Spy Handler

by Victor Cherkashin

  Counterintelligence services rarely expose agents. In my own experience, one of the few cases was that of Oleg Penkovsky, a celebrated spy for the CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). A top aide on the Red Army General Staff, Colonel Penkovsky supplied secrets to the West from 1961 until his arrest in 1962, when he was tripped up by the incredibly sloppy way in which British and American intelligence ran him, setting up meetings in broad daylight in the center of Moscow.

  Such mistakes were almost impossible now. I instantly ruled out a communications slipup. Our methods were too well developed for agents to make blunders during liaisons or by picking up information at special locations called dead drops. I kept coming back to the same conclusion: Someone must have exposed Ames from the inside. Was a mole in Russian intelligence responsible?

  Now Ames would surely spend the rest of his life in prison. What a fate! Considering that the failure was ours and not his, my heart sank. I’d been instrumental in bringing Ames in and convincing him to give us the real goods instead of handing over the useless information he offered us initially. Now I tasted bitter helplessness, unable to do anything for him in return.

  To Americans, the man dominating the headlines was of course a monster. But that was the nature of the game—so much of which turned out to be nonproductive, even damaging, to all its players, as I eventually realized. The U.S. officials now prosecuting Ames treated as heroes Russians who betrayed their country. Ames was a human being, and I felt much sympathy for him for that, even though I’d only dealt with him professionally and shared no personal ties.

  I racked my brain. Perhaps there was something I could do, after all. Although Ames—and Rosario, his wife—were out of reach in prison, his five-year-old son wasn’t. I resolved to help him. I’d propose bringing him here and raising him myself, in a caring family, in a way of which his father would approve.

  Then I thought of how the arrest would affect me. Very few knew me as the man who had recruited the most damaging spy in CIA history. I had no idea how that fact would now play. I’d always hoped the story would forever remain unknown, except to a handful. Since retiring three years earlier, I’d had almost no contact with KGB headquarters. The retirement had been less than genial. I’d been blocked out and partially exiled, and Ames’s arrest would probably cement that condition. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the successor to the KGB’s foreign intelligence wing, the First Chief Directorate (FCD)—had no use for a retired colonel, even one with my experience.

  Or so I thought. Little did I know that in time my name would once again become associated with Ames’s—but for a far different reason.

  2

  The phone rang on a cold, rainy November day in 1997. I was sitting in the offices of the new, swank Actyor Gallery business center on Tverskaya (formerly Gorky) Street, Moscow’s brightly lit main drag and commercial showcase of the new capitalism. The office belonged to my Swiss partner, with whom I’d started working after leaving the bank to set up my own security company.

  My friend Nikolai, or Kolya, was on the other end. He asked if I’d seen the latest issue of Voprosy razvedkii i kontrarazvedkii (Intelligence and Counterintelligence Issues).

  “Did you see what Kirpichenko said about you?” Nikolai continued. Vadim Kirpichenko, a top adviser to the SVR, had been my superior when he was first deputy of the FCD. “Bozhe [God almighty]! Go—get a copy!”

  I hadn’t an inkling of what could be important enough for me to venture outside onto the rainy, muddy sidewalks. The ex-deputy intelligence chief was a longtime ally of Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former KGB chief who helped lead the 1991 coup d’état against Mikhail Gorbachev. What could Kirpichenko be saying about me now? I’d never worked with him directly. For that reason among others, he never really knew me.

  “So what is it, Kolya?”

  “You’d better see for yourself,” Nikolai said, refusing to elaborate. His urging seemed odd. Everyone knew Kirpichenko spoke chiefly for himself and, despite his high rank, certainly didn’t represent the views of the intelligence service. But the concern in Nikolai’s voice prompted me to grab my coat. I ducked outside to a newspaper kiosk on Pushkin Square, site of the poet’s statue as well as Russia’s first McDonald’s, where business still boomed, if not as wildly as during its first years.

  I bought the paper and brought it upstairs. Nikolai hadn’t been kidding. The dirt came in an article by Kirpichenko accusing my former friend Oleg Kalugin of betraying Ames to the Americans. The allegation would have been more shocking if Kirpichenko hadn’t made a practice of accusing Kalugin—who had years before denounced the KGB and moved to the United States—of spying for the Americans. Aside from the new twist about Ames, there was little new.

  Kalugin had graduated at the top of his class before zooming up to become the youngest KGB general ever, at forty-one, and head of the FCD counterintelligence department. Then rumors began to circulate that he was an American agent. Kryuchkov soon demoted Kalugin, which helped set my old friend on a path that would lead him, ten years later, to denounce the KGB. The decision brought the wrath of his former colleagues. Convicted of treason in absentia in June 2002, Kalugin was labeled a traitor by no less than that well-known ex-KGB officer, President Vladimir Putin. Kalugin then made his critics even more livid when he took U.S. citizenship the following year.

  I read on about how Kalugin had obtained his information about Ames from a “friend.” Not just any friend, but someone whose profile was extremely familiar, down to the very name “Victor,” which happened to be mine (the surname was omitted) and the claim that he’d been secretly awarded for handling Ames. That accusation was stunning. In the highly compartmentalized world of intelligence, our commodity—information—was sacred. Only those who had to know were informed. To have spoken about Ames even to Kalugin—my former boss and friend—would have amounted to treason.

  I reread the article to make certain. Yes, there it was. Leaving out only my family name, Kirpichenko accused me of betraying one of our most valuable spies ever, the man whom I’d handled myself with all the care and devotion I could muster.

  So almost fifteen years after the dirty rumors about Kalugin first began, they were again playing into Kirpichenko’s hands. The allegation was as hypocritical as it was disgusting. After all, it was another officer who ran FCD counterintelligence when the blows of the early 1980s were battering the KGB. He was supposed to lead the search for moles in our system—and failed to. How very convenient to pin those setbacks on someone else—Kalugin, no less—when in fact the blame belonged to people like Kirpichenko. Any real suspicions would have been thoroughly investigated—in secret. Instead, to publicly level general accusations without a shred of proof laid bare Kirpichenko’s real intentions. It was not only highly unprofessional, it showed the greatest disrespect to his fellow KGB veterans.

  As for my own reputation, this certainly wasn’t the first attempt to damage it by linking me to Kalugin. Not that we weren’t closely linked. Before Kalugin openly turned against the KGB, we’d often spoken candidly about its failures. That continued even after he came under suspicion and I, knowing our phones were bugged, risked running afoul of the leadership. But I didn’t care. What could they do to me? Besides, everyone knew Kalugin and I went way back to when we were roommates in our elite KGB foreign-language institute. Then, in the late 1970s, I worked under him in Moscow, and it was he who sent me to Washington in 1979.

  My Order of Lenin (I was among those awarded one in 1986, for my work with Ames) later helped prompt more rumors about Kalugin, suggesting he may have known I’d had something to do with our sudden successes. But to prevent the CIA from learning of our celebration, which would have sent them hunting for its cause, the ceremony had been kept secret. Even my closest friends didn’t know about the highly prestigious honor. That upset Elena, who felt it unfair that we couldn’t tell those we completely trusted—even though she didn’t know exactly why I received the award. I could reme
mber saying nothing to Kalugin that would have even hinted of my work with Ames.

  That heated the resentment that now burned inside me—not a good feeling for a trained intelligence professional. I felt I had to do something, but what? I didn’t want to go to court, which would have been even less seemly for an ex-intelligence officer. At the same time, I couldn’t let the accusation stand. I snatched up the phone and dialed the number of Leonid Shebarshin, an old confidante and my former boss. Shebarshin—who was KGB number two for many years and rose to the top position for one day in 1991—always kept a level head and reached sound judgments.

  He thought about my news for some seconds, then answered calmly and disappointingly in his deep smoker’s baritone. “Don’t do anything,” he said.

  “Shto [say again]?”

  “Your surname’s not mentioned.”

  “So? Everyone will surely know it’s me.”

  “But what can anyone actually say? There’s no proof Kirpichenko meant you. But if you start going around making loud noises, everyone will indeed think it’s you. So just ignore it.”

  I took his advice. Throughout my career, I tried to keep my profile low. After retiring from the KGB, I avoided interviews—except for a very few I granted to small newspapers as favors to former colleagues. Following my professional instinct to stay out of all limelights, I rejected lucrative offers to work as a consultant to NTV television, then the country’s top independent channel. And the more I thought about my present urge to challenge the slander, the more I realized nothing Kirpichenko said could affect me very deeply, if only because of his own reputation. The lies and insinuation of treason were outrageous, but I wouldn’t rise to the bait.

  Then the ante was upped. Maybe it was only a matter of time. Another journalist printed Kirpichenko’s accusation and this time included my full name. Now it was “Victor Cherkashin” the traitor—when Victor Cherkashin had actually spent his entire career serving his Motherland as faithfully as he could and scoring major victories against the Main Adversary. I could no longer stay silent.

  1

  INSIDE THE LION’S DEN: WASHINGTON STATION

  1

  I wasn’t even supposed to be in Washington when it happened.

  Elena and I were preparing to return to Moscow in early 1985. Officers’ tours abroad usually lasted three to four years, and I’d been in Washington since 1979. It was painful to be separated from our young son, who had to remain in Moscow to attend school, and we were looking forward to being reunited with him. My replacement had already been picked but he was held up in Moscow, postponing our departure.

  Not that I was in a rush to get back to “the Center”—KGB headquarters in the Yasenevo suburb southwest of Moscow, housed in a complex exemplifying the “soulless modern” architectural style. I knew my superiors, among them Vadim Kirpichenko, were hardly eager to see me. Kirpichenko saw me as an ally of Oleg Kalugin’s, the man he’d helped remove as counterintelligence chief and my boss, six years earlier. I didn’t want to suffer my friend’s fate of being shunted out of counterintelligence.

  So we remained in Washington. It was like no other posting. It’s not easy getting used to the feeling of always having to be on guard. That was especially true for Elena, who by then had worked many years for Soviet intelligence. She’d never felt as tense during any of my other tours abroad. In Washington, she rarely went out by herself. Wary of being set up even for a shoplifting scandal, she kept track of every item in her shopping carts and made sure to check her pockets.

  That was as much a result of the Center’s foolish policies as anything else. The KGB’s constant suspicion of its own officers and agents encouraged the Americans to put us in compromising situations. That was brought home after the arrest of an officer of the rezidentura—as KGB stations, usually housed inside Soviet embassies, were called. He was apprehended, ostensibly for shoplifting, during my tenure in what seemed an obvious provocation, what we called a harassing act or procedure to flush out surveillance or compromise agents or officers. He immediately returned to the embassy and reported the whole thing, insisting that security guards had planted the allegedly stolen goods. The incident was probably captured by closed-circuit video, but the Americans refused to show us the footage. Why didn’t we believe one of our own? Because the Center didn’t. He would have been sent back in disgrace if I hadn’t convinced Moscow to let him off.

  The rescue was unusual. The KGB wasn’t unique in returning intelligence officers targeted in recruitment attempts by the other side. It meant, first of all, that they were known to the adversary. There was also the possibility that they’d accepted an offer, no matter how convincingly they denied it. Even in cases where they clearly turned “pitches” down, they nonetheless remained tainted. But all that went double for the KGB.

  The level of mistrust in Yasenevo’s corridors was so high that the first whiff of anything out of the ordinary could mean the end of a career. Such suspicion only made it easier for the CIA to recruit our men. Fear of losing their jobs inevitably led some to work for U.S. intelligence. A political intelligence officer named Sergei Motorin, who was caught trying to sell a case of vodka, didn’t want that negligible misdeed made known to his bosses. The incident eventually helped convince him to spy for the FBI—until his exposure to us and his subsequent execution, thanks to Aldrich Ames.

  Careful of the company we kept, Elena and I had few friends in the embassy. She never lacked the discipline required for semi-solitude. I sensed that right from the start, after we saw each other for the first time at far ends of a hallway in Lubyanka, the KGB’s forbidding Moscow headquarters. As she later revealed, she told herself right then and there I was the man she’d marry. Such dedication, together with my position as head of the department that searched for traitors, kept us in virtual isolation—which, however, also reflected the suspicion that suffused our embassy in the Main Adversary’s backyard.

  By 1985, Elena and I were old Washington hands, otherwise comfortable in the city and relatively inured to the embassy’s tics. Our precocious daughter, Alyona, was happy in her nursery school and we were proud she was growing up speaking English. We genuinely liked Americans, with their big-hearted hospitality and easygoing manner. And we loved the broad expanses of untouched wilderness. The United States was a good place to be.

  It was a quiet time for the rezidentura itself, although that didn’t mean work was easy. The Center sent a constant stream of questions about security, to which we strove to respond quickly. In the wake of our 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. decision to boycott the Moscow Olympic Games the following year, relations between Washington and Moscow remained rancorous. The division was sharpened by Ronald Reagan’s proclamations of the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire” and his proposed Star Wars space missile defense system, with which we couldn’t possibly compete.

  Meanwhile, the Soviet Union’s internal uncertainties loomed over us. It was still unclear who would succeed Leonid Brezhnev as Communist Party general secretary after his death in 1982, and the uncertainty grew as one leader replaced another in quick succession. Deeply concerned about possible abrupt changes to domestic and foreign policy, we put all operations on hold. Reducing communication with the Center to a bare minimum, we prepared ourselves to be ready for anything, even war with the United States.

  When former KGB chief Yuri Andropov assumed the Soviet leadership after Brezhnev, we felt relieved and hoped for improved domestic conditions. But our expectations were deflated when Andropov died in 1984 and was replaced by Brezhnev’s crony Konstantin Chernenko. He was so ineffectual that by the time he died the following year, we’d stopped worrying that the change would affect our work in any substantial way. Then came Mikhail Gorbachev’s appointment in March—which we applauded. It would take years to suspect that Gorbachev would bring everything we knew crashing down around us.

  By April 1985, the Washington station’s routine had been more or less reestablished. My chief concer
n was a change in FBI surveillance practices. Instead of trailing almost every member of the staff, agents were letting most of our people go about their business and focusing solely on KGB officers. Stark evidence of the change had come in February 1984, when rezidentura technicians found twenty-five radio-transmitting beacons in the cars of embassy employees during a routine check. Twenty-four were in the cars of intelligence officers. The twenty-fifth was found in the car of a consular officer who was a friend of several KGB officers. That caught us off guard. I ordered the unit assigned to monitor and decode FBI radio conversations and other indications of their surveillance of our activity to analyze the data we’d collected over the previous years. The group used radio scanners and other devices to intercept communications “chatter” between FBI agents assigned to follow Soviet staff. The results were clear. The FBI had trailed all Soviet personnel—from our Foreign Ministry, the KGB, GRU military intelligence and trade representatives—until October 1982, when the surveillance suddenly became much more efficient.

  How could they know? Certain officers, including myself, were of course recognized by the FBI. But how did they single out which cars leaving the embassy mansion were driven by KGB personnel, even newly posted ones? That could only mean that an agent somewhere in our system was passing along the information.

  That worried me deeply as I approached our embassy on 16th Street on a beautiful spring day during cherry blossom season. Returning from several meetings in town and girding myself to write a routine report to the Center, I passed the guard and duty officer who observed all comings and goings, then entered the stately Parisian-style building that had once belonged to the widow of railroad car magnate George Pullman.