The DS officers responsible for administering the now-defunct security escort program were appalled by the decision but powerless to overturn the Krys and Ace edicts. The deed was done, and Russian diplomats (and SVR IOs) soon wandered freely inside the HST. One department official recalled that in December 1995 a Russian diplomat showed up unannounced in his office with Christmas gifts of chocolate and flowers for the office staff. At another point, Russian diplomats’ unfettered access to offices and staff was such a nuisance that a career department officer, “Gladys,” who worked in the European Bureau, contacted DS to complain about the lack of security controls. Some department staffers could see the forest for the trees despite the myopia of certain Black Dragons.
The results of the relaxed escort policy were clearly evident to most of us—the security of the HST had been compromised by ill-advised policies and facile bureaucrats. Although early indicators suggested that the SVR had reduced its reliance on former Eastern European proxies to run a variety of intelligence operations against the United States and that previous aggressive SVR behavior under general secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Party to the Soviet Union Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko seemed to wane following the breakup of the former Soviet Union, there was no evidence suggesting that the governments of either Mikhail Gorbachev or Boris Yeltsin were any less intent on obtaining sensitive information concerning their political, diplomatic, military, or commercial competitors. To believe otherwise was just wishful naiveté. Until a complete ideological purge of the former East German, Polish, and Bulgarian security services could be accomplished by the fledgling democratic governments, the former intelligence bosses and midgrade officers in those countries still owed their positions and political allegiance to the SVR. Consequently it retained considerable clout in that part of the intelligence world.
Langan’s flawed justification in asking for the suspension of the escort rules was due to the “rapid political evolution” in former Soviet bloc countries. That artful statement suggested the State Department would be less aggressively targeted by the SVR and its surrogates.
Obviously Langan and Ace were unable to predict the rapid ascent of one ex-SVR thug named Vladimir Putin, giving credence to the notion that career diplomats should leave the department’s security program in the hands of security professionals. Contrary to what these gentlemen liked to believe, when it came to clandestine collection, most foreign intelligence operatives, both friends and foes, assigned to diplomatic missions in Washington aggressively attempted to exploit American diplomats and other targets of opportunity.
So how, why, and under what circumstances did I first find out that the longstanding HST Russian diplomat escort rule had been abolished? In the summer of 1998, SSA Don Sullivan, assigned to the FBI’s Washington Field Office managing one of the counterintelligence desks, called me to arrange a meeting. Tall, lanky, and soft-spoken, Don had worked Russian counterintelligence for the better part of his career. In the near future, we would work together on the Robert Hanssen case before Hanssen was arrested and convicted for espionage in 2001. (However, his most important duty would occur years later when he retired from the FBI and moved to Nashville, Tennessee in the late 2000s. In 2009, Don, I, and our spouses had a delightful reunion over brunch where he accepted his new surveillance responsibilities, which were to discreetly monitor my daughter, Chloe, who attended Vanderbilt University from 2009–2013. Apparently it worked, as she graduated without reportable incident.)
By 1998, Don and I had already worked together on a variety of Soviet intelligence issues, and I had come to appreciate his aggressive counterintelligence stance. I always welcomed his calls. Don told me that he wanted to share some intriguing information that his FBI surveillance team had recently developed regarding Russian diplomats spotted in the vicinity of the HST. A few days later, I was sitting in his WFO office as Don explained the significance of the details contained in the papers strewn atop his overflowing desk.
Patiently and concisely, Don identified seven specific Russian diplomats and their vehicular itineraries when they left the Russian embassy, located on Wisconsin Avenue in the northwest section of Washington, DC, and drove to various destinations in DC, Virginia, and Maryland.
Don explained that the FBI surveillance team had recently noted that certain Russian diplomats were now entering the HST with a frequency and duration dramatically inconsistent with what the FBI had observed for the previous twelve months. More ominously, Don said, “Unfortunately for you, a high percentage of those Russian diplomats walking around the department are strongly suspected to be SVR IOs operating in the United States under diplomatic title.”
“This is a tricky one, Don,” I said. “Bona fide Russian diplomats visit the State Department for a variety of legitimate reasons and some will be IOs.” I could tell from Don’s expression that he was not happy with my answer. “Well, in reality,” I added, “IOs serving under diplomatic guise abroad, for any country, would perform similar activities to protect their clandestine personas.”
“I get that, Robert,” Don said, “but how do we, the FBI, or you in DS account for the sudden influx of Russian IOs inside the HST in such a short period of time?”
“I honestly don’t have a good answer right now, but any Russian IO threat is minimized by the department’s strict escort policy.” Oh, how I would later come to regret that ignorant reply!
Only after returning to my office and researching the access control issues for the HST did I discover Circular 92-19. While Russian diplomats were not authorized unescorted access to the White House, NSA, CIA, the Pentagon, or DOJ, they could freely wander the halls of the US Department of State for as long as they wished without fear of challenge. There wasn’t any similar reciprocity by the Russian Foreign Ministry in Russia for US diplomats assigned to Moscow. Quid pro quo simply didn’t exist in that country’s foreign affairs lexicon. All I could think of was that the State Department had somehow adhered to an overly generous interpretation of America’s “Open Door” policy.
In 1998, David Carpenter, a career United States Secret Service special agent who had been the agent-in-charge of President Clinton’s protective detail, was appointed as the new assistant secretary of state (A/S) for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. I was pleased with Carpenter’s appointment as we had worked together in Strasbourg, France in 1995 in anticipation of President Clinton’s arrival in the city. I found him to be not only personable and professional but also someone who understood and appreciated personal protection and physical security in a way few department managers do.
In November 1998, in direct response to the bombings of the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and in consultation with his professional DS staff, Carpenter issued a new visitor escort policy via a State Department notice on November 17, 1998. The notice significantly tightened the escort rules, including restrictions on foreign diplomats.
According to SA Patrick Donovan, A/S Carpenter’s executive assistant, a hurried telephone call from Daniel Russel (the same PRCMUN Russel), a member of Undersecretary Pickering’s staff, less than forty-eight hours after the issuance of the department notice, resulted in the revocation of Carpenter’s notice. According to Donovan, who left the department in November 2009 to become director of security for Chevron, the undersecretary’s staff had received a number of irate telephone calls from offices complaining about how staff would be burdened with time-consuming escort duties that would also have a chilling effect on friendly diplomats visiting the State Department. In testimony before Congress in 2000, Carpenter stated that Pickering called him “within hours” of the distribution of the policy. According to Carpenter, Pickering indicated that “[p]eople felt it would be too confining and it wasn’t doable and [Pickering] asked [Carpenter] to withdraw it.”
Consequently a new escort policy memorandum, modified and reviewed by Pickering’s office, was issued on November 23, 1998. This policy categorically stated that there would be
no escort requirement for diplomats, regardless of country of origin. Counterintelligence and counterterrorism concerns and just plain commonsense failed to win the day on the issue.
I had served at the American embassy in Paris from 1992 to 1995 and had not worked inside the HST since 1986. I was completely ignorant as to the escort rules governing visitors to the building. However, in Paris, all foreign diplomats who visited the US embassy for any reason, including French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) officials, were escorted to and from the reception desk by an American officer. The French MFA, in kind, enforced the same policy. On one occasion in April 1994, I was a member of a US delegation that attended a meeting at the French MFA at the Quai D’Orsay, and the entire delegation was issued French MFA identification cards and escorted at all times within the building. Even the French MFA viewed counterintelligence rules seriously—including concerning their allies. The US Embassy Paris escort policy was in force at all our embassies and consulates but paradoxically not at the HST.
Don and I quickly reconstructed how Russian diplomats were now treated under the new policies when they presented themselves to the reception desk at the HST. Whenever a diplomat arrived at the HST front desk, he or she presented some form of identification to one of several receptionists who were seated behind a large wooden structure in the middle of a massive lobby festooned with the national flags of all the countries with which we have diplomatic relations.
The rest of the lobby was controlled on both sides by turnstiles, which were activated by department identification cards equipped with secure electronic chips and monitored by armed security guards manning the visitor access gate. The receptionist would check the daily logbook to determine if the visitor had been pre-cleared for entry inside the HST. If so, the foreign diplomat would be issued a white, stick-on paper lapel day pass and directed to the security x-ray machine located next to the visitor access gate. A uniformed guard at the screening station would then x-ray the contents of the diplomat’s briefcase for explosives or other weapons. But other personal items such as cell phones and other electronic devices were permitted according to the security protocol.
The diplomat next walked through a magnetometer or “Walk-Through Metal Detector,” as the department aptly called the device, before proceeding beyond the physical security barrier. This was done for purposes of form rather than substance because no diplomat activating an alarm was ever physically searched. That would have been a downright ungracious act in the eyes of the establishment. Having cleared the supposed screening process, the foreign diplomat was then trusted to proceed to the appropriate office inside the HST without an escort.
Certain department offices were designated as controlled access or Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF) areas due to the nature of the operations occurring behind closed doors. Gaining access to these offices might be more difficult but not impossible. Much of the building was wide open and ripe for the picking. There was a lot of low-hanging fruit for those ballsy enough to take advantage of the department’s lax security procedures. And the orchard was huge because the HST is the third largest office building in the Washington region, after the Pentagon and the Ronald Reagan Building.
Sadly my only other direct and very tragic encounter with the department’s access rules occurred in 1985 when bureaucratic inefficiencies resulted in the death of a State Department employee. In February of that year, Carole Doster, a forty-four-year-old secretary, requested that the building security office issue her dependent son, Edward Steven Doster, a temporary department pass. The pass acted as a department identification card allowing the holder to enter the building without having his or her possessions searched by the security guards. Why she requested the pass remains a mystery because, unfortunately, as we would discover later, young Edward had physically abused his mother and displayed episodes of violence inside her house where he still lived. On May 30, less than ninety days after requesting the temporary pass for her son, she feared for her life and submitted a memorandum requesting that it be withdrawn. At the time, the department didn’t have an automated identification system, and revocations of passes depended on keen-eyed guards memorizing visitor faces and checking the photos on the “do-not-admit” board. Keeping track of all of those who had been denied access to the building over time was a virtually impossible task in the pre–electronic identification card era.
On the afternoon of June 21, 1985, I received a frantic call from the DS executive office directing me to report to the seventh floor of the building, where sounds of gunfire had been reported. I was the only agent in the Special Investigations Branch at the time, and I quickly grabbed my Smith and Wesson Model 19 .357 revolver and holster, stuck both inside my belt, put on my coat to conceal the weapon, and dashed out of my second floor office and up the internal staircase.
Almost out of breath and not knowing what to expect, I opened the seventh floor stair door, took out my revolver, and cautiously glanced out at one of the nine corridors crisscrossing this floor. The hallway was uncharacteristically deserted and quiet. My heart pounding, I carefully walked down the hallway, hugging the right side corridor until I came to the first intersecting hallway. Peering around the corner, I spotted a fellow DS agent and called out to him.
“John.” I waved my hand above my head. “Robert . . . over here.”
He recognized me instantly—we had served together in Beijing during the mid-seventies—and responded, “Somebody just shot an employee and shot himself in the office behind me.” He pointed to the door behind him.
I asked if he needed help, but he told me that a police officer was already inside. I assumed the frantic call to my office was a bit late, so I holstered my revolver and approached my colleague.
“Want to go inside?” he asked. “I guess your office will be involved in the upcoming investigation.”
I nodded and opened the door to see a police officer standing over the body of a young man. We shared a few words, and he said that it appeared that an unidentified man had entered the building using a temporary pass and smuggled in an AR-7, .22 long survival breakdown rifle initially developed for the US Air Force. The grim-faced officer looked at me, pointed to a woman’s body lying on the floor, and said, “Seems pretty clear that this young man shot this woman and then committed suicide. Pretty odd. Since he could not have been walking around the building with a rifle in hand, this guy probably snuck the broken-down rifle into the building in some kind of bag and assembled it in one of the custodian closets or restrooms on this floor.”
Since there was no further need for me in the office, I offered to inspect the adjacent restrooms for any evidence linked to the shooting. However, just before leaving the office, I glanced at the Wang desk computer and noticed that the screen displayed a chronology of incidents involving physical abuse. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the abuser was simply identified as “E.”
Walking back into the hallway, I advised John of my mission and immediately entered the men’s room closest to the office. In an almost comedic scene, I took out my badge, opened the door, and announced, “Federal officer, anybody inside?”
It was empty of people. But lying on the floor next to a trashcan were a gym bag and towel. I quickly stepped outside and said, “John, I think we need to secure this bathroom now and get technicians up here pronto.”
He said, “I will secure access to the bathroom from here and alert the investigators that we might have some possible evidence to tag outside the office.”
We would later learn the identities of the deceased man and woman—Edward Doster and his mother, Carole. The bag I found in the restroom turned out to be the one Edward had used to conceal the AR-7.
That terrible incident ended my brief involvement with these unfortunate deaths. It would be my last association with the State Department access control system until some twelve years later and ironically on the same floor of the HST. As a tragic footnote, it was later determined by the Sta
te Department’s Office of Inspector General that Carole Doster’s May 30 revocation memorandum had not reached the guards’ desk by June 21.
When the locks and gates to the castle are not working, the consequences can be enormous.
Chapter Fourteen
As we belatedly discovered, there were all too many occasions when Russian diplomats would unexpectedly appear at the HST’s diplomatic entrance without prior notification and request entry to the building. As long as the receptionist was able to contact someone inside the building to vouch for the visitor, the unannounced diplomat was admitted in the same manner as a pre-cleared one. In essence, one telephone call permitted a diplomat unescorted access inside the HST.
There were obvious problems inherent in the system. For example, how was the HST receptionist able to confirm that a phone call to pre-clear a foreign diplomat actually came from inside the building? In other words, a Russian diplomat speaking perfect American English could call the receptionist, identify him or herself as a building employee, state that he or she was expecting a Russian diplomat at such-and-such time, and authorize access. Following the telephone call, the receptionist would routinely enter the Russian diplomat’s name in the logbook and await the visitor’s arrival. The then-existing telephone system used by the building’s receptionists didn’t distinguish between internal and external calls. A legitimate department officer could call the receptionist from a restaurant, a residence, or elsewhere to set up a future meeting at the building. It was all a high-risk game of trust that the SVR would eventually exploit.
It was simply too much to expect the SVR or any other competent intelligence service to respect our honor system. The sad fact was that a diplomat from any country could wander aimlessly or purposefully throughout the State Department following a meeting with his department counterparts unless he or she was escorted down to the diplomatic entrance. A review of the security logs for the previous two years failed to disclose a single instance in which a wayward diplomat had been confronted or challenged by department staffers or a security officer. Later on, after the discovery of the transmitter, a “senior official, speaking on conditions of anonymity” and providing background information to the Associated Press, advised that the department’s inspector general found that visitors were “not routinely escorted to the offices in which they claimed to have appointments.”
State Department Counterintelligence: Leaks, Spies, and Lies Page 27
