Bassett was one of those who made the grade. He recently described the benefits of the IOC experience, especially how he and his wife endured grueling training with their three small children in tow. By the time the Bassetts arrived for their assignment in Budapest, they were “dry cleaning” aficionados who had never been caught, which was a huge victory given the stakes. Among the things Bassett learned from one of his agents was that the entire US battle plan for fighting World War III in Europe had gotten into Soviet hands before the Pentagon brass even saw it. As a result, the Soviets changed the locations and assignments of their land and air forces. Given Bassett’s freedom to operate, he and his CIA colleagues were eventually able to nail the US traitor Clyde Conrad. Bassett says, “Thank you, Jack Platt.”
Clyde Lee Conrad, while stationed in Budapest for the US Army in the 1980s, was a highly paid traitor who sold top-secret NATO war plans to Soviet-bloc Hungary for over a decade. As Bassett implies, Conrad was caught in Operation Iceberg and sentenced to life in prison thanks in part to Jack’s training of investigators like Bassett. At Conrad’s sentencing, the presiding judge noted the importance of his capture: “If war had broken out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the West would have faced certain defeat. NATO would have quickly been forced to choose between capitulation or the use of nuclear weapons on German territory. Conrad’s treason had doomed the Federal Republic to become a nuclear battlefield.”*
Author and thirty-three-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine Directorate of Operations, Jason Matthews, himself a grad of Cowboy’s IOC, recently added, “It’s something not many people at the Agency can do.” However, those who graduated entered the Langley-to-Moscow pipeline as prepared as humanly possible. One of Cowboy’s trainees would also utilize the techniques taught him in IOC to evade detection when successfully making a dash to defect to the KGB.
Cowboy Jack regarded his work with the IOC as his greatest achievement at the CIA. To everyone who knew him in those years, it was clearly his passion project. When asked about Jack’s all-day, all-night course, SE chief Burton Gerber wondered how he ever saw his family: “Jack seemed to never take vacations.”
Despite the vast training improvements designed by Jack, Iron Curtain operations were still getting busted, and assets killed. Due to its now improved training course, CIA executives were certain that tradecraft, including blown surveillance detection, wasn’t the problem. As CIA Director William Casey would eventually ask his Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), “What about the human penetration? Do you think there’s a spy in here?”
6
THE QUISLING
I told you I knew how to fucking train people.
In 1984, Gennady was finally relieved of his tedious desk job at Yasenevo and posted to the Caribbean country of Guyana, which had opened diplomatic relations with the USSR fourteen years earlier. “Headquarters had promised to send me to New York,” Gennady says. “But at the last minute I was sent to Georgetown [Guyana]—some sort of security emergency.” Gennady wasn’t happy and told his superiors as much. Nevertheless, he knew, for his career’s sake, that he ultimately had to accept the post. His boss added that they would make it up to him.
The “Land of Many Waters” was seen as a strategic Soviet partner in Central America and the Caribbean, a base for operations against US strategic missile submarines as well as for sabotaging lines of communication in the mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic Ocean. The small country also had prime deposits of bauxite, a main source of aluminum (a major Soviet industry) and an ore in short supply in the USSR. Yet all of this looked more impressive on paper than it was in reality.
“We had a big station in Georgetown, but no counterintelligence function,” Gennady explains. “More work needed to be done to protect the embassy—and to spy on Americans. They promised they’d only put me there for a year before sending me to New York.” Another DC posting was against procedure, but New York would have allowed Gennady to be close to the other Musketeers. At this point, he had been out of contact with them for three years, and he missed them. It would have been career suicide, if not actual physical suicide, for him to make contact while working in Moscow.
Gennady may have been unhappy with the new posting, but he made the most of it, as only he could. One of his regular responsibilities was accompanying the embassy accountant to the bank, where he made deposits or withdrew large sums. On one such visit, Gennady noticed and then fell hard for a gorgeous young teller named Sherry. One day, he offered to “give her a lift.” (“I ended up giving her a lift for one year,” Gennady says with a sly grin.) He began dating Sherry and invited her to volleyball matches. At some point the Soviet ambassador pulled Gennady aside in the embassy and admonished him for dating a woman so young. “Now, knock it off or you’ll get thrown in jail and cause an international incident.” Did he knock it off? “Of course not,” Gennady says. “Well, not right away.” He saw her a few more times, then dropped her.
Almost as important as the girls was his friendship with the other Musketeers. Soon he hit upon a way to make contact. Among Gennady’s other routine duties in 1984 was to liaise between the Soviet ambassador in Guyana and the Soviet UN mission in New York. According to Cowboy, during phone calls to the UN representative—calls Gennady knew were tapped by the NSA for the US Embassy in Guyana, located a mile west along the seawall—Gennady broke the cardinal rule of tradecraft and announced himself with his real name (not his cover, ILYA) in a stage voice that would have been crystal clear to even the most dunderheaded American phone transcriber:
GENNADY: Hello, this is Gennady Vasilenko—that’s G-E-N-N-A-D-Y, V-A-S-I-L-E-N-K-O. I’m calling from the Soviet Embassy in Guyana. G-U-Y-A-N-A. I used to work at the Soviet Embassy in Washington from 1977 to 1980. That’s right, Washington, DC.
For good measure, Gennady added that he needed “some Visine and parts for a Chevy Blazer,” the Musketeers private code for “Come get me!” The secret code also guaranteed the Musketeers that the caller was indeed Gennady, not some imposter provocateur. The Americans traced Gennady’s location, and the conversation was quickly relayed to the men it was actually intended for: Dion Rankin and Cowboy Jack. In Gennady’s version of the story, his whereabouts likely had been discovered already by Jack and Dion’s friend McKim Symington, who worked at the US Embassy in Georgetown, Guyana.
Word of Gennady came first to the Washington Field Office and Dion Rankin, who had continued to believe that Gennady’s parting words in DC left the door open to possible recruitment, or at least defection. He immediately called Jack, who took leave from the IOC in Rosslyn and drove to Buzzard Point, where Dion read him the transcript so Jack could decide for himself whether it was a provocation. Dion had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when Jack shot back, “Genya’s in Georgetown. Let’s go!”
Dion agreed with Cowboy’s faith in Operation DOVKA and quickly broached with his superiors the possibility of a trip. “I never had any problems with Crocker when it came to the Genya thing,” Dion says. “When I asked permission to travel to Guyana he immediately said, ‘Okay, go.’”
If only it were that easy, an envious Cowboy Jack thought. In fact, Cowboy’s cobra-mongoose relationship with Agency executives on the seventh floor would prove a major stumbling point. They had come to think of the whole operation as little more than a boondoggle for juvenile delinquent spies who liked to drink, shoot squirrels, and generally screw around on the government’s dime. Enough was enough. Both SE chief Burton Gerber and Counterintelligence Director Paul Redmond had made it clear to Cowboy that they were finished funding the Musketeers’ personal vacations, disguised, in their view, as Agency business. Gerber, in a recent interview, recalled that he felt that the friendship was just a personal thing, and he saw no strategic or tactical value in the cultivation of Gennady. It was a friendship, period. While Gennady was promising in theory, Gerber was not interested in financing the international target-shooting getaways of good buddies. Gerber also vetoed the purc
hase of a hunting rifle for Gennady for the same reason—not because he was anti-gift or anti-gun but because he saw no value in it. “I don’t see what you can do there,” Gerber told Cowboy. “I don’t see that he’s recruitable.”
Dion accompanied Jack as he went around Gerber and took his trip request to Redmond on the seventh floor. It was an encounter he’d never forget—and it was typical Cowboy. “Jack and I sat on a small couch facing Redmond’s desk,” Dion remembers. “It was a narrow room, and there were two of his junior execs sitting off to the side. When Redmond first indicated he was against the Guyana thing, Jack, who was decked out in full Cowboy regalia, slowly and dramatically pulls a cigarette out of his vest pocket—he was a chain-smoker at this time.” Of course, smoking was against the rules in the executive offices, so everyone’s eyes were riveted to that Marlboro. “So he continues making his case for the trip as he lights up. Except for Jack’s voice, you could hear a pin drop.” All eyes were on Jack’s cigarette because they were wondering what the hell he was going to do with it in the ashtray-less suite.
Dion couldn’t stifle laughter as he recounted how Jack proceeded to speak ever so slowly about Gennady in Guyana, all the while tapping his ashes onto Redmond’s polished tile floor. “It went on for twenty minutes,” says Dion. “It was like a comedy bit, but just for my benefit. Redmond and the other two never said a word. They were horrified. But Jack just kept on talking until there was a pile of ash on the floor.” Finally Jack threw the cigarette on the floor and squashed it under his boot. “For his encore, he threw the butt under the cushion of Redmond’s sofa. Then he said, ‘Thanks for your consideration,’ and we walked out into the hall.”
“What the hell was that?!” Dion asked as they entered the elevator.
“Fuck ’em!” Jack said in the elevator containing a half-dozen shocked secretarial staff. Jack just smiled and said, “Good morning, ladies.”
“You had to love him,” Dion says.
Of course, not everyone on the seventh floor agreed with Dion. Although Burton Gerber admired Jack, he was also aware of many fellow executives who weren’t amused by Jack’s brusque manner. One CIA colleague expressed it more candidly, saying that Agency management was just plain afraid of him. “His personality became a problem for Jack at the CIA,” Gerber says. “He could have advanced further if he had gotten it under control.” To which Jack would have replied that he had no interest in advancement—he just wanted to be left alone to do his patriotic duty. Semper fi.
Dion and Jack concluded that the Agency was concerned with more than the company expense account; they worried the overture was actually a provocation, and they didn’t wish to take the risk. But Jack thought—knew—that his superiors were missing the big picture. Who knew what kind of information was hibernating in Gennady’s brain, especially considering that his father-in-law had been one of the Wise Men of the Soviet nuclear program? Didn’t the suits understand that cultivating sources wasn’t like dropping a coin in a vending machine, then pulling a knob to release an order of nicely packaged treachery? Didn’t the suits trust Jack to not fall for a provocation? Although Jack had a personal interest in seeing his Russian friend, he and Dion also held out that Gennady would someday end up living in the US, and when that time came, he would be a great asset for both their agencies.
As it was, Jack went back to Rosslyn and continued to train others for overseas action while Dion spent six weeks at the CIA, training and learning about Guyana. Dion then made the trip alone and checked into the Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown as a diplomat named “Donald Williams.” The Pegasus overlooks the Caribbean and the 280-mile-long seawall that protects the below-sea-level country. It was the hotel of choice for visiting government employees since it was located just two blocks from the US Embassy. Ironically, it also attracted a decidedly nongovernmental crowd. “It was like a scene from Casablanca—all spies, drug dealers, and con men staying there,” remembers Dion. “But it’s the only decent hotel. All the water in Guyana made you sick—you had to down a cocktail before the foul-water ice melted. The hotel buffet was dried toast, dried bacon, and egg whites—just whites because the chickens were malnourished. A plate of eggs looked like a plate of snot. The people were poor as shit there.”
Dion proceeded about a mile east to the Soviet compound, which took up a large square block where Pere Street abuts the Caribbean. The complex included a basketball court, a tennis court, a large pool, and a volleyball area. Dion pictured his old friend spending a good deal of his time at these recreations. Once inside, Dion had the receptionist page Gennady. “In a few minutes he walks into the conference room where I was waiting,” Dion says. “We both played it cool, knowing we were being watched. I told him I was staying at the Pegasus. Later at the hotel I get a message to meet him by the jagged seawall at ten that night. When the cab dropped me off and drove away it was pitch black. I walked for two miles to lose possible surveillance—Jack would have been pleased—until I arrived at the beach location. Gennady showed up right on time. We got reacquainted, but I still played it cool, no pitch. The first thing he said was ‘Where’s Chris?’”
About an hour later, Gennady drove Dion to within a few blocks of his hotel, and Dion proceeded back on foot. He stayed a week in Georgetown, where the duo met each other every day, often shooting targets from the seawall. Dion laughs. “One thing was clear. Gennady hadn’t changed a bit. He had at least two girlfriends there, including a pharmacist. One day I went to his apartment and I saw Irina, who was there for her twice-yearly visit. She was screaming at him.” Ilya and Julia weren’t there—they were no longer permitted to leave the USSR because they were teenagers. Irina could leave because she was the wife of a “diplomat.” “But Irina was frightened that Gennady would get into trouble by hanging with me,” Dion says. The truth was, Gennady didn’t need anyone’s help pissing people off.
Gennady, Irina, and Dion in Guyana.
After the two men parted ways each night, they were likely at their typewriters, simultaneously writing up their reports. Gennady’s Yasenevo superior, fully aware of his officer’s history with the other Musketeers, was furious. “He warned me not to talk to either of them. He said it’s a provocation,” Gennady says. “I told him to fuck off. ‘If you don’t trust me, send me home. I don’t want to be here anyway.’”
For the rest of the week, Gennady and Dion continued meeting. Thus once again Gennady had allowed his friendships with the Musketeers to force him to deceive his own agency. These deceptions would prove to be monumental mistakes, but, like Jack, Gennady felt the friendships were worth the risk. When Gennady bid Dion goodbye on his last day, he said, “Tell the Cowboy to get his ass down here!”
Dion returned to Washington and immediately called Cowboy, to whom he reported that their friend was well and had asked for him repeatedly. Cowboy knew that Burton Gerber was nearing the end of his rope with Operation DOVKA, so he came up with a new argument for the need to travel to the island: Guyana had vaulted into public consciousness in 1978 when an American Communist cult leader named Jim Jones convinced more than nine hundred of his Peoples Temple followers to commit mass suicide by drinking Flavor Aid laced with cyanide. Jones died along with his followers at his “Jonestown” commune by a presumably self-inflicted gunshot to the head—the US authorities had been investigating his cult, and the maniac had been hearing footsteps. Nearly all of those who died were Americans. Later reports indicated that many of those who “drank the Kool-Aid” might have done so at the gunpoint of Jones’s Marxist henchmen. The deaths immediately followed the assassination of US congressman Leo Ryan, who had traveled to Guyana to investigate reports of Americans being held against their will.
Cowboy knew that the CIA and the KGB had been interested in this small Caribbean nation for some time. In fact, its current president, L. Forbes Burnham, had been installed as prime minister with CIA support in 1964. Regarding the Jonestown incident, both the KGB and the Kremlin tied the nine hundred deaths to America
n decadence and sickness; however, they did so without mentioning their own secret links to the cult. It was soon learned that Soviet representatives had visited the Peoples Temple on a number of occasions. Survivors told journalists that Jim Jones had met regularly with the local KGB contingent. Immediately after the deaths, Burnham released memos detailing the local KGB contacts, noting discussions to relocate the compound to the Black Sea. Letters were made public, showing that $7.2 million of Jonestown money had been delivered to local banks with the Soviet Embassy in Georgetown empowered to withdraw the funds.
While no one truly believed the Soviets had had a hand in the Jonestown massacre, if nothing else, the tragedy became a flashpoint for motivated CIA operatives to pay closer attention—and to visit—Guyana. Nobody wanted another Jonestown on his or her hands. Whatever works, Cowboy thought. After nonstop harassing from Cowboy, Gerber finally relented and signed off on Cowboy’s trip to Guyana in February 1985. As Gennady saw it, his life in Guyana had consisted primarily of waiting for something to happen—and it was about to.
The February 1985 Guyana Musketeers reunion was set to be a surprise, a celebration of Jack’s birthday that month and, belatedly, Gennady’s December birthday. For this trip, Jack used his overseas cover name, “Charles Kneller,” while Dion once again went by “Donald Williams.” After checking in at the Pegasus, Jack stayed behind while Dion walked to the Soviet Embassy, where he made a point of accidentally running into Gennady and invited him back to the hotel for a drink after work.
Best of Enemies Page 12
