Spy Handler

by Victor Cherkashin

  He acted that way all along. Once he fully decided that defecting was a mistake, he chose to take revenge on the CIA for leaking his story. That way he’d save his family from an uncertain future. And he’d have a chance at spending the remaining decades of his life back home instead of whiling away his supposed last months dying in the United States. It was only a matter of time until he returned to the Soviet embassy.

  In Washington six years earlier, Yurchenko had told me something that had always stuck in my memory. “I keep telling my son that no matter what situation you find yourself in, there’s always a way out.”

  12

  Our plan to bring Yurchenko safely home involved making him discredit himself in American eyes. He had to denounce them—publicly burn his bridges—so he wouldn’t be able to go back.

  After clearing it with Moscow, the embassy delivered a letter of protest, denouncing Yurchenko’s kidnapping as criminal to the State Department. The letter was based on what he’d told us. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow also lodged a complaint. After polishing the story—that he’d been kidnapped in Italy, drugged and flown back to the United States, where he was forcibly held in a safe house and interrogated—we went to the press.

  How Yurchenko would behave was still unclear, so the day after his return, we held a news conference for Soviet journalists only. Since the CIA knew the real story, spinning Yurchenko’s kidnapping version was likely to have the greatest impact as anti-U.S. propaganda back home. Yurchenko followed his script to the letter, confirming exactly what he’d told us and damning the Americans for what he said they did to him.

  The following day, a Monday, he appeared at a briefing for the foreign press corps in the new embassy compound. There he told his story to a shocked Washington intelligence community. In animated tones, switching between Russian and English, he denounced CIA SE chief Burton Gerber and his CIA handlers as torturers—except for one, an officer who’d introduced himself to Yurchenko as Phil. He was, of course, Aldrich Ames, whom we didn’t want to be reprimanded. Yurchenko said the CIA made him look like a willing defector, partly by forcing him to sign a contract promising him $1 million—which the CIA thought would encourage other would-be defectors.

  The news conference went swimmingly. If Yurchenko’s story wasn’t entirely believable, his outrage was. Afterward, I was able to relax because the damage had been done whatever Yurchenko did, even if he somehow managed to escape and return to the Americans. “If he wants to stay here, fuck him—we can’t do much about it if that’s what he really wants,” I told Androsov. “But I’m 90 percent sure he won’t.”

  There was one more step. As it always did in such situations, the State Department insisted that Yurchenko meet with U.S. representatives face-to-face to confirm his story. The Americans said they had no reason to keep Yurchenko in the United States, but that they needed to know he’d be returning to Moscow voluntarily. We wanted to conduct the meeting in our embassy, but the State Department insisted on its offices. So on Tuesday, the day after his sensational news conference, a Soviet diplomat escorted Yurchenko to Foggy Bottom. There he confirmed his story once again.

  The effort went off without a hitch. We won the propaganda battle. Had they wanted to, both the CIA and FBI could have easily countered our version of Yurchenko’s previous three months. They had documents, audio- and videotapes to back their story, and could have made them public as some in both organizations reportedly urged. But Gerber ruled out taking action.20 Part of the reason was our speed in publicizing the kidnapping story. The CIA could have advanced its version for the record, but would have had to engage in a tit-for-tat propaganda battle, which would have been less than effective.

  Following Yurchenko’s redefection, the CIA had no idea whether its biggest Soviet prize in decades had been a real defector or a double agent all along. The agency would spend years poring over its records, trying to calculate how much it could trust the information he provided and ascertain whether he’d been planted by the KGB to learn important information about the CIA and the FBI during his debriefing sessions. Many differing opinions were offered about why such an operation would be carried out, and whether we compromised Yurchenko’s knowledge to hide more important information. He became a hot topic of discussion once again after Ames was arrested in 1994, this time over whether he’d been part of a KGB operation to protect our spy.

  I don’t know how many Americans believed Yurchenko’s kidnap story, but his return hurt the CIA’s image regardless. The agency had either been completely taken in by a brilliant Soviet intelligence officer, or allowed one of its top Soviet defectors to slip out of its hands. Reagan summed up American confusion over the event: “I think it’s awfully easy for any American to be perplexed by anyone who could live in the United States but would prefer to live in Russia.”21

  Our propaganda coup came on top of two other defections botched by the CIA. The first took place when a Soviet soldier walked into the U.S. embassy in Kabul but was forced out several weeks later, after Soviet troops surrounded the building and cut off electricity and telephone lines. In the other case, a Ukrainian merchant sailor called Miroslav Medved was twice returned to his ship, a grain freighter called the Marshal Konev, after he tried to defect on the Mississippi River near New Orleans, once by leaping forty feet.

  The Soviet people, on the other hand, accepted the kidnap story—and that had been our most important goal. We showed the CIA was an organization of cynical liars, a portrait newspapers and television sustained for months. That was sweet revenge for U.S. criticism of Soviet human rights violations. Most important, however, by keeping the CIA and FBI guessing, Yurchenko’s redefection helped maintain cover for Ames and Hanssen.

  13

  Five days after he’d showed up at the Soviet embassy, Yurchenko boarded a flight back to Moscow. As he reached the top of the stairs leading up to the plane, he turned, smiled and waved. He knew the CIA was watching his every move. Yurchenko’s act surely galled the Americans, but something else worried them even more. Following Yurchenko up the stairs were several other KGB officers from the rezidentura—part of an “honor guard” escorting him home. One was Valery Martynov, the Line X officer who had been spying for the FBI since 1982. What the Americans didn’t know—but began at that moment to suspect—was that I also knew about Martynov’s espionage. Getting him back to Moscow had been one of my chief worries for months.

  Yurchenko returned home to a hero’s welcome. He was awarded, given a desk in Yasenevo and an analytical job in the FCD. I spoke to him several times after 1986—his dacha isn’t far from mine at the KGB plot near Moscow and I still see him from time to time. We’re cordial to each other, saying hello but not much more.

  Most in the KGB never doubted Yurchenko was a traitor and debated (privately of course) whether Kryuchkov had been right to use Yurchenko’s story for propaganda. Most feel the jury is still out. Less understandable was why Yurchenko was given a job on his return. In any case, there was nothing anyone could do. Yurchenko was officially accepted as an upstanding citizen, even as others who betrayed much less than he were shot.

  The Americans who thought Yurchenko was a real defector were puzzled. Why wasn’t he punished when he got home? Perhaps the biggest reason was Ames. Yurchenko’s defection may not have been an elaborate operation to protect the KGB’s top agent, but his redefection became exactly that. His arrest would have given the game away. Instead, the CIA was confronted with more questions and uncertainties. We could do nothing to protect the agents and operations Yurchenko had betrayed. But the episode as a whole could still turn at least a little in our favor.

  Despite the barrage of criticism leveled at the CIA for letting Yurchenko go, the agency actually did little wrong. In fact, it profited handsomely from the defection, gaining intelligence about two Soviet agents and a number of operations and learning much about the fates of former agents and something about how the KGB worked. Washington also earned points in the propaganda war, howe
ver misguided the decisions to leak information about Yurchenko’s defection had been for keeping him in the CIA’s hands. Until everything went sour, the media campaign was remarkably successful in putting Langley in a good light.

  Not surprisingly, then, it was chiefly in the propaganda war that the CIA suffered as a result of Yurchenko’s redefection, but as noted, mostly in the Soviet Union. There was little damage to operations, Yurchenko having already told the Americans everything he knew. After that, he was of little use and much bother. Had he remained in the United States, he probably would have become an analyst, available to write or endorse anti-Soviet literature if necessary. He might also have covered for other agents, claiming to be the source of intelligence that actually came from elsewhere. But all told, the CIA didn’t lose much. By letting Yurchenko go, it saved itself the $1 million it had promised him, in addition to a furnished house and countless other expenses.

  Unprofessional as it was to release a top defector known to be emotionally unstable, it was a minor mistake. It would have been impossible to keep Yurchenko under constant guard. If he wanted to leave, he’d have found a way sooner or later. The FBI couldn’t maintain a platoon of agents to watch every defector whose intelligence potential was largely exhausted. Those most responsible for the security of Soviet defectors were the defectors themselves. The twists in Yurchenko’s story further illustrate the nature of treason—that it’s most often committed to solve immediate personal problems and is rarely prompted by ideology. Yurchenko never threw away his Communist Party membership card.

  14

  The CIA has been heavily criticized for sitting on its knowledge that Edward Lee Howard was a potential threat. According to Bearden, in an account the FBI denies, SE chief Gerber told the bureau about Howard on August 3, 1985, two days after Yurchenko informed the CIA about Mr. Robert, the Soviet agent who fit Howard’s description. Bearden writes that the CIA learned only later that Howard had traveled to Vienna in September 1984, when he probably exposed Tolkachev and a CIA eavesdropping operation in Moscow called TAW—actually exposed by Ames in 1985.22

  On August 9, immediately after Yurchenko’s defection, we again flew Howard to Vienna, where, without telling him specifically about Yurchenko, we warned him of a possible threat and told him to make his way to the nearest Soviet consulate in case of trouble.

  The FBI had already placed Howard under surveillance. Well trained by Jack Platt to avoid observation, he suspected as much, especially after he was contacted by another man fired by the CIA. Howard had earlier complained to him about his experience with the agency. Now his would-be colleague called to tell Howard that the FBI had come around to question him.

  On September 19, the FBI started closing in on Howard. When one of its agents telephoned him to arrange a meeting at the Santa Fe Hilton, Howard agreed. At the hotel, the bureau’s officers told him that he’d been exposed, but without naming Yurchenko.23 Howard insisted on seeing a criminal lawyer before telling the FBI anything. The officers agreed and let him go for the weekend.

  Two days later, Howard and his wife, Mary, left their house to drive to dinner. When the Howards’ car turned a bend, Howard jumped out and Mary moved a pop-up dummy into his seat. They had learned the “jack in the box” maneuver from the CIA. It turned out to be unnecessary. No one was following them because the junior FBI officer assigned to observe the Howard house from a van at the end of their driveway had failed to notice them leaving. Howard made his way to the Albuquerque airport (by way of a shuttle bus that stopped at the Hilton hotel where FBI agents were staying and planning to arrest him the following Monday, September 23). He then boarded a plane to Tucson. From there, he flew to St. Louis, New York, and on to Helsinki, where the KGB helped smuggle him across the border into the Soviet Union.

  I would see Howard next almost ten years later in Moscow, where he lived in an old, prestigious neighborhood called Chistyi Prudy (Clean Ponds) and ran a small insurance business. He seemed happy.

  Ronald Pelton, the other major spy Yurchenko exposed, was less lucky. Arrested on November 25, 1985, he was later sentenced to life in prison.

  7

  WASHINGTON STATION: THE MOST DANGEROUS SPY

  1

  In mid-1985, a British journalist “friend” of the KGB contacted me to provide pressing information: the man who’d been picked to head the London rezidentura, Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, was an SIS spy. The journalist provided no documents or other proof beyond his word, but the tip-off was credible enough to directly inform Kryuchkov. The FCD chief cabled me to return to Moscow immediately to brief him on the matter, even though I knew very little about the suspected British agent aside from the new information. Gordievsky remained in London, awaiting formal confirmation as British rezident.

  I took the first plane to Moscow. Back at Yasenevo, I detailed what I knew about Gordievsky to the FCD chief. The information was persuasive, but we lacked hard proof of his spying. Meanwhile, Gordievsky was recalled to Moscow on May 17, ostensibly to formally receive his promotion. Things went badly for him from the start. He immediately noticed that his Moscow apartment had been searched.1 Taken to a KGB dacha a few days later, he was secretly drugged, interrogated and informed he’d been relieved of his London position. But instead of being arrested, he was given a month’s leave. He hadn’t confessed under his questioning, and the Center was still looking for incontrovertible evidence. When released, he was kept under close watch, a task that normally would have fallen to the internal counterintelligence directorate, the SCD. To keep the matter internal, however, Kryuchkov made one of his own deputies, Victor Grushko, responsible for watching Gordievsky.

  I returned to Washington at the end of the month. Ames also informed us that Gordievsky agreed to spy for MI6. Disclosing various KGB operations and illegal residents, he also provided the British with most of what they knew about Andropov’s Operation RIAN, the KGB’s search for signs that the United States was planning a nuclear first strike.2 Later Gordievsky’s handlers cunningly helped engineer his promotion. After he was assigned to London, the Foreign Office cleared his way to the top spot by expelling the agent’s superiors one by one.

  Curiously, the SIS refused to reveal Gordievsky’s identity to the CIA. But Langley knew the British were getting information about the KGB from somewhere. SE division chief Gerber ordered Ames, then the SE counterintelligence chief, to figure out where. Ames identified Gordievsky in March, the month before he started spying for us.3

  Several weeks after Gordievsky was recalled to Moscow, one of the most astounding incidents in KGB history took place. Grushko ratcheted up his surveillance of the British agent, who sensed the KGB was closing in on him. Fearing arrest at any moment, Gordievsky alerted his SIS handlers that he was in serious trouble and requested exfiltration to London. The first attempt took place on June 18, 1985, on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, a busy thoroughfare. It failed when Gordievsky missed meeting his British handlers by one minute.4 He then made his way to the Finnish border, where he met SIS operatives who smuggled him across. Gordievsky made his daring escape in the trunk of their car, wrapped in thermal blankets to avoid heat detection.

  The news shocked me. I’d suspected Grushko had additional information besides my own implicating Gordievsky. However, I had no idea why Gordievsky had been set free on his return to Moscow. Even if there hadn’t been enough evidence to arrest him right away, it was inexcusable not to provide enough surveillance to keep him from escaping.

  The FCD made another, potentially even more damaging slip. Until Ames gave us his intelligence on Gordievsky, the information we were receiving from the American was analyzed in Directorate K’s First (American) department—under which I worked. When Ames told us about Gordievsky, Kryuchkov’s deputy Vadim Kirpichenko handed the files to Directorate K’s Fifth department, in charge of internal security. But instead of turning over the information on Gordievsky only, Kirpichenko transferred all the Ames files.

  That betrayed a stunning lack of pr
ofessionalism. Alarmed and afraid of losing clout, the First department lobbied for the files to be sent back. In due course they were—but not before the Fifth department officers saw the Ames files. Only a handful of people in the KGB had known about him. But months later, those Fifth department officers were brought into the operations to arrest the spies Ames had betrayed. They could have figured out the identity of our top asset by simply comparing the pattern of arrests to the kind of intelligence they knew the KGB was providing from Washington.

  Meanwhile, back in Washington, no one knew the real reason for my Moscow trip. There has been speculation that I went simply to discuss Ames. Although I actually saw Kryuchkov to brief him about Gordievsky, we also talked about Ames and how to handle him. In June, less than a month after my return to Washington, I met him in Chadwicks and he fully committed to the KGB by jotting down the list of CIA agents in the Soviet Union.

  2

  Ames was said to be a bad case officer. But if he was, I find it strange that he was selected by his agency and accepted by the FBI to run the highest penetration of the United Nations group of Soviets in New York City—the Arkady Shevchenko case. It sort of ruins the theory that he wasn’t a very good case officer. I didn’t find his personality to be dashing or anything of that sort. But that goddamned CIA had better be a big tent. You need all kinds of people. I’ve seen the repositioning of history a lot of times. All of a sudden someone turns out to be a bad guy when you find out he’s a traitor. But Arkady Shevchenko was a very helpful person to the U.S. government and the CIA. Ames should have gotten credit for that.