Best of Enemies

by Eric Dezenhall

  “Lane told me I was in trouble at headquarters,” Cowboy remembered, “so I went right over to see Hav Smith and begged for my career.” Smith said he’d see what he could do but made no promises. Cowboy twisted in the wind for a week until the final word came. “The indelible date for me was October 8, 1979, when Hav told me I was about to be fired,” Cowboy said. “Hav reminded me that Nixon had years earlier passed a decree that any CIA officer who refused treatment for alcoholism or drugs had to be fired. I was crying by this time.”

  According to one colleague, the Gangplank event was not the only infraction on Jack’s card; in his zeal to “accomplish the mission,” Jack had taken his work home, work that included classified documents. Thus he was already hanging by a thread when the marina incident occurred. His Williams College friend Carl Vogt, by now living in DC and a partner in Leon Jaworski’s law firm, remembers a distraught Jack calling him the next day, saying, “I need to talk to someone.” Jack told Carl that he had been given an ultimatum to get help immediately. “The penalty is I’ll never get promoted,” Jack said. “The good news is I don’t get fired.”

  It wasn’t just the CIA that was fed up with Jack; someone with far greater influence over him—his wife, Paige—had been quietly making plans to leave him. She had found full-time work and was making her own money, a core element of her exit strategy. Then, out of nowhere, Jack called Paige from work and said he needed to meet her for lunch, something he never did. As soon as Paige sat down, Jack said, “I have something to tell you: I’m an alcoholic and I’m going into rehab tomorrow morning. Will you still be here when I get out?” Paige was stunned. She had been making progress on finding a divorce attorney and now this. She doesn’t remember exactly how she answered Jack other than having conveyed her skepticism that he could beat this curse. Perhaps she didn’t want to commit to an assurance. Nevertheless, she stayed.

  Both Jack’s Agency supervisors and his wife had been correct about his problem, and he now knew it. Although he had held it together at the Gangplank, the fact was that in recent months he had been having regular blackouts. “You know you’re an alcoholic when you start having blackouts,” he said. “I became a ceiling-ologist. Drunks often wake up looking at the ceiling, trying to remember where they are.”

  Jack jumped at the chance to save his career—and his deteriorating marriage—and right after hanging up with Carl, he checked into a medical facility at the CIA’s secret training center, The Farm, near Williamsburg, Virginia, where he spent twenty-eight days going cold turkey before attending Alcoholics Anonymous for the rest of his life. “Recovery is one day at a time. AA is wonderful.” From that day on, Jack’s go-to drink was near beer.

  Once Jack had recovered and had become more forthcoming about his struggles, his daughter Leigh asked him if, in all his adventures, he had ever had an affair. Her father answered, “Yes, I had an affair. With a bottle.” But never with another woman. “Dad was in a business where you work hard but get no affirmation. Dad didn’t need affirmation; he just needed my mom.”

  While Jack was in treatment, the Bureau and the CIA shut down the “Get Gennady” operation, and Gary Schwinn received the ultimate FBI chastisement: a transfer. While Schwinn packed his bags for the Bureau’s version of Siberia (Detroit), Mad Dog Denton further investigated the Gangplank incident, interviewing not only the witnesses but also Gary’s and Gennady’s volleyball pals in order to determine how badly CI-4 had been compromised.*

  While Denton worked on the Gangplank damage assessment, FBI rookie Mike Rochford spent his first month at Buzzard Point in frustration. He had been tasked with compiling material on one of Gennady’s rezidentura colleagues, the idea being, as always, to determine if a pitch was possible. However, the CIA’s SE Division had balked at sharing its KGB files with the Bureau. That difficulty was about to be remedied.

  “I’m sitting at my desk when I see this guy dressed in cowboy gear coming into the office,” remembers Rochford. “He throws a thick stack of paper on my desk and says, ‘I heard you wanted these. Well, they just fell off a truck.’”

  “ ‘Who are you?’ I asked him,” Rochford recalls. “That was the first time I met Jack Platt.”

  It was Cowboy’s first day back on the job after drying out at The Farm. A week later, Mike Rochford was assigned to share his government car with none other than Cowboy and Mad Dog, chauffeuring them around town. Rochford was, however, not deemed ready to associate with their main target, Gennady.

  Soon Denton concluded that the Gennady case was indeed salvageable, but supervisor Lane Crocker nevertheless decided to put the project on ice for the time being. However, Mad Dog’s Gangplank investigation yielded unforeseen benefits regarding the Russian’s local contacts, information that would change Crocker’s mind and culminate in a major overture to Gennady. One of Gennady’s closest friends, Denton learned, was a colorful Ukrainian-born radio engineer named George Powstenko, who was clearly the Russian Cowboy’s “uncle”/confidant. Powstenko had been a US citizen for two decades, but “George looked like a Cossack, with his moustache and ushanka hats,” recalls Denton. “He was a stereotypical Eastern Bloc character—everything revolves around drinking together.”

  Powstenko, whose company—Smith and Powstenko—serviced radio and TV transmission needs, was a force of nature in his own right and could be found most mornings at Blackie’s House of Beef, already sipping on B and B (brandy and Benedictine). Having immigrated to the US in 1949 after the USSR absorbed the Ukraine, Powstenko had become one of the leading voices of the millions of fellow Ukrainians living in US exile.* He had originally connected with Gennady through the men’s volleyball team he founded, Chaika, which included amateurs from many government agencies and was called “Washington’s Yankees” by local players. When George and Gennady weren’t chasing errant volleyballs, they indulged in their other mutual passion: chasing skirts. (Unbeknownst to George, Yakushkin had ordered Gennady to keep an eye on the Cossack engineer also.)

  After one of his three-martini working lunches with Powstenko, Mad Dog Denton was witnessed under his Washington Field Office desk, feet sticking out for his fellows to trip over, while warbling “The Star-Spangled Banner” at full volume. When he was first asked to become a source for the Squad, Powstenko replied tersely, “I won’t help the FBI—it is a fucked up organization.” To which Mad Dog answered, “You’re absolutely correct.” Powstenko, obviously appreciating Denton’s candor, then turned on a dime. “Okay, I’ll help you.”

  Powstenko said he was happy to discuss any KGB business he picked up in the local Russian community so long as his friend Gennady was untouched. Cowboy and Mad Dog agreed, but Cowboy still believed he needed to recruit an athlete to get even closer to Gennady, and he hoped Powstenko would point him in the right direction. More often than not, Powstenko had salacious Gennady tales to relate, including the time Powstenko was walking down 16th Street and pulled Gennady out of a car, where he had been screwing the eighteen-year-old niece of a high-ranking member of Jimmy Carter’s administration.

  While waiting for a good lead from the Ukrainian, Cowboy and Mad Dog continued socializing with Gennady, taking the Russian, who openly defied Yakushkin, for all sorts of get-togethers: lunches, family dinners, shooting and fishing excursions. “We often went camping in Fredericksburg, Virginia, near where the Rappahannock River meets the Rapidan,” remembers Denton. “It was all shooting, fishing, and practical jokes. We were like three overgrown kids.” One night, the trio was out shooting in the woods when they walked into a clearing and came upon concerned campers with flashlights. The FBI men flashed their badges and explained to the citizens that they were on a top-secret government mission to neutralize space aliens who had been caught creeping through the forest. “We got ’em all,” the Feds explained to the anxious campers.

  Eventually, Powstenko delivered the goods, telling Cowboy and Mad Dog about Tom Welch, an Arlington-based regional executive with IBM and a top-flight volleyball player-coach.
Powstenko told the pair that Welch was coincidentally just now forming his own six-man AAU volleyball team in Virginia and was, like Gennady, a thirty-seven-year-old bachelor—Gennady in spirit, at least. More importantly, Californian Welch liked girls and vodka.

  By the spring of 1980, Cowboy and Mad Dog had convinced their respective bosses to restart what they formerly called “Operation Gennady” (now officially called DOVKA, an anagram of “vodka.”) Time was short, they told their superiors. Gennady had told the team that he was due to be rotated back to Moscow after his US posting expired in 1981. Cowboy and Mad Dog succeeded in convincing Lane Crocker at the WFO to back an entrée to Welch, officially making him part of the operation. It wasn’t long before Cowboy and Denton showed up at Welch’s IBM office in Arlington.

  “One day my secretary came into my office with a concerned look on her face,” said Welch.

  “There are two strange men who want to see you,” she said.

  “Who are they?”

  “They won’t say.”

  “Where are they from?”

  “They won’t say.”

  “That’s it?”

  “One of them is dressed like he’s with a rodeo.”

  “Hell, show them in.”

  On entering the office, Cowboy spoke up first. “Mr. Welch, would you mind if we closed your office door?”

  Welch agreed while Mad Dog gave the secretary his best “Get lost” look. She closed the door behind her. According to Welch, Cowboy and Mad Dog made no pretense about where they worked, displaying their FBI and CIA credentials.

  Again, Cowboy spoke up. “There’s a gentleman working at the Russian embassy, a fellow volleyball player named Gennady Vasilenko. We want you to play volleyball with him, take him out, have fun, anything you want. Basically, entertain Gennady and tell him why he should defect. We’ll set up a bank account for you to use with him.”

  “So the CIA needs better volleyball players that bad?” Welch half joked, drawing no response from either Cowboy or Mad Dog. “I made it crystal clear to them that it’s not my job to recruit spies,” remembers Welch.

  “Okay, then just party with him—on our tab,” Cowboy countered. “Let him know how great America is. We’ll do the rest.”

  A bit of a carefree, adventurous type himself, Welch agreed—the idea of partying on the government’s dime, with no quid pro quo, was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Of course, the whole gambit would only go forward if he liked the Russian, Welch said.

  “Don’t worry,” Cowboy said. “Everybody likes him.”

  Soon, an operational funds account of $5,000 ($14,000 in 2017 dollars) was set up for Welch with the Bank of Virginia. To put the plan into motion, Powstenko was contacted and told to suggest to the unsuspecting Gennady that he try out for Welch’s new team.

  “I remember when Gennady first showed up at our practice,” Welch recalls.

  “I want to play for your team,” Gennady said in his thick Russian accent.

  “I already have a team,” answered Welch, feigning disinterest.

  “Just give me one set,” Gennady pleaded.

  At that point one of Welch’s players inserted himself. “What the hell? Let him play one set.” Welch relented and was glad he did.

  “He was amazing—far better than the best player on our team,” Welch says. At a team meeting the next day, Welch took the temperature of his players regarding whether one of them minded being benched for a Russian former Olympian. “I don’t give a fuck,” said team captain Antonio. “Put him on the team.”

  Over the next few months, Welch and Gennady partied on the government’s dime, attending fancy embassy parties and the best Georgetown bistros. Welch remembers he and Gennady often practicing two-man volleyball together, and drinking hard after. “Whenever he’d call me up for a practice, he’d always end by saying, ‘Tom, bring alcohol.’ Of course, Gennady always came well stocked anyway, with five-star Russian vodka. After just our second drink together, he told me that he was KGB and the vodka was part of his official allotment for recruiting.”

  Welch harbored a vague sense that hanging out with a Russian spy might be dangerous in theory—an exploding fountain pen, perhaps—but he never imagined that the hazard would come in the form of anything as banal as Gennady’s driving. Late one night, Welch picked up Gennady and two other foreign volleyball players in his clunky old Mercedes for a road trip to a meet in North Carolina. As they crossed the state line after midnight, with Antonio and Juan sleeping in the back, Gennady’s frustration with the pace of things took root.

  “Tom, you drive too slow,” he said. “I’ll drive now.” Once behind the wheel, Gennady hit the gas and sped the Mercedes to well over 100 miles per hour.

  Tom grabbed the armrest and the window, shouting, “You’re going to kill us!”

  Gennady shrugged. “Don’t worry. I do this all the time.”

  Within minutes they were being chased by one of Carolina’s finest, all lit up and siren screaming. Gennady accelerated to about 140 miles per hour, the engine straining as the cop vanished in the rearview mirror. Gennady paid a compliment to German engineering and brought the car back to about 100.

  A few miles later, the volleyballers came upon a constellation of whirring red lights and found themselves confronting twenty police cars blocking the highway. This got Gennady’s attention, and he hit the brakes. Tom instructed his foreign friends to pretend they couldn’t speak any English. The cops demanded that Gennady, Tom, Antonio, and Juan raise their hands above their heads and get out of the car. Tom pleaded with the officers, explaining that they couldn’t be arrested because they were embassy employees with diplomatic immunity. The threesome displayed their IDs. Tom told the disbelieving cops that they were on their way to a volleyball tournament. “Prove it.” He slowly popped open the Mercedes’s trunk to reveal four balls and about twelve bottles of Gennady’s best vodka.

  Furious that the “diplomats” were beyond his reach for arrest, the lead cop gave Gennady a speeding ticket for going 140 in a 60 mile-per-hour zone. As the cops walked away, Gennady spoke out, now in perfect English: “Nice to see you, Officer—and fuck you!”

  When the summer of 1980 rolled around, Welch was preparing a trip home to California to visit his parents and attend an Al Scates Summer Camp in La Jolla. A coach at UCLA since 1959, the legendary Scates had personally reinvented the way volleyball was played,* going on to have, in a fifty-year career, an 81 percent winning record, three undefeated seasons, and twelve national championship rings (two more than UCLA basketball legend John Wooden). His nineteen national titles are the second most of any college coach in any sport.

  Welch had a passing acquaintance with Scates and phoned him at UCLA to see if he would like a former Russian Olympian to give a clinic or two at the camp. Scates said he’d be happy to have him. “I thought Southern California would be a great way for Gennady to experience the best of America,” Welch says. “Great weather, girls on the beach, the whole nine yards.” Of course, the notion rested on the assumption that Gennady could wrangle a sign-off from Yakushkin.

  Cowboy and Mad Dog were immediately on board with the California idea and began making their own travel plans. The mission was to party hard with Gennady in California after Welch had handed him over. “The reason for the California trip,” says Denton, “was that it’s always important to get a potential recruit away from his controls. They have a terrifying hold on their officers.”

  Gennady was ecstatic about the Welch invitation, as Al Scates was well known to him—as were California bikinis. Back at the embassy, Gennady approached Dmitri Yakushkin with his request to spend a week in Southern California. Although Gennady suggested to his boss that the trip might yield some recon intel on Southern California military bases, as well as the future US Olympic team, his actual, unstated goal was to check out those “California girls” he had heard so much about. When he informed a hesitant Yakushkin that all expenses were to be paid by Welch, the chief caved but st
ernly warned him that he had a seven-day pass, not one minute more.

  Soon thereafter, Gennady met Cowboy at one of their regular haunts, bristling with excitement. “Guess what?” he said. “I’m playing volleyball in San Diego, California, in August.” To which a poker-faced Cowboy replied, “What a coincidence. I’ll be in LA at the same time for a conference. I’ll try to come down and see you.”

  There was only one more piece of the puzzle that needed to fall into place before the trip: a critical addition to their merry band. With Gary Schwinn long gone and Mad Dog soon to be transferred to Knoxville, a new FBI CI-4 case officer was assigned to the Gennady DOVKA operation. Dion Rankin was chosen, according to Denton, because “Dion was the guy who was most like Gennady.” Some might call that an understatement.

  Dion (pronounced “Dy-on”) was a thirty-four-year-old native of Augusta, Georgia, where his father bred walking horses (and sold one to their neighbor, soul icon James Brown). He was also a master tracker, having learned the skill in the wilds of Malaysia, where as an army first lieutenant he volunteered to study at the British Jungle Warfare School. After Malaysia and then Vietnam, Dion got his degree in psychology before joining the FBI in 1972. He achieved Bureau acclaim when he helped track James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., after his 1977 escape from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Tennessee. He also provided key tracking assistance during the 1975 Pine Ridge incident in which two FBI agents had been murdered by Indian activist Leonard Peltier, still on the run when Dion arrived on the scene. Known among his colleagues as a man who didn’t suffer fools, Dion had worked in seven different FBI field offices as an interrogator, polygrapher, and firearms instructor before joining CI-4 in 1977, where he had been involved in the successful roll-up of CIA turncoat David Henry Barnett in 1979. In that investigation, Dion and his colleagues had obtained the key evidence from Vladimir Piguzov, the same man who had helped Cowboy gather background on Gennady. Dion had met Cowboy in 1978 at a mutual friend’s party. “He had a good line of bullshit,” remembers Dion. “He had a foul mouth, but endearing.”