Spy Handler

by Victor Cherkashin

  I selected a rezidentura Line KR officer to handle most of the operational work. He’s been identified as Alexander Fefelov in previous accounts of the Hanssen case, and I’ll continue calling him that. The young officer had never taken part in an operation before, so he couldn’t be identified by the FBI. Planning this one with him required elaborate care because despite all our security measures, we tried to minimize discussions involving agents. To avoid eavesdropping, we conducted some of our meetings outdoors and others in loud bars.

  Eventually, Fefelov drove to the drop site—under that bridge in Nottoway Park—which we code-named PARK. Taking a car never before used in operations to minimize FBI attention, he and his driver checked the location and noted its surroundings for security. He spent several hours walking around the park. Meanwhile, other officers—who weren’t told the real reason for the operation—drove past the park entrance to check for surveillance and warn Fefelov if they saw anything suspicious.

  On the designated Saturday, he drove to the site again, this time with a plastic bag containing stacks of hundred dollar bills I’d counted out in my office. Other officers trailed him to provide heavy security. After loading the site without incident, Fefelov marked the pedestrian sign the Source had indicated. He later returned to check whether the agent had signaled having unloaded the drop. Yes!

  Six days later, on November 8, Degtyar found another letter addressed to me in his mailbox. “Thank you for the 50,000,” it read. “I also appreciate your courage and perseverance in the face of generically reported bureaucratic obstacles. I would not have contacted you if it were not reported that you were held in esteem within your organization, an organization I have studied for years. I did expect some communication plan in your response. I viewed the postal delivery as a necessary risk and do not wish to trust again that channel with valuable material. I did this only because I had to so you would take my offer seriously, that there be no misunderstanding as to my long-term value, and to obtain appropriate security for our relationship from the start.”

  The Source went on to reject the communications plan and dead drop sites I’d proposed. Instead, he asked to use the same PARK site on September 9 for our next exchange. The “6” coefficient code he’d set out in his first letter indicated he wanted the operation carried out on March 3, 1986.

  He also gave more information that revealed his motive. “As far as the funds are concerned, I have little need or utility for more than the 100,000. It merely provides a difficulty since I can not spend it, store it or invest it easily without triping [sic] ‘drug money’ warning bells. Perhaps some diamonds as security to my children and some good will so that when the time comes, you will accept by [sic] senior services as a guest lecturer. Eventually, I would appreciate an escape plan. (Nothing lasts forever.)”

  If the Source was to be believed, his motive must have been professional. He was either unhappy with his job or simply bored. The lecturing tone of his correspondence seemed to confirm that he liked showing off his expertise. There was also more indication that he worked for the FBI. (If true, he’d have to be in counterintelligence.) About Yuzhin, Motorin, and Martynov, he wrote, “I can not provide documentary substantiating evidence without arousing suspicion at this time. Never-the-less, it is from my own knowledge as a member of the community effort to capitalize on the information from which I speak. I have seen video tapes of debriefings and physically saw the last, though we were not introduced. The names were provided to me as part of my duties as one of the few who needed to know. You have some avenues of inquiry. Substantial funds were provided in excess of what could have been skimmed from their agents. The active one has always (in the past) used a concealment device—a bag with bank notes sewn in the base during home leaves.” Finally, the Source provided details about a new NSA eavesdropping technique.

  I was infinitely pleased. Even though the Source had batted away my proposals, I remained happy to let the man run himself. My pride wasn’t going to get in the way of what finally seemed clear: We’d hit it big again.

  4

  David Major left his post as director of counterintelligence programs in the White House National Security Council in September 1987. The following year, he returned to FBI headquarters, housed in a central concrete monolith with a horizontal extension on top—ironically reminiscent, I thought, of the flourishes of late Soviet architecture. As deputy head of the CI3 section, Major was responsible among other things for strategic and operational analysis, policy and budget formulation and counterintelligence training.

  Robert Hanssen—deputy chief of CI3’s A unit, which performed Soviet analysis—was first to greet Major in his office on his first day at work. Major knew Hanssen from earlier assignments and considered him an unusual FBI agent. He’d observed Hanssen’s eerie way of quietly entering an office and waiting until he was noticed. He often whispered, which Major thought showed security consciousness. Hanssen also liked to tell inside jokes, snickering about them afterward. He wasn’t a “guy” guy, as Major would say. He never wanted to talk about sports or women or other standard topics for banter among bureau agents. Major never saw him at the FBI gym, the focal point of the bureau’s physical fitness culture. More work was sometimes done downstairs at the gym, networking among agents, than anywhere else. Hanssen had a locker, but it was one of the few collecting dust. Unlike other agents, he also almost never carried a sidearm.

  Major liked to wear a different tie to work each day and sometimes joked with others about their own tie choices. “Those are the ugliest paisley ties in the world, Bob,” he once said to Hanssen. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve got six kids,” Hanssen replied. The somber dresser often wore dark suits reminiscent of the Hollywood-eulogized “G-man” uniform of the 1950s. The quiet introvert was more like an NSA employee—the intelligence community version of a geek, Major thought. But he also knew Hanssen was smart and keen on working hard to improve the bureau. He was the last person Major thought would be a spy. Hanssen also didn’t suffer fools well. He often complained about management policies he thought were ill conceived, and Major found himself admitting that Hanssen was right more often than not.

  After Hanssen’s exposure, most people didn’t understand how he could work both for and against the FBI. Major did. He realized Hanssen wanted to be a great wizard, to offer and glean information from intelligence agencies on both sides of the Cold War front line. He certainly had the opportunity to do that, since he saw everything that came in on the Soviet program. As manager of the program’s analysts, he got a copy of every communication they wrote. He was like a funnel, Major found himself thinking after his arrest. Everything went in to him and out from him. He was senior enough to have wide access and, because he was a deputy, junior enough to read it all.

  He also eschewed intraoffice politics. Major knew that when Hanssen showed up in his office to talk, he would speak his mind—and have something interesting to say.

  “You know why the FBI can’t beat the KGB?” he once asked Major.

  “Bob, what’s the answer?” Major replied.

  “Because they don’t practice the theory of OODA loops.”

  “Oodaloops?” OODA, a term used in the air force to describe a conditioned decisionmaking process, stands for observation, orientation, decision, action. Carried out repeatedly, the procedure becomes the OODA loop.

  “Yes, jet pilots understand that,” Hanssen replied. “If you’re in a dogfight, and you go to Top Gun school, you learn that you have to see your environment and react quicker than the person who’s pursuing you. If you do, you can turn quicker. You can get behind your adversary and beat him. Pilots understand that looking at your environment, assessing the situation and changing quickly will let you win.

  “The FBI is too bureaucratic. Before it wants to do anything, it has to study it and have meetings on it. We’re just walking in mud. If the bureau could look at a situation and respond quicker, we could beat the KGB.”

/>   Major thought Hanssen was right. The FBI was a big bureaucracy in which everybody had to sign off on everything. Later he learned that Hanssen was speaking from practical experience, not just a theoretical standpoint. When he read about Hanssen’s espionage tactics, he saw how his former subordinate changed his operating environment at will—the very advice Hanssen had given Major. In most operations, the adversary targets the intelligence officer (IO)—the known entity—as opposed to the secret agent. So it made sense to maximize the agent’s action and minimize the IO’s. Major later saw that was precisely what Hanssen did; he practiced OODA loops, testing us each time, and we responded to his tactics. It was ironic, Major thought, that selling the theory of OODA loops to a massive bureaucracy like the FBI was almost impossible. But we bought it.

  5

  Running an agent whose identity you don’t know is not the best idea. As with Ames and my other agents, I wanted to know as much as possible about the Source. Trying too hard to identify him, however, posed a risk of compromising him, and I wasn’t about to jeopardize the information he was giving us. So we began quietly collecting physical evidence that might lead us to him. Despite my caution, two of the scraps we managed to collect helped expose the Source fifteen years later: a tape-recorded telephone conversation and a plastic bag he used for wrapping classified documents, which we dusted for fingerprints. Both were stored in Yasenevo, along with his file.

  But trying to identify KARAT came later. For the time being, it was enough to have two brilliant sources on my hands. I had helped penetrate the heart of counterintelligence in both the FBI and the CIA in the Main Adversary’s nerve center. Handling the goose’s golden egg, my priority was to make sure both agents were as secure and happy as possible. Consequently, after Fefelov loaded the PARK dead drop on March 3, 1986, according to the Source’s own instructions, I was extremely upset to learn he failed to unload it.

  That kind of thing happened all the time. The slightest hint of danger caused agents to miss meetings and leave drops untouched. Ames became well-known for failing to show up for rendezvous. Although I could only hope that was also the problem this time, I had no way of telling if we’d lost one of our top two agents. I waited for the Source to send a signal. Days turned into weeks, then months. Eventually, I had to admit the possibility that he’d decided to give up, if only for the time being, or that he was suspected or under investigation. I could do nothing but wait.

  In late June, almost six months after I’d last heard from him, the Source sent Degtyar another letter. It brought a major sense of relief. “I apologize for the delay since our break in communications,” the letter read. “I wanted to determine if there was any cause for concern over security. I have only seen one item which has given me pause. When the FBI was first given access to Victor Petrovich Gandarev, they asked . . . if Gundarev knew Viktor Cherkashin. I thought this unusual.”

  Victor Gundarev was a Line KR officer who had defected to the United States in Athens on February 14, 1986. I didn’t know him and couldn’t imagine what prompted the FBI’s question—besides wanting to provide more information about me for the bureau’s files.

  The letter continued, “I had seen no report indicating that Viktor Cherkashin was handling an important agent, and hereto-fore he was looked at with the usual lethargy awarded Line Chiefs. The question came to mind, are they somehow able to monitor funds, i.e., to know that Viktor Cherkashin received a large amount of money for an agent? I am unaware of any such ability, but I might not know that type of source reporting.”

  The Source then said that if we wanted to continue running him, we should place an advertisement in the Washington Times the following month. He’d call the telephone number we were to provide in the ad and leave another number with a 212 (New York City) area code. We were to call that number an hour later with a message for him. The letter was signed “Ramon.” If the contact went ahead as the Source had dictated, it would be our first communication with him outside of typed messages. I was anxious to glean anything I could about him, which meant I’d be sure to tape the conversation.

  We began preparing another package for the Source. It included $10,000 in bills, which I again counted out and wrapped myself. I still wanted to acquire as much control over the agent as I could without upsetting him. Although he’d flatly turned down my previous suggestions, I proposed two new dead drop sites. I also provided a means of contacting the KGB in Vienna, advising the Source to use it in an emergency.

  During the appointed four days in July, we posted the exact advertisement the Source had asked us to submit to the Washington Times: “DODGE—’71, DIPLOMAT, NEEDS ENGINE WORK, $1000. Phone (703) 451–9780 (CALL NEXT Mon., Wed., Fri. 1 p.m.).”

  We gave the number of a pay telephone near the Old Keene Mill shopping center in suburban Virginia. It was also near the PARK drop site, to make loading easier once we’d communicated. At the fixed time the following Monday, Fefelov was sweating in the booth. The telephone rang. He picked up the receiver and heard a steady voice reciting precisely what the Source had written he’d say. “Hello, my name is Ramon. I am calling about the car you offered for sale in the Times.”

  Fefelov also stuck to the Source’s script. “I’m sorry, but the man with the car is not here. Can I get your number?”

  The Source gave a number and hung up. Fefelov loaded the PARK drop site before returning to call the new number and say the package was ready. Since the Source was in New York, it would take him at least a day to unload the drop. All we had to do—again—was wait.

  We heard nothing for two weeks. Then another note arrived at Degtyar’s house. To my great dismay, the Source wrote that he hadn’t found the package. He said he’d call the same pay phone at the Virginia shopping center at an appointed time about ten days later. I didn’t panic. If the FBI had found the bag of money and our correspondence, I could do little about it now. That it was missing made me highly nervous, however. For a second time, there was a chance the Source had been compromised.

  Meanwhile, accompanied by all the officers I could spare to provide him security, Fefelov raced to the PARK site to search for the package. When he returned, his news made me both relieved and furious: Fefelov had recovered the dead drop—from the wrong corner under the bridge. Wisely, the Source hadn’t spent time looking around for it. Our stupid mistake could have compromised all our intensive work, but at least nothing had been lost.

  When the Source called again on August 18, one of three dates he’d given in his letter, Fefelov was waiting. It was our first nonscripted communication with our agent. I would listen to it again and again in the following days, trying to catch any clue about his identity and character.

  His voice sounded muffled. Fefelov explained what had happened with the dead drop. “The car is still available for you and as we have agreed last time, I prepared all the papers and I left them on the same table. You didn’t find them because I put them in another corner of the table.”

  “I see.” The Source sounded annoyed.

  “You shouldn’t worry, everything is okay,” Fefelov said, trying sound as reassuring as possible. “The papers are with me now.”

  “Good.”

  “I believe under these circumstances, it’s not necessary to make any changes concerning the place and the time. Our company is reliable, and we are ready to give you a substantial discount which will be enclosed in the papers. Now, about the date of our meeting. I suggest that our meeting will take place without delay on February 13, one, three, 1:00 P.M. Okay? February 13.”

  It sounded strange, of course—a meeting “without delay” to be held in six months. I knew that the conversation would be highly suspicious to anyone listening in. But like the Source, who had taken a gamble by communicating by mail, I knew the chances that the FBI was eavesdropping on the conversation were slim.

  The Source was confused, which seemed strange given his high degree of professionalism. “February 2?” he asked Fefelov.

  �
��Thirteenth,” the Russian replied. “One, three.”

  “One, three?”

  “Yes. Thirteenth. 1:00 P.M.,” Fefelov said, to make sure.

  “Let me see if I can do that,” the Source said. “Hold on.”

  “Okay. Yeah.”

  Fefelov waited. He heard the Source whispering to himself, “Six . . . six,” adding the coefficient to figure out the meeting’s real date and time—7:00 A.M. the next day.

  Fefelov grew nervous. “Hello? Okay?”

  But the pause continued until the Source answered at last. “That should be fine.”

  “Okay,” Fefelov said. “We will confirm to you that the papers are waiting for you with the same horizontal tape in the same place as we did it at the first time.”

  “Very good.”

  “After you receive the papers, you will send the letter confirming it and signing it, as usual. Okay?”

  “Excellent.” The Source sounded a little more confident, but Fefelov wasn’t sure he’d understood everything.

  “I hope you remember the address,” he said—even though the Source had provided it himself. “Is . . . everything is okay?”

  “I believe it should be fine and thank you very much.”

  Fefelov finally relaxed slightly. He’d delivered all the information about which I’d coached him. “Heh-heh,” he chuckled. “Not at all. Not at all. Nice job,” he said, speaking to himself now as much as to the agent. “For both of us. Have a nice evening, sir.”

  “Do svidaniya,” the Source said in heavily accented Russian. The newly assured tone sounded like the man I thought I could decipher through his notes. Like many volunteer agents, he was probably self-conscious. But to try to cover it, he, also like many others, developed an assuredness that he was right about everything. From his behavior and accent, and judging from what I’d seen of other Americans, I guessed he was from the Midwest.