The Main Enemy

by Milton Bearden

  Yurchenko scanned the list for a name that he might recognize from his own experiences in Washington or Moscow. He knew that the list was liberally sprinkled with the names of Americans who weren’t spies at all, just energetic political or economic officers working the diplomatic circuit who the local KGB Rezidentura mistakenly believed were in the CIA. Finally, his eyes settled on the name of David Shorer.

  Shorer had been arrested in Leningrad almost ten years earlier, along with an agent the CIA had been running in the Soviet defense industries. The roll-up of the operation, in itself significant enough, took on even greater significance because of the severe physical abuse inflicted on Shorer when he was seized at a dead drop site under a Leningrad overpass. The Second and Seventh Chief Directorate officers had been instructed to play it extra hard in retaliation for a rough-and-tumble arrest by the FBI of a Soviet intelligence officer in New York two months earlier.

  As he flipped through the Rezidentura’s files on the CIA office in Rome, Yurchenko took note of Shorer’s office telephone number. He had a surprise in store for Mr. David Shorer.

  Rome, 1430 Hours, August 1, 1985

  Yurchenko had left the Villa Abamelek, the Soviet embassy staff compound in the western suburbs of Rome, early, explaining to his colleagues that he would check in at the embassy near the Vatican, spend a couple of hours at the Rezidentura, and then take the rest of the day off. He muttered something about wanting to take in the sights in Vatican City and suggested to the Rezident that he had a special contact planned, something sensitive and outside the purview of the Rome Rezidentura. Mysterious activities by visiting seniors from Moscow Center were not all that unusual in Rome, not since the days when Boris Solomatin was KGB Rezident in Rome and, as rumor had it, was running a very high level agent right in the heart of the Vatican. Any senior visitor from Moscow Center who dropped a hint that he might be up to something spooky at the Holy See was given a wide berth by the Rezidentura. The offer of the Rezident to have one of his officers accompany him had been tepid; rebuffing it had been easy. Yurchenko said he would return to the compound for a dinner planned for him that evening.

  He spent the rest of the morning making the tourist rounds of the Vatican. He stopped a couple of times while wandering around St. Peter’s Square, ostensibly to rest and watch the flow of tourists on holiday in Rome. But in reality, he was conducting an extensive dry-cleaning run, becoming a part of his surroundings while looking for telltale patterns and repeaters among the milling tourists. By early afternoon he knew he was surveillance free and hailed a cab. His instructions to the driver were terse: “Hotel Ambasciatore, Via Veneto.”

  Among the things Yurchenko carried with him was a bag filled with Russian herbs and traditional home remedies for the stomach ailment the KGB officer was convinced was a cancer that would soon kill him.

  Rome, 1435 Hours, August 1, 1985

  David Shorer stared at the telephone on his desk, willing it to ring. He had just been alerted that a call had come in for “Mr. David Shorer, who served in Leningrad,” from a man speaking English with a heavy Slavic accent and describing himself as a Soviet official who wanted to “come over to your side.” The man hadn’t sounded like a crackpot, the colleague had said.

  After a ten-minute wait the phone rang. Shorer picked it up on the third ring.

  “Shorer.”

  Yurchenko began with his explanation. “Mr. David Shorer, I am a Soviet official who is interested—”

  Shorer cut him off. “Where are you now?”

  “Across the street from the entrance to your embassy.”

  “Hang up the phone and walk across the street to the American embassy now. I will meet you at the main entrance.”

  Yurchenko put down the receiver in the public telephone booth in the Ambasciatore Hotel and began to walk the last few hundred yards of his long journey. Shorer made his way to Post One, the main entrance of the majestic nineteenth-century Palazzo Margherita on Rome’s stylish, tree-lined Via Veneto that served as the American embassy. A colleague was already positioned in the small office where Shorer would take his Soviet visitor. The concealed tape and video recorders were being loaded and checked, and the Soviet defector kit was being put in place. Shorer arrived at Post One just as the tall KGB colonel pushed through the door.

  Shorer intercepted Yurchenko before anyone else could get to him. “Do you have any identification?”

  “I am Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko,” he said, handing over his Soviet diplomatic passport. “I am a colonel in the KGB, Department One, First Chief Directorate.”

  Shorer had spent his career in the Soviet/East European Division and knew in an instant that the biggest counterintelligence catch in the history of the CIA had just dropped in his lap. He hastily ushered Yurchenko to the “walk-in room” and asked him to sit in a straight-backed chair on one side of a table. Shorer took the other chair and pressed a button under the table, activating the video recorder concealed in a bookcase behind him. On the table before him lay a folder containing all the documents he would need in the next crucial hours with the man who now sat before him.

  “Please state precisely who you are and why you have come to us,” Shorer said as he hit the record button of the tape player on the table and began arranging the forms in both Russian and English for Yurchenko to read and sign.

  Yurchenko faced the bookcase squarely, assuming correctly the location of the concealed videocamera, and began to speak in heavily accented English. His head was almost spinning. He had so much to say and had planned this moment in his mind over and over again since his mother had died. But now he didn’t know where to begin. Then a sense of calm came over him, and he began, “I am Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko. I am a colonel, soon to be a general, in the KGB. . . .” Dave Shorer was furiously scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad.

  Langley, 1230 Hours, August 1, 1985

  The handful of senior officers at Langley aware of the drama unfolding in Rome had been in high spirits ever since the arrival of the first cable from Dave Shorer summarizing Yurchenko’s defection. Burton Gerber notified Clair George and his deputy, Ed Juchniewicz, and raised the question of informing the FBI. George decided that Gerber should tell the FBI about Yurchenko later that same morning at a farewell luncheon for Edward O’Malley, the outgoing chief of the FBI’s Intelligence Division. Ultimately, the FBI would have a high interest in what Yurchenko had to say, particularly since he had been posted to Washington, D.C., a few years back.

  As visiting FBI officials and their CIA counterparts, about two dozen in all, gathered in the posh seventh-floor executive dining room a few doors down from Bill Casey’s suite, Gerber and counterintelligence chief Gus Hathaway took Ed O’Malley aside and gave him the news. Yurchenko’s name meant nothing to the CIA seniors or their FBI counterparts, so the full impact of the defection was not yet clear. No mention of the defection was made to the broader audience at the luncheon.

  CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, 1620 Hours, August 1, 1985

  Something close to an animal scream in the adjoining office brought me out of my chair. I quickly stepped around the corner into Burton Gerber’s office, where I found my new boss engrossed in an immediate-precedence, restricted handling cable. Gerber tore off a copy and handed it to me without comment as he continued to read. I was half-way through the first page when he glanced at his watch, wondering how long it would take Clair George and Ed Juchniewicz, two floors up, to call. They were the only other recipients of messages transmitted in this restricted channel and would probably be reading their copies at this moment.

  CITE: ROME 22345 011405Z AUG 85

  IMMEDIATE HEADQUARTERS SECRET/RESTRICTED HANDLING

  WNINTEL

  REF: ROME 22340

  1. FURTHER TO DEBRIEFING OF KGB COLONEL VITALY SERGEYEVICH YURCHENKO DPOB 2 MAY 1936, SMOLENSK, USSR. DEBRIEFING CONTINUES IN WALK-IN ROOM, BUT FOLLOWING SALIENT, POSSIBLY ACTIONABLE TAKE FROM INITIAL DEBRIEF OF YURCHENKO WILL BE OF SPECIAL INTEREST: />
  A. THERE NO IMMINENT SOVIET PLANS TO ATTACK U.S.

  B. YURCHENKO KNOWS OF U.S. VOLUNTEER TO KGB, CODE-NAMED “MR. ROBERT,” WHO DESCRIBED AS FORMER CIA OFFICER PIPELINED FOR ASSIGNMENT TO MOSCOW BUT FIRED FOR UNSUITABILITY ISSUES AND POLYGRAPH PROBLEMS IN 1983–84. YURCHENKO ADVISES THAT “MR. ROBERT” PROVIDED IDENTIFYING DATA ON SOVIET DEFENSE INDUSTRY SCIENTIST ADOLF TOLKACHEV RECENTLY ARRESTED IN MOSCOW IN JUNE THIS YEAR FOR ESPIONAGE ON BEHALF OF CIA, AS WELL AS CIA ASSET IN BUDAPEST DESCRIBED AS SOVIET COLONEL, POSSIBLY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER, KNOWN WITHIN CIA CIRCLES AS “THE ANGRY COLONEL.” KGB COUNTERINTELLIGENCE IS CONDUCTING EXHAUSTIVE SEARCH FOR ANGRY COLONEL BUT WITHOUT SUCCESS TO DATE.

  C. YURCHENKO ALSO CLAIMS “MR. ROBERT” HAS COMPROMISED CIA TECHNICAL OPERATION IN MOSCOW, AND POSSIBLY ONE OTHER TECHNICAL OPERATION CIA RUNNING AGAINST USSR.

  D. “MR. ROBERT” REPORTEDLY MET SECRETLY WITH KGB IN VIENNA WITHIN LAST FEW WEEKS.

  E. YURCHENKO ALSO REPORTS KGB HAS RECRUITED NSA EMPLOYEE WHO PROVIDED DETAILS ON SENSITIVE NSA MARITIME OPERATIONS AGAINST SOVIET NORTH SEA SUBMARINE FLEET. YURCHENKO CANNOT RECALL NAME OF NSA EMPLOYEE, BUT MET THE VOLUNTEER PERSONALLY WHILE HE SERVED AT SOVIET EMBASSY WDC.

  F. YURCHENKO REPORTS THAT KGB DEPUTY REZIDENT LONDON—HE CANNOT REMEMBER NAME—RECALLED IN MAY UNDER COVER COUNTERINTELLIGENCE INTERROGATION/INVESTIGATION. YURCHENKO HAS HEARD KGB USING “TRUTH DRUGS” ON THIS MAN AT REMOTE LOCATION. NO FURTHER DETAILS.

  2. YURCHENKO HAS SIGNED FORMAL REQUEST FOR ASYLUM. SEPARATE MESSAGES WILL FOLLOW BY IMMEDIATE NIACT PRECEDENCE AS DEBRIEFING PROGRESSES.

  3. BELIEVE IT MOST PRUDENT TO MOVE YURCHENKO DIRECTLY TO CONUS ASAP. HE BELIEVES IT ONLY MATTER OF THREE-FOUR HOURS BEFORE KGB ROME REZIDENTURA PEOPLE WILL START LOOKING FOR HIM, POSSIBLY REQUESTING ASSISTANCE OF ITALIAN SECURITY. IF WE CAN HAVE HIM AIRBORNE BEFORE THAT HAPPENS SO MUCH THE BETTER. PLEASE ADVISE.

  4. FILE: DEFER. E2IMPDET.

  “It’s Howard. ‘Mr. Robert’ is Edward Lee Howard,” Gerber said with what I thought was a strange calmness in his voice. “Edward Lee Howard has betrayed us.”

  I was about to ask who Howard was when the phone rang. Gerber picked it up, paused, and said, “Yes, Clair. I’ve just read it.” He listened to the DDO for a moment, then said quietly, “Yes. There’s no question. It’s Howard.”

  Looking behind Gerber at his little blackboard, I saw the single word written in white chalk: Resolve!

  Later, in my office, I went over the first trace memo providing background on one Vitaly S. Yurchenko. It contained the standard biographical information, the usual boilerplate memoranda from the FBI, but one entry caught my eye. Yurchenko was the hapless Soviet embassy security officer who in 1976 had turned over to the D.C. police a packet tossed into the embassy compound by former CIA officer Edwin G. Moore. Moore had been trying unsuccessfully to volunteer his services to the KGB by dropping notes in the mailbox of Dimitri Yakushkin, the KGB Washington Rezident. When the KGB failed to contact him—they mistakenly feared an FBI provocation—he had taken the desperate step of tossing a package of secrets over the fence. Vitaly Yurchenko, the report stated, thought the package might have been a terrorist bomb and called the police. Moore ended up with a fifteen-year federal jail sentence, and Yurchenko got the bungler of the year award at Lubyanka.

  Interesting guy, I thought. I was looking forward to meeting our new prize the next morning.

  8

  Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, 0700 Hours, August 2, 1985

  Chuck Medanich scanned the milling crowd of CIA and FBI officers in the VIP lounge at Flight Operations at Andrews Air Force Base. Medanich, a stocky southerner with a broad and open face, could have passed for a linebacker or a security guard. But he was actually the chief psychologist for the CIA’s Defector Resettlement Staff, and it was his job to move defectors through the flow of the intelligence community while keeping an eye on their mental health. He had been up past midnight the previous night, laying in supplies at the Oakton, Virginia, safe house reserved for Yurchenko’s initial debriefing. Gerber had called Medanich in for a meeting and personally asked that he “see to things.” Gerber had also assigned Aldrich Ames, chief of counterintelligence inside SE Division, to help Medanich get things ready for the debriefing. Ames would be one of Yurchenko’s initial debriefers.

  Medanich and Ames had stocked the safe house with the usual defector fare: juices, Coca-Cola, milk, bottled water, coffee, tea, bread, eggs, bacon, cold cuts, fruit and vegetables, a few six-packs of beer, a bottle of vodka, and one of bourbon. They worked into the early morning getting the town house ready, then agreed to meet outside the CIA headquarters building a few hours later, at 6:00 A.M., for the drive out to Andrews Air Force Base. There they would greet the C-141 bringing Yurchenko and his escorts, flying in from Rome via Frankfurt, Germany. But Ames didn’t show up on time, so an impatient Medanich called up to the SE Division office to see if anyone knew where he was. A secretary answered that they hadn’t heard from him. After a few minutes, Medanich headed out to Andrews without him. As Medanich waited for the plane in the spartan VIP lounge at Andrews, he was beginning to wonder if Ames, the man who was supposed to debrief Yurchenko, would ever arrive at all.

  As the plane landed and taxied to a stop, Customs and Immigration officers clambered aboard to process Yurchenko’s paperwork. Medanich saw Ames arrive at the VIP lounge just as Yurchenko was being brought off the plane and into a milling crowd of FBI agents, CIA officers, and other government officials.

  Ames thrust himself into the crowd and approached Yurchenko with a line that prompted Medanich to roll his eyes.

  “Colonel Yurchenko, I welcome you to the United States on behalf of the President of the United States.”

  Medanich glanced at Ames. His introduction was awfully pompous, especially for a guy who had nearly overslept and missed the whole thing. The group quickly formed into a motorcade led by armed CIA security officers in rented sedans, followed by the FBI contingent in their official cars and a van. Ames left his old Volkswagen at Andrews. It would remain illegally parked in front of Flight Operations for three days.

  If Aldrich Ames’s behavior at Andrews seemed somewhat odd and contrived, there was a good reason for it. Ames wasn’t certain whether Yurchenko knew he was a Soviet mole. Ames was one of the CIA’s most knowledgeable students of the KGB, and from Yurchenko’s initial debriefing in Rome and a quick reading of the CIA’s files, he had tried to gauge whether Yurchenko had been in a position inside the KGB to have access to his case. Ames believed the answer was no, but he wasn’t quite sure.

  Ames was being handled by Directorate K, the counterintelligence division inside the KGB’s First Chief Directorate. Yurchenko had left Directorate K under a cloud in January 1985, at least three months before Ames had volunteered, and had since been named one of several deputies in the American Department in the First Chief Directorate, responsible for Canada and U.S. reserves. But Ames knew the KGB bureaucracy was filled with dozens of “deputies” with small areas of responsibility, and few ever knew what their bosses were doing.

  Ames was pretty confident that if anyone in the American Department of the First Chief Directorate knew about his case, it would only be the chief and his most trusted aides. Yurchenko was likely out of the loop. But Ames couldn’t be sure, since he knew that Yurchenko could have heard “corridor gossip” about his case. He hadn’t mentioned anything about the case during his initial debriefing in Rome, but he could be saving the bombshell for after his arrival in Washington.

  Ames decided he had to test Yurchenko as soon as possible. So in the back of the car as they drove away from Andrews, he broke off their conversation long enough to hand him a note that he had prepared earlier. “If you have any particularly important information which you wish to provide only to the Director or another senior U.S. official, tell me, and I will take you to him.”

  Yurchenko grinned at Ames and said he had no message that required such special care. The confirmation came as a relief.

/>   But then Yurchenko passed on some KGB gossip that sent a chill through Ames. It was, Ames would later recall, “one piece of corridor gossip of great relevance to me, despite the tight compartmentation the KGB used.” It seems likely that Yurchenko told Ames that he had heard of a sudden and unexplained trip home to Moscow by the KGB’s Washington Rezident, Stanislov Androsov. Androsov (along with his counterintelligence chief, Viktor Cherkashin) had turned up in Moscow in April or May, so the speculation along the corridors in the First Chief Directorate’s headquarters was that something big had happened in Washington at about that time.

  Ames quickly calculated how best to handle this nugget of information. It was the sort of thing, he later recalled, that he could put into his debriefing report with confidence that no one would notice it for some time. Perhaps no one would ever pay much attention to it, if he buried it deep enough.

  The tip went into the Yurchenko file without anyone connecting the Androsov trip with the CIA’s 1985 losses. In part, that was because Yurchenko’s identification of Mr. Robert—Edward Lee Howard—seemed to answer the problems the CIA knew about at the time, particularly the loss of Adolf Tolkachev.

  It felt a little ridiculous, but the CIA driver had his orders: Instead of heading straight from Andrews to the safe house, he began a countersurveillance run, zigzagging around Washington for at least a half hour to make sure that the KGB wasn’t on their tail. When they arrived at the town house, followed by other government vehicles, there was no way to hide from the neighbors the fact that something strange was going on.