SA Ellison called some minutes later to confirm that Gusev had just been brought into WFO. That gave me license to leave the now deserted DS/CI office and walk over to the OES conference room. Using my identification card to enter the building via an employee entrance on D Street, I finally allowed myself to relax and reflect on what had just happened. There was no leak, an SVR clandestine intelligence officer had been detained, and technical equipment located inside the Malibuski was now in the hands of the IC who was about to inspect a Russian transmitter and its receiver. In the tiny world of counterintelligence, which few people truly understand, it just didn’t get any better than this.
In response to my gentle rapping on the OES conference room door, John opened it and let me in. The conference room was now technically a crime scene and investigative protocols needed to be observed. My first duty was to sign my name on an access sheet attached to a clipboard resting on top of the massive conference room table. This was a necessary drill should, in any future court hearing, a defense attorney attempt to prevent the introduction of the transmitter as an item of evidence claiming “chain of evidence” issues, “contamination,” or some other legal impediment. There were only eight FBI and DS personnel present. Everyone walked carefully around the assorted technical equipment that was focused on the chair rail molding, which was now fully exposed because the right-hand side window curtain had been pulled away and draped over a chair. Conducted in accordance with precise forensic protocols, the piece of molding containing the transmitter was gently pried from the wall.
A cursory inspection revealed that the eighteen-inch piece of fake molding was coped on one end and had a mitered return at the other that had been attached to the wall with two nails and a bead of adhesive. Contrary to numerous public reports claiming that the bogus molding was an exact copy of the existing molding, it was not. The profile of the bogus molding mildly resembled that of the authentic molding but its staining was lighter than some of the surrounding pieces. Frankly those physical differences would not have raised anybody’s suspicions because the rest of the room’s chair rail molding had mismatched stains and profiles as well. Maybe the expressions “lowest bidder” and “good enough for government work” helped the Russians conceal their device among carpentry work that was not of the highest caliber. In 1998, certain portions of the OES conference room’s drywall partitions, cove base, ceilings, doors, and chair rails had been reworked by a company tentatively identified as Consolidated Engineering Services, and perhaps the Russian diplomats walking around unescorted inside the HST used the renovation to their advantage. We simply didn’t know.
Further on-site inspection by the FBI revealed a tiny pinhole in the molding that was quickly identified as a microphone hole. At that point, no further destructive analysis could be undertaken, and it was time to remove the device and take it to an IC laboratory specifically created to examine such things. Published reports emerged suggesting that the transmitter was one of great design and sophistication. This simply was not the case. FBI assistant director Neil Gallagher would tell members of the press gathered for a State Department briefing held on December 9, 1999, that ongoing technical examinations were needed to gauge the sophistication of the device; the “space-age technical bug” myth persists to this day. In reality, the transmitter consisted of individual components of high quality, but it was nothing more than a simple microphone powered by a series of flat cell batteries attached to a transmitter that was activated by a radio frequency actuator/transponder emanating from the Malibuski. There was no burst transmitter, no satellite relay, no 200-year-life batteries, and no other Buck Rogers technology—just basic tried and true tradecraft used by the SVR for decades.
Just before leaving the conference room, I shot a glance over to John Fitzsimmons, our lead engineering officer in the operation. We both smiled and shook our heads, knowing all too well that within twenty-four hours, the press and Congress would have a field day talking about lax State Department security practices. Leaving the technical cleanup to the FBI, John and I walked across Virginia Avenue to our office to confront the ordered chaos.
Pairs of DS and FBI SAs had started to interview jointly all individuals who may have had access to the OES conference room, starting with the janitorial staff and finishing with OES’s highly cooperative assistant secretary of state. The teams fanned out through the HST to determine if anyone had any insight or information as to how the device could have been clandestinely introduced into a restricted conference room. While cooperative, like the three wise monkeys in the parable, no one volunteered to speak, hear, or see any evil. Not surprisingly, physical security was not of interest or of prime concern. Not a single lead was developed from the interviews conducted with hundreds of department employees.
John and I were worn out at this point and decided that the only good we could offer at this stage of the investigation was to get out of the way of the investigating agents and head off to the GWU Smith Center gym for a good workout. Many of the DS/CI SAs watched with disbelieving looks on their faces as we hoisted our gym bags over our shoulders and walked out of the office. But frankly there was nothing more John or I could contribute at this juncture. The ongoing investigation was now nothing more than a straightforward exercise in attempting to elicit information. About ninety minutes later, we returned to discover that the FBI and DS SAs had conducted themselves with great skill, just as expected. My blood pressure had returned to normal.
Unfortunately I had already reached the conclusion that the interviews were not going to be productive. If the SVR had planted the device inside the OES conference room without any inside assistance over a year ago, it was my belief that precious little could be obtained from interviewing people about events that may have occurred that long ago. Worse yet, if a department co-conspirator had aided the SVR, he or she had not aroused any suspicions with his or her fellow colleagues. The interviews of department employees were not going to advance the investigation. John and I were of different minds on this particular issue and as to whether the planting of the SVR transmitter had occurred with inside assistance or not. I am sorry to admit that thirteen years have gone by, and neither of us has changed his mind about who is right.
While the transmitter was being removed from the OES conference room, Gusev was claiming in broken English to his FBI WFO interview team that he was an accredited Russian diplomat protected under the provisions of the Vienna Convention. He would not engage in conversation beyond this.
Gusev’s assertion of immunity wasn’t at all surprising. The claim of diplomatic immunity was a standard retort proffered by any foreign diplomat accredited to the United States under such circumstances. American diplomats assigned overseas make the same assertion when confronted by a foreign counterintelligence service or law enforcement agency. The Vienna Convention cuts both ways.
All attempts by the FBI to elicit Gusev’s cooperation with even the simplest of questions were unsuccessful. But after it was clear to him that the official “interrogation” was over, Gusev’s demeanor became jovial and gregarious. His command of English improved as well. In fact, he was so disarming that he convinced one of his interviewers to part with a FBI commemorative lapel pin as a souvenir of his visit to the enemy camp. There was nothing else to do but release Gusev to his embassy and send him packing back to Russia.
The State Department contacted the Russian embassy at approximately 1:32 p.m. to advise a surprised Russian official that the FBI was currently detaining a certain Mr. Gusev, who claimed to be a Russian diplomat, for violation of the espionage laws, and could the embassy kindly confirm his identity and official status. Clearly the Russian embassy official had no clue what was going on and even asked for clarification as to the spelling of Gusev’s name. Once provided, the dumbfounded Russian official promised to call back shortly.
Both the DS and FBI agents laughed at the apparent discomfort occurring inside the Russian embassy. We imagined the words exchanged between the R
ussian ambassador and the SVR rezident about how the Motherland would now have to apologize to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright over the latest SVR transgression against the department. It took the Russian embassy over an hour to coordinate its response. The long delay likely occurred because few, if any, of the legitimate Russian diplomats were aware of what the SVR rezident was up to, especially regarding the installation and monitoring of a clandestine transmitter in the HST. But now they were responsible for responding to a diplomatic snafu and cleaning up the mess left by one of their brethren from the dark side of diplomatic life.
The social and professional wall separating bona fide Russian diplomats and their SVR counterparts within an embassy is quite rigid and formidable. But from an operational security standpoint, the divide was absolutely necessary to avoid compromises of ongoing SVR activities. “Good fences make good neighbors,” however that translates into Russian.
When a Russian embassy official finally called back, it was to acknowledge that Stanislav Gusev was, in fact, an employee of the Russian embassy protected by the provisions of the Vienna Convention. The official stated that embassy representatives would arrive at WFO to escort Gusev back to its embassy. About forty-five minutes later, two Russian officials walked into the WFO lobby and presented themselves to the receptionist sequestered behind a booth surrounded by bulletproof glass, all under the watchful eye of armed FBI police officers. The Russians glumly announced they were ready to take their colleague home. Gusev was brought down to the lobby and turned over to his embassy colleagues, who whisked him away. Two smiling senior FBI officials sat outside on the three-foot-high granite wall surrounding the FBI field office and waved discreetly as he passed. Do svidaniya, Comrade Gusev!
Later the same afternoon, Thomas Pickering, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, the same official whom I briefed earlier about unescorted Russian IOs and legitimate diplomats wandering inside the HST, summoned Russian ambassador Ushakov to his office to protest Gusev’s “incompatible with diplomatic status” activities inside the United States. In addition, Pickering informed the Russian ambassador that Gusev was now declared persona non grata by the US government and had ten days in which to leave the country. Ironically the discussion took place less than a hundred yards from the conference room where the Russian had managed to plant the listening device.
Gusev would depart the United States aboard a regularly scheduled Aeroflot flight from Dulles International Airport without fanfare or press coverage before the expiration of the ten-day State Department deadline.
On December 9, 1999, Neil J. Gallagher, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s National Security Division, and DS A/S David Carpenter provided an on-the-record briefing to the press concerning Sacred Ibis. Later Messrs. Gallagher and Carpenter would brief Congress in public session about the basic facts of the investigation. In February 2000, I would accompany Wayne Rychak, the same DS executive present during my brief visit to Undersecretary Thomas Pickering’s office, to a closed meeting held by the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss the security failures and vulnerabilities identified during operation Sacred Ibis.
In typical tit-for-tat diplomatic fashion, on December 10, Russian first deputy foreign minister Aleksandr Andreyev summoned US ambassador James Collins to the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow to express his country’s “categorical protest” of Gusev’s illegal treatment by US law enforcement agencies. Andreyev complained further “the actions of the American authorities are a gross violation of the Vienna Convention and diplomatic relations and obligations, which the United States has assumed under the convention.”
Andreyev’s démarche to Ambassador Collins did not address the substance of DOJ’s allegations of espionage but instead complained of the mistreatment suffered by one of its embassy officials. Several days after the Collins-Andreyev tête-à-tête in Moscow, I was able to share an unofficial transcript of the conversation with my IC counterintelligence colleagues, and we couldn’t help but chuckle at the scripted, diplomatic verbiage used by the Russians when they were caught red-handed trying to steal our secrets. We were also aware of the fact that our government had essentially used the same language when its clandestine intelligence officers serving abroad under diplomatic cover were caught with their equally red hands in the Russian bear’s cookie jar. It was just part of the gamesmanship between adversaries bent on stealing each other’s secrets.
Both the national and international media were quick to report the incident, asking how it was possible for the SVR to penetrate the security confines of the State Department and place a “listening device” in a room located in the same corridor as the secretary of state’s personal office. It was a logical question and one that confounds the Diplomatic Security Service to this day. Some news outlets speculated that Gusev’s detention and return to Russia was in retaliation for the December 1, 1999, detention and forced expulsion of Cheri Leberknight, a second secretary assigned to the US embassy in Moscow. According to the Russian domestic security service, Leberknight was an alleged undercover CIA intelligence officer who had been “caught red-handed while conducting an espionage operation” inside Russia.
In my opinion, the great success of this case was that for the first time in counterintelligence history, the US government had captured an electronic device called an “actuator” that caused the transmitter to transmit. Clandestine transmitter microphones had been recovered before but never an actuator/transponder. This was a not-so-minor coup for the IC. The tissue box, held in place by a Velcro strip attached to the Malibuski rear window’s carpeting, concealed an antenna that captured the OES conference room conversations into a recording device located under the front passenger seat of the vehicle.
Planting a transmitter in a restricted conference room was nothing new for the SVR. The SVR had attempted to bug a House of Representatives committee room during a public session hoping to later eavesdrop on classified conversations in the same room when it was closed for sensitive hearings. In an operation known as Flamingo, the SVR similarly introduced a transmitter into a conference room owned by Systems Planning Corporation (SPC) located in Arlington, Virginia. It was done during an open meeting attended by SPC officials and Russian representatives who had determined that Department of Defense and SPC officials would use the same conference room at a later date. Victor Lozenko, an SVR officer working under diplomatic cover, attached a transmitter to the underside of the SPC conference table that captured and broadcast conversations concerning sensitive US military operations to a vehicle with Russian diplomatic plates parked nearby. Sounds all too familiar. The SPC operation lasted ten months before the transmitter’s batteries died.
Lozenko was subsequently awarded the Order of the Red Star for the feat. I wonder if Gusev returned to such high acclaim,
In August 1999, months after the discovery of the SVR device planted in the OES conference, an escort policy including restriction on foreign diplomats was reinstated.
Epilogue
On the well-guarded grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, sits a 1950s era, white-domed glass and steel structure designated officially as the Headquarters Auditorium but affectionately dubbed by the agency’s employees as the “bubble.” In many respects, it resembles an outsized igloo, but the odd shape has a more practical purpose as its design also affords protection against electronic eavesdropping. The seven thousand square foot auditorium is equipped with the latest in audio and video technology, seats 470 people, and is outfitted with ceiling-to-floor curtains to guarantee privacy from prying eyes. It also serves as the venue for award ceremonies.
I had visited the “bubble” before, but on August 30, 2000, my presence was much more personal—not just as a spectator but as the recipient of one of this nation’s top counterintelligence honors. I was a bit nervous and humbled by the whole thing as the day’s events would, among other awards, recognize our achievement in unmasking the SVR’s installation of a tran
smitter inside the HST. In the past, I would have elected to avoid such functions, but under the circumstances, the ceremony’s secrecy, atmospherics, and overall hoopla were just too damn appealing to pass up.
With my hand over my heart, I stood tall and proud next to John Tello, my immediate supervisor for the past two years, as “The President’s Own” United States Marine Corps Band String Quartet played the national anthem to open that year’s Intelligence Community Awards Ceremony. At the conclusion of “The Star Spangled Banner,” George J. Tenet, the director of the CIA, confidently strode onto the stage to officiate at one of the very few federal ceremonies to which journalists and media reporters were never invited. Not surprisingly, spooks of all shades and stripes are a bit uncomfortable in such company.
As the master of ceremony, Director Tenet asked the award recipients, intelligence community officials, and invited guests to sit down. He was resplendently turned out in a ubiquitous Washington power suit of dark gray, a white button down shirt, and a red striped tie. He stood behind a large lectern at center stage, flanked by the American and CIA flags.
He began his speech by briefly reminding the audience of the importance of the intelligence community’s mission in safeguarding our nation’s security and the reasons why the director of central intelligence established the Intelligence Community awards to honor those federal employees who provided exceptional service on behalf of the United States. It was an impressive, forceful speech heavily tinged with red, white, and blue symbolism, and it tugged at the patriotic heartstrings of all in attendance.
After his introductory comments, the ceremony moved on to the presentation of individual honors, starting with the National Intelligence Certificates of Distinction to those individuals working for the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Defense Intelligence Agency, and United States Air Force. In each instance, the individual’s name was announced along with a brief and cryptic synopsis of his or her work. One award that grabbed my attention was the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement for meritorious conduct “of an especially difficult duty in a clearly exceptional manner . . . to provide the intelligence required for national security policy determinations.”
State Department Counterintelligence: Leaks, Spies, and Lies Page 31
