International Journal of Intelligence and
CounterIntelligence
ISSN: 0885-0607 (Print) 1521-0561 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujic20
Doubles Troubles: The CIA and Double Agents
during the Cold War
Benjamin B. Fischer
To cite this article: Benjamin B. Fischer (2016) Doubles Troubles: The CIA and Double Agents
during the Cold War, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 29:1, 48-74,
DOI: 10.1080/08850607.2015.1083313
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08850607.2015.1083313
Published online: 13 Nov 2015.
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International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 29: 48–74, 2016
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0885-0607 print=1521-0561 online
DOI: 10.1080/08850607.2015.1083313
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BENJAMIN B. FISCHER
Doubles Troubles: The CIA and Double
Agents during the Cold War
FOOL ME ONCE OR FOOL ME MANY TIMES
Double agents are a special breed of people. They pretend to spy for one
foreign intelligence service while actually spying for another. All
intelligence services fall victim to such deception from time to time. It’s all
part of the ‘‘wilderness of mirrors’’ in spy wars where illusion and reality
coexist and confound. Former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI)
Richard Helms once told Congress that detecting a double-agent operation
is ‘‘one of the most difficult and tricky aspects of intelligence work, and
there isn’t anybody who’s been in it very long who hasn’t been tricked
once, twice, maybe many times.’’1
Helms’s statement was prophetic, though he couldn’t have known it.
During the Cold War the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) bucked the law
of averages by recruiting double agents on an industrial scale; it was
hoodwinked not a few but many times. The result was a massive but largely
ignored intelligence failure. The facts are available from official sources.
Double agent operations do not figure prominently in accounts of Cold
War espionage. Revelations about the Cuban, East German, and Soviet/
Russian fiascos attracted some attention in their day but were soon
Benjamin B. Fischer, the former Chief Historian of the Central Intelligence
Agency, is a specialist on Eastern European and Soviet affairs. A graduate
of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and Columbia University, New
York City, he served for nine years in the Agency’s Directorate of
Intelligence as an analyst of Soviet issues, fifteen years in the Directorate of
Operations in the United States and abroad, and ten years on the History
Staff of the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence, where he edited
several of the Agency’s classified publications on Cold War events, some of
which have been partially or fully declassified.
48
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forgotten. U.S. intelligence was always more scared of ‘‘moles,’’ i.e., traitors
within its own ranks, than of doubles. The Great Mole Hunt or Great Mole
Scare of the late 1960s turned the CIA inside out, ruining careers and
reputations in the search for Soviet penetrations that may or may not have
existed. The mole threat was a chimera, at least until turncoat Aldrich
Ames began spying for the KGB (Soviet Committee for State Security) in
1985.
The real threat came, however, from double agents. As two former East
German intelligence officers explained:
It was difficult to operate against the CIA without inside sources. But it
was not impossible. Naturally, we tried but did not succeed in placing
agents in the CIA. Nevertheless, there was not a single CIA operation
on GDR [German Democratic Republic] territory that we were not
able to detect using IMBs [double agents] and counterespionage
operations.2
By controlling the CIA’s putative agents, the East German Ministry for State
Security (MfS) rendered U.S. intelligence deaf, dumb, and blind.3 A mole or
two might not have caused as much damage.
The Soviets, East Germans, and Cubans wreaked havoc on the CIA during
the Cold War, but no one died. Then, in 2009, a double agent/suicide
bomber killed seven CIA officers and contractors and two foreign
nationals at Forward Base Chapman near the eastern Afghan city of
Khost. This tragedy underscored the risks of running double agents in a
new kind of spy war. It also indicated that some lessons from the Cold
War were not learned.
OUR MAN FROM HAVANA
The first shock came in 1987 when Cuban intelligence officer Florentino
Aspillaga Lombard defected to the CIA. Aspillaga claimed that all of the
CIA’s Cuban agents—some four dozen over a 40-year period—were
actually Havana’s agents.4 His story was hard to swallow, but all doubts
vanished the same year when Fidel Castro launched a propaganda
campaign aimed at rubbing salt in the Yanquis’s wounds. Cuban media
identified 27 of the phony agents who had pretended to spy for the CIA.
The following year Cuban television premiered an eleven-part series based
on clandestine footage of CIA officers engaged in various operational
tasks against the island nation. 5 Thanks to the doubles, Cuban
counterintelligence could identify the CIA case officers and monitor their
activities.
Castro probably reckoned that his documentary would find an echo in the
U.S.6 It didn’t. According to former CIA officer and Cuba expert Brian Latell,
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‘‘Fortunately for the CIA, the two intelligence oversight committees in
Congress cooperated either by suppressing the story or by never insisting on
being fully apprised of it. Surprisingly, too, there were no leaks until years
later.’’7 Latell speculates that Washington’s preoccupation with the Iran–
Contra scandal in the summer of 1987 overshadowed Aspillaga’s revelations.
The Cuban fiasco should have been a canary in the coal mine. The CIA
knew that Soviet and East German intelligence had funded and trained the
Cubans. It would not have been a big leap in logic to wonder if the
Cubans were emulating their mentors.
A WOLF AT THE DOOR
In his memoir East German spymaster Markus Wolf claimed that:
By the late 1980s, we were in the enviable position of knowing that not a
single CIA agent had worked in East Germany without having been
turned into a double agent or working for us from the start. On our
orders they were all delivering carefully selected information and
disinformation to the Americans.8
Was Wolf boasting or lying or both? Former CIA officials backed up his
claim. Ex-Deputy Director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, for example, told
Congress that ‘‘most, if not all [East German] Humint agents over 20 years
were double agents.’’9 Former DCI Robert M. Gates put it more bluntly:
‘‘We were duped by double agents in Cuba and East Germany.’’10 Milton
Bearden, the last chief of the CIA’s Soviet–East European Division (SE),
which was responsible for East German operations, added that ‘‘every one
of the men who seemed ready to change sides turned out to be a double
agent; the CIA had had no luck in recruiting even the dullest functionaries.’’11
Anonymous CIA officers joined the chorus. ‘‘We were batting zero’’ in East
Germany one noted. Another added that ‘‘They dangled people in front of
us . . . [and] we wound up taking the bait.’’12
The CIA’s East German humiliation was a ‘‘Wall-to-Wall’’ intelligence
failure.13 The CIA had no advance warning of the 1961 decision to build
the Berlin Wall and learned about it from radio broadcasts. In 1989 it was
‘‘CNN rather than the CIA that would keep Washington informed of the
fast-moving events in Berlin’’ that led to the opening of the Wall. 14 In
between, most of what the CIA knew, or thought it knew, about the GDR
was no more and no less than what Wolf wanted it to know.
As in the Cuban case, the East Germans’ con game attracted little or no
attention. Journalist Tim Weiner’s history of the CIA, for example, which
accentuates Langley’s failures, follies, and foibles, contains not a single
reference to the GDR or East German intelligence in the index. 15 The
Cold War was over, victory was the West’s, and the CIA was in hot water
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DOUBLES TROUBLES: DOUBLE AGENTS
51
over allegations that it had failed to foresee the looming collapse of the Soviet
Union. No one thought to ask if there was a connection between the East
German double agents and the lack of warning about the collapse of the
GDR two years earlier. The Agency escaped unscathed again. But a bigger
controversy was brewing.
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A DOUBLE DECEPTION
The 1994 arrest of CIA officer Aldrich (Rick) Ames on charges of spying for the
KGB and its successor, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), sent
tremors through Langley. The aftershock came 18 months later with
revelations that Ames had done more than expose all of the CIA’s Soviet and
Eastern European operations. According to then-DCI John Deutch, Ames
also had provided information about CIA methods that enabled the KGB ‘‘to
pass carefully selected ‘feed material’ [a combination of accurate and false
data] to the United States through controlled agents.’’16 The KGB operation
began in 1986 and continued unabated by the SVR until seven years later.
The story began with Aleksandr Zhomov, a KGB officer assigned to watch
the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and its CIA contingent. In 1987, he
approached the CIA station chief and offered to sell inside information in
exchange for payment and resettlement in the U.S. Zhomov said he could
obtain documents explaining how his service had managed to unmask and
arrest virtually all of the CIA’s Soviet agents in 1985–1986—information
the Agency was desperately seeking.17
The offer seemed too good to be true, which it turned out to be.
Nevertheless, the SE Division accepted Zhomov’s terms and encrypted him
as GTPROLOGUE. 18 Zhomov was a dangle, and his mission was to
protect Ames. He provided fabricated records ‘‘proving’’ that his service
had rounded up the agents Ames betrayed through a combination of adroit
surveillance and sheer luck. The subliminal message: there’s no mole in
your midst. Zhomov diddled the CIA for three years before his hoax was
exposed and after it had bought Ames more time to continue spying.
The next part of Zhomov’s con game was more daring. He claimed that the
KGB was planning to dangle a spate of phony agents that it knew would be
of ‘‘special interest’’ to U.S. intelligence. Zhomov offered to identify the
agents only if the CIA played along with the deception and recruited the
new doubles. Otherwise, Zhomov declared, he would come under suspicion
and be caught sooner or later. The SE Division bought Zhomov’s story,
and soon thereafter the dangles began appearing ‘‘like clockwork.’’ The
chief of SE Division noted in his memoir that:
Before long, the double agent cases came to dominate the workload in
Moscow, and [the station chief] could see that far too much of the time
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BENJAMIN B. FISCHER
and energy of his case officers was being spent on agents that the CIA
knew to be frauds.19
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The CIA acknowledged that it had paid Zhomov a handsome sum but
refused to say how much. The Agency was offering a $1 million reward for
information about its lost agents, and Zhomov may have received payment
near that amount.20 He then disappeared.
A DOUBLE DECEPTION
In 1995 the CIA acknowledged that, for eight years beginning in 1986, the SE
Division and its successor, the Central Eurasian Division (CED), had issued
highly classified intelligence reports from ‘‘bogus’’ or ‘‘tainted’’ sources
while concealing their questionable provenance. 21 Thirty-five were from
agents known to be doubles, and 60 were from suspect sources. 22 These
were not routine disseminations that passed unnoticed in the Washington
bureaucracy’s daily paper shuffle. They were ‘‘blue-border’’ issuances, so
called because of a dark blue line imprinted on each page indicating that
they contained information from the most sensitive and reliable human
intelligence (HUMINT) sources. Such reports are rated above top secret
and stamped ‘‘eyes only.’’ Their ‘‘bigot-list’’ was limited to the highestranking national security officials, who had to sign for the documents that
were hand-carried and then returned to CIA Headquarters. Eleven blueborders were earmarked for three Presidents. As one newspaper reported,
‘‘Some key officials in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations know their stuff
is tainted, know it comes from agents who have been compromised, and yet
put it in channels leading right to the White House.’’23
The SE/CE Division’s senior reports officer reportedly claimed that the
sources of the blue-border documents were suspect but that the
information was still good. Similarly, a colleague stated that the Cuban
doubles were controlled but ‘‘still provided important insights.’’ 2 4
Nevertheless, the reports made no reference to the dubious nature of their
sources and offered no explanation of how (or whether) the ‘‘good’’
information was culled from the feed material.
The media clamored after the new disclosures. Both congressional
intelligence oversight committees were reportedly ‘‘outraged.’’ One former
intelligence official said that lawmakers were going to ‘‘hammer the DO
[Directorate of Operations].’’25 It was time for a mea culpa. The Agency’s
inspector general called the affair ‘‘an incredible discovery,’’ adding that it
created ‘‘a feeling that the Agency couldn’t be trusted.’’ 26 Former DCI
Robert Gates stated that the Directorate of Operations, notably the SE and
CE Divisions, ‘‘broke faith with both the CIA and Department of Defense
analysts and with U.S. policymakers.’’27
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DOUBLES TROUBLES: DOUBLE AGENTS
53
Despite the uproar, the CIA might have skated again if the double agent
story had not been conflated with other issues. Members of the House and
Senate intelligence oversight committees charged that the tainted information
‘‘was crucial to Washington’s perception of Moscow in the last seven years
of the Cold War . . . and may have affected decisions to spend billions of
dollars on military hardware.’’ 28 Deutch complained that the bogus
intelligence ‘‘made it much more difficult to understand what was going on
in the Soviet Union at a crucial time in its history.’’29 Another intelligence
official added that disinformation raised ‘‘the disturbing possibility’’ that
U.S. intelligence had been duped into overestimating the USSR’s military
and economic strength and political stability even as it was tottering on the
brink of demise.30 The Pentagon launched its own investigation into whether
it had been fooled into ‘‘designing weapons systems to combat possibly
non-existent threats posed by misleading information.’’31
Public rancor led to finger-pointing and mutual recriminations between
CIA officials past and present. The Agency’s inspector general
recommended that several senior officers, as well as former DCIs William
H. Webster, Robert M. Gates, and R. James Woolsey, be reprimanded for
covering up the Ames case and the double agent deception. All three
co-signed a rejoinder disclaiming culpability because they hadn’t known
what was happening on their watch. Instead, they blamed the inspector
general for not uncovering the sordid affair earlier. Deutch ignored the
inspector general’s recommendation to cite his predecessors, but he
reprimanded several lower-ranking officers.
The controversy soon died down. The fix was in. The CIA and Pentagon
sensed that they were in trouble and joined forces to dismiss or ‘‘blunt’’ the
matter.32 Gates later claimed that the reports had little or no effect on CIA
assessments and played no role in U.S. positions on arms control or other
negotiations. 33 Ditto for the Defense Department, he added, where the
impact of the ‘‘tainted’’ intelligence was ‘‘on the margins’’ to ‘‘negligible’’
on weapons decisions. He further asserted that ‘‘the notion that a few dozen
clandestine reports over nearly seven years . . . led the U.S. intelligence
community to overestimate Soviet military capabilities is wrong.’’ 34
However, the CIA inspector general, who investigated the matter, claims
that Soviet success in channeling false ‘‘SOVMAT intelligence (planes,
tanks, military R&D)’’ to three U.S. Presidents and their advisers was ‘‘the
most bizarre case of fabrication during the Cold War.’’35
Why had the CIA continued dealing with sources ‘‘it knew to be frauds?’’
Author and intelligence expert Thomas Powers opined that it wanted to
conceal from Congress and policymakers the loss of its Soviet agents.36 He
was right. Intelligence officers have a saying that the only thing worse than
knowing there is a mole in your organization is finding the mole. It’s
meant as a jest but the CIA took it seriously. Finding a mole means an
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BENJAMIN B. FISCHER
arrest, which, in turn, creates unfavorable publicity that undermines
politicians’ and the public’s confidence in the Agency. The CIA and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sat on their inquiry into the 1985–
1986 losses and spoofed three DCIs and Congress until the bitter end. The
House intelligence oversight committee, for example, reported that between
1988 and 1992 four of its members asked the CIA for ‘‘information about
counterintelligence problems and the loss of Soviet agents.’’ Langley either
stonewalled ‘‘or responded in an incomplete and misleading manner by
senior Agency counter-intelligence officials.’’ The CIA and the FBI did not
even alert lawmakers about their mole hunt ‘‘until shortly before Ames’
arrest.’’37
There were other considerations as well. CIA officials told Senate
investigators (apparently with a straight face) that:
SE Division was continuing to get new Soviet cases by . . . [mid-1986 to
1987] which appeared to be surviving. This development appears to
have led some to conclude several years later that whatever the source
of the compromises had been, it no longer seemed to be causing
problems.38
The SE Division still needed sources and still needed to produce intelligence
reports. Otherwise, sooner or later someone in the upper reaches of the
Washington bureaucracy would have asked: ‘‘Why haven’t I seen any
intelligence on the Soviet Union lately?’’ The senior SE reports officer
recommended an astonishing solution: continue disseminating intelligence
from ‘‘tainted’’ sources that ‘‘the CIA knew to be frauds’’ without telling
anyone. The ‘‘solution’’ turned the CIA, the KGB, and then the SVR, into
tacit co-conspirators in fraud. The chairman of the Senate oversight
committee challenged the SE’s defense that some of the information was
good by drily noting that since it came from ‘‘controlled agents, I assume
it was not given to benefit the US.’’39
MOLE PROTECTION
For nine years the KGB used dangles and a false defector to divert, mislead,
and confuse CIA investigators looking into the agent losses of 1985–1986.
Moscow sent the investigators off on wild goose chases that led nowhere
but always away from Ames.40 In fact, a daring plan emerged in which the
KGB, perhaps for the first time, dangled its own officers.41
The sanitized version of the CIA’s official damage assessment omits any
mention of the KGB ploys. The Senate oversight committee’s account
includes, however, a cryptic reference to ‘‘KGB diversions’’ that led the
CIA and the FBI to ‘‘believe that the sources compromised by Ames were
either still alive . . . or had been lost because of problems unrelated to a
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human penetration of the CIA.’’42 The account added that investigators could
not determine ‘‘precisely what these diversionary ploys meant’’ or that ‘‘the
KGB was trying to divert attention from a human penetration.’’43 Both the
CIA and the oversight committees blamed bureaucratic bungling and
incompetence for the nine-year-long, desultory investigation that eventually
led to Ames’s arrest without, however, probing evidence that the KGB had
managed to hide Ames in plain sight.
TWIN DOUBLES?
The CIA touts Adolf Tolkachev as its ‘‘billion-dollar spy’’ during the 1980s,
asserting that the Soviet electronics researcher saved the Pentagon several
times that amount in research and development (R&D) and production
costs with purloined information on Soviet military radar and avionics. I
believe, however, that Tolkachev was a double agent, in fact the precursor
to the dangles who came after his 1985 arrest. 44 Like his successors,
Tolkachev offered technical data, which is often used in dangle operations
and difficult to verify.45
Another connection between Tolkachev and his successors is possible. The
CIA may have released the ‘‘billion-dollar spy’’ story as a public-relations
effort to counter accusations that the post-Tolkachev doubles spoofed the
Defense Department into wasting billions.46
Tolkachev was not the only double on the CIA’s payroll. SE Division was
handling another agent encrypted EASTBOUND, who also was selling
information on military radars.47 Soviet and East German sources have
confirmed that the anonymous agent was a double. 48 I believe that
Tolkachev and EASTBOUND were fraternal twins.49
DOUBLES BEFORE AMES?
The KGB almost certainly began dangling phony agents to the CIA before
Zhomov appeared on the scene. Between 1977 and 1985, i.e., before Ames
began spying, the KGB snared seven CIA case officers who were declared
persona non grata (PNG) and expelled from the Soviet Union. A few PNG
actions were reported in the press, but some were ‘‘quiet expulsions,’’ a
face-saving measure that the U.S. and Soviet governments sometimes used
to prevent espionage cases from roiling diplomatic relations. Rem
Krasil’nikov, the chief of the KGB’s First (American) Department of the
Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence) cited the pre-1985
expulsions in his memoir.50
Krasil’nikov had some help from Edward Lee Howard, a former SE
Division officer who was fired in 1983 and then began cooperating with
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BENJAMIN B. FISCHER
the KGB before defecting to Moscow two years later. But most of the PNG
actions were carried out before 1984. That all seven officers were caught in
flagrante delicto is, however, improbable. Good detective work rarely
results in the capture of foreign intelligence operatives or their agents. The
KGB either had another mole in SE Division or it was setting up CIA case
officers with double agents. My money is on the second explanation.
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DID AMES BETRAY REAL AGENTS OR PHONIES?
Victor Cherkashin was the senior KGB counterintelligence officer in
Washington who supervised the recruitment of Aldrich Ames in 1985.
Back in Moscow his colleague, Krasil’nikov, ambushed CIA officers on
their way to meet the agents identified by Ames—a frequent occurrence in
1985–1986. Cherkashin claims that some of the agents Ames was accused
of fingering were actually ‘‘loyal KGB officers who made the CIA and
FBI believe they spied for them.’’ 51 Was the ex-KGB man trying to
exculpate Ames or least to mitigate the damage he caused? Or was he
trying to stir up controversy many years after the Cold War? I believe that
he was telling the truth.
Freelance journalist Pete Earley compiled the most accurate list of Soviet
agents that Ames was accused of betraying. Earley received extensive
cooperation from the CIA, as well from the SVR in Moscow, and he
conducted his own independent research, which resulted in the following
roster of names and cryptonyms:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
BLIZZARD
VANQUISH
TICKLE
WEIGH
MILLION
FITNESS
VILLAGE
COWL
GENTILE
GAUZE
MEDIUM
TWINE
JOGGER
TOPHAT
ACCORD
GLAZING
TAME
Sergey Bokhan
Adolf Tolkachev
Oleg Gordievsky
Leonid Poleschuk
Gennady Smetanin
Gennady Varenik
Still Living in Russia
Sergey Vorontsov
Valery Martynov
Sergey Motorin
Vladimir Potashev
Boris Yuzhin
Vladimir Piguzov
Dmitri Polyakov
Vladimir Vasilyev
Still Living in Russia
Still Living in Russia
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18. BACKBEND
19. VEST
20. EASTBOUND
57
Still Living in Russia
Still Living in Russia
Still Living in Russia52
The six agents cited as ‘‘still living in Russia’’ are suspect. Virtually all of the
real agents fingered by Ames were imprisoned, and several were executed.
EASTBOUND’s double agent status has been confirmed, thus lending
credence to the possibility that the other unidentified persons also were
doubles. Hence, the SVR did not want to reveal their names or allow
Earley to interview them.
There is no doubt about the bona fides of numbers 1, 3, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13,
and 15. Bokhan, a GRU (military intelligence) officer, worked for the CIA in
Athens. He managed to defect after coming under suspicion. Gordievsky was
a British agent and one of the most valuable Western sources during the Cold
War. He came under suspicion, was recalled to Moscow, and then escaped
with help from British intelligence. Varenik spied for the CIA in Bonn, West
Germany; his arrest and execution were confirmed. Martynov and Motorin
were recruited by the FBI in Washington; their executions were verified. The
KGB arrested Potashev, Yuzhin, and Piguzov. All three were eventually
released from the Gulag, and the latter two were pardoned. Vasilyev helped
the CIA catch a Hungarian agent, Sgt. Clyde Lee Conrad, who ran a spy
ring inside the U.S. Army. Vasilyev was arrested and probably executed.53
Poleschuk exhibited all the signs of a dangle and con artist. He first
approached the CIA while posted overseas in the early 1970s and asked for
money to cover funds that he had allegedly embezzled and gambled away. As
soon as the CIA paid him, he disappeared for ten years. Poleschuk
reappeared in Nigeria in 1985 with another offer to spy and another plea for
up-front payment, this time for money to buy an apartment in Moscow.
(There was no private property in the Soviet Union, so the story should have
raised suspicions.) The CIA delivered payment in a dead drop in Moscow
after Poleschuk claimed that he had been granted special home leave.
Through KGB channels, the CIA learned—or more likely was misled—that
Poleschuk had been arrested while was retrieving his dead drop. No one
questioned how the KGB knew about Poleschuk’s contact with the CIA and=
or when and where he would retrieve the dead drop.
Smetanin was a GRU officer in Portugal when he asked the CIA for the
incredible sum of $330,000, which, he claimed, was the amount he had
embezzled from office funds. His story lacked any shred of credibility. A
GRU outpost in a small country was not likely to have that much money
on hand. As soon as he received the money, Smetanin was suddenly
recalled to Moscow and never heard from again. (CIA sources concede
that Smetanin was a scammer.54)
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BENJAMIN B. FISCHER
Vorontsov, a Moscow-based KGB officer, was one of the dangles who
diverted attention from Ames. He claimed that his service had used a
chemical ‘‘taggant’’ that the SE Division called ‘‘spy dust’’ to mark CIA
officers in Moscow and then follow them as they met agents. The story
was later debunked as a hoax.55
The case of Polyakov, a GRU officer, is ambiguous. A former KGB
general claims that he was involved in an operation to dangle Polyakov to
the FBI in New York in the 1960s. The Bureau handed Polyakov over to
the CIA, which continued meeting him intermittingly for almost 20 years
during his foreign assignments. At some point, according to the ex-KGB
officer, Polyakov switched sides and began cooperating with the CIA. The
Soviet press reported that he was executed.56
Only nine of the 20 cases cited by name or cryptonym on Earley’s list
appear to have been bona fide agents. Polyakov may have been a double
agent and a real agent at different times. I believe that four of the Soviets
on Earley’s list, namely Tolkachev, Poleschuk, Smetanin, and Vorontsov,
were dangles, and that the remaining six ‘‘still living in Russia’’ probably
fall into the same category.
BACK TO (GT)PROLOGUE
One name is conspicuously missing from Earley’s list: Aleksandr Zhomov. The
CIA misidentified Smetanin to Earley as GTPROLOGUE for reasons that are
unclear.57 Zhomov, however, also appeared in pseudonym on the Department
of Justice’s ‘‘Statement of Facts’’ in the Ames case.58 Although Ames gave the
KGB Zhomov’s name, the CIA already knew from sad experience that
Zhomov was a double agent.59 Zhomov was not the only double agent cited
in in the statement, however. Also included were GTCOWL (Vorontsov),
GTMILLION (Smetanin), and GTWEIGH (Poleschuk).
SMILE! YOU’RE ON CANDID CAMERA!
The Soviets and the Cubans rightly regarded CIA clandestine tradecraft as the
best in the world.60 Technical advances in the 1970s—disguises, concealment
devices, and especially electronic covert communications devices—enabled
the SE Division to recruit ‘‘the most dazzling inventory of agents in CIA
history.’’61 Selected officers attended a special tradecraft course for and
about ‘‘denied areas,’’ that is the Eastern bloc, China, and Cuba, where
they learned various techniques to detect and elude these countries’
surveillance. Nevertheless, even the best tradecraft in the world offered no
protection from double agents. The KGB, the MfS, and the Cuban
Ministry of the Interior (Minint) used doubles to maneuver CIA case
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officers in front of hidden cameras where their operations were caught on
film.62
The 1988 Cuban television production The CIA’s War Against Cuba
suggested that every CIA operational act in Havana and its environs was
probably videotaped. Castro’s version of CIA reality TV was technically
well done—and not only in Cuba.63 Agent meetings in Europe were also
taped. 64 The Cubans used sophisticated Japanese equipment that was
purchased with CIA money paid to double agents.65
Clandestine photography—close-ups and angle shots from above and at
ground level—revealed concealment devices with bundled pesos for agent
salaries and a fake rock used to hide dead drops. The exposé featured an
array of the CIA’s most advanced covert electronic communications
devices, including radios and racks of communications gear, as well as
transmitters hidden in briefcases, picnic baskets, and tool boxes. The
highlight was the CIA’s state-of-the-art burst transmitter, the RS-804,
which relayed encrypted messages in electronic flashes via satellite.66
The Cubans acquired a trove of less sophisticated spy gear. They found
miniature microphones concealed inside fountain pens and cigarette lighters,
briefcases with secret compartments to hide documents, radios sewn inside
teddy bears, and microphone transmitters hidden in sanitary napkins. 67
Everything was turned over to KGB and East German counterintelligence
for analysis.68
The CIA’s lapse in judgment was twofold. First, Langley dismissed the
Cubans ‘‘as bush-league amateurs, Latino lightweights in the conspiratorial
sweepstakes of superpower espionage.’’69 Second, the Agency believed that
its denied-area tradecraft was good enough to protect its operations on
Castro’s home turf. The reality was quite different. The Cubans almost
certainly had wired the U.S. Interests Section, opened in 1977, for covert
audio and video coverage before the Americans arrived, and they may
have continued to make surreptitious entries thereafter.70 They considered
their surveillance skills among the best in the world and probably weren’t
exaggerating.71
The MfS and KGB also used clandestine photography to keep an eye on
CIA case officers. Former East German officers watched in amusement as
one officer in East Berlin and his wife prepared for an agent rendezvous.
They changed clothes and put on wigs ‘‘probably with the illusion that
such frippery would fool the East Berlin counterespionage service standing
in the background.’’72 The dress rehearsal wasn’t necessary. The couple
were on their way to meet an ‘‘agent,’’ a double, where more covert
surveillance awaited them.
In Moscow, the KGB observed another dress rehearsal as a CIA case
officer donned clothing purchased in local stores. The unsuspecting man
thought his masquerade would enable him to blend in with people on the
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street.73 He needn’t have bothered. The ‘‘agent’’ was the aforementioned
EASTBOUND, who ‘‘worked for the CIA but also, and with more
dedication, for Soviet counterintelligence.’’ It was a setup. The CIA man
was arrested, declared persona non grata, and ordered to leave Moscow in
48 hours. The same officer transferred to another post, where he recruited
an East German who also was a double. There was no sting this time. The
CIA officer was known to Soviet and East German intelligence and
remained under scrutiny for the rest of his career.
The KGB and MfS collaborated on a clandestine surveillance project in East
Berlin. In this case, a CIA officer thought he was going to pitch a GRU officer
posted to the GDR. The man grew nervous when the glue used to attach his
fake beard kept melting from heat generated by hidden camera lights. The
pitch was declined; apparently the KGB and MfS just wanted to confirm the
man’s CIA affiliation rather initiate a double agent operation. The East
Germans wondered whether the failed recruitment had set back the CIA
man’s career.74 It didn’t. He eventually was promoted to deputy director for
operations, the top official responsible for all U.S. foreign intelligence.
In the GDR, the SE Division repeated the same mistake made by the Latin
American Division in Cuba. It underestimated the size and competence of the
secret police, the Stasi, and concluded that the East Germans ‘‘didn’t follow
CIA officers as diligently as did the KGB.’’75 In fact, the CIA officers were
under blanket surveillance around the clock so that ‘‘nothing happened that
was not supposed to happen.’’76
FOOL OR KNAVE?
One CIA officer held the record for ‘‘recruiting’’ East German doubles, a
total of 11. The MfS knew him first as ‘‘Alex Brinkmann’’ and later as
‘‘Alfred Thielemann,’’ his operational aliases, before they learned his true
name.77 He pursued East Germans traveling in West Germany and then
made ‘‘cold pitches.’’ After a brief encounter in a bar or over dinner, he
would simply ask ‘‘Would you like to work for US intelligence?’’ or state
‘‘I have an opportunity for you to make some quick money.’’
East German agents in West Germany began tracking ‘‘Thielemann’’ soon
after he arrived. According to Markus Wolf, his officers began by ‘‘noting his
targets and establishing what he was looking for. Gradually, we started
feeding him targets—agents working for us who would allow themselves to
be recruited . . . [and then] give him a mixture of unimportant secrets and
disinformation.’’78 The targets were members of an elite group known as
Reisekader, or traveling cadre. They were ordinary GDR citizens recruited
and trained to ferret out foreign intelligence officers on their trips to the West.
East German intelligence officers found ‘‘Thielemann’’ amusing. He took
the bait every time, and even boasted to one of his putative agents that he
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had been promoted to the CIA’s equivalent rank of general and received a pay
raise for his efforts. Tongue in cheek, the East Germans claimed credit for
‘‘Thielemann’s’’ career advancement since they had provided the
‘‘worthless’’ information he reported to Langley.79
‘‘Thielemann’’ should have been suspicious about the ease with which he
was able to meet and pitch the travelers. They were denizens of a fearsome
police state that built the Berlin Wall to keep its people in and the CIA
out. Virtually every GDR citizen allowed out was vetted before leaving
and interrogated upon returning home. Families were held hostage in
order to guarantee that travelers would return. ‘‘Thielemann,’’ moreover,
was better suited than native-born CIA officers to be suspicious. He was
born in pre-war Germany, spoke native German, and arrived in the U.S.
as a teenage refugee from the Nazis. Was this a fool who was snookered
by Wolf’s dangles or did he know better? The question can’t be answered;
‘‘Thielemann’’ took his secrets to his grave.
LOOSE LIPS
‘‘Thielemann’’ wasn’t the only CIA officer with loose lips. The East Germans were
surprised at how quickly and easily CIA officers sought to establish personal
rapport with their agents by revealing details of their private and professional
lives. Unofficial contact persons (IMBs) were trained to elicit information from
their contacts, especially in unguarded moments, without alerting them.80
In one case a double agent didn’t even have to try hard. A CIA officer
bragged about his role in an audio (‘‘bugging’’) operation in Bonn. The
target was a Soviet military attaché, a GRU intelligence officer. The officer’s
account was so specific that the Soviets were able to find and remove hidden
microphones with little effort. The same officer freely talked about his
efforts to recruit a Third World ambassador.81 Why he would confide in a
foreigner about secret operations is not clear. Former East German
counterespionage officers note, however, that an intelligence officer’s life is a
lonely one, that even professionals need the recognition and praise for their
work that they may not receive at home or in the office. CIA officers were
constantly cautioned against ‘‘falling in love’’ with their agents, but some did.
OPERATION DOM
Double agents allowed the MfS to keep one step ahead of the CIA. In the
mid-to-late 1980s, Langley decided to establish an overseas counterterrorism
unit to target terrorist organizations based in East Germany. The East
Germans intended to keep the terrorists under observation to ensure that
they did not commit wanton acts of death and destruction in the GDR.
They also provided safe haven, funding, and training to selected radical
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organizations, however, and then directed them to attack the West, and
especially U.S. and NATO targets in West Germany. The GDR became a
‘‘post-graduate school’’ for terrorism. Its international airport was a
‘‘revolving door’’ where one terrorist group arrived as another was
departing.82
The CIA was tasked with monitoring terrorists’ comings and goings
through checkpoints along the Berlin Wall on their way to spread terror in
the West. The MfS knew in advance of CIA plans. The new Agency unit
needed sources and needed them quickly. East Berlin supplied the
‘‘agents,’’ namely six Arabs who dangled themselves to the CIA and were
recruited. The operation was codenamed DOM, the German word for
cathedral.83
GOOD INVESTMENTS OR POOR ASSETS?
The CIA insisted that the Soviet, East German, and Cuban double agents
were worth the time, money, and effort invested in recruiting them on the
grounds that some of the intelligence they provided was useful. The MfS
and the Minint dangled ordinary people from various walks of life, but
managed to keep sensitive national security information out of the CIA’s
reach.
There was another limiting factor. The CIA had little or no opportunity to
pick and choose targets from denied-area countries. It was dependent on
‘‘walk-ins,’’ volunteers who approached the Agency and offered to spy. A
senior operations officer noted, for example, that he could not recall a
single case in which a Soviet agent was ‘‘spotted, developed, and recruited
from scratch by a CIA case officer.’’ 8 4 The CIA’s dependence on
volunteers was a serious vulnerability that the Soviets, East Germans, and
Cubans repeatedly exploited. To vet volunteers from Communist countries
was well-nigh impossible. They usually offered to spy on a take it or leave
it basis, and the Agency often took their offers on faith. Unable to vet
walk-ins in depth, the CIA adopted an ‘‘iron rule’’ that Communist
intelligence services never used sensitive information as feed material. The
corollary: if the information being offered appears to be secret, then
the agent is bona fide.85 This was known as ‘‘validation by production.’’
The Eastern bloc and Cuban services frequently provided enough
seemingly sensitive data to their dangles for them to pass muster.
Brian Latell has defended the recruitment of Cubans, noting that Castro
permitted his dangles ‘‘to share surprisingly sensitive data with the CIA to
enhance their credibility. Most of the disinformation was factual and truthful,
so that when it was passed, would be accepted as valid.’’86 But disinformation
cannot, by definition, be ‘‘factual and truthful.’’ Its very purpose is to
confuse, mislead, and deceive the enemy. Some accurate data may be in the
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mix, but the analytical task is to separate fact from fiction and inform recipients
of the outcome. CIA reports officers apparently failed to do so.
A sampling of Cuban dangles by profession includes:
.
.
.
.
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.
.
.
.
.
Tuna boat captain
Merchant seaman
Official of the Sugar Ministry
Foreign trade official
Cubana Airlines employee
Bank of Cuba officer
Head of ammonia industry
Director of sports federation
Businessman
Most appear to be low-hanging fruit or what John le Carré called ‘‘small
change in the Cold War.’’ The tuna boat captain, for example, was
surprised that the CIA was interested in him ‘‘for he knew no deep
military or political secrets.’’87 But the CIA issued him its state-of-the-art
burst transmitter, which was then forwarded to the KGB and MfS.
Less is known about the East German dangles, but they appear to have been
cut from the same cloth as the Cubans. Markus Wolf said that most were
diplomats, businessmen, and academics passing through West Germany.88
None had access to vital information, all passed on feed material, and their
contacts with CIA case officers were irregular and brief.
The true feed material offered by the Cuban dangles was less important than
what was false. For example, the Cubana Airlines employee was responsible
for ensuring that aircraft cabins were scrubbed down after each flight. He
was tasked to report on the use of the civilian airline to airlift troops and
arms for supporting Castro’s intervention on the side of the Marxist faction
in Angola’s 1975 civil war. Instead, the dangle passed false information that
misled the CIA about the scope and magnitude of the Soviet-backed Cuban
intervention that ended in a victory for the pro-Soviet forces.89
The double in the Cuban communications ministry was considered a prize
catch. He was tasked to provide information that would enable the National
Security Agency (NSA) to intercept sensitive Castro government
telecommunications. Cuban intelligence made sure that eavesdroppers
heard nothing important. As a result, the NSA suspected that the ‘‘agent’’
was a double and so informed the CIA. The CIA demurred. Later, it
presented the ‘‘agent’’ with a commendation from DCI William J. Casey, a
gold medal, and a $10,000 bonus for his services.90
The CIA used various methods to assess potential agents prior to pitching
them and then to validate them after their recruitment. These methods
ranged from simply collecting biographical data to psychological testing to
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graphology and polygraphy.91 In most cases, however, the Agency either
apparently applied such methods rarely or the double agents foiled them.
The Cuban doubles, in fact, noted that the CIA did not bother to check
into their backgrounds or determine their access to information that they
professed to have. Even when subjected to a polygraph examination, the
Cubans routinely ‘‘beat the box.’’ Some doubles did so more than once.
When one Cuban registered deception, his Agency case officer went to bat
for him, and he remained on the CIA payroll.92 One double declared that
the lie detector was ‘‘a meaningless device.’’93
Good tradecraft and common sense prudence require that an agent
operation be carefully reviewed before issuing sophisticated spy gear,
especially hi-tech electronic covert communications devices (‘‘covcom’’).
But the Cubans either passed muster, or were not reevaluated. They
received the most advanced covcom, the CD-501 and the RS-804, which
could automatically encrypt and store messages before relaying them via
communications satellite uplinks directly to Langley.94
The Cuban doubles were amazed at the generous payments they received.
Some earned as much as $500 to $1,700 a month, vast sums in a poor country
with little hard currency but double-agent access to Yanqui dollars. One
double said he was paid $200,000 over the course of his espionage career.95
The East Germans and Cubans cooperated in planning and executing double
agent ploys. One example stands out. In 1983 Cuban counterintelligence
seconded one of its officers, Major Zayda Caridad Gutiérrez Pérez, to the
MfS to coordinate double agent operations and research ways to improve
them. 96 A ten-year veteran of anti-U.S. operations, Gutiérrez wrote a
doctoral thesis under the auspices of the MfS’s in-house law school on
preparing ‘‘penetration agents,’’ that is doubles, for deployment against the
CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. A copy of the thesis was found in
the Stasi archives.97 The title says it all: ‘‘The Improvement of PoliticalOperational Work against the Intelligence Services of the USA Through the
Intelligence Activity of Penetration Agents.’’ Among other things, Gutiérrez
documented the Cubans’ methods and success in acquiring knowledge of
CIA tradecraft and then turning it against the Norteamericanos. She
underscored the importance Castro attributed to double agent operations by
noting that senior government officials were tasked to provide ‘‘intelligence
offerings,’’ her term for feed material.
DOUBLE AGENT, DOUBLE WHAMMY
At the turn of the decade from the 1970s, CIA spy techs achieved two
technological breakthroughs that portended dramatic changes in denied-area
operations. 9 8 The first achievement was the invention of covert
communications devices that use wireless burst transceivers to send and
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receive encrypted radio signals in the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) range via
space-borne satellites. The result was a global network of agent-toHeadquarters communications that allowed spies to send and receive
messages in real or near real time in routine or emergency situations without
running the risk of personal or impersonal (dead drop) exchanges with CIA
case officers. The second success was the deployment of covertly ‘‘emplaced’’
ground-based seismographic sensors that could detect and report the
movement and direction of armed forces and vehicles with superfast burst
transmissions via the same satellites. The sensors were silent sentinels
designed to detect unusual foreign activity that might offer early warning of
war or indicate unusual maneuvers in crisis situations. For the first time,
space-age wizardry enabled CIA officers to run agents and monitor events
around the world without leaving their desks.
The advantage that the CIA gained from its hi-tech leap forward was
short-lived, however. The KGB, the MfS, and the Minint were not far
behind in unraveling Langley’s secrets.99 The Cubans, allegedly ‘‘Latino
lightweights,’’ took the lead role in compromising the new covcom and the
sensors.
The first loss was a burst transceiver designated CD-501. The Cubans
acquired a copy from a dangle in the early 1980s.100 The KGB seized another
from a CIA case officer in Moscow who was caught testing it in a public
park.101 The device was small, about 12.5 inch long and less than an inch
wide and an inch thick, and weighed about five pounds. The model for Soviet
operations automatically encrypted messages to and from agents in both the
Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. It could store some 1,600 characters for up to a
week and then beam up a 21-second message via uplink to the MARISAT-3
communications satellite stationed above the Indian Ocean.102
Some Cubans complained that the new CIA device was unreliable and
occasionally failed to work in their humid climate. They asked for
something better and more reliable. The request should have been a red
flag, since double agents often use ruses such as ‘‘it doesn’t work, I lost it,
or I was forced to destroy it as incriminating evidence of espionage’’ to
obtain new and more sophisticated spy gear. The CIA’s replacement was
the more advanced RS-804. It was faster and better and could send longer
messages in a mere fraction of a second. The RS-804 was issued to the
Cuban tuna boat captain/dangle, and it became the first and only one that
fell into the hands of a Communist intelligence service.103
Minint and MfS technical specialists began studying the CD-501 in 1982.
The CIA’s development of satellite-based covcom was new to both services.
MfS documents note that the CD-501 could send encrypted messages ‘‘with
great security and speed’’ at a rate of 1,024 bits/second.104 Decryption of its
high-grade cipher was impossible, but the Cubans and East Germans
plugged away with a joint effort codenamed Pyramid (Pirámide in Spanish
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and Pyramide in German) to analyze the new discovery.105 The appellation
may have been an ironic reference to a CIA program called PYRAMIDER
that was blue-printed in the 1970s as a global, dual-purpose satellite-based
communications network for covcom and ‘‘emplaced sensors’’ that never got
off the drawing board.106
In 1985 the Cubans invited a delegation of East German technical specialists
to Havana to show off their latest trophy, the RS-804. Two years later they
paid a return visit to East Berlin to brief their efforts to intercept the
RS-804’s encrypted signal and analyze its transmission rate of 9,600 bits/
second in the UHF range of 11 GHz (Gegahertz) via the MARISAT and the
US Navy’s FLTSATCOM communications satellites.107
The East Germans were able to intercept the satellite uplink, which they
codenamed Kegel (bowling pin) after the shape it formed on an oscilloscope
screen.108 They were not able to use conventional DFing (Direction Finding)
techniques, however, to detect the source of the superfast transmission. A
solution was found, and it came from the Cubans, who had discovered
unspecified ‘‘irregularities in the satellite communications.’’109 Equipped
with a means to pinpoint the satellite uplink, the MfS began a nationwide
search for agents using the RS-804. What they found, however, was not
covcom but something more startling—sensors that had been covertly
emplaced near Soviet and East German military sites.
Bereft of HUMINT sources in East Germany, the CIA and the U.S. Army
launched a joint program to emplace ground-based sensors near Soviet and
East German military sites in the GDR. These electronic sentries were silent,
invisible, and invulnerable—or so it was thought. Each one was about the
size of a shoebox and was buried 30 centimeters deep in the earth with
only its antenna sticking up to send signals to satellites hovering thousands
of miles above in space.110 The sensors were ‘‘smart’’ devices that could
distinguish among seven different classes of vehicles, such as Jeeps, cars,
trucks, tanks, and missile-transporters, and determine their direction of
travel. Data were collected and stored for up to a week and then reported
via satellite uplink in an encrypted burst transmission lasting only a
fraction of a second. CIA analysts examined the data, looking for patterns
of routine and unusual activity. A sudden ‘‘spike’’ in electronic signals
could indicate unusual military operations or mobilization for war. The
devices were equipped with a warning device that would be activated if
they were moved or tampered with.111
For all their sophistication and safety features, however, the sensors were
not invulnerable to double agents. The Army insisted on emplacing the first
device, but it did not allow its own intelligence officers stationed in West
Germany to operate in the GDR. Therefore, it assigned the mission to a
trusted East German agent. But the ‘‘agent’’ was an MfS double. He
delivered the sensor to East Berlin.
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When the sensor failed to report, the CIA became suspicious and decided
to use its own case officers in the GDR.112 A hiatus ensued, since the officers
had to undergo special training, first at the CIA’s spy school, ‘‘The Farm,’’ in
Virginia and then in West Germany. Wearing night goggles and eluding
heavy surveillance, they were eventually able to bury the sensors near
selected target areas.113
The MfS was able to locate the sensors with help from the Cubans, since
they used the same frequency as the RS-804, probably an inadvertent design
flaw on the CIA’s part.114 In 1989 and again a year later, the MfS decided to
announce to the press its unearthing of the sensors. Why then? East German
intelligence officers were nervously witnessing popular protests that led to the
collapse of the GDR’s Communist regime and the opening of the Berlin
Wall. Revealing the sensors, they hoped, might vindicate their past services
and justify their future employment in a post-Communist East Germany.
It was all in vain, however, as the Stasi disappeared along with the GDR.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Why did the CIA recruit so many double agents? When I began this inquiry I
expected to conclude that the pressure to recruit agents—the main metric
used for evaluating case officers for promotion and career advancement—
was the answer. Undoubtedly, the officers professionally benefited from
recruiting and handling individuals who proved to be Soviet, Russian, East
German, and Cuban doubles. Yet, they could not have done so without
support from their superiors, who needed to keep disseminating
intelligence reports to the national security establishment, regardless of the
questionable origins of the information contained in those analyses.
The case of the KGB–SVR double agents from 1986 to 1994 is egregious,
not the least because it revealed that deceptive practices transcended the Cold
War. The damage was manifold. Continuing to handle Soviet agents that
‘‘the CIA knew to be frauds’’ allowed the SE Division to cover up the loss
of all its bona fide agents in 1985–1986. The KGB used double agents and
disinformation to confuse and mislead CIA and FBI investigators for
almost nine years before the culprit, Aldrich Ames, was exposed. From
circa 1986/87 to 1994 KGB, and then SVR, double agents provided
‘‘tainted’’ and ‘‘bogus’’ information that the SE and CE Divisions
disseminated as the best HUMINT available on the USSR and the
Russian Federation, doing so at a critical time from the late Cold War to
the dawn of an ostensibly new era in U.S.–Russia relations.
Yet none of these revelations resulted in a serious inquiry into the troubles
that doubles cause. To paraphrase Lord Acton, secret power corrupts
secretly.
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BENJAMIN B. FISCHER
REFERENCES
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1
As cited in Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets: The CIA and Cuba’s Intelligence
Machine (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 15.
2
Klaus Eichner and Andreas Dobbert, Headquarters Germany: Die USAGeheimdienste in Deutschland (Berlin: edition ost, 1997), p. 103.
3
See Benjamin B. Fischer ‘‘Deaf, Dumb, and Blind: The CIA and East
Germany,’’ in Kristie Macrakis, Thomas Wegner Friis, and Helmut
Müller-Engbergs, eds., East German Foreign Intelligence: Myth, Reality,
Controversy (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 48–69.
4
Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, p. 10. See also Ernest Volkman, Espionage: The
Greatest Spy Operations of the 20th Century (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
1995), pp. 16–25.
5
Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, pp. 15–21.
6
The Cubans dubbed the program in English and sent a copy to an FBI (Federal
Bureau of Investigation) counterintelligence agent who was involved in
anti-Cuban operations. They may have calculated that the Bureau would
make the dubbed version available to the public in order to embarrass its
rival, the CIA. Ibid., p. 11.
7
Ibid., p.18.
8
Markus Wolf, with Anne McElvoy, Man Without A Face: The Autobiography of
Communism’s Greatest Spymaster (New York: Times Books/Random House,
1997), p. 285. I use the acronym MfS to refer to East German intelligence.
The MfS, like the KGB on which it modeled, was both an internal security
(the Stasi) and foreign intelligence agency. Wolf was chief the MfS’s foreign
intelligence service, the Hauptverwaltung A (Main Directorate A). Both
services ran double agents.
9
‘‘Testimony of Bob Inman, Hearings of the Commission on the Roles and
Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community,’’ at www. fas.org/
irp/commission/testinma.htm
10
Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five
Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1996), p. 560.
11
Milton Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy: The CIA’s Battle with the
Soviet Union (London: Century, 2003), p. 386.
12
John Marks, ‘‘The Spymaster Unmasked,’’ U.S. News & World Report, 12 April
1993, pp. 41, 45.
13
Benjamin B. Fischer ‘‘Deaf, Dumb, and Blind.’’
14
Milton Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy, p. 397.
15
Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday,
2007).
16
Walter Pincus, ‘‘CIA Chief Castigates 7 Agency Officials,’’ The Washington
Post, 1 November 1995, p. A12. See also Bill Gertz, ‘‘Deutch Spells Out
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Severity of Damage Caused by Ames,’’ The Washington Times, 1 November
1995, p. A3.
17
The following sources recount the Zhomov affair: Milton Bearden and James
Risen, The Main Enemy, pp. 202–203, 297–307, 432–434, 446–448, and 534;
Victor Cherkashin, with Gregory Feifer, Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB
Officer (New York: Basic Books, 2005), pp. 206, 260–261; David Wise,
NIGHTMOVER: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million
(New York: HarperCollins, 1995), p. 191; Tim Weiner et al., Betrayal: The
Story of Aldrich Ames, An American Spy (New York: Random House, 1995),
p. 160; and Pete Earley, Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames
(New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1997), pp. 237, 259, and 287.
18
PROLOGUE was a computer-generated, randomly assigned cryptonym; the GT
diagraph indicated that Zhomov was a sensitive source of SE Division.
19
Milton Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy, p. 306. [emphasis added]
20
Pete Earley, Confessions of a Spy, p. 230.
21
See Walter Pincus, ‘‘CIA Passed Bogus News to Presidents; KGB Issued Data
With Ames’s Aid, Report Shows,’’ The Washington Post, 31 October 1995,
p. A1, ‘‘CIA Chief Castigates 7 Agency Officials,’’ 1 November 1995, p. A1,
and ‘‘Pentagon Was Not Told of CIA Debate on Data,’’ The Washington
Post, 3 November 1995, p. A26; Tim Weiner, ‘‘C.I.A. Admits Failing to Sift
Tainted Data,’’ The New York Times, 1 November 1995, p. A; ‘‘The C.I.A.’s
False Intelligence,’’ The New York Times, 2 November 1995, p. A14; and Tim
Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, p. 450.
22
Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 17–18, and Tim Weiner, Legacy of
Ashes, p. 450.
23
‘‘Disinformation for the President, CIA Flubs Again: Officials Knew Intelligence on
the Soviet Union was Probably Tainted,’’ The Baltimore Sun, 2 November 1995, at
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-11-02/news/1995306149_1_deutch-ciaagent-cia-directorate
24
Walter Pincus, ‘‘CIA Passed Bogus News to Presidents.’’
25
Ibid.
26
Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, p. 450.
27
Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows, p. 18.
28
Tim Weiner, ‘‘C.I.A. Admits Failing to Sift Tainted Data.’’
29
Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch, Statement to the Public on the
Ames Damage Assessment, CIA Press Statement, 31 October 1994, at https://
www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/press-release-archive1995/ps103195.html
30
‘‘Washington Whispers,’’ U.S. News & World Report, 5 May 1994, p. 26.
31
Walter Pincus, ‘‘Pentagon Was Not Told of CIA Debate on Data.’’
32
Walter Pincus, ‘‘Tainted Intelligence Issue Blunted,’’ The Washington Post,
17 November 1995, p. A23.
33
Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows, p. 17.
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34
Ibid., p. 18.
Frederick P. Hitz, The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), pp. 125–126.
36
Thomas Powers, ‘‘Where Does the Truth Lie at the CIA?’’ The Baltimore Sun,
8 November 1995, at http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-11-08/news/
1995312156_1_aldrich-ames-ames-case-deutch
37
U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, 30 November 1994, Report of Investigation: The Aldrich Ames
Espionage Case. 103d Congress. 2d Session (Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office, 1994), pp. 71–72.
38
U.S. Congress. Senate. Select Committee on Intelligence, 1 November 1994. An
Assessment of the Aldrich H. Ames Espionage Case and Its Implications for U.S.
Intelligence, 103d Congress, 2d Session (Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1994), p. 16.
39
Walter Pincus, ‘‘CIA Chief Castigates 7 Agency Officials.’’
40
Benjamin B. Fischer, ‘‘Spy Dust and Ghost Surveillance: How the KGB
Spooked the CIA and Hid Aldrich Ames in Plain Sight,’’ International Journal
of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 24, No. 2, Summer 2002, pp. 1–39.
41
Zhomov was the last dangle. The first was KGB counterintelligence officer Vitali
Yurchenko, who ‘‘defected’’ to the CIA in Rome, was flown to the United States
and then ‘‘redefected’’ only ninety days later. The CIA maintains that
Yurchenko was a real defector, but his account of how the agents Ames
betrayed were unmasked was pure fabrication. The KGB was reluctant to use
its own officers for fear that they might spill too many secrets or, once CIA
money was on the table, decide to defect. Protecting Ames, however, was
worth the risk. A KGB officer who knew Yurchenko claims that he was a
‘‘penetration agent’’ and was injected with psychotropic drugs to make certain
he had not been ‘‘turned’’ while in CIA custody. See Alexander Kouzminov,
Biological Espionage: Special Operations of the Soviet and Russian Intelligence
Services in the West (London: Greenhill Books, 2005), p. 107.
42
An Assessment of the Aldrich H. Ames Espionage Case and Its Implications for
U.S. Intelligence, p. 29.
43
Ibid., p. 30.
44
Benjamin B. Fischer, ‘‘The Spy Who Came in for the Gold: A Skeptical View of
the GTVANQUISH Case,’’ Journal of Intelligence History, No. 8, Summer 2008,
pp. 39–54.
45
U.S. military dangle operations also used technical data as feed material, so there
is nothing unique about the method.
46
See Barry Royden, ‘‘Tolkachev: Worthy Successor to Penkovsky,’’ Studies in
Intelligence, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2003, pp. 5–33, and Milton Bearden and James
Risen, The Main Enemy, pp. 9, 12, 16–17, 32–33, 37–38, 40–43, 48, 53–54, 85,
92, 94, 15, 196, 385, and 411. Royden and Bearden, both former CIA officials,
were given privileged access to classified files. See also, more recently, a
laudatory retelling of the Tolkachev story: David E. Hoffman, The Billion
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Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (New York:
Doubleday, 2015).
47
It is common practice to draw feed material from as few sources as possible, even
when there is overlap, so as to limit the loss of classified information.
48
Klaus Eichner and Andreas Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, p. 125, and Victor
Cherkashin, Spy Handler, p. 205.
49
In 1985, the Soviet press reported that Tolkachev was arrested and executed for
espionage. Certainly, one author claims, he could not have been a dangle. See
Joseph Wippl, ‘‘A Dangle? But Why Executed?’’ International Journal of
Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 24, No. 2, Summer 2011, p. 426. I
am convinced that there never was a person named Adolf Tolkachev. The
man calling himself Tolkachev was a figment of the KGB’s creation and
figment of the CIA’s imagination.
50
See Pe M
[The Phantoms from
, 1999), pp. 291–296. The street name
Chaikovsky Street]
refers to the location of the former U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
51
Victor Cherkashin, Spy Handler, p. 206.
52
Pete Earley, Confessions of a Spy, p. 143.
53
Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, SPYCRAFT: The Secret History of the
CIA’s Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda (New York: Dutton, 2008), p. 433.
54
See Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille, Circle of Treason: A CIA Account of
Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 2012), pp. 77–78.
55
The spy dust story made no sense. The KGB could not have known who all the
CIA operatives were or been able to sprinkle them with the ‘‘taggant.’’
Moreover, some agents, Martynov and Motorin, for example, were first
detected while outside the USSR, not in Moscow. The SE Division never
caught on that the KGB was waiting for CIA officers to arrive at meeting
sites in Moscow, not following them there. The Soviets knew where to set up
ambushes because they had already arrested and interrogated the agents Ames
had fingered.
56
Tennent H. Bagley, Spymaster: Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB
Chief (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2013), pp. 213–223.
57
Pete Earley, Confessions of a Spy, p. 259.
58
‘‘U.S. Attorney: ‘KGB Warned Ames to Avoid Traps Set by the CIA,’’’ p. A16.
The statement outlined evidence that Justice was prepared to introduce at
Ames’s espionage trial. Ames, however, accepted a plea agreement and
avoided a trial.
59
Ironically, Ames validated Zhomov as a bona fide agent for SE Division without
suspecting that he was a dangle.
60
Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, p. 27.
61
Milton Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy, p. 300. For advances in
denied-area tradecraft, see Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, SPYCRAFT,
pp. 363–442.
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62
The Minint, like the KGB and MfS, included intelligence and counterintelligence
services, the Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI) and the Dirección General
de Contrainteligencia (DGCI).
63
Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, pp. 15–21.
64
Ibid., p. 16.
65
Ernest Volkman, Espionage, p. 23.
66
Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, p. 17. See also Dan Williams, ‘‘Duped CIA
‘Double Agents’ Claim,’’ The Los Angeles Times, 26 July 1987, at http://
articles.latimes.com/1987-07-26/news/mn-1227_1_double-agents
67
Ernest Volkman, Espionage, p. 23.
68
Ibid.
69
Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, p. 2.
70
Ibid., p. 19.
71
Ibid., p. 12.
72
Klaus Eichner and Andreas Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, p. 125.
73
Ibid.
74
Ibid., pp. 125–126.
75
Milton Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy, p. 308.
76
Klaus Eichner and Andreas Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, p. 104.
77
The ‘‘Thielemann’’ affair is recounted in the following: Klaus Eichner and
Andreas Dobbert, Headquaters Germany pp. 112–114; John Marks, ‘‘The
Spymaster Unmasked,’’ p. 45; and Markus Wolf, Man Without A Face,
pp. 283–285.
78
Markus Wolf, Man Without A Face, p. 284.
79
For details see Ibid., pp. 283–285; John Marks, "The Spymaster Unmasked,’’
p. 45; and Klaus Eichner and Andreas Dobbert, Headquarters Germany,
pp. 112–114.
80
Klaus Eichner and Andreas Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, p. 110.
81
Ibid., p. 122.
82
See Marian Leighton, ‘‘Strange Bedfellows: The Stasi and the Terrorists,’’
International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 27, No. 4,
Winter 2014–2015, pp. 647–665.
83
John O. Koehler, STASI: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), pp. 333–334.
84
Duane R. Clarridge, A Spy for All Seasons: My Life in the CIA (New York:
Scribner, 1997), p. 272.
85
See Edward Jay Epstein, Deception: The Invisible War Between the CIA and the
KGB (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), pp. 113–125 and 196–215.
86
Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, p. 13.
87
Ernest Volkman, Espionage, p. 19.
88
Markus Wolf, Man Without a Face, p. 283.
89
Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, p. 21.
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90
Ibid., p. 24.
Ernest Volkman, Espionage, pp. 21, 24, and Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, pp. 8,
11, and 16.
92
Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, Spycraft, pp. 363–380. The authors make
no mention of the polygraph.
93
Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, p. 11.
94
Ibid., p. 16 and Ernest Volkman, Espionage, p. 22.
95
Ernest Volkman, Espionage, p. 19, and Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, pp. 11, 16.
96
Jorge Luis Vázquez, ‘‘La analista del DGCI, la Stasi y los Topos: Aspectos de la
Colobaración STASI-MINIT,’’ 13 September 2007, at baracuteycubano.
blogspot.com/2007/09/la-analista-del-dgci-la-stasi-y-los.html. See also Brian
Latell, Castro’s Secrets, p. 14.
97
Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, p. 250n12.
98
See Jeffrey T. Richelson, The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA’s Directorate of
Science and Technology (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
99
Details of the compromise of the CIA’s covcom and sensor programs are found
in the following: Ernest Volkman, Espionage, p. 23; Klaus Eichner and Andreas
Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, pp. 251–252; Milton Bearden and James
Risen, The Main Enemy, pp. 386–387; Kristie Macrakis, Seduced by Secrets:
Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2008), pp. 277–278; Jorge Luis Vázquez, 5 February 2008, ‘‘El Minit y la
‘ ‘ L u c h a E l e c t r ó n i c a , ’ ’ a t h t t p : / / s e c r e t o s c u b a . c u l t u r e f o r u m . n e t /
Informacion-General-c3/Secretos-de-Cuba-f//COLABORACIÓN-STASIMINIT-T-2459; Brain Latell, Castro’s Secrets, p. 12; and K. Eichner and G.
Schramm, Kontrspionage: Die DDR-Aufklarung in den Geheimdienstzentrum
(Berlin: edition ost, 2010), p. 65.
100
Ernest Volkman, Espionage, p. 22.
101
, pp. 142–145. See also ‘‘Soviets
Expel U.S. Envoy, Say He Was Caught Spying,’’ The Los Angeles Times, 14
June 1985, at http://articles.latimes.com/1985-06-14/news/
mn-2295_1_espionage
102
, pp. 142–145 and Ernest
Volkman, Espionage, p. 22. There are three ‘‘birds’’ in the MARISAT system
that provide communications links for the U.S. Navy and commercial shipping.
103
Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, pp. 16–17.
includes details and photographs of an array of
captured CIA technical tradecraft but makes no mention of the RS-804. The
MfS learned about it from the Cubans.
104
Kristie Macrakis, Seduced by Secrets, pp. 278 and 346n83.
105
Ibid., p. 278, and ‘‘Operación Pirámide’’: Intercepción de las transmisiones de la
CIA. Parte I,’’ at http://www.stasi-minint.blogspot.com/
106
The Soviets, East Germans, and Cubans were well aware of PYRAMIDER.
CIA’s deputy director for science and technology outlined details in open
91
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BENJAMIN B. FISCHER
court testimony of ‘‘a system to provide a means for communicating with CIA
agents, foreign agents, emplaced sensors and provide backup communications
for overseas facilities’’ via satellite. He was testifying against Christopher
Boyce and Andrew Lee, two Americans who sold secrets about U.S. ‘‘black’’
satellite programs to the KGB. Boyce stole the information while employed in
the ‘‘black vault’’ at the CIA’s California contractor TRW. Lee served as
Boyce’s courier to the KGB in Mexico City and used some of the proceeds to
fund his drug-dealing. Lee was eventually arrested by Mexican police and was
caught carrying 450 frames of photographed data on PYRAMIDER. The
CIA made the reluctant decision to reveal the project, which had been
cancelled, in testimony against Boyce and Lee in order to protect more
sensitive information about ongoing satellite programs. See Jeffrey T.
Richelson, A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 345–346.
Jorge Luis Vázquez, 5 February 2008, ‘‘El Minit y la ‘‘Lucha Electrónica.’’
Kristie Macrakis, Seduced by Secrets, p. 277.
Ibid., p. 278.
Ibid., p. 277.
Klaus Eichner and Andreas Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, pp. 251–252.
Milton Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy, p. 387, claim that the CIA,
not the Army, initiated the sensor operation. More likely, however, the CIA took
over after no signal was received from the first sensor given to the East German
double.
Ibid., p. 386.
Bearden and Risen, in ibid. p. 387, say that the MfS was able to locate the sensors
after obtaining a copy from an East German double agent. The former chief of
its signals intelligence and counterintelligence directorate refuted that argument,
asserting, as noted above, that the Minint provided the clue that led to the
sensors’ locations.
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