he found a Slidell Computer Complex that belonged to NASA and was completely fenced and protected by uniformed guards. “About 200 cars in parking lot,” Cassidy noted.

  On April 20, 1974, Cassidy was back in New York City for the second time. He drove to a drop site and put down a hollow rock containing reports of his trips to military bases in Florida. At 4 P.M., he met Oleg Likhachev in front of a radio repair shop on East 233d Street in the Bronx. As the two walked along the street, Cassidy filled Likhachev in on the results of his reconnaissance. Likhachev asked Cassidy a lot of rapid-fire questions, whether he had obtained civilian employment with a printer, where he was hiding material from his wife, and what bases he would travel to next.

  After their meeting, Cassidy went to pick up the rock the Soviets had hidden near the New York Botanical Garden. Cassidy began walking north on Webster Avenue toward the rock, which was secreted in a space between a garage wall and the end of a fence. As he did so, something spies always fear seemed about to happen.

  Just as Cassidy approached the drop site, a little girl leaned over and reached for the rock. Dead drops are not foolproof; there is always a chance that someone will pick up one of the hollow rocks and discover its contents. The little girl almost had the rock in her grasp when her mother shooed her away.

  Relieved, Cassidy scooped up the rock and hurried off. To signal he had cleared the drop, he then drove into Manhattan to leave a line on the same lamppost he had marked five months before. After that, he again joined O’Flaherty at the house on Rockaway Point.

  Breaking open the rock, WALLFLOWER and the FBI agents found an A&P matchbook with the word Raincheck on the cover. Under the second c was the microdot with new instructions.

  On October 19, Cassidy returned to New York for another meeting with the Soviets, and once again the unexpected happened at a drop site. At 2 P.M., Cassidy was supposed to leave his rock at the base of a tree near the end of a footbridge that crossed the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. As he approached the drop, he saw smoke billowing up. A teenager had flicked a cigarette into a trash heap near the tree. Someone had turned in an alarm, and the New York City fire department was on its way; Cassidy could hear the sirens getting closer. He hesitated, then decided to stick to the plan. He dropped the rock and fled.

  Only minutes after Cassidy scrambled out of the way, there were fire trucks and hoses all over the place. In an apartment building overlooking the site, the two FBI agents covering the drop could hardly believe the pandemonium unfolding before their eyes. This was definitely not in the script. Special Agent Jim Lancaster, whose Deep South accent marked him as an alien in Brooklyn, recalled the scene. “There was this fire, and the rock was right by a tree. Me and Ricky Shapiro were looking out the window and we said, ‘Oh god, the fire department is going to see this funny rock, and it’s going to burn up.’ ”

  To the agents’ relief, the rock and its flammable contents survived the blaze intact. Two hours later, Cassidy was walking along Sixty-fourth Avenue in Queens, as he had been instructed to do on the microdot in the matchbook, when Likhachev fell into step beside him. Cassidy told the GRU man that he had looked for a civilian job in Tampa at the United States Readiness Command (REDCOM), as STRICOM was now called, but none was available.

  Likhachev asked how the Morse transmissions were going, whether Cassidy was receiving them at the “principal
time.” Cassidy said he was; he had not had to use the alternate transmission times that the Russians had provided as backup.

  At their next meeting in March, Likhachev said, he would explain a new code. Likhachev asked whether Cassidy might be able to obtain topographical maps; after discussing that, they parted. Cassidy drove to Brooklyn to pick up Likhachev’s rock, then into Manhattan to mark the same lamp pole, and back to Rockaway Point to meet with the FBI.

  Cassidy continued visiting and reporting on military bases around the country, and in March he returned to New York, drove to Brooklyn, and hid a hollow rock on the south side of Holy Cross Cemetery, near Cortelyou Road. Two hours later, he rendezvoused with Likhachev on a park bench in Brooklyn. After their meeting, he drove into Manhattan, and this time he left a piece of yellow tape facing outward on a lamppost at York Avenue and Ninety-first Street. The day ended, as usual, at Rockaway Point.

  Six months later, in late September, Cassidy was back in Brooklyn, hiding a rock at another cemetery two hours before he met Likhachev near the Fort Hamilton athletic field. They discussed Cassidy’s latest surveys of military bases, and the Morse transmissions. Likhachev said a new person would be his contact at the next meeting in April 1976; Cassidy should be ready to use the parol, since they did not know each other. But the new Mike, Likhachev assured him, would be up to speed on the case.

  Cassidy then picked up his rock at a dead drop in Brooklyn, left a signal in Manhattan, and returned to the kitchen table at O’Flaherty’s mother’s house, where the rock was broken open. For the first time, it contained two microdots, because the message from the Soviets was longer than usual. It directed Cassidy not only to spy on additional military bases but to try to obtain emergency planning documents from city, county, or state offices.

  Although there had still been no discussion of the “new code” that Likhachev had mentioned, the secret writing in the rock instructed Cassidy to travel to a location in the Bronx for a meeting on the first Saturday after he received a Morse transmission with twenty groups or to go to a dead drop in the Bronx for a pickup if he received a coded radio message with twenty-four five-digit groups.

  In April, Cassidy was back in the New York area, this time to leave a rock at a drop site in suburban Yonkers with more reports on military bases. The FBI had seen Likhachev moving around New York several times with Vladimir Vybornov, who was listed as a “public relations officer” at the Soviet UN mission. His wife, Aleksandra Vybornova, also worked in the public relations office. The bureau predicted that Vybornov would turn out to be the new Mike, and it was right.

  On April 10, FBI agents watched Vybornov fill a dead drop near Pinebrook Boulevard in New Rochelle, in Westchester County. He was accompanied by a woman, believed to be Aleksandra. Cassidy cleared the drop, left a piece of yellow tape on a lamp pole at 201st Street in Manhattan, and traveled to Rockaway Point. There was no meeting this time with Vybornov, but instructions on a microdot inside another A&P matchbook told him to prepare for a meeting with the new Mike in October.

  Cassidy’s report to the FBI of his first meeting with Vybornov, on October 9, 1976, was detailed and meticulous, as usual. At 2 P.M., he left his rock at the base of a street sign at Palmer Avenue in the Bronx. The rock contained a report of his reconnaissance of military bases in Georgia.

  He then drove around to kill time before the meeting. “I parked the car just off Gun Hill Road . . . at approximately 1552 hours. I waited in the car until 1557 hours and I then walked to the spot arriving at 1600 hours.” Cassidy pretended to be waiting for a bus. “I noticed a person in dark clothes w/umbrella at the corner of NW Fenton and Gun Hill. . . . This person stopped in front of me and as I looked at him he asked me about a drive-in and when I responded he smiled and said ‘Hi I’m another Mike.’ We shook hands.”

  As they strolled along the street, the sixth Mike talked about the wet weather and wanted to know where Cassidy had parked; he had not brought his own car, he said, because of the rain. The new Mike not only had a halting command of English, but it was soon apparent he was not cut out for a career in espionage. Vybornov, it became clear, wanted to break all the spy rules because of the inclement weather.

  He asked Cassidy to drive back to the drop site at Palmer Avenue, retrieve the rock he had just left there for Vybornov, and bring it directly to the Russian. They would then simply exchange rocks in Cassidy’s car. This was an unprecedented request, a total departure from spy etiquette. It flouted the GRU’s elaborate procedure for using dead drops to avoid risks. But first, Vybornov had a lot of questions. As they continued walking, he asked if the microdots were legible. Cassidy said they were OK. He then told Cassidy to be sure to keep the secret writing paper wet when he developed it. That puzzled Cassidy, who explained that he dipped the paper in acetone, but after steaming it the sheet dried out rapidly. There was no way to keep it wet. Vybornov did not respond and Cassidy concluded that the Russian was in over his head.

  The new Mike then grilled Cassidy closely about his children and household, apparently to reassure Moscow that his family, friends, and neighbors remained unaware of his espionage activities. “He said, ‘Do you hear from your son and daughter?’ I told him I hadn’t heard from my son since he graduated from high school. ‘How about your daughter?’ ” She was busy with a new career in nursing in Alexandria, Cassidy replied. “He asked if I received correspondence from friends and relatives. I said very seldom. He said, ‘Do they visit you?’ I said we have very few houseguests.”

  Vybornov persisted, Cassidy’s report to the FBI continued. “He said, ‘What kind of a house do you have, something like this?’ and he pointed to a two- or three-story rowhouse we were just passing. I said no, Mike, and smiled. ‘We don’t have houses like that in Florida. I live in a house all by itself and on one floor.’

  “He said, ‘Does your wife know anything about this?’ I said, ‘No, nothing and I want it kept that way.’ He asked if neighbors were friends of mine. I said a few of them were. He said do they visit? I said I’m not on a social basis with neighbors. We speak when we see each other during the day and that’s about it.

  “He asked how finances were and I told him not so good. He said there was $4,200 in my package and . . . he hoped this would help.” Cassidy, who always complained he needed more money, replied, “But Mike, I’m missing the big paydays.”

  He reminded Vybornov that he had provided the name of Nicky, the sergeant at Edgewood, but had not been paid for that. “I missed the payday on Nicky,” Cassidy protested. Vybornov adopted a sheepish expression as though he agreed.

  Vybornov, Cassidy reported to the FBI, then pressed for a document outlining a plan for industrial mobilization in an emergency that Cassidy had said he had access to at a local university. “We are very much interested in it. We would very much like to have that but not if you have to expose yourself. Do not take and reproduce if you must give your identity. Do not give name, address, phone number—nothing. It’s not worth it to us, but get it if you can.”

  As they walked along Eastchester Road toward Gun Hill Road, they were nearing the drop site. “He said he would walk very slowly up this road and that I was to get the car, pick up my package, and then pick him up . . . about five blocks away. . . . I told him I would be back in six or seven minutes.”

  Cassidy retrieved his rock, got in his car, cruised along Eastchester, and spotted Vybornov in the middle of the block. “As I pulled to the curb he came over and got in. I pulled my rock from my jacket pocket and gave it to him. . . . He pulled his from his raincoat pocket.” There was no need to put tape on the light pole, Vybornov said, “because I already know you have [the rock].” It was the only time that Cassidy and a Russian had simply handed the rocks to each other.

  “He had opened the door and was getting out. I noticed he had left his umbrella in the car in his haste to leave and I hollered and opened the door and extended it to him. He made several stabs at it before he caught the handle. . . . To me he lost hi
s composure—seemed he was very anxious for us to separate and me to get the hell out of there.” WALLFLOWER gunned his car and took off.

  Inside the rock handed to Cassidy was a message in secret writing. It provided his schedule for 1977, called for drops and meetings in April and October, and gave the dates and times of the radio transmissions he was to receive. It asked him to provide the industrial-mobilization plan, and to reconnoiter a nuclear-ammunition depot at the air force base in Charleston.

  The message also instructed Cassidy, in case the Soviets should ever lose contact with him, to go to New York City on the last Saturday of January, April, July, and October and wait, pipe in mouth in front of the antiques store in Brooklyn at 4 P.M., holding the usual book-sized package with yellow wrapping. If contact was not reestablished, he was to try again the next day.

  In Cassidy’s appraisal to the FBI of the meeting, it was plain that he had been underwhelmed by Vybornov. “He seemed to have his game plan and stuck with it. This did not include any comments or discussion from me—just answer the questions. He was far from being polished like, say, Mike #1. He had hard features and could pass for alongshoreman or a lumberjack. He wanted to dominate the meeting—and did—and was very confident, bold, hard as a rock, until he started out of the car when he seemed to lose all his composure in attempting to grab the umbrella.”

  Cassidy kept his cool at his meetings with the Russians, and he did this time as well, despite Vybornov changing the procedures and peppering him with questions. But he found each encounter with the Soviets nerve-racking. “I was always on pins and needles worrying that I was going to blow it,” Cassidy confessed. “I was worried I would contradict myself or make a mistake and blow the thing apart.” Cassidy was on edge even though the Russians never indicated the slightest suspicion that he was anything but a genuine mole.

  “I felt they trusted me and believed me,” he said. “I had a job to do and I wanted to do it.”