Spy Handler

by Victor Cherkashin

  The gift had been engineered by Platt. Keen to meet Vasilenko, he didn’t want to do it the standard way, through the “daisy chain” we all knew about and expected. That scheme had a CIA officer working undercover as a government employee, usually a diplomat, introduce himself to a Soviet. After several meetings, the American would introduce his new contact to an “old friend”—a CIA officer who would assess whether the Soviet target was worth pursuing. At some point, a third American would step in to make a pitch. The timing was almost predictable enough for us to set our watches by it.

  Instead, Platt lured Vasilenko to the Globetrotters game. There Matthews introduced Vasilenko to Platt. The Russian took an immediate liking to the blunt Texan, who said he worked for the NSA. Vasilenko suspected that was a lie, but didn’t care: establishing contacts with the CIA was part of a case officer’s work.

  As he’d expected, Platt also liked Vasilenko, who took to calling him “cowboy.” The American began inviting Vasilenko on hunting trips, and the two found themselves becoming friends. Each reported the meetings to his own agency, but—like Rem Krassilnikov and Haviland Smith before them—neither made any headway in his efforts to recruit the other. That didn’t put them off; the two rarely spoke about their work. Many of their meetings were also attended by an FBI officer called Dion Rankin, who participated in the recruitment effort on the part of the bureau. Vasilenko was given the cryptonym MONOLITE.

  After some time, the rezident, Dmitri Yakushkin, began to suspect Vasilenko’s motives. When the young officer reported an invitation from Platt for a weekend family outing, Yakushkin gave the go-ahead, then retracted it. More than that, he ordered Vasilenko to cut off his relations with his CIA friend. Vasilenko went anyway and didn’t report the meeting, or his future ones with Platt.

  For his part, Platt had to brush off criticism at his own agency for having made no headway in recruiting Vasilenko. Part of the thrill for CIA officers was staring across the great divide between the United States and the Soviet Union and trying to understand the other side. Platt genuinely respected Vasilenko, not least for the Russian’s devotion to his son Ilya. “He’s a real mensch,” Platt said about Vasilenko. Platt believed friendship was better than enmity for recruiting agents. Wanting to establish a personal bond that might win his target over, he resisted repeated suggestions to blackmail Vasilenko. “If you succeed, you’ll have to re-recruit him at every single meeting,” Platt insisted.

  The friendship also provided a release from the sometimes crushing CIA bureaucracy. The same Platt who tried to hide his prodigious drinking at the time from the CIA regaled Vasilenko with stories about incidents such as passing out in Paris. His occasional drunkenness initially gave the Russian hope he could recruit him, since he had two children to support. But Platt was resolute. “What are you going to offer me?” he once asked Vasilenko. “Five hours in a bread line? Nine square meters of living space in Moscow?”

  Over his wife’s disapproval, Vasilenko secretly met Platt three more times after Yakushkin ordered him to stop. During one of Platt’s last pitches, Vasilenko cut him short. “Look Jack, let’s do it this way. If you want to be friends with me, let’s be friends. We have many interesting things to talk about. But let’s not interfere with each other’s work.”

  That didn’t always hold. In a small Washington restaurant on 19th street in 1981, Vasilenko turned down yet another offer from Platt and Rankin to stay in the United States with his family. By now Platt wasn’t asking Vasilenko to become an agent—he was simply offering four U.S. passports and a suitcase stuffed with cash. Vasilenko’s reply was, “Look, if you want, I’ll take twenty bucks to pay for lunch.”

  “Your political situation back home is pretty tense,” Platt persisted. “You’d do well to stay here.”

  “Look guys, we’ve already agreed that I work for my country and you go on working for yours.”

  Vasilenko was rotated out of Washington two months later. Platt showed up at the airport to see his buddy off. But that wasn’t the end of their story. Vasilenko later became involved in a life-or-death struggle involving Platt and Robert Hanssen.

  10

  Among the stories Yurchenko exposed to the CIA during his months in the agency’s safe houses was the fate of French agent FAREWELL. Fifty-three-year-old Colonel Vladimir Vetrov, a hottempered officer in the KGB’s Line X (science and technology), began spying for France in 1980, during a tour in Paris. The information he provided included documents from the FCD’s Directorate T, responsible for overseeing science and technology (S&T) intelligence. They exposed a broad-based effort to steal or buy Western technology deemed crucial to the Soviet Union’s efforts to modernize its infrastructure—including information about radar, computers, machine tools and semiconductor technology.15

  One of the projects Vetrov detailed in his so-called FAREWELL dossier was a plan to build a major natural gas pipeline from Siberia to Europe. Germany and Britain were helping finance the project. It would earn the Soviet Union billions of dollars a year in hard currency and provide Moscow with a means of influence over Western Europe. Like the Americans, French President François Mitterrand opposed the project and secretly told U.S. President Ronald Reagan about FAREWELL during a July 1981 economic summit in Ottawa.

  Acting on the intelligence, the CIA later claimed to have slipped the KGB flawed information about pipeline software for controlling pumps and valves. Programmed to malfunction, the computer programs would overload the system. Thomas Reed, a former air force secretary in the National Security Council who helped spearhead the disinformation plan, claimed it was a roaring success. “The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space,” he wrote. Disruption of the project put into question years of Soviet intelligence gathering on that and other technology.16

  Those claims have been disputed, but what’s clear is the role of the American disinformation campaign in a wider effort to roll back Line X intelligence, on which much of the Soviet industrial and military complex relied. Reagan supporters hailed the actions as a significant contribution to “winning” the Cold War, an exaggerated assessment at best. The blast did delay the project to supply Western Europe. Nevertheless Russia currently provides Europe with a third of its natural gas.

  FAREWELL continued informing for the French until 1982, when his espionage ended in bizarre fashion after his mistress found out about it. On leave in Moscow, Vetrov met his lover in a park, where she threatened to go to the authorities with her information unless he agreed to leave his wife for her. Vetrov stabbed her with a knife instead. The story of his subsequent arrest is obscured by myth and disinformation. The woman lived, but Vetrov was also accused of stabbing another of her lovers to death in the park. Vetrov was tried and sentenced to twelve years in prison, but his espionage remained unexposed. Two years later, however, he was betrayed by a prison informant to whom he’d confided during a weak moment. His execution followed. (Despite Yurchenko’s account of the case to the CIA, the Americans still believe Vetrov’s spying was disclosed by an agent.)

  Among other information Yurchenko gave U.S. intelligence was Edward Lee Howard’s claim to the KGB that he’d heard of an “angry colonel” who had approached the CIA proposing to spy against the Soviet Union.17 The information initiated a manhunt, but we weren’t able to expose the agent until Ames gave us more information about him—at about the same time Yurchenko was describing the case to the CIA. Ames thus showed once again that almost all actionable intelligence originates from agents, not analysis.

  Yurchenko also told the CIA about the fate of Nikolai Artamanov, the captain of a destroyer in the Soviet Baltic Fleet. In 1959 the thirty-one-year-old Artamanov’s ship was docked at the Polish port of Gdansk, where he fell in love with a young dental student. The two decided to defect to the West, taking off to Sweden in a motor boat belonging to Artamanov’s ship.

  Artamanov traveled to the United States, where he was given a new identity—Nicholas George Sh
adrin—and a job as a Soviet navy analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Adjusting well to his new life, Shadrin attracted the KGB’s attention in 1966 as an up-and-coming lecturer on Soviet military affairs in Washington. It didn’t take the KGB long to figure out his real identity or approach him with an offer to turn against the CIA as a double agent. The CIA found out about the Soviet plan from the KGB colonel sent to turn Shadrin, who also volunteered with the Americans. The CIA, in turn, asked Shadrin to become a triple agent for the United States by pretending to cave to KGB pressure. He agreed, convincing the KGB he was interested in working against the Americans.

  In December 1975, Shadrin traveled to Vienna to meet his KGB handlers. Several days later—as far as the CIA knew—he disappeared. In fact, Artamanov/Shadrin was abducted, injected with sedatives and driven to Czechoslovakia—in the backseat of a car while crossing the Austrian border. When the KGB kidnappers opened the trunk on the other side, they discovered he’d stopped breathing, apparently from a sedative overdose. Attempts to revive him with CPR, brandy and adrenalin injections failed.

  Several months later, in 1976, the topic of the missing Russian came up between U.S. President Gerald Ford and Soviet General Secretary Brezhnev. The Americans were told that Shadrin had met with KGB officers in Vienna to discuss returning to the Soviet Union but failed to show for a scheduled second meeting. President Jimmy Carter got the same answer when he later raised the question.

  Yurchenko said Brezhnev’s lying to two U.S. presidents made the truth one of the KGB’s most closely kept secrets.18 Certain that if the KGB found out he’d informed the Americans about Artamanov, his family would be attacked back in Russia, Yurchenko made it abundantly clear to his handlers that he didn’t want the information leaked. In 1985 Artamanov’s widow filed a suit against the United States over his death, and the CIA was forced to hand over its files in the case—including Yurchenko’s intelligence—which soon became public information. The suit also raised the possibility that Yurchenko might have to appear in court. Bearden believes that the CIA may have thus tried to ensure the problem defector would never be able to go home. When news of the Artamanov case appeared in the American media despite his strenuous efforts to keep the information secret, he felt betrayed yet again.

  On November 2, 1985, Yurchenko found himself guarded by a young CIA security officer, Thomas Hannah. Disliked by more than one superior, Hannah had been given dreaded weekend duty. He allowed Yurchenko to talk him into taking him shopping, a clear violation of orders. Yurchenko quietly slipped away at the mall and called the rezidentura. Then he convinced Hannah to take him to a down-market French restaurant in Georgetown called Au Pied de Cochon.

  As the two sat at a table amid the smell of fried food wafting in from the kitchen, Yurchenko spoke up. “What would you do if I got up and walked out?” he asked. “Shoot me?”

  “No, we don’t treat defectors that way,” Hannah replied.

  Yurchenko announced he was taking a short walk. If he didn’t come back, he said, it wouldn’t be the officer’s fault. He stood up and walked out, leaving the nervous junior officer behind.19 After some minutes, Hannah got up to report to headquarters that Yurchenko was missing.

  11

  “I’m going upstairs to see him,” I told Androsov in the parking garage after he informed me about Yurchenko’s return. The “redefector” was waiting in the apartment of a security officer. He’d just walked the twenty minutes up Wisconsin Avenue from Au Pied de Cochon and buzzed himself in at the main gates. Androsov told me he claimed to have escaped from the CIA.

  Yurchenko looked very much like I’d remembered him, if a little skinnier. He seemed irritated. “Molodets [good man]!” I said. I tried as hard as possible to beam widely. I walked up to my old head of security and threw my arms around him. “Congratulations,” I said. “Welcome back. You don’t know how happy I am you managed to escape,” I said. “How did you do it?”

  “The bastards,” Yurchenko cursed. “They kidnapped me in Rome. They drugged me. I got away as soon as I could. I’m so happy to be back. I just hope I’ll be able to find support for my actions here.”

  Yurchenko sounded convincing. He acted happy to be back but didn’t overdo it. He moderated his anger at the CIA, striking an entirely plausible demeanor of frustration and tiredness.

  “You’ll get our full support,” I assured him.

  There was no question how I’d treat Yurchenko. Thanks to Ames, we knew exactly what had transpired since his defection. But Androsov and I agreed to buy Yurchenko’s story. He was back now, but we didn’t know how he’d behave. Maybe he’d want to return to his American friends after a couple of days. Our priority was making sure he didn’t defect again before we got him to Moscow as quickly as possible. That meant pretending to be overjoyed to see the prodigal son back on our side while posting security guards to make sure he didn’t sneak out. We had to let him feel we trusted him, that we’d support and protect him and that he was among friends. It was a routine decision, made by the book. After about twenty minutes of discussion, I left to find Androsov. We drove back to the embassy to send a cable to the Center.

  Yurchenko’s surprise appearance came during a barrage of anti-Soviet propaganda in the American press. Even Yurchenko’s defection was subordinated to the drive to criticize the USSR. The CIA had arrested neither Edward Lee Howard nor Ronald Pelton, instead leaking information that inspired numerous newspaper stories about Yurchenko and the intelligence he’d given the CIA and the FBI. The leaks couldn’t have taken place without decisions by both the CIA leadership and the White House. By making Yurchenko’s defection public and angering him, CIA Director Casey jeopardized his agency’s operations together with Yurchenko’s future.

  Androsov and I agreed that Yurchenko might well have been drugged after his defection to make him more cooperative. But that was irrelevant. Most important was knowing what operations and agents he’d compromised. In addition to information about Pelton and Howard, he told the Americans about KGB contingency plans in case of a large-scale military mobilization. They included a series of 1985 meetings in Karlshorst, the KGB’s East Berlin headquarters, to discuss measures such as planting secret arms caches in Western Europe. Yurchenko had been in charge of preparing the plan. He knew which agents were involved and which operations had made it past the planning stage—and he told the Americans about them.

  If the initial decision to welcome Yurchenko back was an immediate, temporary measure, it now developed into a larger plan. Thanks to Ames, we were spared guesswork over how to limit his damage. Instead, we decided to fight back from our embattled position on the propaganda front. We’d exploit Yurchenko’s return by trying to discredit the CIA and the U.S. government in just the way they were attacking us. Tweaking Yurchenko’s story of kidnapping and drugging, we’d unleash it against the United States. We detailed our proposal to the Center.

  I met Yurchenko a number of times in the following days. We took meals together and discussed bogus plans about what to do next. He appeared slightly nervous, but mostly happy to be back. It was the perfect attitude to strike, and he did it with confident calm. His story was well engineered: claiming to have been drugged excused him from having to describe exactly what he’d told the Americans while also giving him carte blanche to say with a shrug that he might have told them anything.

  Yurchenko had clearly mapped out a detailed strategy for himself, planning for each possible contingency. He had to behave like someone who’d just lived through a major ordeal, when he actually looked like he’d had a comfortable three months. His performance was convincing but not perfect. He wasn’t hysterical, didn’t get drunk, didn’t swear or do other things easily expected of someone who’d just endured months of stress. He also didn’t know what we knew about him. Had he known that a KGB agent was telling us everything he’d been doing since his defection, it’s unlikely he’d have dared return.

  Meanwhile, Androsov and I worked on our priority—getting
him back to Moscow. We had to prevent the Americans from attempting to really kidnap him this time. Even though he’d probably told his interrogators everything he knew, he was still important to them. With embassy guards secretly spying on him, his “friends” at the embassy pretended to help him get over his shock while also keeping tabs on him.

  One afternoon shortly after his return, several of Yurchenko’s acquaintances, including Elena and me, gathered for tea in his apartment. The chief question on everyone’s mind was how his kidnapping took place. “It just happened,” Yurchenko replied testily.

  Someone mentioned that American newspapers had written differing accounts of what they portrayed as a defection. Yurchenko noncommittally replied that he’d read the papers. As his guests talked, he got up to use the toilet. Elena went to the kitchen at the same time. Returning to the living room, she saw Yurchenko gazing into a hallway mirror, combing his hair back. He didn’t notice her watching him. He looked confident, as if convincing himself that everything was going according to his plan. Clearly he wasn’t afraid.

  Connoisseurs of James Bond films and spy novels rarely think about their fictional heroes’ steamy affairs. Intelligence officers and agents are usually depicted as putting their lives on the line to fight evil. Love affairs and gambling are therefore understandable and excusable. In real life, people have less tolerance for such activities and support punishment of intelligence officers who dare believe they’re more than the sum of their job descriptions and act according to their own wishes. Of course such an explanation has no legal weight, but the fact is that Yurchenko betrayed his country because he allowed himself to act like a human being. Presumably the Soviet intelligence service, its state secrets and its agents were less important to him than his personal desires.