A Look Over My Shoulder

by Richard Helms

  McGeorge Bundy had apparently forgotten his comment when, in an interview with Michael R. Beschloss, he remarked in effect that he thought Penkovsky’s importance had been exaggerated in the literature of the period.‡ Bundy then noted that in the text of his own book he had managed to avoid even a single reference to the spy.§ This will pass for a gratuitous comment on a man who of his free will, and at the cost of his life and the well-being of his wife and family, had volunteered his services to the United States, the United Kingdom, and the free world. While pondering Bundy’s views I was reminded of a comment made by Richard Wilmer Rowan in 1937. In remarking on what he called “the Great-Man treatment of history,” Rowan writes that “the great men themselves, when composing memoirs or correcting the grade of their eminence, have been disposed to protect their spies … even those safely deceased—by preserving their anonymity and resisting the temptation to divide with them the credit which otherwise must burden the narrator alone. Concern for the ultimate security of the spy is never so acute … as when the time comes to save him from his … share in the public acclaim.”*

  In the two years before his execution, Penkovsky supplied CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service more than five thousand pages of highly classified Soviet missile data, war plans, and military and political intelligence. This information was without question a fundamental part of the data that permitted President Kennedy to make the decisions that avoided the possibility of a nuclear showdown and perhaps war.

  Unlike Lieutenant Colonel Popov, the first GRU officer to offer his services to CIA, Colonel Penkovsky moved in the upper bracket of Soviet society. Popov was born a peasant. Only a series of extraordinary coincidences allowed him to fight his way from the dirt floor of his peasant home to a commission in the Red Army and assignment to the intelligence service. In contrast, Penkovsky came from the upper-middle class, and could plausibly have claimed fringe membership in the lesser nobility in Russia. His father was a mining engineer who died in the 1920s as an officer in the White Army, fighting the Bolsheviks. From the time he was accepted into the Young Communist League (Komsomol) and commissioned as an artillery officer, Penkovsky was able to fudge the details of his father’s past sufficiently to allow himself to become recognized as a promising officer. He married the daughter of a lieutenant general, and as a result of his wartime service attracted the attention of another senior officer. General Sergei Varentsov, who was subsequently appointed chief marshal of artillery, came to regard Penkovsky as a surrogate son.

  After his graduation from the Frunze Military Academy and the Military Diplomatic Academy, Penkovsky was assigned to the GRU, Soviet military intelligence service.* By 1960, and his promotion to colonel, Penkovsky feared that because of his father’s background, he might never be cleared by the KGB for promotion to general. In the eyes of the security service, it did not matter that Penkovsky was only four months old when his father died.

  Like most volunteer agents, Penkovsky’s motives were complex. The faults, weaknesses, and corruption that Lenin and Stalin had inflicted on Russia were all too obvious. Through no fault of his own, Penkovsky felt that his career was frustrated. From what he had seen of the West, he admired the political system and envied the comfortable life and personal freedom offered by the capitalist democracies. Penkovsky was acutely aware of the threat the USSR posed to the West, and was convinced that the easygoing democracies seriously underestimated the peril they faced. He had a taste for the good life, and took risks to enjoy it. But this danger was a remote second to the ultimate peril he faced in his role as a penetration agent.

  From the moment Penkovsky passed a letter to two young American tourists in Moscow in August 1960 to the scores of hours spent in London and Paris with his case officers, the brush meetings and the servicing of dead drops in Moscow, and the anxious time snapping some five thousand photographs—and incidentally exhausting two Minox cameras—his life was on the line. The dust of the missile crisis was still very much in the air when the operation came to term. On November 2, 1962, a signal from Penkovsky informed us that he had placed an urgent message in a Moscow dead drop. A few hours later, our young embassy employee was arrested while attempting to service Penkovsky’s dead drop. Penkovsky’s arrest had come some weeks earlier, after a long and sophisticated surveillance. Our after-action assessment of the operation showed no indication of deception until the time of his arrest.

  As always with a “walk-in,” as we irreverently referred to volunteer agents, the first consideration is the possibility of provocation. Was the chap sent to us by an opposing intelligence or security service interested in eventually deceiving us, or was he merely to provoke a glimpse of our personnel and clandestine facilities? The next step is quickly to determine if the volunteer is the person he says he is, and thus has plausible access to the information he is offering—that is, might he be a self-serving fraud, intent on improving his fortune? These protective procedures are practiced around the globe, from the quietest diplomatic and intelligence backwaters to the most exposed and sensitive posts in hostile police states. In the USSR, we had, of course, long since learned that the KGB and its sister intelligence and security services were masters of provocation and deception operations. The Russians did not invent these operations—although the czars’ various police organs left a rich heritage for the KGB to build on—but they may claim to have developed the techniques to a near art form.

  The details of how we determined Penkovsky’s bona fides—and verified his position in Soviet intelligence, traced his career from his field assignment in Turkey, and learned of his persistent, friendly approaches to American, Canadian, and British officials—are spelled out in The Spy Who Saved the World.* The extreme sensitivity of our limited facilities in the USSR mandated a most cautious response to Penkovsky’s approach in Moscow. In 1960 an important part of Ambassador Llewellyn “Tommy” Thompson’s mission was to improve relations with the USSR. Thompson was an accomplished diplomat and expert on the Soviet Union. Understandably, he did not want to risk giving the impression that the Moscow embassy was a nest of spies. In view of the repeated, and often successful, KGB efforts to compromise and blackmail Western diplomats with just such provocations as Penkovsky seemed to offer, Ambassador Thompson insisted that Penkovsky be kept far away from any official American installation in the USSR. In the ensuing weeks, as we struggled to rig a secure response to Penkovsky’s offer, there were moments when I thought it might remain just beyond our reach. As it turned out, it was Penkovsky who, with almost unbelievable luck, solved the problem.

  After waiting four months to hear from us, Penkovsky undertook a series of bold—all but foolhardy—approaches to British and Canadian businessmen and diplomats. Today, when diplomats, businessmen, and tourists move around in Moscow as casually as they might in downtown Dubuque, Iowa, it is difficult to comprehend the extent to which the Soviet security organs monitored the movement and activity of foreigners in the USSR. This level of surveillance made it possible for the KGB to launch provocations and blackmail operations on a uniquely sophisticated level. I recall at least two foreign ambassadors, various highranking embassy and military personnel, and numerous clerks who fell victim to these operations. Tourists and others without diplomatic immunity were also at risk of arrest and blackmail.

  These provocations and blackmail operations served another important KGB purpose. For the Western powers, the best defense against these operations was to advertise this KGB practice and to warn officials and private persons against accepting any documents or letters proffered by apparently well-meaning Russians. To the degree these warnings were effective, we will never know what legitimate offerings and opportunities we may have missed.

  In view of the tight surveillance the KGB maintained over all foreigners, it was nothing short of a miracle that Penkovsky’s repeated attempts to contact us escaped KGB notice. This was such an exception to the rule that it was not until Penkovsky’s initial reports were evaluated and p
roved to be of such great sensitivity and value, we felt reasonably sure the bold approach was not the first step in some high-level deception effort. On my staff, even Jim Angleton, the ultra-cautious counterintelligence chief, agreed that Penkovsky’s reports were entirely too revealing ever to have been used to authenticate a deception operation.

  Because Penkovsky eventually succeeded in reaching British officials with his request for contact with us, and in respect to our longstanding relationship, we agreed to join forces in handling the Penkovsky operation. Joint operations are usually to be avoided for reasons ranging from petty to profound—methods are different, egos clash, routine procedures tangle. The Penkovsky operation was an exception. Harnessed in tandem, our combined facilities were much enhanced. The extraordinary value of Penkovsky’s reporting smoothed the few kinks that developed.

  The Cuban missile crisis ended on November 2, 1962, when the Soviets began dismantling the missiles and destroying the launching sites.

  Colonel Penkovsky was brought to trial in May 1963 with Greville Wynne, a British businessman who had served as a contact man. Wynne was sentenced to eight years’ “deprivation of liberty.”* Penkovsky was found “guilty of treason to the Motherland” and sentenced to be shot to death. On May 17, Pravda announced that “O. V. Penkovsky had been executed.”

  Here I want to put two often cited notions about the Penkovsky operation to rest. From the outset, every bit of operational and intelligence reporting on this activity went across my desk. I received all the incoming traffic and released all the outgoing messages. For reasons not clear to me, Greville Wynne, who performed bravely throughout the operation, has alleged that he had accompanied Penkovsky to Washington for a secret meeting with President Kennedy. Penkovsky would surely have enjoyed such a trip, and President Kennedy, who would probably have thought I was mad to ask, might conceivably have agreed to meet the spy. More to the point, had the opportunity for any such visit been remotely possible, neither I nor my British colleague would have agreed to run any such lunatic risk. Even if the weather and aircraft involved promised to cooperate perfectly, we could not possibly have permitted Penkovsky to drop from the sight of his Soviet colleagues for the two days likely to be involved in such an undertaking.

  It has also been alleged that Penkovsky (and before him, Lieutenant Colonel Popov) were not shot but were burned alive in the presence of some of their colleagues. However sensational, there is no evidence to support this grisly notion. It may have sprung from the fact that in the aftermath of an execution, an officer must be present to certify that the cremation was performed.

  Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Pyotr Popov deserve the respect and gratitude of us all. Their story needs no imagined embroidery. The truth is drama enough.

  *Ray Cline, Secrets, Spies and Scholars (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis, 1978), p. 197.

  †Dino A. Brugioni, a longtime CIA officer, supervised all of the Agency’s aerial photography and briefing material during the missile crisis. His book Eyeball to Eyeball (New York: Random House, 1991) is an excellent inside account of the crisis.

  ‡The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963 (New York: Harper-Collins/Burlingame, 1991), p. 768.

  §Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988).

  *Richard Wilmer Rowan with Robert G. Deindorfer, Secret Service: 33 Centuries of Espionage (New York: Hawthorn, 1967), p. 1. First published in 1937 as The Story of the Secret Service.

  *The GRU collected military and political intelligence abroad and was responsible for the security of the armed services. The KGB had both internal security and foreign counterintelligence responsibilities, and also collected intelligence abroad. Although the missions of the two services overlapped and caused continuous bickering, neither the KGB nor the GRU had the slightest compunction about engaging in operations theoretically the province of the other. In the early days and through World War II, the GRU was the stronger intelligence collection service, and its personnel and methods were more sophisticated than those of the KGB predecessor organizations—the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, and NKGB. The parallel activity of the services permitted Alger Hiss to deny that he worked for the KGB, and for his supporters to come up empty-handed after a cursory glance at selected KGB files. The GRU files will reflect a different history. By the mid-1950s, the espionage element of the KGB had shaken much of its secret police mentality and had begun the recruitment of educated and linguistically competent young officers, well qualified to work abroad. The KGB continued to flourish and was to become the more powerful and senior of the Soviet intelligence organs.

  *Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin (New York: Scribner’s, 1992). This excellent book gives an informed, inside view of the entire Penkovsky operation.

  *In April 1964, Wynne was exchanged for Gordon Lonsdale, a Soviet agent who had been imprisoned in England.

  Chapter 21

  —

  KHRUSHCHEV BLINKS

  As the crisis with the Soviet Union in Cuba developed and ran its course, I was fully occupied with focusing the Agency’s espionage operations on every possible aspect of the confrontation. This kept me a step away from those at the EXCOM level who had the lonely responsibility for dealing firsthand with the very real possibility of nuclear war. From October 16, when President Kennedy was shown proof that nuclear weapons were being installed and armed in Cuba, to October 28, when Khrushchev informed Kennedy that the “Soviet Government has ordered the dismantling of bases and the return of [the] equipment to the USSR,” the U.S. government and the country at large had functioned admirably. In the face of a possible nuclear war, there was no panic in the streets, and the President presided over his administration with what today strikes me as considerable wisdom. He marshaled his forces prudently, balanced sage advice against various hotheaded or weak-kneed proposals, and navigated a steady course to the best possible result.

  It is commonplace to note that we will never know how good a president Kennedy might have become. Maybe so. But there is evidence enough to support plausible speculation.

  In the weeks leading up to the missile crisis, Bill Harvey and Robert Kennedy had crossed swords several times, and I had more than once advised Bill to remember that in arguing with Robert Kennedy he was also taking on his older brother. Unfortunately, my counsel had little effect.

  If one were to cast about for someone positively calculated to rub against every grain of Bill Harvey’s being, the chance of finding anyone who might fit the measure more closely than Robert Kennedy would have been zero. To say that Bill was paunchy would have been a mistake—he was much more than hefty. Robert was lithe. Bill was Indiana and University of Kentucky. From his underpants to button-down shirt, Bob was East Coast and Ivy League. Bill had earned his way in life without the benefit of family influence. Bob was born to the manor, and as a young man he took the best of everything for granted. In office, Bob spoke with the full backing of his brother. Harvey had the DCI’s confidence and mine, but when he spoke with Bob it was as a lieutenant dealing with a general. Harvey was never to see it that way.

  I doubt that anyone could have done a better job of attempting to run our part of the MONGOOSE project than Harvey did. He was a compulsive worker, and had all but exhausted himself attempting to draft plans and create operations that would win Bob’s approval and that of General Lansdale. Viewed from our side of the fence, the oral directives of both these men were often inconsistent, and too frequently subject to abrupt changes. A few weeks before the missile crisis, Bill’s frustration with trying to carry out a string of next-to-impossible missions while satisfying the two totally different senior people, neither of whom had more than a slight notion of what was involved in agent operations, became impossible for him to hide. I no longer remember what it was that fired the explosion, but in early September, Harvey and Robert Kennedy tangled in an all-out oral donnybrook. No matter that the incident which ended their re
lationship came as the result of honest misunderstandings on both sides: Bill Harvey was persona non grata with Robert Kennedy and the White House.

  This was not the moment I would have chosen to make any such serious a personnel change, but things had gone too far for any attempt to restore the relationship. As an interim solution, I assigned responsibility for liaison with Robert Kennedy and his staff to Harvey’s deputy, Bruce Cheever, who had come back from Europe to join Task Force W. Although relieved of the responsibility for personal liaison with Robert Kennedy, Harvey would continue in place until a replacement could be found. The job required an experienced senior officer who was aggressive, fast on his feet, wise in the ways of Washington, socially adroit, and quick to learn.

  By the time the missile crisis had subsided, I had chosen Desmond FitzGerald as Harvey’s replacement.

  “Des,” as he was known, was never in OSS but he might well have been—he was a prototype of the score or so top-drawer, impeccably well connected New Yorkers who populated the earliest OSS cadre. Unlike many of his coevals, he marched to his own drum. A few days after Pearl Harbor, Des enlisted as a private soldier. He was thirty years old, with a wife—Marietta Peabody, a New England socialite, who later married a British diplomat, Ronald Tree—and a daughter, Frances, and a son to whom he was devoted. After a severe dose of rugged combat service with General Joseph Stilwell and Chinese troops in the China-Burma theater, Major FitzGerald returned to New York. Despite a flirtation with New York politics and a promising future with his law firm (Hotchkiss Spence), Des welcomed the CIA job that his friend Frank Wisner offered him. This time, he did not start out as a buck private—his first assignment was as executive officer in the Office of Policy Coordination element of the Agency’s Far East Division. It was in covert action that Des found his Agency métier.