The Spy Who Was Left Behind

by Michael Pullara

  “No,” he answered. “We didn’t do any studies—but we didn’t have to. It was obvious that the bullet fragmented after impact with Woodruff’s skull.”

  As a trial lawyer I had learned to be suspicious of phrases like “it is obvious that. . . .” Experts routinely use such phrases to excuse their sins of scientific omission: their failure to test a basic assumption or their inability to prove a fundamental fact. In this case, the pathologist had assumed that the bullet broke up on impact with the car, and the ballistics expert had assumed that it broke up on impact with the victim. Each of these prosecution experts then proceeded to construct an opinion on the basis of an assumption denied by the other expert.

  They couldn’t both be right. But they could both be wrong.

  I now knew that Altunashvili’s expert testimony contained only one verifiable observation: that the diameter of the bullet hole in the hatch matched the diameter of the bullets fired from the defendant’s rifle. However, there was no scientific test that would allow me (or anyone else) to prove whether the hole was created before or after the arrest of Anzor Sharmaidze. For this issue, I had to rely on eyewitnesses—and those witnesses appeared to be uniformly consistent: In the days immediately after the murder a number of experts inspected the Niva in search of a bullet hole and none of them found it.

  This fact was suspicious but not conclusive. The shell casing found at the scene of the crime was circumstantial evidence that Anzor’s rifle had fired a bullet that could have made the hole and killed Freddie Woodruff. I needed to find someone who could talk to me about the provenance of that casing.

  Once again, Lali found just the right person.

  Irakli Batiashvili was a handsome and urbane child of privilege. The son of a celebrated movie director, he had been an early leader in the Liberation Movement. He was almost killed in 1989 when Soviet shock troops violently suppressed a nationalist candlelight vigil. His injuries established him as a genuine Georgian hero and sealed his place among the new leaders. In 1992 he was appointed chief of intelligence and information services.

  He was thirty-one years old and had no prior professional experience.

  We met in the parlor of his family’s fifth-floor apartment. The walls were covered with portraits of long-dead Batiashvilis—a visual history of the clan’s social and political prominence. The ancestors seemed to look down on Irakli with benign approval.

  He rose from an overstuffed chair to shake my hand.

  “I am very happy today,” he said. “I just received a PhD in philosophy from Tbilisi State University.”

  Obtaining this degree in the current climate was a daunting achievement. According to Lali, the Georgian educational system had ceased to function during the revolution. Classes seldom met. Grades and graduation were a product of financial negotiation.

  “You’re here about the Woodruff murder,” he said. “I was in charge of our intelligence service at the time of the killing. As you probably know, I didn’t trust the official investigation: The prosecutor and police were not interested in finding the truth. That’s why I had the ministry do its own separate investigation.”

  His statements were simple, direct, and strangely collegial—as though he viewed me as a professional colleague. I was just beginning to enjoy the idea of this unexpected efficiency when I had a chilling realization: Irakli believed I was a CIA officer.

  Up to this point I had given very little thought as to how the Georgians (or Russians) would perceive me. After all, I was doing things that were fairly routine for lawyers in America. But I wasn’t in America. And if these people thought I was a spy they would feel justified in treating me as an enemy combatant.

  For a fleeting second I considered exploiting the misperception. If he thought I was an intelligence professional, Irakli might tell me things that he would not tell a civilian. But the cost of such duplicity would be my credibility and (possibly) my life.

  “I’m a lawyer,” I said. “I’m just a lawyer.”

  Irakli seemed oddly encouraged by my response—as though my overt denial had somehow confirmed my covert affiliation. This refusal to believe the true nature of my status was a maddening (and dangerous) non sequitur that would be repeated throughout my Georgian odyssey: The more emphatically I protested, the more confidently they assumed.

  “I don’t know how I can help you,” he said. “I’ve already told the world what I think happened.”

  He was referring to a 1995 press conference in which he had publicly accused the Russian special services of complicity in Woodruff’s death and an attempt to assassinate Eduard Shevardnadze. At the time his statements were dismissed as an unsubtle bid to incriminate Igor Giorgadze—the man who had replaced Irakli as director of the Georgian intelligence service.

  “But you weren’t very specific,” I said. “I was hoping to get a few more details.”

  The conversation paused as Irakli served cognac. He was playing the consummate host and in the same gesture controlling the rhythm of our talk. I had the uncomfortable impression that he was estimating my value as a pawn in a chess match of political ambition.

  “It was GRU,” he said. “Woodruff was murdered by Russian military intelligence.”

  This was the same thing that the embassy-based military attaché had told FBI investigators—Woodruff was assassinated by the GRU. But the attaché had added a titillating wrinkle: He suggested that Georgians may have been involved in the killing.

  I asked Irakli if this was accurate.

  “Yes,” he said. “Eldar Gogoladze was instrumental in the murder.”

  This was an astonishing accusation—not simply because he blamed his subordinate for the murder of an American diplomat, but because he implicitly confessed that he had been powerless to do anything about it.

  I had arrived in Tbilisi thinking that (with a combination of charm and enthusiasm) I could navigate the labyrinth of Georgian political culture. I now realized I had been audaciously naive. Nothing was as it seemed. A government title was no sign of influence or authority. A subordinate position was no indication of subservience or accountability.

  Power was a function of who you were and who you knew.

  This disorienting insight left me with two very troubling questions: Who was Eldar Gogoladze? And why was he untouchable?

  I had already begun making organization charts detailing the formal relationships among the people with relevant knowledge. My conversation with Irakli made me see that if I was to have any hope of understanding the true power dynamic I would need to chart the informal relationships among the players. This was much more difficult but potentially much more rewarding.

  “I fired Gogoladze right after the murder,” said Irakli. “Shevardnadze called four times asking me to leave him in his position—but I’m pretty sure someone was pressing him to do that.”

  Irakli’s suggestion that the chairman of the State Council could be compelled to lobby for Gogoladze’s retention was inconsistent with my preconceived notion of Shevardnadze’s status. I had it in my head that he was in charge and that made it difficult for me to imagine that someone could press him about a personnel decision.

  Clearly, I was still thinking like an American.

  “But wasn’t Gogoladze reinstated as chief of the protection force?” I asked. “How could that happen if neither you nor Shevardnadze wanted him?”

  Irakli shrugged and raised an eyebrow. Then, as though changing the subject, he said, “Gogoladze was GRU.”

  For a moment I thought Irakli had exposed a lie by Gogoladze. “During our meeting he told me that he had retired as a KGB colonel,” I said.

  “It’s true,” said Irakli. “He was KGB. And GRU. Soviet military intelligence placed him inside Soviet KGB to spy on their sister service. After the revolution, Gogoladze went from officially working for Soviet KGB to officially working for Georgian KGB—but the whole time he was also working for GRU.”

  I was speechless.

  Gogoladze was a KGB
officer, a GRU agent, and the administrative head of Group Omega—the CIA-sponsored special operations unit that Freddie Woodruff and Delta Force had created in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

  It seemed inconceivable.

  But if Gogoladze had in fact enlisted to serve these three irreconcilable masters, to which of them, if any, had he given his ultimate allegiance? And how could I ever find out?

  “When I realized that the prosecutor’s investigation was corrupted,” said Irakli, “I assigned my deputy, Shota Kviraya, the task of conducting a separate inquiry on behalf of the intelligence and information service. But it was never completed.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “A month later—September 1993—Georgia suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Russians,” he said. “We lost the battle for the regional capital of Sukhumi and eventually all of Abkhazia. I resigned as minister and was replaced by Igor Giorgadze. He had no interest in the investigation and terminated it immediately.”

  I knew from my research that Giorgadze—a general in the USSR’s Group Alpha—had continued to serve as head of Georgia’s intelligence and information service until he was implicated in a 1995 attempt to assassinate Shevardnadze. He fled to Russia and was replaced as minister by Shota Kviraya. A year later, in 1996, Kviraya issued a public statement accusing Giorgadze of arranging Woodruff’s murder on orders from Moscow and accusing Eldar Gogoladze of participating in the plot.

  “Kviraya was lifetime KGB,” said Irakli. “He hated Eldar. And vice versa.”

  I copied down Irakli’s comment verbatim and wondered about this unexplained antipathy. Was he describing an irreconcilable personality conflict or giving me a hint about Gogoladze’s ultimate loyalty?

  “What about the shell casing?” I asked. “The FBI lab confirmed that it had been fired by Sharmaidze’s rifle—and that would appear to tie him to the murder.”

  “The police planted it,” he said matter-of-factly. “They fired the defendant’s rifle and left the spent shell on the roadside so that your FBI could find it. Kviraya witnessed the whole thing and confirmed it in his reports.”

  My heart was racing. Irakli had discredited the last piece of forensic evidence and (at the same time) offered compelling proof of both police misconduct and a government conspiracy to frame Anzor Sharmaidze. If he was willing to confirm this under oath then I would have new evidence of the defendant’s innocence from an unimpeachable source.

  “Would you be willing to sign an affidavit?” I asked.

  “I will,” he said. “After all, it is the truth. The murder was thoroughly planned and professionally executed. It is simply absurd to suggest that it was done by a peasant.”

  We sat in silence for a few seconds. I was having trouble processing the torrent of revelations. I was (I believe) hobbled by my preconceptions. It was very hard for me to imagine that a legitimate government would willingly participate in such a calculated miscarriage of justice.

  “What about the Americans?” I asked. “Did they know about all this?”

  Irakli’s expression changed. He looked at me as though I might really be just a lawyer.

  “Of course,” he said. “The Americans knew everything.”

  For the first time I began to doubt Irakli. It seemed impossible to me that the US would not expend every reasonable effort to expose and prosecute the person who murdered Freddie Woodruff. To do otherwise would have been to disavow a man who had died in service to his country and to repudiate the core ethos of the American warrior: that no man is ever left behind.

  Irakli must have sensed my incredulity.

  “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “I was with Chairman Shevardnadze when he delivered Woodruff’s body to your director of central intelligence. The chairman was very concerned that this crime was going to interfere in Georgia’s strategic relationship with the United States. He offered a carefully prepared statement of condolence and then Director Woolsey talked for thirty minutes. I remember how puzzled and surprised Shevardnadze was by Woolsey—by what he said and what he didn’t say. All the way back to Tbilisi the chairman kept repeating the same phrase: ‘The American never mentioned the murder.’ Woolsey had talked about all the things our countries were going to do together, but he never mentioned Fred Woodruff.”

  To the Georgians, the meaning of the oversight was obvious: The United States had decided that Freddie Woodruff was expendable. Woolsey later denied the omission, but the damage had already been done. The Georgians believed they’d been encouraged to resolve the matter of Freddie’s death in any manner they deemed appropriate. And the sooner it was over, the better for all concerned.

  “But why?” I asked.

  Irakli didn’t answer immediately. It seemed as though he was trying to decide how much he could trust me. Finally he spoke.

  “Aldrich Ames,” he said. “He met with Chairman Shevardnadze when the CIA delegation was here in Tbilisi. Afterward we received a communication from Boris Yeltsin that caused us to become suspicious of Ames. Shevardnadze contacted friends in Washington and told them he was concerned that Ames was funneling information to Russia.”

  It was not an answer I had expected.

  From the beginning, there had been whispers that Woodruff’s murder was related to Ames’s treachery. Now Irakli suggested that the Agency’s decision to cover up that murder was also somehow related to the traitor.

  Implicit in this suggestion was the inference that—at the time he met Shevardnadze to take possession of Woodruff’s lifeless body—DCI Woolsey already knew about Ames’s betrayal. If this was true, then the Agency had permitted a known traitor to travel to the former Soviet Union and drive (literally) to the Russian border. If Ames had continued just a few more kilometers north on the Old Military Road, he would have passed into Russia and beyond the reach of American justice.

  What, I wondered, was important enough to justify such an audacious risk? And was Freddie Woodruff a casualty of that audacity?

  As we drove through the unlit streets of Tbilisi, Lali was uncharacteristically silent. I think she was evaluating the risks of joining my idealistic crusade. When she finally spoke, I realized that she had transitioned from contractor to comrade.

  “Why don’t I call President Shevardnadze?” she said. “We can see him tomorrow.”

  I was surprised. It had never even occurred to me that I could talk to the Great Man himself. As it turned out, his private telephone number was on Lali’s speed dial.

  We arrived at his compound in the morning. There was an eight-foot wall, armed guards in business suits, an airport-style X-ray machine, and a metal detector. I wasn’t sure whether it was a fortress or a prison.

  I collected my thoroughly searched briefcase and turned to Lali. “Who pays for all this security around Shevardnadze?” I asked.

  “You do,” she said. “The first thing President Shevardnadze did after the Rose Revolution was call his friend Jim Baker. He asked him, ‘Are the Americans going to continue my security or am I a dead man?’ Your government agreed to provide this protection for the rest of his life.”

  One of the US-trained guards escorted us through the garden to the house. Along the way we passed the grave of Nanuli Shevardnadze. Lali said that she had been buried inside the compound so that her husband of fifty-three years could make his daily visits without leaving the sanctuary.

  Shevardnadze met us at the door and embraced Lali with genuine affection. The former president was wearing a blue cardigan and seemed to welcome us as a distraction from the tedium of involuntary retirement. He led us into a spacious room that was in equal parts office, parlor, and library. He sat in an overstuffed leather chair, while we took the sofa opposite. I explained my client’s concerns and enumerated the evidence supporting Sharmaidze’s innocence.

  “I remember Freddie Woodruff,” he said. “He was helpful to me. He used to give me briefings on signals intelligence and Russian troop movements. But about Sharmaidze, I do not agree wi
th you: He was adjudicated guilty by the court. He is guilty because the judge said he’s guilty.”

  It was a shrewd answer. The former chief executive did not concern himself with truth; he focused entirely on process. Once the process was complete, it created its own kind of reality. And in the context of that reality, there was nothing more to be said about Sharmaidze’s innocence.

  I tried a different tack.

  “I spoke with your former bodyguard, Eldar Gogoladze,” I said. “He denied that he was fired after Woodruff’s murder.”

  “Of course he was fired,” Shevardnadze said. “He carried a foreign diplomat in his private car, he took him outside the city limits, he didn’t have a chase car—he violated every security protocol. There was no reason not to fire him.”

  The answer had been quick and emphatic—but then the former president paused. His eyes twinkled and he smiled at some secret amusement.

  “But there was something interesting,” he said. “A few days after I fired Gogoladze someone reinstated him. I don’t know who it was that did it—but it certainly wasn’t me.”

  It was just as Irakli had told me: In 1993 the chairman of the Georgian State Council did not have the authority to hire or fire the head of his personal protection force. Governmental power lay somewhere outside the formal chain of command—and I had no idea where.

  I needed to know a lot more about the recent history of Georgia.

  The conversation drifted toward current events and the new government’s campaign to arrest the old government’s ministers.

  “When I became president I knew there would be corruption,” he said. “So I told each minister that I had two rules: ‘First,’ I told them, ‘you are forbidden to steal too much. And second,’ I said, ‘you are forbidden to take the money out of the country.’ ”

  Shevardnadze must have sensed my schoolboy contempt for this official tolerance of dishonesty. He seemed mildly dismayed by the unspoken judgment and leaned forward to explain.