© Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, Inc. 2009
Interview of Former Special Agent of the FBI
W. Peyton George (1962 – 1969)
Interviewed by Brian R. Hollstein
On June 29, 2009
Edited for spelling, repetitions, etc. by Sandra Robinette on October 7, 2009
Edited for content and chronology, etc. by W. Peyton George on November 17, 2009.
Brian R. Hollstein:
My name is Brian R. Hollstein. Today’s date is June 29, 2009. I’m
talking to Peyton George. What’s your middle name, there?
George:
The Bureau started me out with William P. George, Jr. and in
midstream I changed my official bureau name to W. Peyton George.
Everyone had wanted to be chummy and call me Bill. W. Peyton
George is my professional name and what I have used ever since I
left the Atlantic City RA, and throughout my legal career.
Hollstein:
Okay. Is Peyton a family name?
George:
Yes. I had a great-grandfather, Peyton Randolph Orr, named after
the patriot, Peyton Randolph.
Hollstein:
Okay. What were your dates of service with the Bureau?
George:
I came in the Bureau in January of 1962, to New Agents Class # 5,
and I left in October of 1969 to another government agency.
Hollstein:
Well, we overlap a little bit there. Okay. I’m going to turn off for a
moment.
Hollstein:
Okay. We’re back on and we’ve checked to make sure the
recordings is going okay. First of all, I’ll be sending out to you a
copyright form and I’d appreciate it if you’d fill it out and send it
back to me.
George:
Sure.
W. Peyton George
June 29, 2009
Page 2
Hollstein:
There are some little ground rules on these interviews. We don’t
want the names of informants mentioned, or their administrative
designations. If you need to talk about an informant, give the person
a name of some kind that we can use while we’re talking and that
doesn’t identify them. No classified information, no information that
you know to be classified, that is; and no mention of sensitive
investigative techniques as this will be available to the public in the
future.
What offices were you assigned to?
George:
My first office was Richmond, Virginia. After a few months at the
field office, I became a Resident Agent (RA) in Lynchburg. From
there I was transferred to Newark, New Jersey. After a few months
in Newark, I became an RA in Atlantic City, New Jersey. From
there I was transferred to the Washington Field Office in DC.
Hollstein:
Okay. Let’s go back a little bit more and ask you where you’re from
originally, and how you happened to find the Bureau; and where you
went to school?
George:
I grew up on a dairy farm near Ada, Oklahoma. After a stint in the
oil fields, the Army, and some college, I became a Police Officer on
the Oklahoma City Police Department. I attended the University of
Oklahoma, East Central State College, Oklahoma City University
and graduated from Central State College, now the University of
Central Oklahoma, at Edmond, OK, with a degree in Math and
Physics. I worked night shifts on the Police Department and attended
day classes.
The only contact I had had with the FBI until I applied was with an
old time John Dillinger era FBI Agent named Weldon “Spot”
Gentry. He taught courses in my Police Academy Class. He was a
contemporary of famed FBI Agent and SAC, Jelly Bryce. Gentry
taught the three-hour block of instruction on when to use deadly
force, or when to shoot or not to shoot. I never forgot the way he
summed up his three-hour block of instruction. He said, “Boys,
remember, if somebody’s going to be buried and somebody’s going
to be tried, make sure you’re the one that’s tried.”
Hollstein:
(Laughing)
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W. Peyton George
June 29, 2009
Page 3
George:
I never forgot that. Fortunately, I never had to shoot anyone.
Incidentally, Jelly Bryce, the awesome pistol shot also came off the
Oklahoma City Police Department, a generation or two ahead of my
late younger brother, SA Supervisor Thomas H. George, and me.
Hollstein:
Well, we’re very much interested in Jelly Bryce. I’ve done some
interviews of people who knew him, physically knew him.
George:
Okay.
Hollstein:
Not former Agents, but family of former Agents. So it was a kind of
an interesting thing.
George:
Have you seen Ron Owens book? Jelly Bryce, the Legendary
Lawman.
Hollstein:
I don’t have it. No.
George:
Owens is a retired Oklahoma City Police Captain who has written
several books that tell the story of the guys in early law enforcement
from Oklahoma, such as Jelly Bryce, Spot Gentry, and other
gunslingers from the gangster era.
Hollstein:
Well, good.
George:
In any event, after I finally received my Batchelor’s degree from the
University of Central Oklahoma in 1961 (my fourth college under
honorable conditions), I took the Treasury Law Enforcement Exam
at the urging of a Secret Service agent friend, Jack Neilson, from my
night law school at Oklahoma University Law School. All this in the
same time frame, I both received a direct commission as a Second
Lieutenant in the 95th Infantry Division Military Police (MP)
Company, Army Reserve, where I had been a Sergeant, and learned
from one of my colleagues on the Police Department that the FBI
was recruiting science majors.
I made a call to the Oklahoma City FBI Office and then met with
SAC Lee Teague. My application took several months to process
with the background check, physical, and so forth. Not having heard
from the FBI several weeks after completion of my Physical Exam at
Tinker Air Force Base, I phoned the local FBI Office at 8:00AM one
morning, having just finished my 11:00PM to 7:00AM night shift. I
called to inquire about the status of my application.
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George:
I was told that due to a mix-up, Mr. Hoover’s telegram notifying me
of my agent appointment had gone to the wrong address a week
earlier. In any event, I only had three days to get to Washington, DC.
After having worked all night, during the day I cleaned out my
apartment, sold my police uniforms, and was driving toward DC that
night.
Hollstein:
(Laughing) Oh my! That’s got to be some sort of a record I would
think.
George:
It was. But I thought it would be the great opportunity it turned out
to be.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
After reporting in, just in time, at DC, we members of New Agents
Class number 5 went to Quantico on a bus. At Quantico I thought I
had died and gone to Heaven. I was making more money than the
Chief of Police in Oklahoma City. I was sleeping at night in a bed
and eating three meals a day.
Hollstein:
(Laughing)
George:
I gained something like twenty-five pounds during New Agents
Class.
Hollstein:
That’s an unusual thing in itself.
George:
My Class Counselor was Dan Brandt, whom I’m still in touch with.
After completing the FBI Academy, under the direction of John
Malone and Hank Sloan, I was transferred 100 miles south to
Richmond, Virginia, as my first office.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
My SAC there was Earl E. Brown. My ASAC was Harry (the hat)
Morgan. My supervisor was a wonderful man and great mentor,
Hershel Caver. I think that Tom Tully replaced ASAC Harry
Morgan, before I left the division.
Hollstein:
What types of cases did you handle there in Richmond?
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George:
Well, for the first two or three months I was pretty much on the road,
filling in at the Alexandria, Virginia RA, or wherever I was needed. I
spent a couple weeks on a surveillance of a fellow named Clive
Rigdon, which is a story in itself. Clive Rigdon had a trailer house
similar to a large air stream trailer, which he towed behind his large
Cadillac sedan. The trailer had all kinds of derogatory remarks
painted on it, mostly about the FBI, Mr. Hoover, and so forth. I’ll
send you a photograph of that one. FBI Headquarters was reportedly
concerned, and wanted to know whenever Rigdon might come back
into DC. The only way to do that at the time was to follow him
around for a couple of weeks.
Hollstein:
Uh-huh.
George:
He was camped out in Fredericksburg, VA for a while, and then he
was out in western Virginia on the Shenandoah Parkway where he
would stop for few days at a time. There wasn’t much to do out in
the mountains with two bureau cars and a painted up trailer house on
narrow roads. A discrete surveillance was not in the cards.
I would periodically talk with Rigdon at night as we stood on the
roadside between his trailer and our bureau cars. He seemed like a
pretty decent guy. I would not give him my name, so he called me
“Anonymous Joe” though he obviously had a beef with the
government in general and the FBI in particular. He was annoyed
that some agents would throw rocks at his trailer to annoy him and
his wife, which also seemed inappropriate and immature to me. The
best I could determine from him over several days chatting was that
he had worked in a Government Defense plant somewhere in the
Midwest during World War II as a machinist.
After the war ended the discipline deteriorated in the plants.
Employees were stealing things or misappropriating and misusing
government property for their own projects. He kept reporting these
matters to authorities, and eventually he lost his job, for which he
blamed the FBI. That drove him to paint unflattering remarks on his
trailer, and to periodically go on tours so that everyone could see
what he thought. After one of these nightly chats I said to him
“You’re acting like a nut, you know it, running around here with this
trailer all painted up. You ought to deal with this government
problem with your Congressman or Senator”. The last time I saw
him, he had left the trailer in Virginia and had driven into DC in the
car.
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W. Peyton George
June 29, 2009
Page 6
George:
We followed him to Capitol Hill where he parked. He entered the
Russell Senate Office Building with a big stack of papers in his
arms. He gave me a big wave as he entered. As far as I know, that
was the last we heard from Rigdon.
Hollstein:
Uh-huh. Okay. Where did you go from there?
George:
After a few months in Richmond I was assigned to the Lynchburg,
Virginia Resident Agency (RA).
Hollstein:
Uh-huh. Okay. And what kind of work did you do in Lynchburg?
George:
Well, the Lynchburg RA covered the City of Lynchburg, and the five
surrounding counties of Appomattox, Campbell, Buckingham,
Bedford and Amherst. We had parts of the Shenandoah National
Park or Forest in my territory, as well as the Shenandoah Parkway,
so we had some Crime on Government Reservation cases. Babcock
and Wilcox made reactors for nuclear submarines near Lynchburg so
we had some Atomic Energy Act cases. We had several colleges,
each of which generated applicant cases, and we had a suspected
deep cover Soviet Agent. He was a professor at one of the colleges,
and periodically under technical coverage. This brought down
Agents such as Aubrey (Pete) Brent from the Washington Field
Office from time to time. There were the usual bank cases and thefts
from interstate shipment. One of my larger classifications was
military deserter cases. It seems some sailors would leave the ship
when it docked in Norfolk, VA, to go home on leave to chop wood
for the winter, and forget to go back to the ship.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm. The volume stuff that most of us cut our teeth on?
George:
It was like a general law practice.
Let’s see. I’ve made a little list in chronological order so I could
remember forty years ago. Bear with me a minute.
Well, Lynchburg was supposed to be a two-man RA, but the fellow
that had been out there from the 1940s, Jack Freeze, had various
medical problems and back problems. He was sick or away from the
office a good portion of the time that I was assigned there. For most
practical purposes, I was in a one-man RA in my first office.
Hollstein:
Which is a lonely feeling, I’m sure.
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June 29, 2009
Page 7
George:
Not at all. At work my partners were Virginia State Troopers or
Lynchburg Police Officers, whenever I needed help or to arrest
anyone. The radio in my Bureau Car was with the Virginia State
Police, not the FBI. My dispatcher was the Appomattox Division
Headquarters.
In that connection, I had mentioned one of my major classifications
was military deserters. I knew from my experience on the Oklahoma
City Police Department that if a police officer picked up a deserter
and returned them to military control, they were entitled to a twentyfive dollar reward. It came from the deserter’s pay. Federal officers
were not eligible however.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
So I would always take a Virginia State Trooper or a local Police
Officer with me to pick up a deserter. I’d let the officer book them
into the local jail, and I would send in my AirTel reporting the
apprehension. I closed another fugitive case for the FBI, and the
police officer or trooper got twenty-five dollars. I helped buy a lot of
shoes for trooper’s kids in that part of the state, and I always had
willing helpers to assist me.
Hollstein:
(Laughing)
George:
I still have friends there to this day.
Hollstein:
Well, coming from a police department and having that experience
had to be good, wasn’t it? When you’re dealing with the locals?
George:
It was a huge advantage. At that time there was a rift between the
Bureau and the head of the Virginia State Police. However, I always
got along great with the Troopers at the working level.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
Having been a former Police Officer, I was precluded from working
civil rights cases, and there were quite a few of those cases in
Virginia at the time. I guess that it was discrimination against me as
a former police officer on one hand, and a blessing on the other.
Hollstein:
Yeah. Absolutely. Were things heated up there at that particular
time in your area?
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W. Peyton George
June 29, 2009
Page 8
George:
Quite a bit. It seemed like when they had an incident; there were
more TV camera men and newspaper reporters than there were
alleged civil rights victims or pickets.
Hollstein:
Yeah. That was very common. Especially if they could work out of
Richmond, or go over to Lynchburg from time to time. Yeah, we
had it. I was in Tampa in first office and we had Civil Rights cases
down there. And the amount of news and various other people that
would show up, you’d have a cast of thousands very quickly.
George:
As I mentioned, I enjoyed great relations with local law enforcement
personnel. We were all young then. One Lynchburg Police Officer
was an especially sharp kid, Dennis Wayne Robertson. I suggested
to him that he should go with the Virginia State Police because it
provided better advantages, opportunities, pay and so forth. He
replied that he had gone to the Army before finishing High School
and did not have the High School diploma required by the State
Police. I said, “Dennis, that’s not a problem.” I knew the lady who
handled the High School Equivalency Program in Lynchburg.
For the next several weeks he would come over to my apartment
every Saturday and we would work through high school equivalency
tests. As soon as he received his diploma, he applied to the State
Police. I knew the women in the front office at VSP Headquarters
from my days in Richmond. His application stayed on the top of the
stack, and he quickly became a Virginia State Trooper. Dennis called
me recently to tell me he was retiring after forty-four years in law
enforcement. He had held most every job in the Virginia State
Police hierarchy except being the head of it.
Hollstein:
(Laughing)
George:
For years every time he would get another promotion he called to
thank me.
Hollstein:
That’s got to be a good feeling, helping guys along, bringing people
along in their careers like that. That’s great.
George:
Yes, my own great opportunities came from people helping me. In
that connection, I was alone at the RA when our division came under
inspection. The Inspector’s Aide came out to inspect it. I took him to
meet the Chief of Police, showed him around, and answered his
questions. We had a very nice professional visit, and he gave me a
lot of career advice.
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W. Peyton George
June 29, 2009
Page 9
George:
His name was Hobson Adcock, a World War II Naval Officer with a
law degree. He was assigned normally to the Crime Records
Division in public relations but was on loan to the inspection staff
for this inspection. When he left to return to Richmond he told me,
“If you ever come through DC, stop by. I’ll be happy to show you
around FBI Headquarters.” I don’t know whether he really meant it,
or he was just being polite, but once I got my next transfer, I stopped
by FBI Headquarters on the way to Newark. Adcock took me
around and introduced me to Assistant Director Cartha “Deke”
DeLoach, his boss, Don Hanning, Mr. Hoover’s secretary Miss
Helen Gandy, and several other people in the Crime Records
Division that I now don’t remember.
I would cross paths with some of them a little later on to my benefit.
I worked for Mr. DeLoach on the Democratic National Convention
Special in 1964, and they got me transferred out of Atlantic City so I
could attend more law schools. I would again work with both
DeLoach and Adcock after the FBI when DeLoach became a Vice
President of PepsiCo, Inc., and took Adcock with him
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
In Newark, I mostly worked Selective Service cases on ASAC
Harold Campbell’s squad, and helped out sometimes in organized
crime matters. The laws on Interstate Transportation in Aid of
Racketeering and the like had been enacted shortly before I came to
Newark. That part of New Jersey was a hotbed of organized crime
and public corruption. For example, if we did a name check at the
local police department on an applicant case, thirty minutes later it
would often appear in technical coverage at some crime figure’s
place when the police reported it to the crime figure.
Hollstein:
It took awhile for the Bureau and U.S. Attorney to catch up on those
laws, and actually make good use of them. What did you do with
Selective Service Cases?
George
Failure to register for the draft was a federal offense. Many so called
“draft dodgers” came to our attention through various means and a
case was opened. Some were ignorant of the law or had jumped ship
in Jersey City. Some were from Puerto Rico with poor language
skills or education, and many had no idea of the requirement. They
were seldom prosecuted unless they became high profile, the interest
being that they register. Once I got assigned the case I would pick
them up in my Bureau car, take them over to the draft board, and
register them.
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W. Peyton George
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George:
Most did not speak enough English to get inducted on the spot.
Thereafter, I would obtain a declination of prosecution from the
AUSA on the grounds the subject was now registered, and close
another case. I remember vividly one case where I called this Puerto
Rican kid to tell him I would pick him up at a particular time. When
I arrived at the families’ apartment in one of the high rise projects in
Newark, this kid was dressed in a coat and tie, and the entire family
was there, including the priest. They, I expect, feared that I was
taking him to a firing squad. With the help of the priest as a
translator I finally convinced them that I would have him back home
in a couple hours.
I mentioned earlier that at the time my FBI application was being
processed I was attending my first semester at the Oklahoma City
University Law School at night, still on the Police Department. I had
to leave for New Agents Class before the finals, so SAC Earl E.
Brown in the Richmond FBI Office gave me my law school exams
for that semester in his office in Richmond. This probably has to be a
first. Also, upon arrival in Richmond as a GS-10 FBI Agent, I
received a letter from the Treasury Department appointing me as a
GS-7 Customs Port Inspector in New Orleans. I respectfully
declined.
As a result of passing my exams in Richmond I now had ten hours
law school credit under my belt. In Newark, I enrolled in Seton Hall
Law School at night, which was downtown and near the FBI office.
I lasted three weeks until SAC Ralph Bachman (whom I understand
actually caught the Nazi saboteurs) found out about it and called me
into his office. He said, “George, we hired you without a law degree.
The only reason you’re going to law school is to get another job, and
we’re not going to cooperate with you.” He transferred me on the
spot.
Hollstein:
(Chuckle)
George:
That’s how I got to Atlantic City, and over the objection of an SRA
who did not want me at all.
Hollstein:
(Laughing)
George:
Ralph did me a big favor because I would never have survived trying
to attend law school in a small office where everyone has to go out
when anything of major significance happens.
Hollstein:
Bachman. Do you know if he’s still alive?
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Page 11
George:
I’m relatively sure he’s gone. He was old in the 1960s.
Hollstein:
Yeah. I don’t see him in the book, here.
George:
He was one of the really old time SAC’s.
Hollstein:
Okay. And in Atlantic City, you were there for how long?
George:
Until the end of 1964.
Hollstein:
What type of work did you do in Atlantic City?
George:
Atlantic City was an eight-man RA. This was back before the
casinos and it was a rather seedy, run down place. But it had a nice
beach, and it had the Atlantic City Convention Center, which drew a
lot of national corporate and political events including the Miss
America Pageant. I lived on the island near the boardwalk while the
married guys lived in the suburbs on the mainland. I handled general
criminal cases and lots of car thefts and fugitive matters.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
Our RA territory had responsibility for Atlantic, Cape May and
Cumberland Counties, which consisted of the southern tip of New
Jersey. Organized crime families in Philadelphia had houses at
Margate and Ventnor. Sometimes it seemed that every poor kid in
Philadelphia stole a car to go to the beach on the weekend and stole
another one to go home.
Hollstein:
(Laughing)
George:
So we might have two Interstate Transportation of Motor Vehicle
cases per kid on Monday mornings. There was still a variety of great
work though. Incidentally, the Kennedy assassination occurred while
I was in Atlantic City. In fact, I was interviewing a bar owner about
a stolen car left in his parking lot when the news came on the
television. The bar owner was very upset that I was investigating a
car theft instead of working the assassination case.
Hollstein:
Sure.
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Page 12
George:
Lyndon Johnson is now the President and he came to Atlantic City
occasionally for convention speeches. As a result, we FBI Agents
were loaned to the Secret Service on the Presidential Protection
Detail periodically. At that time, the Secret Service was a very tiny
outfit until they were able to staff up after the assassination.
Hollstein:
And how were they to work with?
George:
The ones that I worked with were the street guys, and they were very
professional.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
They appreciated the help.
Hollstein:
They’ve grown considerably, I guess, over the years.
George:
I don’t know whether you are aware of the background on this but I
was informed at the time that President Johnson never trusted the
Secret Service. He felt, wrongfully no doubt, that they had allowed
President Kennedy be killed. LBJ had much respect for, and kept
close contact with, Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach. DeLoach had
been FBI liaison with him when LBJ was a Senator. Once, when
LBJ kept getting a busy signal while trying to call DeLoach at home
(his children were on the phone), the next morning, which was a
Sunday, the DeLoach’s were awakened by telephone company
personnel there to install a direct line at the direction of the
President. The FBI even opened a special Resident Agency near
LBJ’s ranch in Texas
Hollstein:
Hmmm!
George:
The Democratic Convention in 1964 was held in Atlantic City in the
year of the Kennedy Assassination. Attorney General Bobby
Kennedy was trying to get the nomination away from LBJ. The
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and others who were allied
with Kennedy were trying to unseat the regular Mississippi
delegation. The burned car bodies of the civil rights workers were
being run up and down the streets in Atlantic City on trucks. There
was chaos and potential for disruption.
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Page 13
George:
Assistant Director Cartha D. DeLoach arrived with his entourage
from FBI Headquarters, including Hobson Adcock, Don Hanning,
and Elmer Todd. DeLoach announced to us assembled in the RA,
including other agents who were brought in for this Special,”Men we
are here because the President wants us here. He feels if any
violence erupts it might cost him the election”.
We had technical coverage on SNCC, Martin Luther King, CORE
and others, all monitored in my apartment, as I lived on the Island
near all the activity. The results of our technical coverage were being
provided LBJ Aides Walter Jenkins and Bill Moyers. Mr. DeLoach
covers this assignment in detail on pages one through seven of his
book “Hoover’s FBI”
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
Fortunately, no serious violence erupted, and LBJ held on to the
nomination.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
Most of us received Letters of Commendation. Mine read “for my
exemplary technical skill”. My assignment was in the State Police
Command Post at the Convention Hall. Some agents were
undercover with the activist groups and some worked the crowds
developing information and defusing situations. Mr. DeLoach
received an incentive award for his leadership. Our team was alerted
for the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago because of our
experience, but we subsequently were not called up.
Hollstein:
(Chuckling) Okay. Moving right along. Then you headed down to
Washington Field.
George:
Yes, I was transferred along with twenty other single Agents, on one
day’s notice, to the Washington Field Office for the “Walter Jenkins
Special”. LBJ Aide Walter Jenkins was the one we were working
closely with in Atlantic City four months earlier, but he was
subsequently caught in a homosexual incident in the YMCA across
from the White House. Our “Special” was to do background checks
on all the White House Staff. I was the only one of the twenty-one
who came out of an RA, thanks to my Crime Records friends. When
the first opportunity came up, my name was on the transfer list for
WFO, and this was it. They knew that I wanted to finish law school.
Hollstein:
Yeah, you specialize, then, in last minute running around, huh?
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Page 14
George:
I’m the guy.
Hollstein:
(Laughing) Pull up stakes and, and move
George:
Then it only cost twenty-one cents a mile to move me.
Hollstein:
Uh-huh.
George:
At WFO, my Supervisor on the Applicant Squad was George Duffy.
I started out doing background checks on mostly White House Staff.
Coincidentally, until then, those who worked at the White House
were never required to have a background check. Only if they came
from the military or some other agency did they have one. President
Johnson regretted losing his trusted aide, Walter Jenkins, from the
YMCA incident, but he used the opportunity to get rid of the
Kennedy holdovers he had been stuck with, several of them had
personal or alcohol abuse problems.
I interviewed a number of prominent government and other people
during this period. I also worked closely with Provost Marshal
General Carl Turner and his 1st CID Detachment, which were
conducting parallel investigations on military personnel at the White
House. Also, I frequently had a new Agent in tow from his New
Agents Class.
Hollstein:
How long were you on this assignment?
George:
Happily, I got off the Applicant Squad after about nine months, and
was assigned to S-2, the Soviet KGB Squad. My Supervisor there
was Don Gruntzel. Courtland Jones was our overall Security
Supervisor. Jones had his own Squad S-1, and supervision over all
the other Intelligence Squads, which were under him.
My SAC was Joseph D. Purvis, who wrote “The Era of J. Edgar”.
When I left the FBI he told me that I could always come back. My
ASAC was Jack McDermott. Both were very good to me.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
I spent the rest of my time on this squad.
Hollstein:
Uh-huh.
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Page 15
George:
Squad S-2 handled exclusively, known or suspected, KGB Agents. I
was assigned as the Case Agent for a Soviet TASS correspondent
named Viktor Kopytin. Agents with very active spies only had one
case, while other agents with less active spies might be responsible
for two or more. At the time, Kopytin’s closest friend or associate,
from most appearances, was Oleg Kalugin. They and their families
socialized together. Kalugin was later determined to have been the
Deputy Resident and Acting Chief of the KGB Residency at the
Soviet Embassy in Washington. Both had been exchange students in
the United States and were the best of the best in their trade. Kopytin
did not have diplomatic immunity. He was quite a scofflaw and near
impossible to keep up with when he was driving in a car. Once,
when he had amassed twenty-seven unpaid parking tickets, I pointed
out his illegally parked vehicle to a DC Motorcycle Officer who
promptly towed it. This resulted in an article in the Washington Post
newspaper entitled “To the Viktor goes the Foil.” I will send you a
copy.
Hollstein:
You have a story that you mentioned about an Average Garden
Variety Spy Case involving Kopytin. Would you share it with us?
George:
Sure. You may want to clear some of this with the FBI as to national
security but I assume by now after forty years and after the end of
the Cold War most of this will not hold up to classification.
But it was a classic beginning of a spy case. The Soviet KGB Agent
was in a DC Bar where he overheard a conversation between two
individuals who worked for Department of Defense related “think
tanks”. The Soviet, under cover as a correspondent for a Soviet
News Agency, eventually joined in the conversations about Multiple
Re-Entry Vehicles (MERVs) and defense policy. One of the
American’s grandfathers, who was Jewish, had emigrated from
Russia years earlier. They developed a common bond based upon
their ties to Russia. The American source reported his contact with a
Soviet to the FBI as his security clearance required, and I, as the
Soviets’ Case Agent, encouraged him to continue his relationship.
Over subsequent weeks the Soviet would ask for help and
information on innocuous items. At about the same time as this
double agent case was getting started, Senator Fulbright, a liberal
Democratic Senator from Arkansas in an effort to try to embarrass
the Nixon Administration and score points with the left, chose to
violate several federal law by releasing to the public an extensive list
of classified projects and studies being funded by the Department of
Defense.
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June 29, 2009
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George:
The researchers included defense contractors such as Rand
Corporation, Battelle, and others. Most of these studies were
classified Secret and above. It became a shopping list for Soviet
spies to test the legitimacy of their sources. For example, if a
Soviet’s source worked for a government contractor, the Soviet
would assume their source had access to, or would be able to provide
the study done by that contractor.
The Soviet began asking the source for certain classified studies,
most of which were provided after appropriate clearances. A special
board connected with the National Security Advisor at the White
House would authorize release. I recall once going to International
Security Affairs (ISA) at the Pentagon to discuss possible release of
a classified study pertaining to Peoples Republic of China sought by
the Soviet. I always remember the response of an ISA Official. He
said “We would love for the Soviets to know what we know about
the Chinese, sell it to them!”
Over a couple of years the source and the Soviet met about every six
weeks at restaurants throughout the DC and suburban areas. Each
time the source would pass on certain information and reports, the
Soviet would usually provide three to six thousand dollars in new
twenty-dollar bills. We often wondered how much cash the spy left
the embassy with, in relation to what was paid to the source. It was
common knowledge then that Soviet handlers skimmed money from
that which was intended for their sources. One Soviet called it the
“coefficient of danger”.
During the course of the operation the source relocated to
Massachusetts with his job, but continued to return for the spy meets.
We always put him in the better hotels including the Hilton at 16th
and K or the Watergate Hotel as a part of his cover and to show the
importance of the source in the eyes of the Soviet. The operation was
funded by the Soviet’s money. We would pay the hotel bills with
cash after recording the serial numbers of the bills we expended, and
then turn in the remaining funds to the SAC’s secretary for further
efforts to trace the origin.
At one meeting the Soviet was being unusually pushy. When it came
time to order dinner, the Soviet asked for recommendations. The
source, with quite a sense of humor, said, “I think you should have
the red snapper”.
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June 29, 2009
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George:
On occasions we would photograph the two together in case there
was ever a need to prosecute the Soviet. He did not enjoy diplomatic
immunity, but our Government gave news personnel usually great
deference. What we were really learning was the specific targets and
interests of the Soviets, which was discernable in part from the
questions they asked. The Soviet would punch his finger in the
source’s chest demanding, “We want to know what your President is
thinking!” As with refusing to admit there was a mafia in this
country until Joseph 'Joe ' Valachi came out of it, and the FBI
renamed it La Cosa Nostra, there was no recognition of a Political
Branch in the KGB. We were still chasing after spies who wanted
missile secrets when the Soviets had missiles as good as ours. This
came to the forefront later with the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
(SALT).
The source was growing more frustrated with the lack of use of the
information he was providing, as was I. He was well connected
politically, and was a friend of Ambassador Robert Ellsworth then
working in the Nixon White House. The source’s father had a seat
on the New York Stock Exchange and was equally politically
connected. The source decided that he would talk to Ambassador
Ellsworth about the FBI’s lack of interest in our double-agent case. I
spent until the early morning hours in his hotel room at the Capitol
Hilton Hotel telling him that there might be repercussions, but I did
not deter him. In any event, and considering the levels in the
Government we were dealing with, I had little concern that it would
get out of hand. The next day the source went to the White House
and had a long meeting with Ambassador Ellsworth. At the
termination of the meeting, the Ambassador telephoned Assistant
Director William F. Sullivan who was in charge of all national
security matters for the FBI. My rather insecure supervisor in these
situations, who had gotten a call from Assistant Director Sullivan’s
office, came running through the Squad Room, shouting, “Do you
know what your double agent is up to? He is headed to FBI
Headquarters?” “Really?” I replied, silently delighted.
As it turns out, my double agent source and Assistant Director
Sullivan, both bright guys, had a delightful meeting. It was probably
the first time the Assistant Director had talked to a real double Agent
in contact with a Soviet KGB Agent. Little if anything changed for a
while, and there was no fall-out for me from this meeting.
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George:
At that point in FBI History, Mr. Hoover had begun to grow
inward and protective of his legacy. The cardinal rule was “do not
embarrass the Bureau,” which meant Mr. Hoover. He was very
sensitive of contacts in the news media for fear of adverse articles.
Before we could interview a person in the media it was required
that a background investigation be conducted and permission be
obtained from FBI Headquarters. Thus, it became doubly difficult
in dealing with news media spies as many of their contacts were
with, yes, news media personnel. If one followed the arbitrary
Headquarters rules to the letter, it would shut down all interviews,
as a practical matter. As luck would have it, I was a friend of Alan
Cromley, head of the Washington Bureau of the Daily Oklahoman
in DC. He was also president of the National Press Club. We were
both active in the Oklahoma State Society, something my
Supervisor Hershel Caver in Richmond had advised me to do if I
ever got to DC. (The State Societies sponsor the annual Cherry
Blossom Festival). Cromley knew personally nearly all news
personnel in DC.
If our technical coverage indicated that my Soviet was having
lunch with some American news media type, then, instead of doing
a full field background check and taking a month, I would call
Alan, tell him that my Soviet just had lunch with Mr. X of the New
York Times, et al. Where upon he might suggest that I not contact
the person because of perhaps their leftist or anti-FBI leanings, or
else he would say for example “Hell, Mr. X is an old Marine
veteran, do you want to talk to him?” Ten minutes later I would
have a call from Mr. X who would provide a report and become
another press contact. It was OK if someone called us instead and
“volunteered” information.
So I often became the “go to guy” for agents with newsmen spies.
Mike Hudabaugh replaced Cromley as Press Club President and I
enjoyed the same relationship with him. This would come in handy
after I left the FBI when certain FBI Executives wanted to get their
story out discretely during ABSCAM.
Equally vexing at the time was that Mr. Hoover also forbade contact
with universities with the same fear of potential embarrassment as
with dealing with newsmen. The following morning after each spy
meet, my source, along with other Agents who might join us from
the squad, Robert Cavanaugh, Jerry Pangburn, Chad Marsh, or
others, would meet to debrief the source.
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George:
It was paper intensive preparing those Letter Head Memorandums
(LHMs). I grew tired of taking notes and was concerned that I might
be missing something so I would put the old Dictaphone machine
with the pink belts in a briefcase and take it to the University of
Oklahoma’s Washington DC Office conference room (an office my
wife ran), give the source the microphone and tell him “instead of
“I” say “source” and instead of the Russian’s name, say “subject”.
He would dictate these thirty page or longer LHMs which drove my
supervisor nuts. My supervisor at one point even assigned fellow
squad member SA Vern Weimer to me to do my paper work.
A few days after one such debriefing I had picked up my neighbor
and friend from Oklahoma, Air Force Colonel Jim Nelson, at the
Pentagon in my bureau car to drive him out to a place near Andrews
AFB where he could get a Kirby vacuum cleaner wholesale from one
of my contacts. I knew that he was working in the subject area that
the Soviet was talking about. I handed him a copy of the Secret
LHM and suggested he read it as we drove. That evening he came
over to my house, two doors away, in Riverside Estates near Mount
Vernon. He told me that he had spent a very uncomfortable
afternoon. He said he was working with 800 other people in the
Pentagon on the US position for the SALT talks. From my LHM it
was clear to him that they weren’t even in the same ballpark. He
wanted to know how he could get an official copy of my LHM.
The next morning I went in to my supervisor and told him of the
request. To my surprise he told me to take them a copy. I took the
bus to the Pentagon where Colonel Nelson met me. He ushered me
into the office of a three star Vice Admiral who was Deputy Chief of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Colonel Nelson and GS-12 Agent George
sat patiently in front of the Admiral’s desk as he read the Letter Head
Memorandum on the debriefing of my source. Periodically his bushy
gray eyebrows would twitch and he would exclaim “those dirty
bastards” as he turned the pages. When he finished reading, he asked
a few questions about the background and bona fides of my source,
and then said, “May I communicate with your headquarters?” My
response was “Certainly”.
What I did not know until forty years later was that Colonel Nelson
and the Admiral could tell from the questions the Soviet was asking
that the United States position in Geneva had been leaked. The
Soviet even had the United States’ Position Points in chronological
order.
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George:
The Admiral immediately went to Secretary of Defense Melvin
Laird, who called Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who called in the
State Department FBI Liaison and reamed him out, demanding to
know how many other operations like this were going on that they
had not be informed about? Welcome FBI to the Political Branch of
the KGB. My case was one of the hotter ones in the Bureau for a
short time until the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia and the
disarmament talks were put off. This was to the United States’
advantage so our side could regroup. Subsequently, a Washington
Post correspondent was kicked out of Moscow and my Soviet was
declared persona non grata partly in retaliation, and partly to get rid
of him. This was in my last semester of law school at American
University. I was carrying fourteen hours in an effort to finish. The
FBI paper work was intensive as we closed out the case.
A few months later I had passed the Virginia Bar and was hired as a
GS-15 by the banking agency at the U. S. Department of
Agriculture. My source was subsequently contacted by another
Soviet, who directed him to meet the first Soviet, who had been
expelled from the US, up in Montreal, Canada. The source initially
could not get the attention of anyone at the FBI, as the case was
presumed concluded and closed. Here I was, putting together a spy
meet in Canada from the U. S. Department of Agriculture. My
source and fellow cold warrior visits me (40 years later) in Santa Fe
periodically as he has a sister living there.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
I have a recollection about us putting a little spy on the wrong
airplane, not one of Squad S-2’s finer moments.
Hollstein:
(Laughing)
George:
The person was Alexi Zencavages (phonetic). I don’t recall the
exact spelling but it would be listed in the diplomatic section of
Congressional Directories from the mid to late 1960s as a Second
Secretary of something in the Russian Embassy.
Our squad dealt with known or suspected Soviet KGB personnel. While we
each had our own case or cases, we were periodically saddled with
surveillance on one another’s spies. On one such occasion we were
directed to shadow a known KGB Agent of Lithuanian extraction assigned
to the Soviet Embassy in DC. He was rather small in stature compared to
most of the other diplomats.
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George:
This diplomat had gotten the required permission from the State
Department to travel to New York City. His case agent wanted to know
what the Soviet was doing while in New York. Was he making a spy meet,
or was he simply there on legitimate embassy business? Our job was to
confirm that he got on a particular plane, and the New York Agents would
then pick up the surveillance upon the target’s arrival in New York. They
would endeavor to determine what he might be doing while there. We
reciprocated for the New York Office with respect to their known or
suspected KGB Agents assigned to the UN or Consulate in NYC when they
visited DC.
On this day we tailed him to National Airport (now Reagan Airport). Once
inside the terminal he seemed to be taking his time in getting to the gate for
the Eastern Airlines Shuttle. My squad members, Alfred L Anderson, Robert
Taylor, Philip A. Thielman, and I were hoping to get this assignment out of
the way promptly. It was payday Friday and traditionally we went down to the
Flagship Restaurant on the waterfront for a seafood lunch. Thus, this slow
Soviet was beginning to interfere with our lunch plans. We could see out the
terminal window that the plane was already boarding.
I was dressed in a dark “Hoover Blue” suit, which was similar to those worn by
Eastern Airlines employees at the time. I approached the Soviet and said “Sir,
your plane is leaving.” Whereupon he picked up the pace toward the departure
gate. By the time we arrived at the gate the air craft (and this was back in the
days when the steps folded down from the inside of the airplane) had
completed boarding and the steps were already being retracted for departure. I
approached the airline gate agent, identified myself by flashing my
credentials, and told her to put the guy whom I pointed out to her on the plane.
The gate agent called the pilot, and hustled the little spy out on to the tarmac as
the pilot put the steps back down. I remember how forlorn and pathetic he
appeared as he stood there alone on the tarmac with his briefcase, awaiting the
descending steps with a hundred sets of eyes on the plane watching and
wondering who this dignitary was that was holding up the flight. In any event,
we finally got our ward on the plane, called the New York office, told them to
look for him on the next shuttle, and went on to our lunch.
A few months later, while on a personal trip to New York City, I learned that
the shuttle on the hour went to LaGuardia and the shuttle on the half hour went
to Newark, New Jersey. We had put the little spy on the shuttle to New Jersey.
It became clear why the New York agents had missed him upon arrival, as
well as the potential for an “international incident”.
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George:
Here is another situation involving this same Soviet. One of our tasks was to put
selected Americans in touch with Soviet KGB Agents in an effort to develop a
relationship and hopefully a double agent situation. In this case, we had the
Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) identify an Air Force enlisted
man of Lithuanian extraction.
We arranged for the airman to be in the parking lot of the Soviet’s apartment
complex when the Soviet arrived home in the evening. The Air Force person
was pretending to deal with a flat tire. As the Soviet walked by the car, our Air
Force Lithuanian USAF enlisted man was loudly cursing in the Lithuanian
language and lamenting his difficulty with changing a tire. This attracted the
attention of the target. He engaged the enlisted man in a conversation in
Lithuanian, subsequently developing a relationship. Once they established a
relationship, the OSI working with CIA, would transfer the airman to an
overseas military base in, for example Korea, Egypt, etc., to see who would
come out of the woodwork to make contact with him. I do not know the rest of
the story here, just the beginning, but this was one of the creative methods we
used at the time to confirm the identities of KGB personnel operating in
particular countries.
Hollstein:
You told me about an unusual installation.
George:
Yes, we had a special camera arrangement set up in a woman’s
apartment. In hindsight some of this may not sound proper or
necessarily be flattering to the FBI, but at the time we were in the
Cold War and looking for any opportunity to turn a Soviet Agent, or
if not, to cause problems at home and abroad. Kopytin was quite a
ladies man, though married to a beautiful Russian woman.
I will not use the names to protect the guilty. One of my sources was
a young woman librarian with an international organization who had
met the Soviet through a newsman friend while attending a
correspondent’s dinner. They struck up a relationship. Never under
estimate a librarian. They are smart, well read, patriotic and some are
willing to work undercover if need be, to further the cause of
freedom and democracy. The Soviet’s MO was to call every month
or so, tell her he was in the area, and ask if he could come by.
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George:
She lived in an efficiency apartment in Southwest DC on 4th Street
on the sixth floor. By coincidence, my wife and I lived in the same
development at 201 Eye Street, SW in another apartment building on
the sixth floor. Her balcony was about 200 feet away, over the tops
of some townhouses, from ours. Our plan was to endeavor to obtain
some compromising photos that we might use to embarrass him. At
the time, our perception was that his wife was a jealous kind, and we
were in the middle of the Cold War.
With my librarian’s permission, fellow squad member, the late
Robert E. (Bob) Beams, and I installed a camera inside a large
plastic clothes bag in her closet. We cut a hole through the drywall
and mounted a two-way mirror, which faced the sofa bed in the one
room apartment. The FBI Lab had fitted the camera with a receiver
that would click the shutter whenever the microphone of a handy
talkie two way radio, was keyed. Technology was not all that good
back then for no, or low, budget operations. The limiting factor was
that the handy talkie had to be no more that about 200 feet away, and
with no obstructions that might weaken the signal. We had sixty
frames of film in the camera. The plan was to key the mike about
every minute, thereby getting an hour of activity.
This matter dragged on for several weeks until one night the Soviet
did finally call again. Madam Librarian tried to reach me on my
beeper. Unfortunately, I was out at law school class and my beeper,
which I had carried religiously for the past six weeks, had
inadvertently been turned off. She then called my apartment and told
my new bride that she was unable to reach me. She reported that the
Soviet was on his way up, and time was short. My wife had
emergency instructions, so she turned on the handy talkie radio. The
temperature outside on the balcony was in the teens. She was trying
to dry her hair with one of those old backpack style hair dryers with
a bonnet on it and wearing a robe out in the bitter cold. At the same
time she was trying to take remote photos of a Soviet in bed. Her
microphone clicks out in the cold became more frequent than one
minute apart.
We thereafter pulled out the camera installation, and Bob Beams and
I refinished the dry wall in her apartment. A few months later, I was
sitting in the back row at an in-service course down at Quantico
when two guys from the FBI Lab came in. They had a big poster
display of our camera setup, and talked about the great installation
we recently used in southwest DC.
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June 29, 2009
Page 24
George:
I was the only one in the room who knew that, after all that effort,
the only thing we got was a bunch of photos of a Soviet mixing
himself a drink, and that the photos we did get were taken by my
new bride. Mr. Hoover might have had us all on the next bus to
Butte or worse had he known.
As an aside, the librarian enjoyed the attention of the several agents
she came in contact with over several months. One night about
midnight I was awakened by a phone call with the message. “Look
out your balcony”. I grabbed the binoculars and saw two of my (just
say they had been drinking) squad members along with the librarian
waving their arms at me from her balcony. I had to get dressed, go
retrieve them from her apartment, and drive them home in northern
Virginia in a snowstorm. The buses were no longer running that late.
It turns out that they had all gone to “The Place Where Louis
Dwells”, a nearby local bar and restaurant, for dinner and each of
them had enough to drink.
Additionally, thirty years later I would learn from a former KGB
Officer, Oleg Kalugin, that both the Soviet correspondent and his
wife were having affairs within the embassy community, and that
our efforts would have had little or no impact. Kalugin also
identified Kopytin as the one who had placed a microphone in the
Senate Armed Services Committee hearing room.
Hollstein:
Those were busy times.
George:
Yes, in WFO we had the Martin Luther King riots and the like. I
think we had 500 Agents in WFO at the time. I would sign up for
every weekend that was available, for surveillances and the like, so I
could take two days off during the week to deal better with law
school.
Hollstein:
Yeah, I can see where that would be a big advantage. You finished
your degree then?
George:
Yes, I finished my degree at American University. When I got to DC
I enrolled in Catholic University Law School since it was close to
the office. Eventually, CU Law School moved out to the main
campus. I then switched to American University. This was my fourth
law school under honorable conditions.
Hollstein:
Uh-huh. Did the law degree make much difference in your
assignments?
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June 29, 2009
Page 25
George:
No. The FBI didn’t have an interest in that at the time, and there was
an unwritten rule that FBI Agents could not become AUSA’s or
Justice Lawyers at the time, something I would have enjoyed doing.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm. Okay. Now, let’s see what else can we ask you about
here?
George:
Well, for a street agent, I met Mr. Hoover twice.
Hollstein:
How was that?
George:
The first time was in New Agents Class when part of our class work
was in the Old Post Office Building in DC. We each kept an extra
clean white shirt in the classroom for about a week while we were on
call to see the Director. Mr. Hoover prided himself in the fact that he
had met every one of his Agents at the time. When we finally got
the call to come to the Director’s office, we changed to our extra
shirt after being coached on firm handshakes and no sweaty palms.
Twenty-eight of us went in one door to shake hands with the
Director and we left out the back door in probably less than two
minutes.
Hollstein:
(Laugh)
George:
The then number two guy in the FBI, Clyde Tolson, during these two
minutes, was standing over in the corner behind the palm plant
awaiting the Director’s signal, just in case someone in the class did
not make a good appearance, or had a weak handshake, or a sweaty
palm, or other issues that would upset Mr. Hoover. Fortunately, for
us and for our class counselor, we each passed this test.
Hollstein:
Well, that’s good.
George:
So technically I “had” met Mr. Hoover. My sometime career coach,
Hob Adcock, from the Lynchburg RA inspection, had strongly
advised me that if I ever went back for an In-Service Class that I
should ask to see the Director. This was an option given at the start
of each Class and not without some risks. Adcock insisted that this
was a good career move and that I needed a favorable memo in the
file from the Director if I ever wanted to advance. Some agents used
this opportunity to plead for a transfer to a location for better
medical treatment of family members, and so forth.
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George:
My orders for an In-Service Course arrived. SAC Ralph Bachman
called me to come to his office in Newark from Atlantic City. Upon
my arrival he says, “George, I’ve got your orders here to go to inservice. I’m sure you have no burning desire to see the Director.”
SAC’s at the time were afraid that some agent might say something,
even inadvertently, to the Director which could cause the inspectors
to descend on their field offices or worse.
Hollstein:
Uh-huh.
George:
I had already gotten on Mr. Bachman’s radar screen over trying to
attend law school and this was another effort to deter me. I said,
“Gee boss, I think I’d really like to see the Director.” He was a little
gruff, and obviously displeased, but made no further effort to stop
me. When our class at In-service was asked whether anyone wanted
to see the Director, I raised my hand. At the appointed time, I
proceeded to the Director’s office. Upon entering, we shook hands,
and I said, “Mr. Hoover, I really have no problems and I really enjoy
my work. I just wanted to come in and say hello.” With that he
invited me to sit down. Now, Mr. Hoover was not a very tall guy.
The seat of the chair beside his desk where he invited me to sit was
only a few inches above the floor. One had to look almost straight up
at Mr. Hoover, which I suspect was part of the ambiance.
Hollstein:
Is that right? Huh!
George:
So he talked about thirty minutes while I sat in silence, and nodded
periodically. He spoke of the early days of the FBI, which was just
fascinating. Mr. Hoover talked specifically about the Alvin Karpus
gang, and the things that they had done. He talked about the arrests
that he had personally been involved in. After my thirty minutes of
allotted time was over, his secretary buzzed him. He stood up, and
thanked me for coming in. We shook hands, and I left.
My friends obtained a copy of Mr. Hoover’s write-up when it went
into my personnel file “Today I saw Special Agent George of the
Newark Office. He makes a good appearance and seems intensely
interested in his work. He should be considered for administrative
advancement.” At the time, having such a memo from the Director
in my file would preclude some SAC from saying that I was not a
splendid Agent. It was job security and future advancement
potential, had I stayed.
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June 29, 2009
Page 27
Hollstein:
Yeah. It was interesting how those things worked. I’ve heard this
story many times and, and it, very often, did have an effect. You
know, suddenly there were changes in opportunities and they
became relief supervisors, or had interesting assignments, and what
have you. So I guess it was worth it.
George:
I’ve heard the story of a SAC who went in to see Mr. Hoover. When
he left he was so rattled that instead of going out the front door he
walked into the closet and closed the door. (Laughing)
Hollstein:
(Laughing)
George:
And he waits there in the closet a few minutes. Finally, he opens the
closet door, and Mr. Hoover says, “What kept you?”
Hollstein:
That’s another interesting story. I’d love to find the guy that actually
was involved in that particular one.
George:
I am told that it was Ed Soucy, the SAC in Boston.
Hollstein:
You mentioned that you had some dealings after you left the Bureau
with some of your people you were investigating? Many years later.
George:
Shortly after I left the FBI and Squad S-2, Oleg Kalugin went back
to Russia. At the time we did not know about the Walker Spy Case.
The powers that be mistakenly thought that Kalugin was being sent
home because he was in some kind of trouble. Instead, it later turned
out that he was actually going back to be rewarded and promoted for
his work on that case. When he left DC for New York and on to
Moscow, Robert W. (Bob) Feuer and other agents followed him and
his family, looking for a place for an approach.
When Kalugin stopped at the Howard Johnson’s on the New Jersey
Turnpike for a coffee, Feuer got behind him in the coffee line. Feuer
said, “Oleg (and whatever his middle name was), you don’t have to
go back”. Kalugin turned around and said, “Oh, we are in the same
business”. Of course the effort to defect him did not work for reasons
we now know, but it was the first admission that he was KGB. For a
small world story, same location, according to Feuer who died in
2003, after he retired from the Bureau, he and his wife were driving
to New York on a personal trip. They stopped for lunch at the same
Howard Johnson’s where he had approached Kalugin years earlier.
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George:
The people in the next booth were speaking Russian. Bob struck up a
conversation with them. It turned out that one of the group was a
Russian Orthodox Priest who had sheltered Kalugin at one point
when the KGB was after him in Russia. Feuer gave him a message to
take back to Oleg.
Kalugin was the author of “The First Directorate: My 32 Years in
Intelligence.” He had handled the Walker Spy Case which gave
away our technology that allowed our submarines to run silently.
This got him promoted in the KGB and sent back to Moscow. He
eventually came back to DC after getting crossways with the KGB
himself, and service as an elected member of the State Duma, or
legislature. He went into the consulting business in partnership with
a former staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Committee Chairman, David Boren, a long time friend retired from
the Senate to become President of the Oklahoma University. Our
wives had been college roommates and I handled his personal legal
work. At David’s going away reception in the Russell Senate Office
Building, I spotted Kalugin in the crowd. I moved up beside him and
in a low voice asked “Whatever happened to Viktor Kopytin? He
turned to me, “Oh, you know Viktor?” He then told me where
Viktor was at the time in Russia, and that Viktor had some
undisclosed trouble, but that his wife’s family was well connected,
and had gotten him out of it.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
Some months later the Smithsonian was running a lecture series on
the Cold War entitled “The Hammer and Sickle.” Most of the
presenters were old former CIA Officials. However, Kalugin was the
speaker for one evening to present the other side. I attended that
evening. After his presentation I went up and introduced myself. I
told him that I would love to get together with him, with some of the
guys in the Washington Field Office, for lunch. He said, “Gee, I’d
love to do that too.” So I called my friend Bob Feuer, who had been
Kalugin’s Case Officer thirty years earlier, and the three of us went
to lunch at the City Club in DC. We spent a fascinating two hours
talking about different sides of the same cases, different
perspectives, and so forth.
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George:
Back in the 1960s, we had an initiative called the “smile program”.
Selected FBI agents would arrange to bump in to Soviets or “smile”
at them at various places along their route and try to strike up a
conversation or develop a relationship. Kalugin was Feuer’s target
under this program so they had talked years earlier. Feuer wrote a
memo of our discussion for the FBI and for our overall Supervisor,
Court Jones. I will provide you a copy.
Kalugin related to us a story of his days in Washington at the
Embassy. Usually Soviets went back to Russia for vacation. One
year he decided he wanted to stay in the US and to vacation in
Florida. He got permission from both his government and the U. S.
State Department to do so. He took off for Florida in his Green
Volkswagen, we used to follow around, accompanied by his wife
and I believe a daughter or granddaughter. Of course Agents
followed him the entire route. At one point his car broke down just
before he got to a motel. The agents on this “discrete surveillance”
took them to the motel in the bureau car. When the Kalugin’s came
out of the motel the next morning the Volkswagen was repaired and
sitting in front. He said that he thought about writing Mr. Hoover a
thank you letter but figured it would get the agents in trouble.
Bob and I got a chuckle from this, as we knew that the Agents just
wanted to get the guy out of their territory, and into the next field
office division. He also told us about writing an eight page
handwritten letter to Gorbachev telling him that if he did not get
control of the KGB it would get control of him.
Hollstein:
Uhm-hmm.
George:
I had a photo taken of the three of us at the time. I gave Kalugin a
copy. I also put one in the Grapevine in 1993. I used to get
Christmas cards from him when I lived in Virginia. My wife and I
have been to his house for dinner parties with the other guests,
mostly retired CIA types. I lost track of him the past few years,
except that I see him on the news from time to time. Cal Guymon,
one of my X-Agent colleagues in Albuquerque, works in intelligence
at Sandia Labs. He was back in DC a year ago for a training session
with his job. Former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin was one of
the presenters. According to Guymon, when Kalugin started his
presentation, he remarked that he had known a couple of guys that
were in the FBI’s Washington Field Office. He indicated that one
was Bob Feuer, and the other guy’s name temporarily escaped him.
He then popped a slide up on the screen with the three of us in the
photo that I had given him from our City Club lunch.
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June 29, 2009
Page 30
Hollstein:
That made you instantly famous, huh.
George:
Only in Albuquerque. My friend did come back with a little different
respect for his Chapter Secretary.
Hollstein:
So Kalugin has got to be a man of considerable age now, isn’t he?
George:
How old would he be?
Hollstein:
Yeah. Just roughly.
George:
He has to be close to 75 by now. I see him on TV from time to time.
He has just written another book.
Hollstein:
So that’s good. You left the Bureau in 1969 and where did you go
from there?
George:
I became Executive Assistant to the Administrator of the Farmer
Home Administration in the Department of Agriculture. I went from
a GS-12 FBI Agent to a GS-15 bureaucrat in another agency in one
day, which impressed the guys on the squad. This lending Agency
had six thousand employees and a three billion dollar budget. I was
in that job about six months before moving over to the Office of the
Secretary. There, I served as a Congressional Liaison Officer on the
Cabinet Secretary’s personal staff, first for Secretary Clifford Hardin
and next for Secretary Earl Butz when Hardin left to head Ralston
Purina. This was a great job handling the Department’s relations
with Congress. I had spent much of the previous four years learning
the workings of Capitol Hill via a Soviet KGB Political Branch
Agent as he made the rounds there.
During the 1972 Presidential Campaign I was an advanceman for
surrogate Presidential Candidate Earl Butz, and thereafter spent a
year in the General Counsel’s office at USDA before entering
private law practice in 1973.
Hollstein:
Well, there is life after the, after that life, huh?
George:
Yes, the opportunity to serve in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was my big
break in life. It opened doors and exposed me to a world I would
have never known existed. I was most fortunate to work on good
cases for outstanding SACs, Assistant Directors and Supervisors,
and with outstanding, dedicated agents and administrative staff.
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Others:
Here is a “FBI related” story that you can use or discard which I
provided in October to those of us who attended a reunion of former
Butz staffers at the Capitol Hill Club in DC. Former Secretary of
Agriculture, and former Dean of Purdue University, Earl Butz died
last year at age 96.
During the 1972 Presidential Campaign Nixon was doing things in
China, and rarely campaigned for re-election. Instead, he had his
Cabinet Secretaries on the campaign trail as Surrogate Candidates.
Butz was a dynamic public speaker and sought after particularly by
those other candidates running for office, for their events. Our
mission was to turn around the farm belt states in support of the
President. I was one of four Advance men for Butz. We advance
men “leap frogged” one another to our next event as soon as we
finished the last one. Our goal was to make the 6:00PM news and the
10:00PM news, and to be above the fold in every newspaper. I had a
letter in my pocket signed by former Attorney General John Mitchell
authorizing the advance man to cancel the event if it did not meet our
standards and goals.
We were in Albuquerque, NM in an effort to help Albuquerque City
Councilman, Pete Dominici, in his successful U. S. Senate
campaign. Our party consisted of Secretary Butz, Don Brock, his
personal Assistant, the USDA- OIG Bodyguard, Jack Neese, and me,
as the advance man for the event. We occupied a block of rooms at
the Downtowner Hotel before an event that evening at the
Albuquerque Convention center. Each of our adjacent individual
rooms opened to an outside walkway.
I had called a friend who was the Assistant Special Agent in Charge
(ASAC) of the Albuquerque FBI Office at the time, to inquire where
we might buy some Indian jewelry to take back to our respective
spouses in Virginia, as we were on a relatively tight schedule. My
friend volunteered that a number of his Agents worked on the Indian
Reservations where the jewelry was made, and that his office kept
some samples for purchase by visiting dignitaries from the
Washington Headquarters. He volunteered to send an agent over
with some of these trinkets for our consideration.
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George:
A short time later this FBI Agent knocked on Secretary Butz's door
by mistake, instead of mine. The Secretary answered the door,
whereupon the Agent flipped his credentials, and said "FBI, I've got
the jewelry." And then walked right past the Secretary and dumped
out a Seagram's Liquor cloth bag of turquoise and silver squash
blossom necklaces, bracelets, and rings onto the Secretary's bed.
Secretary Butz thought he was being framed, or else being set up, by
the Democrats. I was summoned from three doors away to sort out
the situation. Once matters were explained, we all had a big laugh.
Thereafter, Don and I picked up a few of the jewelry items at
wholesale, and the FBI Agent (who was quite embarrassed by having
imposed on the Cabinet Member by mistake) put the remaining
jewelry items back into the Seagram's bag and returned to his office.
Some fifteen years later I attended a function in DC, also attended by
Secretary Butz, and he was still quipping about the FBI and jewel
thieves.
And another:
On Friday night in June, 1972, I was home for the weekend after
several days on the campaign trail with Butz. My wife, Nancy, my
two-year old son, Richard, and I planned to go to the Watergate
concert on the waterfront by the Memorial Bridge where military
bands used to perform. On the way to the event, and shortly before
8:00PM, we stopped at the Howard Johnson restaurant across from
the Watergate complex to get my son an ice cream cone. My son and
I went inside and I ordered the ice cream from the cashier. I noticed
former FBI Agent and former CIA employee James N. McCord and
others seated on the far side of the counters facing me. McCord
hopped up, and came around to greet me.
Two months earlier, as head of Security for the Committee to ReElect the President, he had tried to hire me as a bodyguard for
Martha Mitchell. She was the wife of former Attorney General John
Mitchell, currently head of the Committee to Re-Elect. She had liked
the FBI agents who were around her when her husband was AG
(including my NAC Counselor Dan Brandt). Whomever they hired
had to be an FBI Agent in a certain age bracket.
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George:
They knew that I had worked on the LBJ Protection Detail. After
several interviews with Mitchell’s staff, including Fred Larue, in
which everyone agreed to my terms that I be given a lawyer position
in the firm of Mitchell, Rose and Alexander, Mr. Mitchell finally
turned it down, claiming that he already had too many attorneys in
the firm working in the campaign, so I withdrew. McCord said.
“You know what we want. Who would you recommend?” I told him
to call Former FBI Agent Stephen B. King, who was working on the
Senate Permanent Investigation Committee or Former FBI Agent
Robert McKenna who was working on the House Investigations
Committee. Both were friends from WFO. McCord had
subsequently hired Steve King. McCord told me what a great job
Steve was doing, and in fact he was currently at San Clemente with
Mrs. Mitchell that evening. This turned out to be the night of the
Watergate break-in. In hindsight the others involved were sitting
with McCord. He came around to greet me so that I would not come
to him. That got me an interview with the FBI, a page on my son and
me concerning our experience at the Howard Johnson’s in the book
“Secret Agenda” by Jim Hougan, and an interview by Len Colodny,
and a mention in his book, “Silent Coup, the Removal of a
President”. Apparently my son and I were the last ones to see the
Watergate burglars who weren’t arrested with them.
33