State Department Counterintelligence: Leaks, Spies, and Lies

by Robert David Booth

  The only thing more boring than sitting in a windowless room in the bowels of the HST for hours on end watching live video feeds coming from inside the OES conference room during the workday was doing the same mindless camera watching during the evening and midnight hours over very long weekends. The tedium was mind numbing and excruciating. But the miniature television cameras and audio devices expertly installed inside the conference room, without the knowledge of department personnel, worked beautifully. From the moment the cameras were activated, DS/CI agents carefully monitored and recorded every single second of activity and conversation that took place in the OES conference room. For months on end, every DS/CI agent took turns participating in the tedious task.

  Personal sacrifices became routine during this time frame. I recall that while enjoying my Thanksgiving dinner with my mother, wife, daughter, brother, and sister-in-law, I had not touched my glass of wine—a highly unusual sacrifice for me—when just before the pies arrived, I stood up and announced that I had to go to work. My brother, Tom, a savvy Justice Department lawyer for over twenty-five years who usually had an insightful appreciation for my work, just gave me an odd look as I geared up for the job.

  On another occasion, it was reported that one of the duty agents, Christopher Lyons, serving on yet another boring overnight shift, was overheard by his teammate to be moaning over and over again: “This bullshit is never going to end!” The frustration levels of those who protect and serve are incredibly high most of the time.

  With DS monitoring the conference room, the FBI continued to watch Gusev. That exercise resulted in some funny moments. There were times when the FBI surveillance teams alerted me that Gusev was trying to find a parking space on Virginia Avenue. My office faced the northeast façade of the HST with an unobstructed view of Virginia Avenue, and sometimes I casually rested my forehead on the office window and watched Gusev park his car and feed the meter before leaving for his walkabout. I had to admit it was somewhat amusing to watch an SVR agent at work while drinking coffee and conducting business with colleagues.

  On another occasion, John Tello almost literally bumped into Gusev inside the CVS pharmacy located just thirty yards around the corner from our office. Once, while walking up Twenty-Second Street, John and I caught the now familiar sight of Gusev approaching us from the direction of GWU’s Smith Center on his way back to the parked Malibuski. We held our laughter until the next block while we reflected on the sheer lunacy of it all.

  Many different federal agencies were involved in the Sacred Ibis investigation, and DS/CI played an important role in the overall operation. The ultimate decision on how best to exploit and ultimately conclude the operation rested with the DOJ and the IC. Luckily all good things must come to an end, and in the case of Sacred Ibis, it was none too soon for us. When DOJ decided it was time to roll up Gusev and remove the transmitter, John called all of the agents into DS/CI’s conference room and advised them that the game was about to end. The relief on everyone’s face was obvious. They had accomplished their tasks with dedication and without mistakes and could now look forward to spending evenings and weekends at home. There were only a few final details left to resolve before the case was officially wrapped up.

  The legal and administrative issues surrounding the impending detention of a clandestine intelligence suspect are daunting and unique in every espionage investigation. One unusual aspect of this case was that taking possession of the transmitter and the recording devices located inside the Malibuski was more important than grabbing Gusev. As an accredited Russian diplomat, Gusev could be detained for only a few hours at most and would have to be released to the custody of his embassy. Ditto for the Malibuski; it is the private property of the Russian embassy. The electronic devices were the true prize in this game of spy vs. spy.

  Just to be on the safe side, the DOJ determined that in order to prosecute Gusev successfully, if the Russian embassy for some bizarre reason waived his diplomatic immunity to meet the legal definition of espionage, it would be necessary that a conversation transmitted from the OES conference room to a recording device in Gusev’s Malibuski had to be classified at the “secret” level. DOJ forwarded its tasking to our office.

  Ultimately John Tello identified Fran Saunders, DS/CI’s branch chief for counterintelligence analysis, to prepare an authentic classified briefing that she and her staff would deliver inside the OES conference room. As Sacred Ibis had been a closely held investigation even in our small office, I vividly recall the shocked look on her face when I disclosed to her the existence of the transmitter and her upcoming role in the final hours of the operation.

  She then smiled and said, “I have watched you and John for the last several weeks, and I had suspected that something big was going on because of the everyday wholesale change in the work routines of the agents.” Being a true professional, she had never attempted to violate the need-to-know doctrine and ask questions of John and me. “I can have a plausible script ready within twenty-four hours,” she said.

  One last hurdle to be jumped was to figure out how DS/CI could ensure that Saunders’s team could enter the OES conference room and carry out the twenty-minute “secret” level conversation required to meet DOJ’s legal threshold for “the transmission of classified information.” Timing was absolutely crucial to success. The OES conference room might be occupied by a meeting when it was time to commence the “secret” DOJ ordained conversation, so we had to prepare for that possibility. A fire drill, an electrical problem, an environmental concern, or other lame excuse for evacuating participants from the room were some of our options. OES, which was administratively responsible for managing the conference room, intentionally had not been briefed on the Sacred Ibis operation for fear that an inadvertent comment or action by OES personnel would unravel the operation. So we could not rely on its help in the ruse. We arrived at a solution in typical government fashion—we would cross that bridge later and hope we didn’t burn it behind us.

  In preparation for Gusev’s detention and the examination of the SVR transmitter, a team of DS and FBI technical specialists was identified to wait inside the same cramped observation room manned by the DS/CI OES surveillance team. The FBI wanted the technical team to enter the OES conference room to commence an immediate forensic and technical inspection of the device following Gusev’s detention.

  With the final details worked out and the agents and technicians readied, we agreed that Gusev would be detained sometime in the last week of November. Since he frequently visited Virginia Avenue on Monday mornings, we all agreed that his rollup date would be pegged for November 29, 1999—if things went well.

  At 6:30 a.m. on November 29, I visited members of the joint DS/FBI technical team, who sat on the floor of the cramped observation/monitoring room surrounded by bags of electronic equipment and tried not to interfere with the DS agents still conducting video monitoring of the OES conference room. There was a sense of urgency in the air as everyone speculated what the next few hours would bring. Shifting back to my office, I spoke with analysts Tom Lalley and Fran Saunders about their upcoming dramatic roles as “senior officials” discussing twenty minutes of classified information inside the OES conference room. In an attempt to calm the nerves of the members of the bogus team, I jokingly asked if they had ever committed espionage on behalf of a foreign power. I warned them that their voices would forever be recorded on SVR equipment. They appeared confident and said they looked forward to being actors in this psychodrama.

  Finally I spoke with SAs Kent Trogden and Jon Norsworthy, DS/CI’s representatives on the FBI’s detention team, and completed confirmation of our readiness by speaking on a secure line with SA Ollie Ellison, who was assigned to the Sacred Ibis Command Post located at the FBI’s WFO. Everything was set, and everyone was ready to pounce. But like Godot, Gusev never came.

  Monday came and went. So did Tuesday. There were no Gusev sightings. In fact, no suspicious cars bearing Russian diplomatic plates were s
potted in the vicinity of Virginia Avenue. Suddenly all activity associated with Gusev and the State Department ceased.

  Something seemed desperately wrong. My first guess was that a leak had occurred. Had someone made an indiscreet comment to the wrong person on the phone, perhaps at a high-powered luncheon or during a classified meeting?

  We had been notified that Secretary Albright had already briefed James Rubin, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs and chief spokesman for the State Department who was married to CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Rubin’s relationships with the press left a number of us in the investigative community with a sense of unease. Fearful of an unauthorized disclosure to the press, I had personally voiced my misgivings about briefing the department’s public affairs office any earlier than five minutes before Gusev’s detention. But decisions of this nature were made, for better or for worse, by the secretary of state.

  By Friday, December 3, the mood among the FBI/DS team was dour, to put things mildly. I visited the surveillance room the previous day only to be greeted by a group of sullen individuals sitting in a room littered with empty coffee cups and fast food wrappers. No one spoke, but the resignation of defeat was in the air. I asked a quick, “Is everything OK?” and made a quicker retreat into the hallway before I heard the replies. I advised A/S David Carpenter about the grim possibility that our prey had slipped away. I reviewed the situation with John Tello who, as usual, maintained his professional composure while counseling patience.

  That weekend seemed like the longest of my career, as I feared the inevitable finger pointing was about to begin, especially given the massive effort and manpower resources that had been devoted to Sacred Ibis. My wife, Lori, sensed my discomfort and guessed correctly that something at work wasn’t going well. Monday morning came and went, and the tension in the office and the observation room was fierce. On Wednesday, December 8, after arriving in my office to confirm that all personnel were in place around Virginia Avenue and near the OES conference room, I remained in a foul mood. The FBI and DS simply couldn’t continue this manpower-intensive wait-and-see operation much longer, and I was already wondering who would be singled out as the number one scapegoat responsible for its failure. The answer was easy: me.

  How had the Russians found out about the investigation? Five days before the proposed rollup, Gusev had calmly fed the parking meter on Virginia Avenue and took his usual two-hour stroll. It appeared that we had missed him by one weekend

  In the midst of my frustration and disappointment, I remembered that I needed to talk to SA Ollie Ellison, who was still assigned to the FBI’s Sacred Ibis Command Post, about an unrelated matter. Around 9:15 a.m., I finally got Ellison on the telephone and exchanged pleasantries before talking shop. We were careful to use an encrypted secure telephone line, which is critical in these circumstances.

  No sooner had we begun to talk than Ollie blurted out, “Robert, I am getting a frantic hand signal from my FBI counterpart. Gusev has just been sighted leaving the Russian embassy in the Malibuski and appears headed in the general direction of the State Department!”

  I slammed down the phone, leaped out of the office, and looked around for help, only to discover that I was the only agent around—a pretty old and frustrated one at that. Anxiety hit me fast. Where the hell was everybody? The sense of urgency hanging over the detention and removal operation had diminished over the past ten days to the point that early morning enthusiasm had been replaced with slow-paced purchases of coffee around the normal 8:45 a.m. startup time. Hurrying down the corridor and peeking into empty cubicles, my worst fears were confirmed. I was alone and panicking!

  At that moment, Paul Gaffney opened the main door to the DS/CI office space, coffee cup in hand and resignation on his face. I literally screamed, “Gusev’s mobile,” the code words to conclude the final phase of the operation.

  At first, he refused to believe me, having been exposed to my warped sense of humor for the better part of twenty years. As he brushed past me, his only response was “Right.” It took three or four tries before he realized that Gusev’s arrival was imminent. Calmly putting down his coffee on the secretary’s desk, he said with a wink and smile, “Don’t worry. I know what to do.” He buttoned up his trench coat and hurried out of the office, heading in the direction of the HST surveillance room filled to capacity with eager agents and technical specialists.

  The DS/CI agents were alerted by cell phone and handheld radios to move immediately to their predetermined locations. Those DS SAs assigned to work with their FBI counterparts needed to hook up with them ASAP or sooner. John Tello had returned to the office to escort the bogus briefing team to a preselected location adjacent to the OES conference room. Thank God everything fell into place as planned and practiced. Within five minutes of my call to SA Ellison, I spotted Gusev’s car from my office window as it slowly traveled north on Virginia Avenue heading in the direction of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, apparently in search of a parking spot. I alerted our agents by encrypted radio that the Malibuski had circled the block and was now attempting to park in a space diagonally across from the CVS pharmacy. I then instructed John to move his “briefing team” into the OES conference room. As luck would have it, there were no meetings scheduled for the morning, and the DS/CI team promptly took their seats around the conference table and began the putative classified discussion.

  As Gusev pulled his car into an empty parking space on the north side of Virginia Avenue, he managed to bump a van parked in front of him as he jockeyed for the perfect position. Earlier that morning, the FBI had parked a nondescript white van equipped with TV cameras in order to capture Gusev’s final acts on film. By the greatest of coincidences, the empty parking space picked by Gusev happened to be the one directly behind the FBI surveillance van—the very one he had just bumped! When I later reviewed the surveillance film, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud seeing Gusev’s face behind the Malibuski’s front windshield as his car jostled the FBI van. The recorded, hushed comments of the FBI surveillance team inside the van were not so polite. Gusev kept moving his car two feet forward and then one foot back, turning his wheels toward the street, and then swinging back in. All the maneuvering was making me nervous. I was afraid that either he had spotted the FBI surveillance van or else he couldn’t properly align his receiver with the transmitter located in the OES conference room. In either case, I worried that he might call it a day. In those few moments while he was attempting to perfect his parallel parking, Gusev pushed my panic buttons.

  As my anxiety grew and choice expletives poured from my mouth, my secretary, Theresa Black, having just been briefed on the essentials of the case, teased me unmercifully.

  “Mr. Booth, this one isn’t so important, is it?”

  “Well, kinda. Yeah, it is.”

  “No one will get fired if it is screwed up, right?” She had a huge Cheshire smile on her face.

  “Just me.”

  I kept staring out the large pane of glass to the street below and announced to no one in particular, “This is probably the only time in the history of espionage that the conclusion of a spy case has occurred at the door steps of the affected agency’s counterintelligence office.”

  “Is that good, Mr. Booth?” Theresa continued. “Can I get something for you, coffee or a relaxant? You are not going to survive this morning if you continue like this.”

  Gusev was still inching his car backward and forward while my blood pressure was seconds away from going over the top.

  Finally Gusev exited the car, closed the door, and pulled a palmful of quarters from his pants pocket. Wearing a light gray winter jacket and dark gray pants, he carefully fed the parking meter until the two-hour maximum time limit was reached. He gave one quick glance over to the HST and headed north on foot to Twenty-First Street. I just rolled my eyes, shook my head, and took a deep breath, much to the amusement of Theresa, who thought I was going to stroke-out any second.

>   Approximately twenty minutes after Gusev left for his walk, the final act in this long and complex investigation began to unroll. As I watched, a nondescript vehicle containing three occupants and traveling south on Virginia Avenue suddenly pulled a U-turn and jerked to a stop next to Gusev’s vehicle. Two men quickly got out of the car and opened the Malibuski’s front passenger doors. Within seconds, both cars drove away in tandem. The FBI had just seized Gusev’s vehicle. I alerted Tello by radio, “John, time to dismiss your bogus briefing team and usher the technical team into the OES conference room.”

  At 11:34 a.m., as he was returning to his long gone Malibuski, Gusev was detained by a team of DS and FBI agents near the GWU Smith Center. Numerous students, office workers, and shoppers calmly walked around the small group of five people, blithely unaware of what was happening even though one of the FBI agents had a pair of handcuffs dangling at her side. A Russian-speaking FBI agent advised Gusev that he was being detained on suspicion of being involved in espionage activities against the United States. I don’t know if he was read his rights or not. Gusev politely declined to engage in any conversation beyond a few “yes” and “no” responses and an occasional nod or shake of his head.

  Two unwitting but highly cooperative Secret Service Uniformed Division officers happened to be driving by in their marked police cruiser and were pressed into service by DS SA Jon Norsworthy. They were asked to assist in the rollup by diverting all vehicle traffic away from the street corner so as not to have cars stop or slow down to gawk at the developing spectacle on the sidewalk.

  The back-and-forth street theater continued for about two minutes before the FBI gave the signal to take Gusev into custody. Neither handcuffs nor physical force were used as Gusev meekly stepped into a strategically parked government vehicle that immediately sped off in the direction of the FBI’s Washington Field Office.