Spy Handler

by Victor Cherkashin

  But critics should also remember that catching even sloppy moles is incredibly difficult, notwithstanding the many mistakes of the FBI and CIA—including lax policies for administering routine polygraph tests. The public was bombarded with lists of obvious signs of espionage after the arrests of Ames and Hanssen. Ames bought new houses, cars and clothes he couldn’t possibly have afforded on his CIA salary. Hanssen left telltale records of searches he ran of the FBI computer database for signs of investigations into his activities. But given the thousands upon thousands of possible suspects engaging in similarly suspicious activities, identifying the agents—if possible at all—would have taken more time than executing a mission to fly to Mars. AVENGERs continue to exist in Russia, the United States and everywhere else. As long as emotional needs and frailties exist, so will spies. And as long as intelligence services exist, so too will the temptation to find more about what the intelligence services of their adversaries are up to.

  10

  THE FINAL YEARS OF THE KGB

  1

  Ames left Washington for his tour in Rome at the end of July 1986. I handed over his files to my successor, and the following month, after more than six years in Washington—and almost two longer than originally planned—I returned to Moscow with my family. Those additional unexpected months had turned a good tour into a spectacular one. As the Aeroflot plane took off from Dulles Airport, I was conscious of it also being my last posting overseas.

  The major coup I helped pull off put us squarely on top of the Cold War intelligence battle. One result was a worsening of foreign relations. Although the Americans sensed something was going on, not knowing exactly what increased their nervousness. In two months, Gorbachev would meet with Reagan in Reykjavik to propose drastic nuclear cuts. The summit would be seen as a failure when Reagan, loath to give up his Star Wars antiballistic missile project as part of the package, walked out.

  But if the Cold War showed no signs of abating, that didn’t mean things weren’t changing. Gorbachev had begun to kick-start the campaign begun under Andropov to combat corruption in state institutions, forcing grossly corrupt Party bosses to resign. In April 1986, a reactor exploded in the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine. When the world’s worst nuclear accident spewed out radioactive matter, Gorbachev chose to publicly announce the catastrophe. Although the decision took some days to make, it heralded a new level of openness on the part of the Soviet government.

  Relations between Gorbachev and Reagan would soon improve dramatically, pushed along by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s declaration that the Soviet leader was someone she could “do business” with. But the rapprochement began amid the backdrop of an increasingly tense security standoff.

  In May 1985, following the arrest of John Walker, Reagan—who felt fighting the KGB and GRU was an integral part of winning the Cold War—announced he wanted twenty-five Soviets working at the United Nations to leave the United States. They were finally expelled in September 1986 in an operation called FAMISH. My replacement as Washington Line KR chief, Vasily Fyodorov, was among them. Especially concerned about the number of Soviets spying on their territory, the Americans said we had more intelligence officers in New York, Washington and San Francisco than they had FBI agents to cover them.

  We weren’t about to take the expulsions lying down. Toward the end of October, the Foreign Ministry kicked five CIA officers out of Moscow. Days later, Washington declared fifty-five Soviets personae non grata and ordered them out. We followed by withdrawing all Soviet personnel staffing the U.S. embassy in Moscow. That virtually paralyzed the work of the American mission, including the CIA.

  2

  As that diplomatic battle unfolded, we worked to protect Ames and Hanssen, employing measures that included confounding the CIA with our cooked-up story about Yurchenko’s redefection. Another measure was conducted by the SCD’s First department, responsible for tracking foreigners in the Soviet Union. It knew nothing about our Washington agents but indirectly ended up helping them. The target was Clayton Lonetree, a marine guard in the U.S. embassy in Moscow. He fell prey to a classic “honey trap” sex entrapment scheme. An attractive young interpreter convinced him to pass information about embassy operations to a man she introduced as her “Uncle Sasha.” Lonetree continued spying after his transfer to Vienna in 1986. He eventually confessed to the CIA in December, prior to a secret trip to Moscow the KGB planned for him. A court-martial sentenced him to fifteen years in prison.

  The Marine Corps’ image took another blow in March 1987, when several more guards were arrested and accused of spying for us. Those charges were eventually dropped, but the incidents deflected American attention from investigating a mole in Langley. Instead, the CIA spent precious months scouring for security breaches in the Moscow embassy.

  Other operations were executed with the sole purpose of protecting Ames and Hanssen. In March 1986, the KGB delivered an anonymous letter to the mailbox of a CIA case officer in the West German capital, Bonn. It offered to explain how Gennady Varennik—one of the CIA agents Ames betrayed—had been exposed. The letter asked for $50,000 in return. The fictitious writer claimed to be a KGB officer who had been friends with Varennik. As “proof” of his identity, he identified Varennik’s handler as CIA officer Charles Leven. The letter also hinted that the KGB had penetrated the CIA’s electronic communications link to its Moscow station.

  The CIA was susceptible to such tactics because the KGB had previously been loath to disclose any significant operational information. Back at Langley, counterintelligence chief Gus Hathaway, SE chief Gerber and SE clandestine operations chief Paul Redmond decided to pay the money, which a KGB officer picked up from a dead drop in Austria. The CIA dubbed the letter writer “Mr. X.”

  Several days later, the KGB sent a follow-up letter giving more specific information. It said Moscow was intercepting cables sent from the secret CIA communications center in Warrenton, Virginia, and it asked for more money. To make the information seem more credible—as well as to further stir up the CIA—it accused CIA officer Leven of skimming money from payments to Varennik. The KGB sent up to six more anonymous letters in 1986. The CIA was simultaneously testing its communications, leading Gerber and Hathaway to eventually decide the letters from Mr. X were fakes.1 I later learned what clinched the argument: The CIA officers refused to believe that Leven, whom they trusted, had been stealing. The KGB had miscalculated by failing to perceive the cultural difference between Soviet and U.S. intelligence. Nevertheless, the operation helped distract the Americans from investigating the source of their real problems.

  Even after the CIA exposed our misinformation campaign, the Americans couldn’t be completely certain of their conclusions. The possibility always existed that something had gone unchecked or been misinterpreted, or that key facts remained unknown. In that sense—spreading uncertainty and tying up resources—the KGB’s post-1986 operations were highly successful.

  Of the double agents we ran to protect our American assets, one in particular shone as an example of boldness and professionalism. In 1987, an officer in the SCD American department called Alexander Zhomov approached Moscow CIA station chief Jack Downing with an offer to spy for the CIA. The KGB knew the CIA was all but certain that we never risked dangling one of our own staff officers. Because Zhomov was a precisely such an officer, we believed the CIA would almost certainly take him for a real spy. It did, giving Zhomov the cryptonym PROLOGUE.

  Zhomov provided false information about the arrests of some agents lost in 1985. In each case, the KGB was shown to have found the moles through sheer luck and hard work. Zhomov continued his operation until July 1990, when the CIA tried to exfiltrate him to the United States for proper questioning. Of course Zhomov wouldn’t leave the USSR for the USA. That game was up.

  3

  I was long accustomed to the routine following an overseas posting. Complaints about my work were rare. My reports and evaluations were all pro forma, and I always knew in
advance about my next assignment. The year 1986 was different, however. Even before arriving from Washington, I found it odd that my replacement as U.S. Line KR chief could tell me almost nothing about my prospects.

  Back in Moscow, I had to wait two days before speaking to Directorate K chief Anatoly Kireyev. He also had no idea about my future. “Kryuchkov’s dealing with it,” he said in answer to my questions about my next assignment. “I’m sorry, but that’s all I can tell you.” It was a cold reception, but I should have expected it. Returning officers were almost always met with suspicion by Yasenevo staff officers. I knew that the few KGB bosses who were aware of my stunning successes in Washington would be especially difficult. There was also the question of my old friendship with Oleg Kalugin, on which I knew Kryuchkov frowned. I’d never considered myself Kalugin’s supporter or anyone else’s, for that matter. But as he had drifted further from the KGB leadership’s good graces, I knew that—fairly or not—I was seen as a member of his camp. Despite my fast-sinking expectations, however, I wasn’t prepared for what lay in store.

  By now a specialist in actions against the Main Adversary, I believed I was still most useful in anti-CIA foreign intelligence. I knew the top KGB positions were closed to me, but I expected to at least be named head of the FCD’s First (American) department. (My successor in Washington, Vasily Fyodorov, had occupied that job before replacing me.) But the days went by and I heard nothing. Then I was told to put my personal affairs in order.

  Nonwork matters indeed needed attention. My daughter, Alyona, had to be enrolled in a new school. My son, Alyosha, had married, and his wife moved in with us in our five-hundred-square-foot apartment. So did Elena’s aging mother. With six of us now living together in cramped quarters, it was time to look for a new place. (Little did I know that it would take years to find one.) There was also the question of our dacha. Before leaving for Washington in 1979, I’d been allotted a plot of land outside Moscow in an area reserved for KGB officers. Away in the United States, I’d been unable to build a dacha—a tricky and laborious process that required procuring construction materials from wherever they could be scrounged. After returning, I was dismayed to find my plot had been assigned to someone else. Although I eventually managed to secure another plot in the same area and, in time, set about building my dacha, it was an ominous sign.

  A week after my return to Moscow, I received a telephone call from Yasenevo asking me to attend an awards ceremony. Showing up at headquarters the following day at ten in the morning, I was surprised to see so many people—about two hundred, representing each KGB department—filing into a hall to attend the ceremony, presided over by KGB chairman Victor Chebrikov. After the standard laudatory speeches, the recipients’ names were read out, and I began to realize I was taking part in what was essentially theater. Around fifty decorations were awarded, all to officers in Directorate K.

  Ten or so got the Soviet Union’s highest honor: the Order of Lenin. Mine wasn’t a surprise. My successor in Washington, Vasily Fyodorov, had told me about the decision to add to my awards, which already included the Order of the Red Star, the title of Honored Officer and about thirty lesser medals, certificates and letters of gratitude.

  The ceremony might have been one of the brightest days of my career—had I not grasped the spectacle’s main purpose: to publicly attribute the wave of arrests of CIA agents to the hard sleuthing of KGB counterintelligence. I could have approved of the measure if it had been staged mainly as another way of protecting Ames and Hanssen. But the ceremony’s main purpose was to cover up the massive KGB failures and advance the careers of Kryuchkov, Kirpichenko and a handful of others. The counterintelligence officers being awarded medals they didn’t deserve were the actors in the show—and those from other departments were the audience. After the ceremony, I went straight home. If there was a dinner afterward, I wasn’t invited.

  I wore my Order of Lenin only once—in 1986, when I was asked to do so for a KGB institute graduation ceremony in Yasenevo. I sat on stage as a member of the presidium along with a number of other officers and Kim Philby, the star of the ceremony. I’d spoken to him once before, shortly after my return from Washington, and found him friendly and modest. Although he knew how valuable he’d been to the Soviet Union, he didn’t show it. I’d met his wife, Eleanor, in the late 1950s as an SCD English department officer. She’d traveled to Moscow from Beirut to join her husband, who was visiting the Soviet Union. I made the arrangements, booking a room in the Metropol Hotel, and picked her up at the airport.

  By the end of September 1986, my “vacation” was over and I reported at Yasenevo again. Again I was told the top brass were still dealing with my reassignment. The situation was plainly becoming absurd. Feeling I was making a fool of myself, I decided to retreat home, lie low and wait.

  In late December, an old colleague named Alexander Bykov telephoned to wish me a happy New Year. Bykov worked in the First Chief Directorate’s department of operations on Soviet territory—Directorate RT. We spoke about general matters, including how I was adjusting to life in Moscow. I told him I’d more than settled back in.

  “Good,” Bykov said. “When do you think you’ll be coming in to work?”

  “Just as soon as I get an assignment,” I replied, sick of repeating that to everyone who asked.

  Bykov sounded surprised. “But you’ve been assigned to our directorate!”

  “What!?”

  “Didn’t you know? You’re the new head of Directorate RT’s American department.”

  That’s how I finally found out about my new position as chief of the FCD wing that conducted operations against Americans on Soviet soil. The news stung. Whatever happened, I never thought I’d be thrown out of foreign counterintelligence. Having worked on external intelligence operations for twenty-five years, I was being dumped into an internal directorate whose work was obviously far less important. It was unquestionable that someone wanted me completely out of the KGB—or at least relegated to a building far from the heart of foreign intelligence. If the message weren’t clear enough, the FCD leadership hadn’t even officially informed me of the decision.

  My disappointment notwithstanding, there was nothing to do but chalk up the unpleasantness to the vagaries of fate and get on with my new work. Nothing lasts forever, I told myself. My career in foreign intelligence would have to end sooner or later.

  4

  RT operatives worked undercover in the Foreign Ministry, the Academy of Sciences, the Novosti press agency and other organizations that officially dealt with foreigners in the Soviet Union. Officers weren’t permitted to break cover even with the most trustworthy agents and contacts. That meant the directorate was a political intelligence branch more than an operational one. Since it didn’t come close to meeting my professional qualifications, the decision to shunt me there clearly constituted the first stage of my dismissal from the KGB.

  A conversation with Directorate RT chief Victor Petrov several months after I began work in 1987 removed any lingering doubt. Petrov and I liked each other and got on well, so he came straight to see me after a particularly pointed conversation with Kirpichenko.

  “What kind of relations do you have with Vadim Alexeevich?” Petrov asked me.

  “Nekakiie [none],” I said. “I’ve never reported to him. I’ve never even formally met him.”

  “Well, I just met with him and he asked me how you were working out in the directorate.”

  “Oh?”

  “He said that if there were any problems, if I wanted to fire you for any reason, I should be assured the FCD leadership would agree.” Petrov added that he, outraged at the suggestion, told Kirpichenko he saw no reason to sack me. Distasteful as it was, the episode further clarified my standing in Kryuchkov’s FCD.

  But dwelling on my circumstances would do me no good. I had to get on with my new assignment. The department I headed was housed on Vernadsky Prospekt in the city’s southwest. It comprised several lines running tens of sub
ordinate sections in various institutions throughout the Soviet Union. Contacts included members of almost every U.S. organization whose members set foot in the country. As a rule, the arrival of every foreigner created counterintelligence work.

  In 1990, Igor Gulyaev, an officer working undercover as a researcher at the USA and Canada Institute—a think tank dealing with foreign and military policy issues—told me that one of his targets, a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, had asked him to arrange a meeting with Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev. The American, whom we code-named MOLE, was staying in the Sovetskaya Hotel on Leningradskaya Highway in northwest Moscow. We strongly suspected MOLE was a CIA agent.

  Alexander Yakovlev wasn’t just any Politburo member. As Gorbachev’s right-hand man, he became known as the “father of glasnost” for his influence on the new policy of openness. MOLE told Gulyaev he had important information for Yakovlev, but his high position made him inaccessible. After considering the options, I gave Gulyaev the go-ahead to set up a meeting in the Kremlin. I also detailed the case in a letter to Kryuchkov, who had ascended to the post of KGB chairman following Chebrikov’s retirement in 1988. Informing the chairman was a matter of course for any operation involving Politburo members. In such cases, the presumed CIA target would be warned well in advance of any potential security threat.

  A week later, I received my letter back from Kryuchkov. I expected to see his signature as acknowledgment of having read it. But there was nothing to indicate that either he or Yakovlev had seen it, which I took to mean Kryuchkov had no intention of informing Yakovlev, his fellow Politburo member and ideological enemy—and didn’t want to leave any proof that he’d seen the letter himself. I later guessed Kryuchkov already suspected his rival of involvement with the CIA. He failed to inform Yakovlev about MOLE in order to veil his own hypothesis—and continue collecting evidence to support it.