CIA Spymaster_George Kisevalter

by Clarence Ashley III

  When George was ready to go back to the U.S., his old friend Malia Natirbov, at the time stationed in Turkey, was assigned the task of escorting him back as far as London. Natirbov was in security and carried a weapon. Since this was soon after the Penkovsky affair, the Agency people were concerned that George might be vulnerable to retaliation by the Soviets. George and Malia had remained close since childhood in New York. Malia was concerned about George's safety, both on professional and personal levels.

  When they got to Rome they had a layover to change flights. Rome has a large airport with shops and restaurants, so the men spent some time looking at ties and so forth in a shop. George then said, "I'm going to go to the men's room." Malia said, "Okay, but don't go anywhere else. I'll wait here." After ten minutes, George had not returned and Malia began to get worried. After twenty minutes Malia went looking for him. He looked in all of the toilet stalls, but no Goga, an affectionate moniker with which he labeled George. He was frightened and wondered, "Should I call the chief in Rome? Should I call the Italian police?" He knew that the revolver in his pocket would be an issue if he did. He ran around all over the airport. He could not find George anywhere. He began to think that his worst fears might have come true. Finally, after about an hour he found Goga wandering lazily through the shops. Malia gave him hell. He was so angry with George that he wanted to hit him. This was typical Goga, he observed. It was just like the time when they were kids living in New York and absentminded George left Malia, without a word of explanation, to languish overnight in New Jersey beside some railroad tracks in the hope of getting a job at a construction site. By the time the pair reached London, Malia had cooled down. They looked at the bears in the zoo before Goga went on to the States and Malia went back to Turkey.3

  CHAPTER 17

  Associations

  When he got back from Turkey, things began to work very well for George. He was in the Army Reserves as a lieutenant colonel, and the next year he passed all of the required General Staff examinations to become a full colonel. At the same time, Richard Helms, then chief of clandestine operations and later to become the director of the CIA, called George in and promoted him to the level of GS-16. This was unique. George was the first case office to attain super-grade level based upon work as a case officer rather than as an administrator. This opened the way for other people to do the same. All of George's future assignments, then, came under the deputy director of operations to the director of the Agency, that is, the individual responsible for all clandestine operations. He continued on in special operations, going to Ottawa and Montreal, Boston and Los Angeles. A lot of preparation went into these contacts, and productive intelligence information did not always materialize. In the spring of 1964 he went to Mexico City in an attempt to make contact with a Soviet believed to be a good candidate for cooperation. The man was scheduled to go home, so George had to meet with him promptly. Unfortunately, the timing was very bad. The operation there didn't take place because the man didn't make his scheduled rendezvous with George at a certain music shop as planned.

  One of George's last long trips made while he was on active duty with the Agency came in late 1964. He was a guest speaker of the BND, the West German Intelligence Service, whose headquarters were located in Pullach, just outside of Munich.1 He recalled that this was very difficult for him because his fluency in German was not current. He apologized for his misuse of the German language, but in the arena of intelligence operations, the illustrations that he used were very clear. This trip was particularly interesting to him because he previously had been acquainted with General Gehlen, the chief of the BND. They had met in 1946, right after the war, at Fort Hunt, Virginia (near Washington, D.C.). Gehlen had been the chief of intelligence for the Eastern Front of the German military. George recalled that Gehlen was very gracious to him, excessively wining and dining him.

  George then went to several other German institutions-the Coast Guard, the police, the Internal Police in Cologne-and to an American retreat for intelligence personnel in the Alps, where he gave additional lectures. George maintained that he was well received there and it was his hope to be assigned to the area. It didn't work out that wav, however, because he later made what must have been a very good lecture "down on the farm," the CIA training facility near Williamsburg, Virginia. His talk prompted the audience to hoot and holler such that his leaders decided he should teach at the prep school there for case officers. George was assigned to the farm for two and a half years, until the summer of 1967. After that, George spent three years back at headquarters, instructing and running courses in officer training. Additionally, he gave lectures about CIA activities to the army, navy, and air force, specializing in the topic of intelligence vis-a-vis the Soviets.

  Dating back to its inception, the Agency required that individuals retire at age sixty. So in April of 1970, George's retirement was automatically scheduled. He was given a splendid cocktail party, and Director Helms spoke some fine words on his behalf and gave George one of the two pairs of gold cufflinks that were used operationally during the Popov affair. Following retirement, George continued to correspond with Director Helms, who occasionally asked him for clarification in the transliterations of Russian names that the director would write about in various magazines. George had a warm relationship with Mr. Helms, who, on occasion, invited him to lunch to discuss certain aspects of various operations. When appropriate, he also was used by the Soviet Division for various operational needs. In addition, he continued to lecture for the Agency on a contract basis. The lectures were almost exclusively about Penkovsky. He gave an average of three or four a month, at CIA headquarters; FBI headquarters; Bolling Air Force Base, where the Defense Intelligence Agency was headquartered; the navy premises in Anacostia; Fort Meade, where NSA is located; and occasionally down on the farm. The lectures usually ran about four hours in length. Security was always maintained, but a special person brought in visual aids from the Agency so that George would not have to be burdened with that task. He of course knew most of the material by heart, but to be effective with the audience, certain things had to be visually presented.

  George spoke to me on some of the fascinating associations that he had made throughout his career. He began, "That reminds me of someone. One day, when I was in Washington, at CIA headquarters, I saw Sam Wilson there at a party for somebody's award presentation. I had not seen Sam since the days of our working together in Berlin when I was involved with the Popov case and he was working for Bill Harvey. Sam was the one who, along with his wife, had shared the QP car with Ferdi and me for bingo that night and had the embarrassing event with the condoms in which he was completely innocent but unable to explain himself to his wife.

  "Well, time had gone by. Sam had completed his assignment in Berlin and now was a lieutenant colonel. He had moved up. So, we warmly shook hands. To my amazement, he had a new job there at our headquarters. He volunteered for everything. From the CIA he went to Vietnam. There, one of our top generals, Westmoreland, took a liking to Sam. Sam became very well known in Vietnam. He became a hero. Sam became a one-star general. Sam then got his second star and became chief of the Eighty-second Airborne Division, the jumpers. He would jump; he would do anything. Eventually, Sam got his third star. So he came back to Washington and his new assignment was that of deputy director for the intelligence community to Bill Colby, who was by then director of the CIA.2 Following that, Sam became director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, our top institution for all military intelligence and particularly for battlefield intelligence.

  "One day I was sent to lecture at DIA. Sam saw me and said, `George, my buddy, come here! Have some Irish coffee.' I replied, `Oh no; I know you, Sam. Look, I have a four-hour lecture which I'll screw up with a capital S with your coffee.' Ah, but afterwards we got along fine, and that is Sam Wilson on the cover of that magazine right there on the table in front of you. This is his new retirement address in Virginia. I have been so lucky to know so many interesting p
eople. Associations. Thanks to Sam, when I went to Bolling Field I was able to enter a brand-new DIA building there called Moscow Hall. It was so named because it was all red inside. It is a gorgeous building, an office building, hidden there and classified. You needed ten passes to even look at it, let alone walk in. I lectured there about four times. Courtesy of'whoever was there, I walked under the wings of a MIG 25. I walked around a T-10 tank, like the one that I told you about, hidden in that classified barn. I saw it and artillery all over, some of it taken by the Israelis during that six-day war with the Egyptians. Not the MIG; it came by way 'a defector in Japan. I understand nothing of these highly technical, super instruments. To walk around and look at them doesn't make me any smarter. Sam Wilson. That's what life is all about. Associations."

  Even after his retirement, George helped the Agency from time to time with its operational activities. No one else could quite fill his shoes, and on occasion his unique talents were in critical need. Such was the case in the fall of 1972 when George was asked by the chief of operations to accept a special assignment in Kenya. It is a tale that I refer to as "African Queen." In this instance, his maturity and experience, more than his fluency in Russian, were needed. The target was the longtime ambassador of the Soviet Union to Kenya. The Agency believed that he might be a good candidate for recruitment and cooperation because of recent apparent overtures on his part. In addition, the ambassador had been treated cruelly by the Stalin regime, and Stalin's successors also had hurt the man, perhaps provoking him to turn on them.

  The operation involved extensive covert preparations. George's cover was very elaborate. He went to Kenya with a false name, Pershing, and a passport to match. The Agency planners thought that his nom de guerre might make an impression on the ambassador, as Pershing has a Russian connotation. George played the role of a traveling American millionaire-author with a Russian background. Once there, he needed a good personal reference in Nairobi through whom he could make acquaintance with the ambassador. The party the Agency hoped would cooperate, albeit unwittingly, was the world-famous author Joy Adamson, who wrote Born Free, the hook about the taming of Elsa, the lioness. She was known worldwide for her efforts in the preservation of animals. She was married to George Adamson, who was similarly disposed. George would not meet him, however, because he lived in a different part of Kenya pursuing the preservation of elephants.

  In order to approach Mrs. Adamson, George needed an initial reference, which he presumed to have: his good friend and classmate from Dartmouth, Nelson Rockefeller. The governor did not know this at the time, although George was certain that his classmate would have gone along with the ruse. Governor Rockefeller had supported animal-preservation activities for a long time and had communicated with Joy Adamson in that regard. When George first contacted her, she accepted his phone call as a friend of Nelson Rockefeller and agreed to meet with him.

  George then took an elaborate suite at the Hilton Palace, overlooking Lake Naivasha, sixty miles northwest of Nairobi and not far from their intended meeting place. He approached Mrs. Adamson with books she had written and requested her autograph. He also purchased numerous boxes of "Elsa the Lioness" Christmas cards through her. To his surprise and great pleasure, he found out that she had been born in Vienna and had a Viennese maiden name. Since Ferdi had come from Austria, George could speak to Mrs. Adamson in German with a Viennese accent. This, of course, appealed to her immensely.

  George knew Mrs. Adamson had an appointment to meet with the Soviet ambassador on the following day. She hoped to discuss with the ambassador the Russian royalties for her books sold in the USSR. George deliberately told her that he spoke fluent Russian. She immediately invited him to assist her the next day during the meeting with the ambassador. George expressed surprise at the invitation and consented. She, of course, had no idea that his approach of her had been orchestrated toward this end.

  For the meeting on the following day, the ambassador brought with him a well-known pianist who, like the ambassador, had travel rights to the backcountry of Kenya. He and the ambassador were the only ones in the Soviet Embassy to have such a privilege-no other Soviets had that license. George promptly spoke in Russian to them in order to prevent them from speaking between themselves. He told them that he was an author by the name of Pershing and that he was of Russian descent. Everyone then had a very pleasant brunch. The ambassador explained to Mrs. Adamson that commercial arrangements for royalties were not the custom in the Soviet Union. He did propose, however, that revenues from the sale of her exceptional books on wildlife could be applied to the preservation of wildlife in the USSR. Animals such as the polar bear, the brown bear, the white wolf, and the gray wolf could thereby benefit. Moreover, she would get great publicity from such a covenant. This compromise suited her and the meeting wound up in a pleasant atmosphere. Before departing, George invited the ambassador to an intimate lunch with him later in the week. The ambassador accepted. They would meet in George's hotel suite.

  During that meeting, as per standard operating procedure, the conversation with the ambassador was recorded. They spoke Russian. As they began to talk, however, and as the ambassador began to reveal himself to George, the spymaster immediately began to see problems. From his reading of the man, he could see that the ambassador's character and background portended danger for the Agency. Not only would the individual be unsuitable as an agent or a defector, but his desertion from the Soviet Union might cause a furor, if not a scandal, to the embarrassment of the United States. George concluded that his personal problems in the USSR as well as his extreme drinking habits would make him unsuitable for CIA use because the man would be too vulnerable to later coercion from his homeland. Such a likelihood made him totally inadequate for Agency purposes. Without sharing with me the details of his apprehensions about the individual, George simply stated that he foresaw the possibility that the Agency might lose much more than it could gain from proceeding with him. This was to the dismay and disappointment of the local intelligence officers, who had hoped a successful defection operation could occur on their watch, so to speak. George wasn't happy in this conclusion either, but he did not see an alternative. He left Africa shortly thereafter and reported his findings back to headquarters. The chief of operations agreed that George had recommended the proper course and broke off contact. "It is fine to make successful intelligence operations," George told me, "but you can lose tremendously if you misfire in these adventures." It had been an interesting trip. It was also a hectic one, however, one that frayed the spymaster's nerves somewhat, as he continuously pretended to be someone other than himself. I could not help but observe that George's association with his classmate, Nelson Rockefeller, certainly had facilitated a smooth operation and I began to appreciate the importance that George placed on associations.

  CHAPTER 18

  Cherepanov

  As I climbed the steps to the back entrance of Vinson Hall I still had the Popov narrative on my mind. George had been vague about its resolution. Of course, most true spy stories terminate ambiguously, so I could not expect this one to be tied up neatly. Nevertheless, I believed that I should be able to get a better fix on how it ended. After all, this was the centerpiece of George's service to the Agency and he should know everything that the Agency did about the operation. In any event, I would expect that he knew more about this case than anyone else, so I resolved to ask George, once again, to explain to me just where that operation had gone wrong for us. I rang the bell.

  "Come in," his familiar voice roared.

  "How are you doing today?" I countered.

  "I'm hoping for the end. I want it to come soon."

  "Don't wish your life away. Are you eating anything?"

  "I just don't feel like it."

  "Is something wrong with the New York pie that Clara Sue made for you?"

  "I just have not felt like eating anything."

  "Well, now, you are going to hurt her feelings; she made it exactly according to y
our recipe. In the meantime, please try to drink this juice."

  "Okay, but I cannot taste much now.... That's all I can drink."

  "That's okay; we'll finish it later. Maybe we'll also eat something. What do you want to talk about today?"

  "Whatever. It doesn't matter. I've lived long enough."

  "No you haven't. We have to finish this. We have a long way to go. You have to keep on telling me stories. You're Scheherazade."

  "Scheherazade?"

  "The girl in the caliph's harem who told him a story every evening for 1,001 nights in order to save her ass."

  "Oh yes, of course."

  "Your Russian friend Rimski-Korsakov wrote some beautiful music about her affair with the caliph, and I want a thousand stories. You cannot die now."

  "Oh, Nikolai Andreevich."

  "Who?"

  "Nikolai Andreevich Rimski-Korsakov was the guy."

  "Okay, let's talk about Popov some more, George."

  "Popov?"

  "Yes, I want you to clear up a couple of things. When do you think that the KGB first could have suspected Popov and what, in particular, brought him down?"

  "The first possibility? Hmm, a long, long time before we would have realized that he was under suspicion. There were some important events occurring later on that allowed us to look back and understand what they might have known had they been sharp enough, and what we believe that they actually knew. The first one happened in 1962 when Nosenko came to Geneva. He told us, for the first time, about the Soviet attempts against our Little Guy. He was called `Ryzhiy' (Redhead) by the Soviets. Nosenko revealed to me how they conducted their game with `Ryzhiy.' When I found this out I said, 'Jesus Christ! They could have known about the Popov operation through Little Guy. I guess Little Guy could have hurt us more than we had realized!' Remember? He was the fellow that they were trying to frame with the girlfriend in our embassy. They were using her as bait, keeping the hot pants on him and reporting on his every move. Had they been patient enough at the time, maybe they could have observed just who he was trying to contact."