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International Journal of Intelligence and

ISSN: 0885-0607 (Print) 1521-0561 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujic20

Doubles Troubles: The CIA and Double Agents during the

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: https://doi.org/10.1080/08850607.2015.1083313

Published online: 13 Nov 2015.

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ujic20 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

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) 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. operations do not figure prominently in accounts of Cold War . 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 , 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 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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE DOUBLES TROUBLES: DOUBLE AGENTS 49 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 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 Hisstorywashardtoswallow,butalldoubts 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 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 ’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 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 and learned about it from 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

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE DOUBLES TROUBLES: DOUBLE AGENTS 51 over allegations that it had failed to foresee the looming collapse of the . 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.

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 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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and energy of his case officers was being spent on agents that the CIA knew to be frauds.19

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-fivewerefrom 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 imprintedoneachpageindicatingthat 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 highest- ranking national security officials, who had to sign for the documents that were hand-carried and then returned to CIA Headquarters. Eleven blue- borders 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.’’24 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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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

AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE VOLUME 29, NUMBER 1 54 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

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE DOUBLES TROUBLES: DOUBLE AGENTS 55 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 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 .47 Soviet and East German sources have confirmed that the anonymous agent was a double.48 Ibelievethat 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

AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE VOLUME 29, NUMBER 1 56 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.

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. BLIZZARD Sergey Bokhan 2. VANQUISH Adolf Tolkachev 3. TICKLE Oleg Gordievsky 4. WEIGH Leonid Poleschuk 5. MILLION Gennady Smetanin 6. FITNESS Gennady Varenik 7. VILLAGE Still Living in Russia 8. COWL Sergey Vorontsov 9. GENTILE Valery Martynov 10. GAUZE Sergey Motorin 11. MEDIUM Vladimir Potashev 12. TWINE Boris Yuzhin 13. JOGGER Vladimir Piguzov 14. TOPHAT Dmitri Polyakov 15. ACCORD Vladimir Vasilyev 16. GLAZING Still Living in Russia 17. TAME Still Living in Russia

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18. BACKBEND Still Living in Russia 19. VEST Still Living in Russia 20. EASTBOUND 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 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 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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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 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 , 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

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE DOUBLES TROUBLES: DOUBLE AGENTS 59 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 expose´ featured an array of the CIA’s most advanced covert electronic communications devices, including and racks of communications gear, as well as hidden in briefcases, picnic baskets, and tool boxes. The highlight was the CIA’s state-of-the-art burst , 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

AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE VOLUME 29, NUMBER 1 60 BENJAMIN B. FISCHER 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 generatedbyhiddencameralights.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 , 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

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE DOUBLES TROUBLES: DOUBLE AGENTS 61 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 attache´, 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

AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE VOLUME 29, NUMBER 1 62 BENJAMIN B. FISCHER 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 theWest.TheMfSknewinadvanceofCIAplans.ThenewAgencyunit needed sources and needed them quickly. East Berlin supplied the ‘‘agents,’’ namely six Arabs who dangledthemselvestotheCIAandwere 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.’’84 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 adoptedan‘‘ironrule’’thatCommunist 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

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE DOUBLES TROUBLES: DOUBLE AGENTS 63 mix, but the analytical task is to separate fact from fiction and inform recipients of the outcome. CIA reports officersapparentlyfailedtodoso.

A sampling of Cuban dangles by profession includes:

. 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 Carre´ 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 cabins were scrubbed down after each flight. He wastaskedtoreportontheuseofthecivilian 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 themandthentovalidatethemaftertheir recruitment. These methods ranged from simply collecting biographical data to psychological testing to

AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE VOLUME 29, NUMBER 1 64 BENJAMIN B. FISCHER 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 Gutie´rrez Pe´rez, to the MfS to coordinate double agent operations and research ways to improve them.96 A ten-year veteran of anti-U.S. operations, Gutie´rrez 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 Political- Operational Work against the Intelligence Services of the USA Through the Intelligence Activity of Penetration Agents.’’ Among other things, Gutie´rrez 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.98 The first achievement was the invention of covert communications devices that use wireless burst transceivers to send and

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE DOUBLES TROUBLES: DOUBLE AGENTS 65 receive encrypted radio signals in the High Frequency (UHF) range via space-borne satellites. The result was a global network of agent-to- Headquarters 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 Thedevicewassmall,about12.5inchlongandlessthananinch 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 (Pira´ mide in Spanish

AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE VOLUME 29, NUMBER 1 66 BENJAMIN B. FISCHER 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 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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REFERENCES 1 AscitedinBrianLatell,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 USA- Geheimdienste 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 Mu¨ ller-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 ’s Greatest Spymaster (New York: Times Books/, 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 , 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,’’ , 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,’’ , 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-cia- agent-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-archive- 1995/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. 35 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,andMiltonBeardenandJames 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 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,Summer2011,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 PeM [The Phantoms from Chaikovsky Street] , 1999), pp. 291–296. The street name 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.Foradvancesin 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 Direccio´n General de Inteligencia (DGI) and the Direccio´n 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 , 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. 91 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 Va´zquez, ‘‘La analista del DGCI, la Stasi y los Topos: Aspectos de la Colobaracio´ n STASI-MINIT,’’ 13 September 2007, at baracuteycubano. blogspot.com/2007/09/la-analista-del-dgci-la-stasi-y-los.html.SeealsoBrian 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 Va´zquez, 5 February 2008, ‘‘El Minit y la ‘‘Lucha Electro´ nica,’’ at http://secretoscuba.cultureforum.net/ Informacion-General-c3/Secretos-de-Cuba-f//COLABORACIO´ N-STASI- MINIT-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 ‘‘Operacio´n Pira´mide’’: Intercepcio´n 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

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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 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. 107 Jorge Luis Va´zquez, 5 February 2008, ‘‘El Minit y la ‘‘Lucha Electro´nica.’’ 108 Kristie Macrakis, Seduced by Secrets, p. 277. 109 Ibid., p. 278. 110 Ibid., p. 277. 111 Klaus Eichner and Andreas Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, pp. 251–252. 112 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. 113 Ibid., p. 386. 114 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 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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