CIA Spymaster_George Kisevalter

by Clarence Ashley III

  "The point of all of this is that Henning was the son of one of the principals of the engineering consultant firm of Christiani and Neilson. They are famous engineers. They built almost everything notable in their part of the world, all kinds of things. They invented a suspension-system bridge with multiple crisscrossing spans. There is a famous stadium in Rio de Janeiro that they built. They designed a bridge between Denmark and Sweden, a railroad, and highway bridge. They built the docks for the ship called The Normandy in France. When the Germans invaded their country, Henning's father sabotaged his own firm there in order to prevent any cooperation with the Nazis. I met him, the father, after the son's death. Circumstances. Life. Associations. Right?

  "Well, with this relationship to Christiani and Neilson, I was well fixed in that area. So well, that when I went out there, I took my wife, Ferdi. A local official loaned me, or assigned to me, one of his secretaries to squire Ferdi around town, showing her such things as statues and monuments. A car was provided her, this and that, `wining and dining,' etc. I was working eight hours a day with another secretary, a beautiful girl who was a super linguist. Her specialties were the local language and English; mine, of course, was Russian. We were attempting a penetration of a Soviet intelligence officer there. A high-level Soviet official was attempting to get close to our allies. We were concerned and wanted to help them. So, using a woman as bait, we endeavored to get the Russian compromised. The woman was a government employee of theirs who was willing to sacrifice herself, even to sexual involvement, for purposes of the compromise.

  "There, in the safehouse where this was to go on, we set up a microphone and a transmitter. It was a highly elaborate package and was activated all of the time. The transmission was directed to an LP, a listening post. That is where we would be, along with our recorders. I had nothing to do with setting up this attempted penetration. I was only an instrument in this thing, there to translate into English, in real time, what was going on. That is, I was to translate everything that I heard in the Russian language. Understand that the principal language used in this operation was Russian. The secretary was translating some of her native language. All of this was to be done with the blessing of CIA, the local government, and everything else.

  "My technician friend, John, got together with the hometown technicians and he began to help with the technical setup of some of the wiring in the safehouse for the transmission to the LP. Everything seemed to be going well in this cooperative effort. The technical end of the operation was set.

  "As I mentioned, he has this Swedish background, whatever that means. Anyway, with the local technicians' broken English and John's presumed ability to speak a bit of the languages in that region, it appeared that communication would not be a problem for us. Without anyone's awareness, however, something became lost in the translation during the setup for the operation. Unknown to us, something of the technical translations between the languages had been terribly misunderstood. So, although everything appeared to be properly synchronized, suddenly, one night at about seven o'clock, news time, our transmission came up from the safehouse and was broadcast on public TV. This carnival was out of this world! The sound was on the TV! All over town. It went on the TV right in the middle of the safehouse action. It was completely devastating. When you realize who the principals were, this was in the category of high treason! A local official and a Russian official being exposed like this on public TV!

  "Can you imagine such a misadventure? It may also have been on the radio as well; I don't know. I didn't hear the broadcast. The next day, I innocently was reading my newspaper for the day's news. Lo and behold, there before me I saw an account of the snafu in the paper. I said to myself, 'I am living in fairyland.'

  "John, of course, was immediately thrown out of the country. He subsequently was the recipient of a number of missives from headquarters seeking to attach the blame to him. There was no value in having an international argument with one of our allies; so, like a good soldier, he just accepted full responsibility for the gaffe and went off silently. Poor guy. It wasn't his fault. Somehow, something was just lost in the translation.'

  "This was an international embarrassment. This involved the CIA. It involved the United States. It involved the USSR. It involved a third country. It is a true story. How the hell they officially explained away this blunder, I don't know. I don't speak that language. The baloney to cover this outrageous gaffe really must have been stacked high. Can you imagine this happening? Like lightning striking an outhouse."

  When he told stories in the office I could not concentrate on business. I started to exit the premises in order to get some work done. Then I heard Captain McAboy enter the office and it became unnecessary. I knew exactly what would happen. They would play pinochle and I would be free of his interruptions. I returned to my thoughts but heard an occasional comment from the two.

  "Deal again, Mac."

  "George, I'm tired of losing to you!"

  "It's the cards, Mac, just the cards."

  "No it isn't. You're reading my mind!"

  "Come on, Mac; deal another hand."

  "Well, stop looking at me!"

  "Looking at you, Mac?"

  "Yes, and you're reading my mind. You know just what I'm going to play, every time."

  "Come on, Mac; that's ridiculous. Let's play now."

  "Well, I'll play one more hand with you, just one more, and then I'm going to do some real estate."

  "One more, Mac, one more."

  Capt. Lyman R. McAboy, a retired naval aviator, was the leader of our little outfit. We had a commercial real-estate practice in downtown McLean, Virginia, a bedroom community for Washington, D.C., made famous by the presence of the CIA and the Kennedys. We sold an occasional house, but mostly we sold land. We sold building lots in and around McLean and in Great Falls; we sold commercial land in northern Virginia, incurring many agonizing zoning battles; and we sold big tracts of land for development anywhere we could in Virginia. We were a small outfit with just a few agents. Our sales success was somewhat limited when one considers the tremendous growth that took place in the area at that time. We were quite accomplished in at least one respect, however-that of personal relationships. We never once had an argument about money, client designation, or any other competitive aspect of the real-estate operation. There was absolutely no greed or jealousy in the office. During the nineteen years that George and I were together in the firm, no one ever left our office to work for a competing real-estate office. Now, arguments about politics were something else. We were a diverse group with different backgrounds and distinct views.

  To understand George, I first had to know Mac, the boss, the only man in my experience to whom George regularly would show deference. George could show respect for many people if he thought that they deserved such treatment, and he was polite with almost everyone, but he had a veiled disdain for authority that was somewhat comical and refreshing. He did not give homage unless he was convinced that the authority was earned. For George, Mac had a position of honor, not just because he was the boss, but because he was a man of great character, confident yet kind and gentle. George simply loved him.

  I had come to the firm after a career in aerospace and some years at the CIA. There, initially, I was engaged in assessing capabilities of foreign missile systems. Later, I was assigned to a senior staff that planned future intelligence requirements and evaluated collection programs to fulfill these requirements.2 After six years with the Agency, I left. The atmosphere of the gathering Watergate episode was one impetus. I also saw that my employment at the Agency might be tenuous. The replacement of Richard Helms with James Schlesinger as director of the CIA (with the attendant resignation of all of the other people in my little systems analysis group) meant that I would have to thrash about for another job somewhere in the Agency at a time when people were being asked to take premature retirements because of overstaffing. Finally, the profitable sale of a piece of real estate that I owned contribu
ted to the decision.

  The first time I saw George was a beautiful day in April of 1973. As I approached the glazed-glass front door to the real-estate office, I saw him inside. His feet were propped up on the desk and he was asleep. When I opened the rickety old door, George, startled, suddenly awakened and his feet fell to the floor. I thought to myself, how stupid and lazy this man must be.

  I soon learned that he was a retired CIA case officer of the DDP, the term for the CIA's clandestine operations group at that time. This knowledge did not endear him to me as I had a negative impression of the DDP. They had contributed little to my department's effort when I was an analyst working on the Soviet ABM problem. Later, when working in the systems analysis group of the CIA, trying to set up methods for evaluating the performance of various collection programs (including the DDP), I found them so secretive and non-cooperative as to be useless in Foreign Missile Intelligence. Most of them were Ivy Leaguers who had studied the soft, liberal-arts subjects in college. They could speak wonderful English, but they could not understand basic mathematics. They were not like the state-university engineers, of which I was one, the people who were supposed to replace them at the Agency. After all, intelligence was now a world of science and technology. I was familiar with rockets, missiles, satellites, computers, and the like. The collection, processing, and analysis of intelligence information were now tasks for technology, not jobs that required the humanities. We had to replace these people with engineers and machines, I believed.

  I learned that George had graduated from Dartmouth. This made the picture complete, as far as I was concerned: a former DDP Ivy Leaguer. What bothered me the most, however, was his unkempt appearance. He looked as if he never bothered to prepare himself to leave the house: Come on clothes, I'm going downtown; if you want to go, hang on. After I had been with the firm about one year, and felt comfortable doing so, I asked Mac if he would speak to George about his appearance. Mac said he would not. He was not bothered by George's appearance. I was disappointed. I firmly believed that appearance was important.

  By 1975 I had borrowed what was to me a lot of money in order to purchase various parcels of land for development. Development became impractical, however, as interest rates for construction projects rocketed over 20 percent. Payments continued to be due and I became seriously concerned with my financial future. Times looked grim. There was an Arab oil embargo and people were lined up at filling stations to buy gasoline. One day, George said to me that the economy was in the first stages of a significant depression and that no matter what I did, things were hopeless. He then volunteered that I was just like a son to him and gave me more advice: I wasjust thrashing about; I should quit real estate and get myself a real job. Sensing that I resented his advice, he stated, solemnly, that I did not have much respect for him. It was sadly true. My first impressions were strong. How could anyone be so stupid and so lazy?

  In time, however, I learned to appreciate George's better traits. Even though he was unkempt, he nevertheless was a meticulous record keeper. He exhibited an incredible amount of attention to detail in everything that he did and it did not take me long to learn that George could perform extraordinary mental feats. He could solve virtually any problem related to the amortization tables almost instantly on the back of an envelope. Given the loan amount, the interest rate, and the term, he could determine almost at once and within a dollar just what the monthly payments on the loan would be. He certainly had a great deal of respect for money; his investments in the stock market were monitored hourly and astutely. He also had vast knowledge of corporate America and he used it well to his own advantage. Then, there were those interminable crossword puzzles. Every day, he would routinely dispatch the Washington Post crossword puzzle within a matter of about five minutes.

  Whenever the phone in the office rang for George, I never knew what type of strange individual might be on the other end of the line. Often, it was somebody from the CIA. It seemed as though he still had some business with them, even though he had experienced mandatory retirement at age sixty. More often it was someone with a very foreign accent. I later learned that these were mostly older people, formerly White Russians, who were calling upon George to help them with the vagaries of life's practical challenges: for instance, doing their income taxes. The people had not yet learned to cope with the new, modern world. George had their trust and understanding. He would help them. Occasionally, a distinguished, older, female voice would be there. This turned out to be Velma, George's former wife, thirteen years his senior and living in D.C. She still depended upon George to get the plumbing fixed, which he did. George seemed to help everybody that he knew. He always seemed to have empathy for those around him. If someone had a problem, he was always quick to suggest an appropriate solution. So, there was an endearing quality to the man. He did not, however, seem to have great compassion for the needy unless he knew them directly; and he had a great deal of mistrust and suspicion of established charities.

  He depended upon Mac to give him his daily pinochle "fix." Without that form of mental stimulation, he seemed lost for the day. George would arrive at the office at about nine o'clock, turn on the radio to the yakity-yak twenty-four-hour AM talk station, and await the entrance of Mac. Mac arose each morning at about five o'clock, went automatically to Burke Lake Par-three Golf Course, and played eighteen holes with his regular foursome. He would find his way to the office about midmorning, where George would have the cards shuffled and the score sheets ready. At that time, the radio station would be changed to one broadcasting beautiful mood music, the kind that Mac and I liked. It was part of a daily ritual that had a consistently predictable outcome. After beating Mac's brains out, George would lean back and sigh, Mac would accuse George once more of reading his mind, shouts would follow, and the exercise would be over. Sometimes the game would be followed with political discussions. When these occurred, Mac usually would have to make George tone down his rhetoric for fear of offending the ladies in the office next door. George's language could at times be quite salty but never, ever knowingly in the presence of women.

  Early one morning in November of 1988, Mac's daughter, Patty, called and told me that her father had suddenly died. Bam! Just like that. Thankfully, the old boy went very quickly. He couldn't have felt a thing. They would put him down at Arlington National Cemetery. Even though he had been a captain in the navy and had collected many commendations from the Second World War as well as the Korean War, the service would be simple. His wife, Mary, the girl he knew from childhood, the one whom he daily called from the office to say silly, sweet things to before coming home, insisted that it be a simple ceremony. In his will, Mac had requested that "Till We Meet Again," a popular song of World War I vintage, be played at the funeral. Mary could not place the song, but she wanted it played to satisfy Mac's request. I found a copy of it in a music store, and my son Dennis played the piece on the old upright piano at the Fort Myer Old Post Chapel service. He added to it one bar of notes from "Anchors Away." Mary made the connection with "Till We Meet Again" when she heard Dennis play it. Now, every time I hear the song I feel a little melancholy.

  George was devastated. He had lost his good friend. He had lost his daily pinochle fix and he feared that he would lose the recreation that the real-estate avocation so vitally provided him. He thus took it upon himself to ensure that we all remained with the enterprise, convincing all of us that it was in our best interest to do so, and he insisted that I assume the leadership of the firm. I was so frustrated with real estate and so saddened by Mac's death that I was about ready to pack it all in and do something else. After all, I was an experienced engineer. I could get a real job and move on. George convinced me to continue with the firm, assuring me that he would help in any way necessary. Indeed, he did prove to be quite helpful, both with his advice and his encouragement. Although, by this time, he was not too active with the real estate, he was surprisingly savvy about business. He taught me how to keep the books an
d how to complete the corporate income-tax returns. He assisted in every way needed. He wanted me to make a success of the enterprise for the sake of all of us, I soon realized, not just for his own recreation.

  Then, just as suddenly, George's wife, Ferdi, died. This was in August of 1989. She died of a heart attack, at home, in his arms. At this Arlington Cemetery service, frugal George implored everyone to gather the flowers at the gravesite and take them home. No one could do it, of course.

  George then seemed a lost soul. Mercifully, his daughter, Eva, moved back home, bringing with her one of her best friends, Annie Snyder. The girls lived downstairs in the walkout rambler and George lived upstairs. It must have been an absolute madhouse, albeit a loving and entertaining one. Although these two very active and attractive professional young ladies were looking out for the old guy, they had completely different interests and outlooks on life from his.

  With Mac gone, George tried to get me to learn all about pinochle. I knew that I had my hands full in just trying to stay solvent, and a daily card game would ruin my chances. Thankfully, Eva took over that duty.

  Although George's real-estate activities by then were nominal, he nevertheless continued his daily trek to the office. It was then that he seriously took to telling me his fascinating and illuminating storiesstories about world history, about corporate industry, about agriculture, about his family background in Russia, about his life growing up in New York, and about his experiences at the Agency. He was so full of knowledge, and it all was so very interesting. I began to realize that he was quite an individual, and although at times his visits interfered with my work, the stories were always so intriguing that I never once regretted listening to them.