State Department Counterintelligence: Leaks, Spies, and Lies

by Robert David Booth

  “Robert,” he said, “start an investigation, although you know you will never solve this one.”

  Ah, Director Dittmer, always the encouraging soul. Returning to my office, I opened a file folder, wrote out SB12-0185-100-0059 on the tab collar, and started a new unauthorized disclosure investigation.

  With a little bit of digging, it became clear that the only people in the department who would be intimately involved in the upcoming negotiations were officers assigned to EAP—Don Keyser’s future assignment as PDAS. With an invaluable insider source within EAP, I quickly was able to reduce the possible suspects to three individuals, and only one whose outspoken views concerning the upcoming negotiations were well known. The US had been making economic concessions to the Japanese government ever since Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke visited the United States in 1957. Maybe it was time to level the playing field. Or maybe not.

  However, before interviewing the suspects, I needed to interview William Sherman, who was the deputy chief of mission in Japan with me from 1978–1980, and now the deputy assistant secretary for the region, to determine whether members of his staff had been authorized to discuss negotiation topics with their Japanese embassy counterparts. But before that interview took place, I had to alert Director Dittmer that my inquiry was getting very close to implicating or touching Black Dragons. Surprisingly, without any hesitation, he authorized me to go ahead.

  My discussion with DAS Sherman, conducted on the afternoon of January 9, 1985, was slightly strained as it became crystal clear to him that I was pursuing an unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information investigation and that one of his subordinates was my prime suspect. I was sure that he wanted to protect his employee from an overzealous investigator such as myself (shades of Kelly/Keyser). However, in the end, DAS Sherman was the consummate professional; he could not confirm or deny if the leaked information was “classified information” (shades of Kelly/Keyser). I needed to draw my own conclusions. Later that afternoon, I contacted “Edgar,” suspect number one, and arranged for a 9:30 interview the following day.

  Edgar appeared on time at room 2422, and SA Michael Posillico and I amicably started the interview. All said and done, Edgar acknowledged that he had reviewed with his Japanese embassy counterpart the suggested importation quotas of Japanese cars into the United States. Even before the negotiations started, the Japanese had been handed a huge advantage in terms of the US position. It was a nice starting point in a game of cards knowing how the deck was stacked. Edgar explained that, in fact, his disclosure (was it classified or just damn sensitive?) would ensure that the negotiations were successful (shades of Kelly/Keyser). Had the secretary of state approved this diplomatic disclosure? Most importantly, Japanese face saving had been assured. Was American saber-rattling about Japanese car imports all show for the public and Detroit? Did President Reagan have a public narrative for the US public and a private narrative for the Japanese government? Maybe concessions by the Japanese in other areas of negotiations would be forthcoming as a result. I thanked him for his candor and honesty, wrote up the interview, and forwarded the final report of investigation to Director Dittmer, who never discussed this investigation with me ever again—odd indeed.

  Edgar’s career appeared unaffected by his actions, and he moved up to the most senior ranks of the Department of State. So maybe this was actually an authorized leak, and neither I or the IC sleuths had a need to know. Maybe DAS Sherman was giving me a hint that afternoon of January 9. I think to this day that Director Dittmer and I stumbled into something that was way over our collective pay scales.

  All I know is that in 2013, Japanese car companies sent over 1.5 million vehicles to the United States while fewer than thirteen thousand US cars were sold in Japan.

  The leak cases just never stopped. It got so bad that on one occasion even I was suspected of having leaked a story to a national newspaper. Director Dittmer called me into his office on October 17, 1990, when I was the SIB chief, and handed me a copy of that morning’s Washington Post federal page with an article entitled “Ex-Bush Aide Quits As Zimbabwe Envoy” boldly circled in red ink. Agitated, face flushed, arms gesticulating wildly, he shouted, “Robert, did you leak this story?”

  I slowly and carefully pored over the newspaper article. According to the story, prepared by Ann Devroy, “Steven Rhodes, a senior adviser to President Bush when he was vice president, has resigned after less than five months as the U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe because of what the State Department describes as ‘personal reasons.’ Rhodes, 39, was recalled to Washington in August after the State Department received an accusation from Zimbabwe that he had been involved in an incident involving drugs earlier in the summer, a senior administration official said yesterday. The official said he was not under criminal investigation in either country. The official said Rhodes resigned after ‘discussions’ with State Department authorities here over a two-month period. A spokesman for the department, Adam Shub, said Rhodes submitted his resignation to Bush October 4.

  “‘As in any case in which a resignation is submitted for personal reasons, it is the department’s practice not to comment on the reasons involved,’ Shub said.

  “Shub said Rhodes has what amounts to a ninety-day grace period before he leaves government. Reached at a hotel here, Rhodes declined comment.

  “. . . Officials would not provide further details of the alleged drug incident. ‘There was an incident involving drugs,’ an official noted. ‘Discussions were held. He is now gone. That is all we have to say about it.’”

  What could I say to Director Dittmer? To be sure, I was the lead agent responsible for investigating “the accusation” as theWashington Post so carefully phrased it. All such accusations must be vetted, especially if made against a serving US ambassador. The results of my investigation, conducted with technical assistance from the FBI, had been submitted to Director Dittmer in late September 1990. I guess “the discussions” between Ambassador Rhodes and the department were initiated as a result of my investigative report.

  Director Dittmer knew that my final report had been restricted to his office and those with whom he shared it. The contents of the investigation were highly restricted to preserve Ambassador Rhodes’s privacy, yet someone in the department felt no such compulsion. While the article was not entirely accurate, only a Black Dragon who had access to my investigative report would have revealed selected portions of the final report to the Washington Post staff. Ambassador Rhodes was a political appointee, just like the fired BA 2888 leaker, and not a true Black Dragon and, as such, could be sacrificed for an indiscretion. I assured Director Dittmer that I had not discussed any information concerning Ambassador Rhodes with anyone outside my office, except him. I was not the source of that leak. Why would I be? To this day, I am baffled as to why anyone in the department would leak the story to the Washington Post. For what it is worth, I would happily serve at an embassy under Ambassador Rhodes’s leadership. Fortunately I was not asked to conduct an unauthorized disclosure investigation into this particular leak.

  During my career, I assisted with at least another twenty-five or so significant department loss and leak investigations. Some remain very sensitive as the identities of the leakers and the correspondents who received the classified information are known to the FBI and DS. Some still remain under investigation. Some department leakers will not be prosecuted, even though their identity is known, because DOJ and the State Department are unwilling to confirm in a public courtroom the authenticity of the information disclosed or, even worse, to defend why the information was classified.

  There is a whole category of leaking, much of which could be considered classified, that occurs between reporters, officials, and even DS agents on overseas missions. My good friend Sid Balman Jr., with whom I shared coaching duties for nearly a decade with our children’s soccer teams, was United Press International’s diplomatic and national security correspondent during the 1990s, which meant that as part of his dutie
s, he travelled on all overseas missions with presidents Bush and Clinton and Secretaries of State James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Warren Christopher, and Madeleine Albright.

  As part of the regular “spin cycle” on those trips, top aides to the president or secretary of state would come to the press section of the plane and impart nuggets of information about the story they wanted to create from a trip—say, to Syria for peace negotiation, China for a discussion of trade relations, or Brussels to work out NATO’s Balkan war planning. They mostly spoke on background as “senior US officials” or maybe “Western diplomatic sources” if the news was so classified or so sensitive that they did not want any fingerprints on it. If it was really sensitive, they would corner one particularly influential reporter near the bathroom—usually the likes of Tom Friedman of the New York Times, Barry Schweid of the Associated Press, or Steve Hurst of CNN—and leak something they were sure would end up at the top of that day’s news lineup.

  But some stories leak out in unusual corners of those airplanes. Sid was travelling with Warren Christopher back from consultations in Moscow during the mid-1990s with Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev. There was a full agenda of disputes, including the Balkans and the Middle East peace negotiations that the two diplomats addressed with varying degrees of success. Sid went to the restroom on the Air Force VC-137, the military’s version of the Boeing 707, immediately after then-Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk, who was largely responsible for Middle East policy. Imagine Sid’s surprise when he clicked the door locked behind him and saw an eight-page document clearly marked “top secret,” a virtual blow-by-blow of the meetings with the Russians that Indyk had left behind. As Sid describes, it was a “reporter’s pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.” But he had been around the block a few times as a reporter, and he didn’t want to end up in hot water for what some might view as stealing a classified document. Sid wrote most of the narrative in his reporter’s notebook, then tore up the document and threw it in the trash, thus ensuring his deniability and preserving his scoop. Further Sid waited a few days once back in Washington, to insert a little more space from the flight, before he reported a series of stories that caused quite a diplomatic stir in Moscow and Washington.

  Indyk’s department security clearance would be suspended on September 12, 2000, by DS for mishandling classified information while he was assigned as the US Ambassador to Israel. I was the DS/CI deputy director working along with DS/SIB chief Robert Hartung for the 1999 investigation into allegations of Indyk’s “. . . sloppy handling of classified information . . .” while serving as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs and as our ambassador. But when Robert and I interviewed Ambassador Indyk on October 25, 1999, about his adherence to department security guidelines concerning his handling of classified information, this airplane episode was completely unknown to me. Reportedly Indyk’s top secret security clearance was re-instated at the direction of President Clinton.

  Chapter Twelve

  When I was a young special agent, one of the first department conundrums I had to resolve was a case where “top secret” documents were being shared among convicted felons in a federal institution near Washington, DC. In this instance, the department thanked God that interest in foreign policy was not particularly high among the inmate population. Unlike comic books, drugs, and shanks, which could be easily traded for favors or contraband, the classified department documents held little or no value for the run-of-the-mill prisoner. Put another way, bureaucratic prose of a highly sensitive nature was not the currency of the prison. Not surprisingly, the office eventually identified as being responsible for losing the classified information was none other than the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR).

  This loss of highly classified department documents received its first public exposure when a Washington Times article dated November 10, 1983, entitled “Shultz Orders Hunt for Person who Let Secret Papers Go to Jail” reported that Secretary of State George Shultz, who was informed of the situation during a refueling stop in Alaska while traveling to Japan, had ordered an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the loss of our government’s most sensitive information. It was another black eye for the department—one that caused much snickering and finger pointing among the Washington pundits and politicos.

  Seven days before the Washington Times article appeared, I was seated behind my massive oak desk, poring over unsolved investigations, when my telephone rang.

  “Special Agent Booth,” I answered, “Special Investigations Branch, Department of State, how may I help you?”

  “I am Corrections Officer Charles Wrice at Lorton Reformatory. I have been calling everybody in federal law enforcement, and no one seems to be willing to help.”

  Lorton Reformatory—that would be the District of Columbia’s severely overcrowded and outdated prison built in Occoquan, Virginia, which holds DC’s most vicious and violent prisoners. Nothing but nothing good happens there. No wonder no one wanted to talk with him. Why was he calling the State Department?

  “Well then,” I said, “why don’t you tell me your story, and let’s determine who should be talking to you.”

  “Listen, about one month ago, I found these government documents in an old metal file cabinet being refinished by Lorton inmates.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah, and when I told my Lorton supervisor about it, he told me to forget it. And when I called the FBI’s Alexandria Field Office and talked to “Jerry” he just brushed me off. And when I called “Sally” who works at the Department of Justice, she claimed they had no jurisdiction. That’s why I am calling you.”

  Oh no, I thought, I have a looney on the other end of the line. “OK, and why are you calling the State Department?”

  “I think these are State Department papers. Some papers have ‘State Department Telegram’ written on the top, and I have one in my hand right now.”

  It was possible I have a real problem here, I thought. “Can you start to read from the top left of one of those papers for me?”

  Corrections Officer (CO) Wrice proceeded to recite a time and date group and additional acronyms that were consistent with a State Department telegram that was less than ninety days old.

  I interrupted him, asking, “Is there a large marking in the middle on the top and bottom of the page?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, “Secret.”

  “And any words after the subject line on the left side?”

  “Grenada, but the one that I think you might be interested in is one that talks about a suspected KGB agent traveling in Europe.”

  Someone is going to die here, I thought. “Excellent, you have reached the right office.”

  I quickly asked him when he could drop by my office for an interview, and he agreed to visit the next day.

  At 3:45 p.m. on November 4, I escorted CO Wrice to room 2422, deep in the bowels of the department, to be questioned by SA Michael Considine and me. Mike—6´4˝, basketball standout, and graduate of SUNY Brockport—had a constant smile and gentle comportment. We had served together on the secretary of state’s protective detail in the early eighties and enjoyed each other’s company.

  Once seated around the square walnut table, CO Wrice spun the tale. According to the CO, sometime in early October 1983, he discovered classified documents inside a file cabinet located in Lorton’s Old Furniture Building (OFB). For years, the US government had sent old or slightly damaged furniture to be refurbished by the inmates housed at Lorton as part of the corrections agency’s rehabilitation and cost reduction programs—the “Idle Hands are the Devil’s Tools” dictum, I supposed. In this instance, it turned out the department was bedeviled by a significant loss of ultrasensitive information thanks to gross negligence on the part of INR employees. According to CO Wrice, on the day in question, he was assigned to stand post in the saliport in the maximum-security area of Lorton Reformatory. Around 9:00 p.m., he was told that the maximum-security prisone
rs did not have linens or other sundry items in their cells and that Lieutenant J. Gibbs had authorized CO Wrice to scrounge for the necessary items. Images of James Garner in the movie the Great Escape filled my mind.

  During his search, while walking between One Block and Three Block, he noticed that the back and front gates of the walkway were open and the OFB front door facing the flagpole was also open. CO Wrice explained that it was possible an inmate could have been trying to hide inside the OFB, so he radioed Officer Coleman in tower 7 directly above the OFB to advise that he was going inside to conduct an inmate search. Even though he found no inmate inside, CO Wrice remained suspicious of the unlocked door and believed that contraband may have been secreted somewhere inside the OFB.

  In the midst of a search through the numerous pieces of furniture in various stages of refurbishment, CO Wrice opened a file cabinet and discovered classified documents inside. He removed some of the papers, which he recalled were stamped with “TOP SECRET” and “SECRET” markings. He suspected that his discovery was significant enough to contact his direct supervisors, Lieutenant Gibbs and Captain Durham, to alert them to his finding. His initial alert did not appear to generate any interest, and after thirty minutes, CO Wrice called back seeking guidance. He received an oral reprimand from Captain Durham for being away from his assigned post.