A Spy's Journey

by Floyd Paseman

  As a senior officer, I was offered the opportunity to participate in an Agency-wide executive seminar. This program exposed our senior officers to various think tanks to challenge our traditional ways of thinking, and to develop our cadre of executive officers. It was fun, exceptionally stimulating, and one of the great programs the Agency offers. The seminar sessions were spread out over more than one year.

  For one seminar, we visited a well-known leftist think tank—the first time a CIA group had made such a visit. We were a small group, with 12 experienced senior officers. In the midst of briefing us, their director stopped and said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the CIA, we have a surprise for you.” With that, in walked Oliver Stone. Being Oliver Stone, he immediately went on the offensive, accusing us as CIA employees of “attempting to overthrow governments, killing innocent people,” and so forth. It almost started a riot. Stone backed off a bit when we attacked his films, particularly JFK.

  “Well,” he said, “if you want me to tell the true story, then I insist that you simply give me all your files, and I’ll decide what’s true and what isn’t true.” It was a rough session for him, and for us.

  At one point, I asked him directly, “How can you live with yourself—passing JFK off to our kids as if it were really history?”

  Stone leaned back and said, “Hell, I don’t care if it’s true or not. I’m simply in the entertainment business.” Oliver Stone will never get another nickel from me.

  1. The Counterintelligence Reader, Vol. 3, Frank J. Rafalko, ed. (Washington, D.C.: National Counterintelligence Center [NCIC]), p. 407.

  FOURTEEN

  GERMANY—

  BACK INTO THE FRAY

  1994–1998

  My assignment as chief, Germany, came about in a strange manner. I had been asked to select a post from among several excellent possibilities. The chief of European division had already asked for and been selected for Germany. I was asked to fly to Europe, and upon return, select the country that I preferred. I visited several places and was most impressed with them, but I had not come to a conclusion. I was en route home and stopped in Great Britain to take care of some business. While there, I received a phone call from the DDO.

  “Congratulations!” he said.

  “Thanks,” I responded, “what for?”

  “You have been selected as chief of Germany,” he said, saying he would explain when I got back. So, I wound up with the German position that I didn’t ask for. Throughout my entire career, I never asked for a specific assignment, nor did I turn any down. We all serve at the pleasure of and for the need of the service. But in my view, that attitude has unfortunately changed with the current generation.

  When I returned to the United States, I learned that the position in Germany had opened up for a number of reasons. Primarily because the officer who had been selected to be chief, Germany, had visited the country, and his wife hadn’t liked the country or the assignment. So he declined the assignment.

  The DCI called me in and said, “I want you to go out and fix Germany.” I understood the DCI was talking about justifying the CIA’s significant presence there, now that the Cold War had ended. Four years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, little had changed. Our European friends and allies, Germany included, were no longer willing to turn a blind eye to our activities now that there was no common enemy. I understood my instructions and began preparations. For my part, I was delighted. I served in Germany while I was in the military, and both my ancestors and my wife’s ancestors came from Germany.

  But there was one political problem. Several weeks before, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Holbrooke, a strong, demanding, and outstanding diplomat, was informed that the other officer was to be assigned as the chief, Germany. I had known Holbrooke from previous years when he was undersecretary for Asian affairs at the Department of State.

  One afternoon, our associate deputy director for operations (ADDO) called me and told me to go with him to meet Ambassador Holbrooke and tell the ambassador I was coming to Germany instead of the other officer. We met Holbrooke and talked as we walked. The ADDO then gingerly told him that I was to be the chief and not the other officer, whom the ambassador had already met. Holbrooke exploded. He ranted and raved about our inability to make up our minds. He calmed down a bit, turned to me, and said, “Look, Floyd, I know you are a senior officer, and I like you. But how am I to interpret this change?”

  I thought for a moment and said, “Dick, if I were you, I’d look at it as an upgrade from the previous appointee.”

  Holbrooke looked at me for a moment and burst into belly laughs. “Damn,” he said, “you’ll do just fine.” We got along great from that point on. Unfortunately, his time in Germany was limited, and he moved back to Washington and on to distinguish himself as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

  The CIA prepares officers for their overseas work. I was offered several months of German language training, and after arriving in Germany I spent two months in full-time training at a private institute. Although I wasn’t totally fluent, I worked in the language and certainly traveled everywhere without difficulty. I also read the newspapers. I still remember the longest word I learned—die Deutchedonausampshipfahrtgesellschaftkapitinskabina (the cabin of the captain of the ship which sails the Donau for the ship company). I also learned how strict Germans could be. I went into a small restaurant and ordered (in German) a ham-and-cheese sandwich.

  “Nope,” I was told, they do not have ham-and-cheese sandwiches.

  “Do you have ham sandwiches?” I asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Do you have cheese sandwiches?”

  “Yup.”

  “OK, take the ham and take the cheese that you make each sandwich with and make me a ham-and-cheese.”

  “Nope.” So much for German flexibility.

  I worked hard on my language study. In addition to the ham-and-cheese-sandwich caper, I also had an educational experience regarding German sun worshipping. One afternoon, the sun peeked out during a particularly cool spell, so I took my language books and headed for Wannsee Lake—like almost every other German in the vicinity. Approaching the beach, I noticed two signs in German—one said “Beach” and the second said “Frei Korper Kulture.” The only word of the second three that I knew was Frei, meaning “free.” So, I took that fork in the road. The trek toward the beach was about a mile long. I started down the beach toward a point on the far western shore where I had arranged to meet someone. Up came a lifeguard.

  “Take ’em off, buddy.” To my horror, he was stark naked. When I demurred he said, “You come to the naked beach, you get naked.” “Frei Korper Kulture,” I was to learn, meant “Nude Beach.” On top of that, I was lily white while all the people on this part of the beach were completely tanned. I lamely said to the lifeguard that I only wanted to walk over to the western side. “Take ’em off,” he said again. So I took ’em off! I heard nothing but giggles as I displayed my tennis tan—face, arms, and legs tanned, and everything else pure white. I made it to the western side, put my trunks back on, and met my friend, without offering any explanations.

  During the preparations afterward in Washington, I had one of the most memorable meetings in my life—a personal meeting (along with several other officers) with a man named Jan Karski. We visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., and as a special event, we were scheduled to meet Karski in person. I knew about Karski’s service in the Polish underground during World War II. I had read his terrific book, Story of a Secret State, which recounted his activities—among them, his meetings with Churchill and Roosevelt to tell them the news of the Holocaust.

  We were ushered into a small room and introduced to Karski. I sat spellbound as he took us back in history and described his flight to London to bring the news to Churchill, and then by Lancaster bomber to the United States, where he finally got to see President Roosevelt and relayed the same information. Karski’s descriptions of his meetings with and description
s of these two great leaders were fascinating. Karski didn’t hide his feelings about having been rejected by those leaders. I remember well that at the end of the session he reflected and said, “I no longer carry any animosity about these events. After all, who could expect the two leaders of the free world to take this kind of incredible information seriously from a Polish captain in the underground?” I understood his point. I greatly appreciated this rare opportunity to be taken back in time by a person as great as Karski.

  We wound up in Bonn, then the capital of Germany, and found a beautiful home overlooking the magnificent Rhine River. We strolled with our dogs along the Rhine in the evenings, stopping for a beer or a glass of Mosel wine. The Germans say their country is “Hund freundlich und kinder feinlich!” or “Great to dogs and terrible to children!” And it’s true. We took two dogs to Germany and they were treated royally. They went on trains with us, into restaurants, and once even into a movie theater. But they are expected to behave, and ours did. Germany isn’t hard to like for dog lovers.

  “Fix Germany!” It was a tall order, and it brought me face to face with the man the Germans called “008”—Minister Bernd Schmidbauer, the coordinator for intelligence for the German Chancellery. Fascinating, handsome, controversial, full of himself and the need to prove himself, and absolutely taken with his role as the coordinating head of German Intelligence, the minister was more than a handful to deal with. And he had one fatal flaw common to many spook wannabes—he had no in-depth knowledge of what intelligence really could and could not do. Thus, he often expected intelligence, particularly the CIA, to bail him out of difficult situations.

  Which leads me to the Mouse caper. The minister had been dealing for several years with a shady ex–private detective named Mauss. This operative had inserted himself into a number of intelligence operations that typically failed. He also fabricated much of the information he had provided to the minister. In this case, an unfortunate German citizen was a hostage in South America. The minister dispatched Mauss to go down and bribe the captors to release the hostages. However, Mauss was also known to the local government as corrupt, and had made illegal contact with the group holding the hostage. He was arrested and jailed for his efforts. At this point, now in trouble, the minister came to us as he generally did, and asked us to intervene to get both the hostages and Mauss released. I told the minister there were several things wrong with this: First, U.S. government policy against paying for hostages precluded this. Second, even if we did attempt to help, it was unlikely it would do any good, since we had no real influence with this South American country’s government.

  The minister was furious and retaliated by leaking a story that the U.S. Ambassador to the country where the hostages were being held was unwilling to help. Washington called me about the minister’s dealings. I told headquarters this was just another case of the minister digging himself into a hole and wanting us to get him out. The incident unfortunately escalated. The U.S. Ambassador in the South American country went public with his sentiments about the minister. The minister, irate about what the ambassador had said about him, then again called me in. I took the opportunity to tell 008 that what the ambassador had said about him was true, if unfortunate. This series of events escalated for several months before the hostage was finally released. Mauss did some jail time before being expelled from the country.

  Another of the minister’s not-so-clever episodes involved his use of some intelligence that we had provided to him. In this case, the minister, who was also a member of the parliament, was taking a stand against corruption in one of the former Soviet Bloc countries. He asked me about that corruption, and I provided him with some classified information with the clear stipulation he could not use it without first securing my permission. “OK,” he agreed.

  In the morning paper I saw a picture of the minister holding up a few sheets of paper that looked suspiciously like those I had given him. Sure enough, the article in the open press clearly stated that the information provided to parliament by the minister came from the CIA. More calls from my headquarters and more explanation about the minister ensued.

  These were not isolated events, but were regular occurrences during my four years of dealing with the minister on a regular basis. The minister was quite capable of generating trouble in his spy games. The most public caper was the minister masterminding the “plutonium affair,” as one newspaper dubbed it. In short, the minister was concerned about fissionable materials making their way into the hands of terrorists and other criminals. The intelligence agencies of both the United States and Europe took the issue very seriously. There were a number of scams going on throughout the world with red mercury (a Soviet-developed nuclear bomb component) being offered for sale. These were well known.

  To be helpful, I gave 008 information about the scams and fabricators. He ran a sting operation. Unfortunately, as part of the sting, he directed the shipment of a small amount of plutonium onto a German aircraft that was due to land in Munich. News of the scheme leaked out, and the German Green Party—exceptionally environmentally aware—had a field day with the minister.

  The minister was intent in playing his 008 role to the hilt on the worldwide stage. He got involved in the Mideast and Southeast Asia, in addition to Europe. This inevitably involved some scheme, and he would then turn to me to get the CIA to bail him out. I know that the minister knew that we couldn’t or wouldn’t help in many cases, but he wanted to build up a record demonstrating that we didn’t help him when he needed it for leverage.

  In one irritating encounter, I confronted the minister with the fact that I knew that information he provided was false; he responded, “I liked your predecessor better because he would agree with me and tell me what I wanted to hear.” My relationship with 008 was proper, and in total, productive, and I maintained with him the same policy I maintained with other intelligence services—never mislead or lie to them.

  In another encounter with 008, a senior officer who desperately wanted a tour back in Germany pestered me for over a year. He spoke fluent German, but I turned him down for potential chief or deputy jobs in Asia while I was chief of East Asia division. Simply put, he was a first-class annoyance, and pretty much everyone saw this. I told him frankly that I had no intention of allowing him in Germany.

  This officer was present during one of 008’s trips back to the United States, and was involved in briefings that we had set up. I didn’t know until later was he had the gall to directly approach 008 in a men’s restroom to lobby 008 to persuade me to assign him to Germany. And 008 was smart enough never to raise the subject with me. What the officer didn’t know was that one of our German desk officers was in one of the bathroom stalls when the officer made his men’s-room pitch to 008. The officer took notes on the entire episode and gave them to me. So after 008 left for Germany, I sidled up to this officer and commented, “Oh, by the way, 008 asked me to ensure that your appeal to him in the restroom was rejected.” I thought he’d fall right through the floor. He never got a German assignment.

  One of the great pearls of wisdom I gleaned during my career came from an officer who was in charge of sorting and routing the traffic to our various offices. “You know,” he said, “whenever I want to know something, I just go sit on the can for a while. Sooner or later somebody will have a discussion in the men’s room that gives me more information than I get from all our town hall meetings.” Indeed!

  Not long after my arrival, a VIP visitor who had traveled all over Germany arrived. So I availed myself of one of my senior management officer’s services, we’ll call her Stephanie, who knew Germany inside out and spoke fluent German. The official party arrived late in the afternoon, and Stephanie assisted with interpreting and ensuring that everything was on track. Since she and I had never met, and since we had some down time before the evening meal, she suggested that she come to my hotel room a half hour before dinner so we could get to know each other. I agreed, answered the door when she knocked, a
nd invited her in.

  Stephanie sat down, and I poured her a glass of white wine. To mask our conversation (just like in the movies), I turned on the TV. To my great embarrassment, a porno channel came on, with people writhing and moaning with pleasure. Stephanie shrieked, and I fumbled around with the remote, but the moaning got even louder, so I finally just yanked the plug out ot the TV. Stephanie was bright red, I was red, and we were mightily embarrassed. I asked her to meet me later downstairs. I wasn’t sure what would happen next. Fortunately, as I sat in the lobby waiting for dinner, she came in, sat down, and ordered a glass of wine and a beer for me. She then turned to me and said, “Did I pass the test?” and we both laughed until we had tears in our eyes.

  Stephanie eventually became my deputy. She was a fine officer, dedicated, a terrific writer, and had a keen sense of humor. For my part, my embarrassment was still not quite over. When I checked out the next morning, I discovered an exorbitant charge for a pornographic movie on my bill. I tried to explain it away, but everyone just laughed.

  One of our first big visits was an important DCI visit. We visited the former East Germany as part of the trip, and to keep a low profile, we traveled by bus with our German hosts. We visited a small city and toured some of the historic sites. Naturally, we had a large security contingent with us. Try as they might to blend into the crowds, they still attracted attention, hopping off the bus first to check out security, wearing ear pieces for their radios, and talking into the sleeves of their coats.

  We picked up an elderly woman who was our guide and translator and explained the local history of things as our tour progressed. At each stop she was held back while the security people got out of the bus first and surveyed the landscape. Finally, at one point, as the DCI and I exited the bus, she remarked, “Wow, you must be someone important to have all this security.”