Great Spies of the 20th Century

by Patrick Pesnot

  Jacques Derogy and Hesi Carmel100

  [In this extract the two journalists describe the meeting between Pollard and Colonel Sella at the home of Steven Stern, a rich Jewish man from New York.]

  Sella sought the agreement of his boss, General Amos Lapidot, who encouraged him to submit a report to Rafi Eitan. Eitan was the head of Lekem, the obscure scientific bureau with links to the Ministry of Defence and which wasn’t even on the CIA’s radar of Israeli intelligence, and he gave Sella the green light to proceed. Pollard brought with him a file of top-quality information. Eitan was excited and believed the chance had come for him to outdo his Mossad rivals, but his subordinates at Lekem were not pleased: firstly, the service had no mandate to spy on Americans and secondly, Pollard’s handwriting left little to be desired. Consequently, they asked for a document from their leader showing that they had warned him of using such a dangerous character and that Colonel Sella should not act as his case officer. Determined to have his own way, Eitan flew to the US to convince Sella to keep manipulating his course, assuring him that he had been authorised to do so by the authorities.

  After having received the documents, the Israelis followed the following procedure: every fortnight, Pollard would visit a house bought by Lekem near Washington, where he could make use of an ultra-modern photocopier. Once the documents had been duplicated, he could then return to his office and put the various bits of paper and photographs back where he had found them.

  Pollard was a spendthrift and crippled by debt: he was always in need of money and the money he received from Lekem was relatively good. With one month's salary he bought a ring for his fiancee followed by a honeymoon in Europe where they stayed in the very best hotels. He even opened a Swiss bank account and in total earned tens of thousands of dollars. Pollard clearly was not just acting out of sympathy for Israel. However, it was not all bad for Lekem: it is far easier to keep a spy on side who is being paid. Pollard received more and more money, thus reinforcing the idea that he was providing a considerable service to Israel, which psychologically was very important and meant that he worked even harder.

  From now on, Pollard worked on demand. At the beginning of his collaboration with Lekem it was he who had taken the initiative to find documents that might be relevant to Israel. Yet he was now being told where to look and as he was being forced to take more and more risks, he was given an Israeli passport (under a different name, of course), in order to keep him quiet. This meant that if things did go wrong then he would be able to settle in Israel, or at least, that is clearly what they wanted him to believe.

  Pollard handed over thousands and thousands of pages of documents including information on the US Navy' communication systems, Soviet military equipment in the Middle East, arms sales to Arab countries and a number of satellite photos. If the Israeli

  Air Force was able to bomb Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Tunis in October 1985, then it was no doubt down to the aerial photographs provided by Pollard.

  This incident certainly gave various specialists in Washington something to think about. The bombing surprised them as they knew very well that the Israelis could not have had the aerial photographs to carry out such an operation. Only the US had access to such things. As a result, the idea that there might be a mole in their midst began to take form.

  At the same time, Pollard was increasingly coming under the suspicions of his superiors in the US Navy, not least because of his lifestyle: Pollard and his wife appeared to be positively rolling in money. This recklessness was no doubt due to a lack of professionalism from Lekem, and their Mossad rivals would certainly not have allowed one of their agents to visit the best tailors or dine in the most expensive restaurants. They would also show a similar amateurism when their spy was finally unmasked.

  On several occasions Pollard was caught telling lies, inventing false pretences to view highly confidential archives, or lying about how he spent his time. More worryingly, a colleague saw him leave work with a large amount of documents, which turned out to be secret ones, and which should never have left the building where Pollard worked.

  The spy was thus under increasingly worrying suspicion, yet it was the illegal installation of a camera in his office that would bring the truth to light. The navy's counterintelligence unit discovered that Pollard was consulting documents that had nothing to do with his work on terrorism. Yet when asked politely, Pollard had an answer for everything: if he was consulting documents that had no relevance to his work, it was because he had discovered a major case of espionage.

  His defence was clever but he was to make a vital mistake. Allowed to call his wife, he told her, using a coded message, that she should quickly destroy some documents that were stored at their home. His wife panicked and could do no better than to cram the papers into a suitcase and entrust it to their neighbours, who in turn were so wary and suspicious of what was going on, that they alerted the authorities.

  However, Pollard had not yet been arrested and was allowed to return home that same evening. He must have known that his time was up and so called his case officer, Yagour, demanding to be evacuated as soon as possible. Unfortunately, he soon discovered that contrary to what he had been told, there was no escape plan or anything for that matter that would help him.

  Believing that he had been let go, Pollard made one last desperate attempt and drove with his wife to the Israeli Embassy in Washington. As the gates were opening for another car, he forced his way in, but was outflanked by the FBI, who had already laid siege to the Embassy. Inside, the security services knew what had to be done and to avoid an incident with the FBI, they sent him away, despite the fact that he had an Israeli passport.

  All the Lekem agents who had dealt with Pollard suddenly rushed to leave the US. As for the abandoned spy, he was arrested and immediately confessed to what he had done. The result was predictable: the United States were furious with Israel, while Jerusalem, after initially denying it, soon apologised and blamed Eitan and his subordinates. Finally, each side tried their best to minimalise the significance of the whole affair.

  Yet Pollard's betrayal, despite its extreme seriousness, did not fundamentally harm the relationship between the two countries: the US and Israel are also linked by other important interests. However, it is true that the affair definitely cast a temporary frost between the two. It should also be emphasised that in spite of the continued urgings of the Israeli authorities, which have been repeated several times over the years, including in recent election campaigns in Israel, Washington has never agreed to pardon Pollard, who was sentenced to a lifetime in prison.

  During the Wye Plantation negotiations between Israel and Palestine, Prime Minister Netanyahu threatened that he would not sign it unless Pollard was released. But Clinton did not give in to such blackmail. So why such obstinacy from the Americans? After all, Pollard had spent almost twenty-five years in prison and was a citizen of one of the United State's closest allies in the Middle East. What is more, in Israel Pollard had become somewhat of a national hero in the same vein as Eli Cohen.101

  In order to understand why the Americans insisted on keeping him in prison, it is important to bear in mind the vehemence with which Caspar Weinberger described the case, even going so far as to say that Pollard should be shot. Indeed, the Pollard Affair went beyond that of simple spying between the two countries, as such cases of espionage had already been revealed before. Instead, it must be seen in the context of the time: in the 1980s, the Israelis were doing everything they could to ensure that Soviet Jews were allowed to emigrate to Israel. Among these Jews were highly skilled people, such as senior scientists, and others who were of great interest to the Israelis. But Moscow was not interested, and so the idea of a trade formed, whereby Israel could use the information provided by Pollard, which included military information that might in turn have been of interest to the Soviets, such as the range of techniques used by the US Navy to detect and track Soviet submarines. Information such as this could prove
vital in case of any conflict. The Israelis presumably communicated this information with Moscow and in return, many Soviet Jews were suddenly given permission to go to Israel. However, one way or another the US intelligence agencies had got to the bottom of the case and Jonathan Pollard had to pay the ultimate price.

  The famous American journalist, Seymour Hersch,102 claims to have been told by certain CIA officials, furious at the idea that the White House might one day bow to Israeli pressure and pardon Pollard, that they planned to block any such pardon by revealing that he had, in fact, caused serious harm to the USA. This damage was far worse than might previously have been imagined, as some of his information had actually ended up in the hands of the Soviets.

  Chapter 19

  The Polyakov Mystery

  The greatest spy of the twentieth century? Perhaps. Whatever the case, Dmitri Fyodorovich Polyakov was certainly one of the most mysterious and even today, many American intelligence experts estimate that the CIA has never possessed such a valuable resource in the heart of the ‘Evil Empire', to use Ronald Reagan's expression. Yet there are also other experts who claim that General Polyakov was actually a double agent responsible for poisoning the Langley headquarters. So why was this high-ranking Red Army spy shot in the mid-1980s? His death sentence was revealed by Pravda in 1990, at a time when the USSR still existed and was thus information directly orchestrated by the Kremlin. This is why these same experts, who questioned Polyakov's loyalty, believe that there must have been some form of subterfuge and misinformation: a classic KGB manoeuvre.

  What was the truth? It is fair to say that the fall of the Red Empire had done little to unravel the mystery of the Soviet secret services, which remain carefully protected by their existing avatars; the FSB and the SVR. Yet this is not surprising when the Russian leader is a former KGB man who has placed many of his former comrades at the top of his government.

  The Americans gave Polyakov the curious codename of ‘Top Hat', as well as another aristocratic alias, ‘Bourbon', showing that they clearly held Polyakov in high esteem. Senior CIA officials considered him to be the prototype ‘fake defector', a spy who pretends to switch sides so as to better misinform the enemy. This highlights one of the most tortuous aspects of intelligence: a grey area where any form of certainty seems to have been abolished.

  Was Polyakov a genuine defector? A preliminary remark must point out the fact that he was never actually a ‘physical' defector. Unlike other Soviets, he never chose ‘the free world', to use Kravchenko's famous expression. Instead, even though he often lived outside of the USSR, he never officially broke with his home country. When the time came for him to retire, he did not try to flee to the West and, much to his misfortune, chose to stay in the USSR. However, the official announcement of his death sentence and execution does not mean that he was actually shot, although even this is not the only uncertainty in this particular case.

  Dmitri Polyakov was born in the Ukraine in 1921. The son of an accountant, he was a brilliant student and was admitted to the prestigious Frunze Military Academy, where the officers of the Red Army were trained. He was naturally mobilised during the Second World War and as an artillery officer, led his men with courage, which resulted in him being decorated several times. After the war, he continued his military training and was quickly assigned to the Red Army's intelligence agency, the GRU. His private life was very normal: he married a military nurse who gave him two sons.

  In 1956 the young officer was given his first foreign posting to the United States. He was to be entrusted with a special mission: to work as a member of the Soviet delegation to the UN that was responsible for coordinating the work of ‘illegals' in the United States, that is, those spies without diplomatic cover. Polyakov's work was clearly satisfactory as he was appointed as a colonel. After a brief return to the USSR, he went back to New York and resumed his post.

  The beginning of the 1960s marked a real turning point in Polyakov's life as it saw the start of his career as a double agent. However, before looking at the details of his betrayal, we shall continue to follow the path of his official career in the GRU. After New York, Polyakov once more returned to Moscow, where he was appointed as the military attache in Burma. This was a time when America was engaging in its war with Vietnam and Yangon was a strategic place for an intelligence officer. He was later posted to India, where he held the post of head of the Soviet Bloc. Now appointed general, he returned to the USSR and directed the Chinese department of the GRU. Now he was at the top, his rank and position allowed him to have access to the Red Army's best-kept secrets. He finally retired in 1980, where he could enjoy of his favourite hobbies: woodworking. He was denounced in the mid-1980s and although no longer an active agent, he must have maintained contact with some of his former colleagues.

  At the outset, the longevity of his career as a double agent is somewhat surprising, but can be explained by his extreme caution. Unless, of course, he was a false double agent and a man who only betrayed when ordered to do so. An example of his excessive caution can be seen in the way he made contact with his American case officers, always using the correct Soviet procedures. He always refused face-to-face contact and chose the location of the dead letterboxes (the hiding placing that can only be accessed after completing a very complicated process) himself, this allowing him to communicate with the Americans. Later on and still in an attempt to avoid unnecessary physical contact, he demanded to have access to the most sophisticated technology. Consequently, the CIA concocted an ingenious course of action: the use of a transmitter that was capable of sending radio waves that were so compressed they were virtually undetectable. This meant that he could pass an American building while inside some form of public transport and simply click the lock on his briefcase and send a message that would otherwise have taken up fifty typed pages of documents.

  To return to the beginning of his collaboration with the Americans in the early 1960s, there are two versions that currently exist. The first is that Polyakov was approached in New York not by the CIA, but by the FBI. In the US, the federal agency is also responsible for counterintelligence and so there was nothing to prevent the FBI from poaching a Soviet official.

  The second version seems more plausible, given Polyakov's personality, and sees the Soviet taking the initiative and contacting the Americans. But why? Once again we enter the realms of hypothesis and the first explanation of his betrayal could be that he was deeply affected by the horrors of the Second World War and wanted to spare his country the drama of a second conflict. He feared that a war might one day break out between the two superpowers, but as a patriot, naturally wanted the USSR to emerge victorious. However, he did not want to see the Soviet regime and its corrupt leaders triumphant, but rightly or wrongly, believed that the Americans were being naive and had not fully recognised the Soviet threat. Sooner or later he believed that they would eventually succumb and be eaten by a fish much cleverer than themselves.

  Constantin Melnik103

  Must we believe [Polyakov] when he affirmed during his trial that he had rebelled - in an unfathomable paradox of the human soul - following the break up to the communist system after the death of Stalin; a system to which he had been so enthusiastically devoted during his youth?This hard line Stalinist was now apparently leading the defence for democracy. Instead we should consider his whole demanding temperament and that this high-flying spy could not accept the petty bureaucratic cowardice of the regime. Day to day intelligence is not about the exploits of Richard Zourgue or Kim Philby, not to mention that idiot James Bond...

  [Thus according to Malik, it is this revolt against an exacting and callous organisation that pushed him to devote his body and soul to a democratic system.]

  There have been other spies and influential agents - Georges Paques in particular -who thought they were working for peace by betraying their country, as they believed that in doing so, they were helping to maintain a military and strategic balance between East and West. The differe
nce here is that Polyakov believed that it was the West that was in need of help as it had underestimated the USSR's power and its ability to cause harm. We now know that this was not the case and that his analysis was incorrect, at least from a strictly military point of view. In the late 1970s, Yuri Andropov (the head of the KGB and later president of the USSR), secretly drew up a catastrophic picture of the competition between the USA and the USSR, to the detriment of the latter.

  According to other sources, another reason that many have strengthened the Soviet's resolve to betray his country was that while stationed in New York in the early 1960s, his eldest son, who was then very young, fell gravely ill. Polyakov requested that his child be cared for by the best doctors, which was expensive, but his superiors refused to grant him the necessary funds and the child died. Did this mean that Polyakov now conceived a definitive hatred against the Soviet authorities?

  Another question is what was the exact nature of the information that Polyakov passed on to the Americans, firstly to the FBI and then to the CIA while he was in Burma and India? According to some experts, his information was extraordinary, even claiming that there was so much of it that two rooms in Langley had to be devoted to him. However, this exaggeration is no doubt linked to the propaganda that would later surround Polyakov and the CIA's wish to celebrate his success.