The CIA didn’t respond. Tolkachev left a second note, then a third. But Langley’s leadership, caught in a post-Angleton spike of suspicion, had ordered a stand-down, forbidding its operatives to recruit new agents. The agency was convinced the notes were a KGB provocation. It took the arrival of a new station chief the same year—the headstrong Gardner “Gus” Hathaway—to lobby Washington to allow the Moscow station to contact the persistent volunteer. Hathaway, who would become head of CIA counterintelligence in 1985, earned fame after a fire broke out in the embassy. He allegedly blocked a brigade of ax-wielding Soviet firefighters—really KGB officers—from entering the CIA communications area.
Tolkachev continued to leave notes, each disclosing more information about himself. Thanks to Hathaway’s persistence, the CIA finally decided to make contact—but missed speaking to him on the telephone when his wife picked up the receiver. Tolkachev’s approaches continued. Once he even walked up to the ambassador’s residence, Spaso House in central Moscow. He told the Americans he had grown to hate the Soviet system and wanted to do all he could to help bring it down.
Many months later, the CIA finally realized it was dealing with a top scientist who had access to highly sensitive technological information. Tolkachev began working for the Americans in January 1979. He continued for six years, telling no one, not even his wife or son, about his secret life.
When the KGB finally learned about Tolkachev’s activities, Krassilnikov organized an arrest using the elite special operations Alpha unit. It took place when the scientist was returning from his dacha one Sunday in April 1985. Alpha men posing as traffic police stopped his car and motioned for it to park near a van whose driver was enduring a dressing-down by one of the phony policemen. Men burst from the van to handcuff and disrobe the spy to prevent suicide. Then they dragged him off to Lefortovo.8
The KGB searched Tolkachev’s apartment in one of Moscow’s seven landmark neo-Gothic “Stalin skyscrapers” built to house the Soviet elite. This one, at Ploschad Vosstaniya (Uprising Square), was for air force pilots and personnel. They found shelves and closets crammed with millions of rubles. Tolkachev hadn’t known what to do with his money.
He’d been betrayed by a CIA recruit preparing to take over his handling from Stombaugh. The trainee’s name was Edward Lee Howard.
7
Leaving my office late on the chilly evening of November 2, 1985, I drove toward home in the Soviet residential compound, located up Wisconsin Avenue next to the construction site of a new embassy that would replace the old 16th Street mansion. What the Americans would soon call the Year of the Spy had already been strange and momentous, with waves of exposures on both sides. Of course, the CIA didn’t realize the central reasons for the KGB’s successes—our recruitment of Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames—until years later. I thought I was prepared for anything after those coups. But the sight of Stanislav Androsov walking toward me as I parked in the underground garage heralded news I could never have expected.
The rezident looked concerned. “Ivanov told me you’d arrived,” he said as I climbed out of my car. He was speaking of the watch officer. “Yurchenko’s back.”
“What?” I stammered. The stunning news was the last thing I expected to hear from Androsov.
“He’s upstairs now. He showed up about twenty minutes ago. Says he decided to come back himself.”
“I can’t believe it! Sukin syn [that son of a bitch]!” My mind was spinning. How could Yurchenko possibly be back?
KGB Colonel Vitaly Yurchenko had worked under me as the head of security in Washington until 1980. It was he who handled the walk-in recruitment of Ronald Pelton, the former NSA cryptologist who betrayed IVY BELLS. Sent back to Moscow, Yurchenko was eventually promoted to deputy chief of the Fifth department in my own Directorate K. I hadn’t seen him since he left Washington and had heard little about him until four months earlier, on August 1.
I was in my office that day when the rezidentura received an urgent ciphered cable from Kryuchkov: Yurchenko had defected to the Americans during a trip to Rome! Since he knew about several Washington operations besides Pelton, we scrambled to figure out what he could compromise. One fear dwarfed all others—he may have known about Ames. Yurchenko had no access to information about the top KGB asset, but he may have heard something from the active rumor mill back at Yasenevo. Kyruchkov asked whether it would make sense to exfiltrate Ames to Moscow.
I racked my brains to remember everything I knew about Yurchenko. Before coming to Washington in 1975, he’d been assigned to the Third Chief Directorate, responsible for military counterintelligence. I worked with him regularly for six months after I arrived in Washington. He was a dependable head of security. He handled his team of officers efficiently and was generally well respected by, and on good terms with, the embassy’s diplomatic staff. He was experienced in keeping tabs on the Soviet community. He conducted himself unimpeachably in the Pelton case. At the end of his posting in 1980, I’d sent back a positive evaluation of his work.
Yurchenko rarely attracted attention to himself around the embassy but sometimes showed eccentricities that I attributed to stress. Although his athletic body radiated health, he saw any small tic or sickness as a sign of a major, incurable disease. He refused to eat many foods and constantly gulped a variety of medicines.
One sweltering summer day, we were both upstairs in the rezidentura: “I’m thirsty as hell,” Yurchenko said, speaking for both of us.
I offered him water from a pitcher in my office.
“Is it boiled?” he asked.
“No. But what do you care? It’s American.”
“It’s not filtered properly. I only drink filtered or bottled water—at the very least boiled.”
“Okay, whatever you say.” Pouring myself a glass, I noted Yurchenko’s attitude. It was unusual for Russians, who were used to the worst water pumped by Soviet systems.
Back in Moscow, Yurchenko was assigned to Directorate K’s Fifth department, which kept tabs on Soviets and Soviet organizations abroad. He got on well with Dmitri Yakushkin, the former Washington rezident. When his old boss returned to the Center in 1982 to head the FCD’s First (American) department, he recommended promoting him and installing him as his deputy. Yurchenko took up the new post in April 1985.
Nothing had prepared the Center for what happened several months later, when Yurchenko engineered a trip to visit the Rome rezidentura, ostensibly to sound out a possible agent, a radio operator at the U.S. Navy communications center in Naples who had volunteered to spy for the KGB. Claiming the walk-in, Thomas Hayden, was a CIA dangle, Yurchenko spread rumors in Yasenevo about his unreliability.9
In Rome on August 1, Yurchenko told his colleagues that he wanted to visit the Vatican museums. After leaving the Soviet embassy residential compound in the city’s western suburbs, he made his way instead to a hotel opposite the U.S. embassy on Rome’s Fifth Avenue, the Via Veneto. He phoned the embassy switchboard and was directed to cross the street. He’d decided to leave his wife, daughter and adopted son behind in Moscow. He was about to hand the CIA the highest-ranking KGB officer ever to defect to the United States.
During his initial debriefing in the embassy, Yurchenko told the CIA he’d seen cables sent from the Vienna rezidentura describing an American volunteer, “Mr. Robert,” who had betrayed Adolf Tolkachev.10 Yurchenko also told the CIA that, among other intelligence, the KGB was receiving information from a mole in the National Security Agency who had signed up in 1980 and betrayed Operation IVY BELLS. That explained how the Soviet navy located the prized eavesdropping device. Although Yurchenko participated in Pelton’s recruitment, he claimed to have forgotten the agent’s real name.
CIA Soviet and East European (SE) division chief Burton Gerber and his deputies in Langley still had no idea who betrayed IVY BELLS, but they immediately suspected that “Mr. Robert” was Edward Lee Howard. Yurchenko’s defection buoyed the CIA leadership—especially director Bill Casey, the Cold W
ar warrior who’d been seething under an order from Congress to stop aiding the Contra rebels fighting to overthrow the socialist Nicaraguan government.
The Americans flew Yurchenko to Washington and installed him in a safe house in Oakton, Virginia, as I found out in a major stroke of luck several days later. Gerber had assigned SE division counterintelligence chief Aldrich Ames to take part in Yurchenko’s debriefing. By then, Ames had been spying for us for almost four months. Desperate to protect him from possible exposure by Yurchenko, I couldn’t even contact him to warn of the defection—because Ames was busy debriefing the defector.
Showing up late to meet Yurchenko on the morning of his arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, he nevertheless installed himself first in line to greet him.11 Like me, Ames tried to guess whether Yurchenko might have been privy to information about him. Even though Yurchenko hadn’t mentioned anything about Ames—or anyone who fit his description—during his Rome debriefing, our nervous agent had no way of telling if Yurchenko did know about him.
Although Ames realized there was little chance of that despite Yurchenko’s work in Directorate K, he also knew the KGB’s strict need-to-know policies couldn’t always stop office chitchat. He moved quickly to get to the truth. Climbing into the backseat of the car waiting to drive the defector from the airport, he slipped him a note. “If you have any particularly important information which you wish to provide only to the Director or another senior U.S. official, tell me, and I will take you to him.” Yurchenko didn’t.12 Ames continued to press him until the Russian told him about my unexplained trip to Moscow in April or May. My visit had indeed sparked hallway talk that something big had happened in Washington. Happily, nothing implicated Ames or anyone like him.
When Ames finally met his KGB contact, the diplomat Sergei Chuvakhin, several days later, it was clear he was in no danger. The CIA’s attribution of what it knew of its huge loss of agents chiefly to Edward Lee Howard had been a lucky break. Only after Ames’s safety was assured could I reflect on the significance of his latest assignment: that our best spy was now even more valuable. In the following days and weeks Ames provided us with ongoing reports about what Yurchenko told the CIA. The information was funneled directly to Kryuchkov.
8
After arriving in Washington, Yurchenko began riding waves of conflicting emotions. Escaping the Soviet Union and cooperating with former adversaries who now professed to be his best friends must have given him a massive adrenaline rush. But it was overshadowed by one main concern: Yurchenko believed he was dying of stomach cancer and had only weeks or months to live. That expectation likely played a major part in his decision to abandon his family and Motherland. Yurchenko insisted that the CIA keep his defection secret—chiefly to protect his wife and son back in Moscow. There was a chance his family could be spared harassment if no direct confirmation of his defection surfaced.
Languishing in his safe house during weeks of debriefings, he became increasingly restless and depressed. Hoping to keep him happy, the CIA promised him $1 million on top of a $62,000 annual stipend and a well-appointed house in the Washington suburbs. He was also taken to a private dinner with Casey. His mood improved, but not for long.
Another issue may have played a seminal part in Yurchenko’s decision to defect—it was reported that he had a lover, a young woman called Valentina Yereskovskaya, whom he’d met and had fallen for in Washington during the 1970s. That was news to me. Everyone in the embassy had known the two were good friends, but no one suspected an affair. Yereskovskaya, who was married to a Soviet diplomat, had been the embassy pediatrician. In 1985, her husband was posted to Montreal, where both now lived. In a risky bid to assuage Yurchenko’s growing unhappiness, the CIA arranged for him to meet his lover to try to convince her to run away with him. Under heavy security, he appeared at her Montreal apartment when she was alone.
Everyone who knew Yurchenko also knew he didn’t care for his wife. Having to live with a woman he didn’t desire no doubt depressed him. Now he wanted to spend his last few months with the woman he did love. He didn’t want to hurt his family (hence his pains to protect them), but had decided to make a last bid for his own happiness. So there he was, in the doorway of his former mistress’s apartment. To his great surprise, she turned him down flat. She’d loved a KGB colonel, not a traitor, she told him.13 Yurchenko’s hopes of spending his last days in a CIA-bankrolled union with his beloved vanished. The blow struck hard.
More trouble for the defector and his stewards loomed. Still in Montreal in late September, Yurchenko came across a reprinting of a Washington Times story in a Canadian newspaper that broke the news of his defection. More stunning than the leak itself was its almost certain source: no one other than Casey himself, no doubt eager to generate good press for the agency, which was embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal. For Yurchenko, it was a slap in the face.
His grim mood worsened on his return to Washington. To bolster his flagging spirits, the CIA took him on a holiday tour of the West—where, however, the chaperoned defector felt unable to do anything for himself. In a widening of the probe to track down the KGB agent in the NSA, an FBI agent flew out to meet him with a series of mug shots. Yurchenko finally identified Pelton.14
Milton Bearden—the CIA SE division deputy chief who participated in Yurchenko’s debriefing—writes that the Russian’s mood plummeted after he identified Pelton. He probably realized, to his own surprise, that exposing the former NSA employee might mean that he’d have to testify about the case in court. That would provide incontrovertible proof of his defection, making it impossible for him to return to the Soviet Union—and prompting authorities in Moscow to take action against his family. If Yurchenko hadn’t already begun reconsidering his defection, he probably started thinking about how to come back to us then.
Or slightly later, when a beaming Bearden drove to his safe house to convey the momentous news that medical tests showed he didn’t have stomach cancer. Yurchenko appeared stunned. He clutched his head. “Oh, what have I done!” he uttered. Far from feeling relief, he began agonizing about what to do with the long life that suddenly stretched before him instead of the few months he’d expected to live.
9
Rezidentura officer Alexander Kukhar was a hot-blooded guy. If he saw an FBI car trailing him, he’d step on the accelerator and try to outrun his tail. He did that all the time—even when he wasn’t conducting an operation. The FBI agents assigned to follow Kukhar would have to report that they’d lost their target and of course get reprimanded for that. One day, the KGB officer drove out of the Soviet embassy and found himself surrounded by four FBI cars—one on each side, one in front and one behind. They drove 20 miles an hour, forcing Kukhar along with them. There was nothing our guy could do. He was escorted onto highway 95 and deposited 30 miles outside of Washington. FBI special agent Dion Rankin organized the incident. Kukhar got the picture. He never tried to elude FBI tails again when there was no need for it, which was most of the time. I never thought it was a good idea to annoy the adversary. If worse came to worst, it was always possible to postpone meeting an agent. That’s what we were taught—to respect the other side.
—Gennady Vasilenko, former Line KR officer in
Washington and rezident in Guyana
Jack Platt, who ran the program that trained Edward Lee Howard, had a record as an accomplished case officer, with service in Vienna, Laos, Paris and elsewhere. A Williams College graduate, the Texan served as a marine officer before joining the CIA in 1963. By 1977, he was in Washington, assigned to watch the Soviet embassy. Always on the lookout for interesting cases, Platt’s ears pricked up when colleagues told him about a new KGB officer in the Washington rezidentura. “He’s not your usual Soviet,” Platt was told.
CIA and FBI officers could spot most Soviets a mile away. This case was different. The new officer dressed in fashionable Western clothes. He walked confidently. He wasn’t wary of meeting Americans. He seemed well educated and well con
nected. And he was a ladies’ man. Platt wanted to find out more, which wasn’t too difficult, since the CIA had an agent working in the KGB training institute in Moscow. He’d served as class evaluator for the group in which the new man had graduated.
The officer’s name was Gennady Vasilenko, the man I later assigned to run Pelton. Tall and athletic, he was a natural at any sport he took up. He skied, skated, hunted and played basketball. After graduating from secondary school, he enrolled in the Bauman Technical Institute to study for an engineering degree. But his passion was volleyball—he wanted to join the Olympic team. Since the Bauman institute team was mediocre, Vasilenko joined the Dinamo club, not knowing that the Dinamo Sports Association, whose various teams included the famous soccer winners, was sponsored by the KGB. After graduating in 1962, he was offered a position in the secret service.
Vasilenko refused, saying he had no interest in intelligence work. Just ahead of tryouts for the 1964 summer Olympic volleyball team, however, he pulled a shoulder muscle. Unable to compete for a place on the squad, Vasilenko wondered what to do with his life. Prompting from fellow Dinamo members that he sign up with the intelligence service eventually swayed him. Despite his initial misgivings, he soon saw his new job as a great adventure. He continued playing sports during his KGB training.
Vasilenko’s gregariousness served him excellently. Arriving in Washington in 1976 to work in counterintelligence, he joined local basketball and volleyball teams and made friends quickly. Feeling completely at ease in the Main Adversary’s capital, he soon had five good contacts, including FBI officers. He played tennis with an agent named Pat Matthews. Over a drink one day, Matthews offered Vasilenko and his son tickets to a Harlem Globetrotters game, something that the sports enthusiast was unlikely to refuse.
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