Best of Enemies

by Eric Dezenhall

  • “How much time would citizens need to remain in shelters following an attack?” The president received a qualified estimate of two weeks from a member of the subcommittee. The group was clearly talking about US citizens protecting themselves from the globe-encircling fallout following a US nuclear attack on the USSR.

  At the close of the gathering, Kennedy issued a directive stating that “no member in attendance disclose even the subject of the meeting.” Amazingly, the secret lasted more than half a century.

  Two years after Kennedy’s directive, the young president seemed to reconsider the nuclear option when he delivered his extraordinary “peace speech” at American University in which he outlined an approach for nuclear disarmament. In his commencement address, JFK decried even the consideration of the use of nuclear weapons. Additionally, he called on all the world’s inhabitants to focus on their common human desires and even to sympathize with the insecurities of the Soviet Union in the wake of the horrors it had suffered in World War II. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev called the speech the greatest given by a US president since Franklin Roosevelt. Just eight weeks later, the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed. Nuke fears vanished rapidly as backyard fallout shelters were turned into playhouses for the kids. The levity would be short-lived, thanks to what might be called the “era of doctrines.”

  Arguably the catalyst in the abandonment of the “peace speech” spirit was the civil war in Vietnam, into which the US inserted itself, and which was viewed by many as a proxy war of expansion between the US and the USSR. Simultaneous with the United States’ catastrophic invasion of Vietnam was the issuance of the Johnson Doctrine, which supported authoritarian regimes in Latin America. The Soviets replied with the muscular Brezhnev Doctrine, which led to the August 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. This was answered by the Nixon Doctrine, which underlined the United States’ right to support their capitalist allies; followed by the Carter Doctrine, with its call to unite countries in opposition to socialism (especially in the Persian Gulf); and finally the Reagan Doctrine, which enlarged US military potential to resist Soviet influence in the world with such tools as an arms race and an economic war against the USSR.

  From the Soviet point of view, all of these presidential doctrines were thinly veiled anti-Communist—and especially anti-Soviet—broadsides. And in case the message was lost on anyone, in 1969, President Johnson initiated a massive military exercise called Reforger, in which tens of thousands of US military troops were deployed to West Germany in order to act out US support for NATO operations against the USSR. Reforger would be staged annually for the next twenty-four years, with more than 125,000 troops utilized at its peak. In a recent interview, Jack Platt’s SE boss Burton Gerber opined that “[t]he Russians became concerned about US military exercises in the 1970s, which escalated tensions. They even interpreted blood drives as CIA prep for launching a war.”

  The “war scare” era was punctuated in 1983 not only by President Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars initiative but also by military action. According to a recent Washington Post article by David Hoffman, a November 1983 NATO exercise was interpreted as “cover for a nuclear surprise attack by the United States.” A declassified top-secret report concluded that the operation might have inadvertently pushed the superpowers to the brink of a nuclear exchange.

  In the late 1970s, just as Cowboy and Gennady were receiving their respective marching orders in the US capital, their countries possessed, more or less in parity, some fifty thousand nuclear warheads. Thus the strategy: Get the other side’s agents to betray their country’s nuclear agenda. Shvets recalled an instructor saying, “I hope no one doubts that the United States is capable of wiping our country off the face of the earth… But does it have the desire and the will to do so?… This is exactly what you will have to find out when you are sent there.” Gennady was a particularly attractive target for the US because he was the son-in-law of the high-ranking scientist Goncharov, who was one of the major players in the creation of the Soviet atomic and hydrogen bombs.

  “So, what’s your play?” Haviland asked Cowboy the day after the Globetrotters game.

  “Not a coerced recruitment, that’s for sure,” Cowboy replied. “There’s a damned good chance Genya will go back to his boss and tell him what happened.”

  “Genya?” Haviland said. “Nickname basis. Do I hear wedding bells?”

  Cowboy chuckled. “I liked the guy. You should have seen him with his son. There’s a message in there somewhere. The kid speaks great English. He likes to climb trees. The carrot here is a better life in America.”

  If he had to describe Gennady in one word, Cowboy said, it would be “seducer,” adding that he didn’t want to get back to Gennady too fast because that could smack of desperation. He decided to run into him again and then invite him to go shooting. He’d need some weapons and a place to shoot where they wouldn’t be bothered. Haviland had an ace up his sleeve, too. As Cowboy and Gennady were beginning their spy mating dance, the Americans were digging a billion-dollar tunnel (code-named MONOPOLY) beneath the decoding room of the KGB’s future DC rezidentura, in the new Soviet Embassy still under construction. Eventually, it was hoped, the tunnel would give ammunition to operatives attempting to turn their counterparts.

  Back at the current rezidentura, Gennady, who had chosen the code name ILYA, after his son, likewise met with his superior, Yakushkin. Of Cowboy (whom he knew as Chris Llorenz at this point), Gennady said, “Chris wears cowboy boots.”

  “American cowboy?” Yakushkin asked. Then he pointed to Gennady and said, “Russian cowboy. You like playing with guns. You like playing with girls, too. You like to roam around and not do what you are told.”

  Gennady conceded to Yakushkin that he was at a loss to identify a weakness in Cowboy. “He gave Ilya a lot of attention,” he added. “And he likes to shoot guns.”

  “Maybe you see him again by accident, maybe not,” Yakushkin replied matter-of-factly.

  After a suitable amount of time passed, Cowboy put word out among his Pentagon friends that he wanted to run into Gennady at a social event. Given Gennady’s sports endeavors with State and Pentagon staffers, he knew this wouldn’t be a difficult task. A few weeks after the Globetrotters game, a high-ranking Pentagon official threw a party in Northern Virginia. Gennady had been invited, so Cowboy, who stood out like Gene Autry at a Hyannis Port regatta, wrangled his own invitation, and it didn’t take long for Gennady to find him. While Irina wasn’t with him, the Russian was anything but alone; he sauntered across the room arm in arm with the host’s comely twenty-something daughter. Cowboy considered the blackmail potential of what he had just seen. But an insouciant Gennady just threw out his arms and said, “Chris! I was hoping to see you. When will we go shooting?”

  Well, I guess blackmail isn’t going to work if this guy’s just gonna be on the make all over town, Cowboy thought. He made a mental note about Gennady: Seducer. Reckless. Human weakness, carnal. Capable of betrayal (of wife and family). Odd candor. Cowboy told Gennady that he had located a place to shoot and hoped Gennady would be able to join him the following weekend. “I’ve got some weapons I think you’ll really like.”

  After a couple months of casual get-togethers, the pretense began to loosen a bit, with both hinting that their real jobs were a little different than first described. “Gennady said, ‘My job is to talk to these crazy people who come into the embassy,’” Cowboy said. “I told him I had the same job in Vienna.” Indeed, many of the walk-ins were head cases that had seen a few too many James Bond movies, but some, like naval officer John Walker Jr., were the most valuable Russian assets during the Cold War.

  With Jack already knowing Gennady’s true employer, and Gennady virtually certain that Cowboy was either FBI or CIA, the two suggested their own version of what would become known years later as glasnost: an open discussion. They both agreed to share at least one type of intelligence that would be mutually beneficial: terrorism, the common enemy.
At the time, both their countries were concerned about the possibility of an attack at the upcoming Summer Olympic Games to be held in Moscow. Gennady and Cowboy, with their bosses’ consent, actually provided leads to each other. (Of course, the topic would soon be moot for the US, which ended up, along with sixty-five other nations, boycotting the games in protest of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.)

  One weekend, Cowboy picked up Gennady at the Soviet Embassy and the two men drove to a wooded location in Maryland. The government, which owned the property, had told its supervisors that they were to take the day off and not express any curiosity about what might be occurring there.

  Cowboy drove deep into the woods. Gennady had figured they would be going to an official range somewhere. “Are we in Siberia?” Gennady asked.

  “Pretty much,” Cowboy said, explaining, “We have to go far away from anything because one of the weapons I have is illegal.”

  Gennady liked the sound of that. This Chris fellow really was a cowboy.

  When Cowboy got to a clearing in the woods, he popped the trunk and told Gennady to follow him. Cowboy drew back a blanket in the trunk and exposed for Gennady a cache of weapons, including Cowboy’s Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver and a Smith & Wesson Model 29, the .44 Magnum revolver Clint Eastwood used in the popular Dirty Harry movie series.

  “Dirty Harry!” Gennady said. He picked up the 29 and pointed it into the wilderness. In heavily accented Russian, he asked the trees, “Do you feel lucky, punk?”

  Cowboy pulled back another blanket and revealed a Marlin 336, often considered a perfect American hunting rifle. Much as he did at the Globetrotters game, when he mimicked the handling of a weapon, Gennady picked up the rifle, caressed its stock, pulled back on the bolt action, and pressed the weapon’s scope against his eye. Cowboy’s instinct told him, You cannot fake this. Gennady was not faking, any more than he had been faking his love of Ilya at the Globetrotters game.

  “This is illegal?” Gennady asked Cowboy, still holding the Marlin.

  “Oh no. The Marlin is legal. This, however…” Cowboy pulled back another blanket in his trunk and revealed… a violin case.

  “Violin?” Gennady asked.

  “Not exactly.” Cowboy opened up the case, and there was a Thompson submachine gun, the weapon used by frontier gangsters and against them by lawmen.

  “The Tommy!” Gennady said. This was what the FBI and CIA didn’t want the property’s local custodians hearing. There were few things more recognizably illegal than automatic gunfire.

  “Where did you get this?” Gennady asked.

  “It belonged to a gangster in the 1930s,” Cowboy answered. “A friend at the FBI loaned it to me.”

  The duo set up the targets Cowboy had brought against wooden posts that had already been stabbed into the ground. They also propped up cans as well as an assortment of fruits along a fence. As the men obliterated tin cans, grapefruits, and watermelons, Gennady noticed that Cowboy wasn’t shooting the Marlin very often. “You don’t like the Marlin?” Gennady asked.

  “Of course I do,” Cowboy said. Playing coy, he added, “It’s just that my feelings are hurt you didn’t bring along one of those legendary Russian carbines we Americans hear about. Is it true that only a handful of custom carbines were made for Russian leaders?”

  “I heard that Stalin, Zhukov, and Brezhnev had custom weapons made, but I never saw them,” Gennady answered.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Cowboy said. “If you are a good boy and you get your hands on a rare Russian carbine, I’ll see what I can do about a Marlin. But you must be good.”

  As they each schemed to get the other to betray his country, both men griped about the bureaucracies they worked for. Not one word was exchanged at this outing that even hinted at an act of betrayal by either party. There would be time for that, but both men were satisfied with their early efforts.

  For the rest of 1979, the duo played it cool, meeting once a month for dinner at the Gangplank Restaurant or for the occasional target practice. Cowboy would sometimes joke with Gennady about how, if he moved to the United States, he could shoot US weapons all the time and perhaps even own a Marlin 336. One day later in the summer of 1979, Cowboy brought an unusually aggressive amount of alcohol to one of their outings. Both men drank heavily, but where Gennady’s aim remained true, Jack started shooting far afield of the targets.

  “Do you want to always work for the government, Chris?”

  “Not as much as I used to,” Cowboy said. “Biding my time. I’ll take a crack at business someday. I’ve got three girls to put through college.”

  “I can get money,” Gennady said in his soft, understanding manner.

  Cowboy’s wretched state didn’t weaken his sense of duty. He slurred, “What the hell are you going to offer me? Five hours in a bread line? Nine square meters of living space in Moscow?”

  “That’s enough drinking, Chris. I will drive us home.”

  The following Monday, when Gennady got to work he reported to Yakushkin, “Chris loves his beer.” Cowboy’s report to Haviland Smith took a different tack and simply concluded, “Gennady likes it in America.”

  4

  MUSKETEERS

  Will you still be here when I get out?

  Since Gennady spent much more time on the volleyball and tennis courts than at the target range, Cowboy informed Lane Crocker that he would need a Bureau athlete to really schmooze this guy. Shortly thereafter, an agent from the criminal division, Gary Schwinn (a pseudonym chosen by the authors), was assigned to CI-4 and the new “Get Gennady” team. Cowboy introduced thirty-year-old Schwinn, a five-letter man in college (including tennis and volleyball), to the Russian as a tennis-loving “business friend.” In fact, Schwinn was also a weekend disco dance instructor (white Travolta suit included) who was called “Johnny Disco” by others on the Squad. Members of the Squad remember his go-to pickup line for female agents: “Do you Hustle?”

  On the early evening of September 25, 1979, the flamboyant trio found themselves at the Gangplank Restaurant, where they met up with a CIA code clerk “Captain Dougie,” who owned a houseboat that was moored nearby at the capital’s only live-aboard marina. Walking toward Hains Point along the dock, Gennady’s eyes lit up when Cowboy pointed out in the distance the presidential yacht the Sequoia. “You mean where Kennedy did all his fucking?” Gennady inquired.

  Inside the Gangplank, the four-dozen patrons at the crowded upper-deck restaurant had no idea that the increasingly rowdy quartet, which was downing copious amounts of beer and vodka, consisted of two CIA officers, an FBI agent, and a KGB spy. While Cowboy and Gennady were masters at holding their alcohol—Gennady was rumored to have a cast-iron liver—Gary and Captain Dougie were having a hard time remaining upright.

  Suddenly, Gary attempted to rise and blurted out to two couples at the next table, “This here is real vodka, this here is a real KGB guy, those are real CIA guys, and I’m FBI!” Cowboy flushed with the instant realization that he could be out of a job if this continued—in fact, it might already have been too late to save it. He threw a hundred-dollar bill on the table and told Gary and Captain Dougie that they had to get out of there, now. That’s when Gennady and Cowboy discovered that the inebriated duo couldn’t walk.

  Cowboy instructed Gennady, “You take Johnny Disco. I’ll take Dougie.” Cowboy and Gennady proceeded to carry them to Captain Dougie’s houseboat, but as the quartet stumbled down the docks, Cowboy lost his grip and the clerk fell into the channel—not the first or last Gangplank patron to do so. After Gennady retrieved Captain Dougie, Cowboy thought, Isn’t this just spectacular? A CIA officer and KGB spy carrying an FBI agent and a sopping wet Agency code clerk to a houseboat. When Gary came to hours later, Cowboy let him have it: “You got drunk and had a fuckin’ KGB officer carry you to the boat. Don’t let it happen again. We have a case to work here.”

  The looming problem for Cowboy was a stroke of splendidly awful luck: the two couples seated at
the next table had been Air Force Intelligence colonels and their wives, and the next day they reported the incident to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI), which passed them over to the FBI, where they were referred to Cowboy’s friend John “Mad Dog” Denton in the CI-4 office. Before joining the Bureau in 1969, New Jersey native Denton had, like Cowboy, served in the Marines, where his practical jokes and good-natured irreverence earned him the “Mad Dog” moniker. Among his stunts was scaling the Marine base’s fence late at night as if he were an intruder and whispering faux-foreign gibberish, throwing the sentries into a panic. Mad Dog’s Marine moniker followed him into his FBI work, say fellow CI-4 members. Once he ripped out the wires of a police car radio because the siren drove him nuts. Mad Dog and Cowboy’s shared “leatherneck” history and iconoclastic behavior forged a strong bond between the two counterintelligence partners. “I had met Jack at social gatherings,” Denton says. “He was not only a fellow jarhead but a real nutjob.”

  The colonels who had witnessed the Gangplank fiasco described the supposed “CIA guy” as oddly wearing one glove on his left hand—a peculiarity that applied to only one known Agency employee: Cowboy Jack Platt. At CI-4 headquarters, a furious Lane Crocker instructed Mad Dog Denton to “see if [Gennady’s recruitment] is salvageable.” If that turned out to be the case, Denton would partner with Jack. “I was looking forward to working with him,” Denton says.

  Mike Rochford couldn’t have picked a more bizarre occasion for his first day on the job with the CI-4 Squad. The twenty-four-year-old Southern Illinois farm boy had just completed Russian language training at the Defense Language Institute and was now looking to introduce himself to his new boss. “I asked to see Lane Crocker,” recalls Rochford, “and I was told he was busy trying to save some CIA’s officer’s career.” In his office, Lane was in fact on the phone to CIA headquarters and Cowboy Jack at the CIA Washington Station in Bethesda.