CIA Spymaster_George Kisevalter

by Clarence Ashley III

  Popov was able to initiate contact with the CIA on 10 January 1956. From a hotel in Stralsund, East Germany, he sent a note through a British officer. The officer was part of a military mission passing through. He couldn't know who Popov was, but during the contact he had the presence of mind to arrange for Popov to meet with whoever the proper people might be, within a few days. The manner in which the intrepid Popov was able to make the contact is worthy of note. His bold experience is detailed in a report sent by the British officer that is now on file at the CIA.

  "On the 10th January, 1956, I was reading in bed in my room in the BALTIC Hotel, STRALSUND, when, at 10:30 P.M., there was a knock on my door and a small, dark man in plain clothes looked in. He apologized, asked if I was English and if he might come in, to which I agreed. He then asked if I would help him, to which I replied that I would be delighted.

  "His description was as follows: Age (apparent): 32; Very dark; sallow skin; slightly Jewish in appearance despite fact that he claimed to be pure Russian; hair thinning. Height: approximately 5 ft. 5 ins.; He spoke fluent Russian and German.

  "He then explained that he was a Soviet Lt. Col. and stated that he worked at the Intelligence H.Q. in SCHWERIN and that his office was in a building next to the KOMMANDATURA as you look towards the lake. He said that since he had been in SCHWERIN he had seen a number of American Mission cars and that he had been anxious to make contact with American officers, but had not had the opportunity.

  "He had come to STRALSUND informally with his chief, a full Colonel of the Soviet Army. He had later told his chief that he was going out for a walk and a drink in the town and, on coming back to the hotel, had noticed a British Mission car. He had asked which rooms the British officer had occupied and had come to see him without the knowledge of his chief."

  In accordance with the suggestions of the British officer, within a few days Popov appeared in the hotel cafe and met two members of the U.S. Military Liaison Mission who routinely visited points in East Germany. These men, with Popov's help, agreed on the next steps of a plan for putting Popov in touch with George. Communicating through the British officer exposed Popov to the British Secret Intelligence Service for the first time, and such exposure was not to the CIA's liking.It turned out to be even riskier than was first realized, because the notorious George Blake, a Soviet mole buried at a very high level within British SIS, easily could have learned about the note. It would have been easy for him to sense Popov's activity, assess it accurately, and report it to his Soviet masters. Evidently, Blake did not get wind of this, so Popov appeared to be safe for the time being.

  After his forty days and forty nights in Reno, George went back to headquarters for reorientation. Notwithstanding the fact that the Agency had given Popov information on signal sites and other means of contacting its people, no one had heard from him. They (lid not know that Popov had been transferred from Moscow to Schwerin, East Germany, in the far north, near Hamburg.2 Then the cable came from Berlin. "Get Kisevalter over here! We have heard a noise from a guy by the name of Scheinhorst." (Scheinhorst was the cover name for Popov.) They told George that Popov had observed one of the inspection officers of the occupation forces, a Brit, who was legally in East Germany and that Popov had contacted the Brit at Stralsund. The word got to Berlin and to Bill Harvey, the Berlin Base chief. It got to headquarters. "Get Kisevalter over here. His old agent from Vienna has suddenly showed up in Germany and he is trying to re-contact us."

  George rushed to Berlin to resume the operation. He had been in the States only a few months. Everyone expected that George was going to be stationed in Berlin for an extended period, so he was given a "Permanent Change of Station" at once. This meant that he would not get a per diem as before.

  At any rate, George was back working with Popov and he was going to enjoy the reunion. With Popov's suggestions on how to do it, the CIA people in Germany contacted him. That is a story in itself. Berlin Base sent an old gentleman with instructions to meet Popov at a certain place at a certain time. The man was part of a network of ordinary-looking, "street-type" East Germans who could travel freely throughout East Germany and East Berlin without raising any suspicion. He was a World War I veteran and railroad man. The gentleman as well as Popov wore the cufflinks adorned with the West Point emblem for recognition. This was absolutely necessary because Popov spoke poor German, and the old man was not about to learn any Russian. He was totally unwitting of the actual nature of his activity, or of the danger involved, but he was anxious to help. Ted Poling related that the fellow might have thought that he was working for the kaiser.3

  Popov met the old gentleman in Rostock, near Schwerin, where neither was known. The old gentleman received a package from Popov and then took the train back to East Berlin. He arrived in the wee hours of the morning and was met by a CIA courier, who then ferried the package into West Berlin and onto Bill Harvey's desk by 7:00 A.M.

  Harvey, like George, was quite a heavy drinker, but he could get by with practically no sleep. He could go out drinking at night, get up early the next morning, then play at least nine holes of golf before coming into the office. He would be ready for work at 7:00.4

  George was always excited before contact meetings. Everyone was on edge. So, George and Ted Poling tied one on that night. They didn't have any responsibility for the meeting. All they had to do was read the "take" when it came in. They were out until about 4:00. The phone rang for them at about 7:00. It was Harvey who woke them up. They then trotted their weary selves in. Bill looked at them, and he was appalled. He chewed them up one side and then down the other. Finally, he said, "George, now you get over here and translate this stuff. Ted, as soon as he starts grinding it out, you go down and run the traces."

  Ted and George spent the day with hangovers, translating the notes and tracing down information on any person mentioned in the text, if they knew of him. As fast as they got bits translated, they ferried them up to Harvey so that he could then send OPS Immediate messages (i.e., operations messages requiring immediate attention) back to headquarters about the substance of the information as well as the traces. Both miscreants' heads were pounding. In the afternoon, Bill came down and said, "I apologize for chewing you two out." (He could identify with them.) Then, after pausing a moment, he followed with, "But you deserved it!"

  The information from Popov included the code names and brief descriptions of every agent in the Transborder Intelligence Unit, Central Group Forces. Transborder Intelligence is Tactical Intelligence, as opposed to Strategic Intelligence; it is the so-called "battlefield intelligence." These units were reporting on local military activities, but some intelligence agents reported on NATO forces and SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces), etc., as well as on atomic-warfare dumps, fuel lines, artillery resources, and airfields in Germany, Holland, and Belgium.

  For the rest of that year, while George was in Berlin, most of the contact with Popov was through the courier. The CIA intermediary, the old German gentleman, was not likely to be suspected. This worked quite satisfactorily. Personal contact, of course, is much preferred, and Popov managed three trips to West Berlin, where he and George met in a safehouse. These visits were quite dangerous for Popov but he seemed to enjoy helping the CIA and living on the edge.

  George continued, "And then there was Ferdi. A month or two after I got to Berlin I sent her clandestine letters, surreptitiously, innocently. I used a friend in Berlin as a dead drop and a friend in Vienna to deliver the letters. Nothing in a letter of a security risk. She knew nothing about me. She didn't know anything about the business, nothing at all. I didn't want to have anything compromised; I didn't want to screw anything up. I thought I'd be a little hit careful here, so I did these secretly. I didn't have permission to do all of these things. I didn't do anything wrong and I didn't want to advertise that I was doing anything wrong. I was concerned about the CIA finding out about this, not the Soviets. You might say that I feared the exposure of stupid correspond
ence-`What the hell are you doing this for?'-I guess. By this time she knew my name. But she didn't screw anything up. When she replied she mailed as directed. That is all she had to do; and a lady in Berlin gave me the letter.

  "Finally, I received an official task from the CIA to go from Berlin to Vienna, taking some documents and other articles. Of course, I ran off secretly and saw Ferdi. That was the time that I told her enough to begin buttoning things up, hoping that she wouldn't drop the ball somewhere. I told her that this was a hazard to me if she were loose with her tongue. Then she understood. That was it. She knew that I worked for the U.S. government, but she didn't know what it was. I mean, we didn't know what it was ourselves. To try to explain to Ferdi would be ridiculous. What in the world is O.S.S.? How could you explain that to her? I suppose that she thought that I was a postman-mailman or something like that. She didn't know or care.

  "I was in love. It was spring. Feelings do not evolve from logic. They come and they go, as the case may be. Life is like a game. The Ferris wheel goes around. Why boy A meets girl B, I don't know. That's life, grabbing the brass ring as you go round the merry-goround. So, shortly after I got to Berlin I asked her to marry me. She said yes. I then politely asked for permission from the Agency to marry Ferdi. I submitted a letter of resignation, as appropriate, in case they did not favor my request. I sent in an official letter to the director of the CIA saying that I had been divorced from Velma and that I was thinking of marrying an Austrian girl. `Please check her out. Enclosed also is my resignation. Please accept it or give to me permission to marry this girl.' I was at their mercy. That was that. They sent back a reply, `No, we checked her out. She is clean, legitimate. Go ahead and marry her if you like. We'll accept it. In fact, we'll make her a citizen.'

  "I sent a telegram through channels to Vienna and told Ferdi. I then sent her a letter, some money, and a plane ticket. `Get such and such documents, grab a plane, and come to Berlin. I will meet you. Bells are ringing!' She came up to Berlin; I took her to a safehouse. Three days later, on the 17th of April 1956, we were married. David Chavchavadze was the best man and his wife also was in attendance. He had recently arrived there in Berlin. It was the first that I had seen him since immediately after the war. He's a Russian prince, you know, working for the CIA. His mother, Nina, lived in Newport, Rhode Island. She knew many high-ranking people in the United States.5

  "The chief's wife came with a bouquet of flowers and we were married. We had a champagne breakfast. Everybody blessed Ferdi and accepted her into our little fraternity. She certainly changed my life, and much for the better. Now Ferdi became aware of my employment-that is, the general nature, but not the details. At that time, Ferdi's two boys were in their early teens, so they stayed with relatives in Vienna. When we left Berlin in 1960, they were in their late teens. They were independent, they had their own jobs, and they had a pension from their dad. The kids never came back to the States to live with us, but Karl later came on visits. Ferdenand, the older, died in 1965 of a tumor."

  Soon after George and Ferdi were married, Popov said that he was going on a thirty-day vacation. George told him that was fine and to have a nice time. George then made plans to take Ferdi back to the United States to get her citizenship. The Agency brought them back and in twenty-one days she was an American citizen with a diplomatic passport. She needed the passport to travel as his wife. There is a law in the United States that declares "should a citizen marry a foreign national and this union is in the best interest of the United States," the government will waive any waiting-period requirement for citizenship (e.g., five years, two years, or even ninety days). They then will proceed with the required examination of adequacy-that is, knowledge of the Supreme Court, Constitution, etc.. This must be done in a federal court with a federal judge, but they will grant the citizenship without regard to time requirements, if it is in "the best interest of the United States." So, if one has a sponsor like, for instance, the CIA or the State Department, he or she can do it quite expeditiously. The Agency put in the request for George and Ferdi and it went through immediately.

  The couple had taken up residence in Washington, D.C., at Alban Towers Apartments, just across the street from St. Albans School and the National Cathedral. While there, Ferdi studied the Constitution day and night for her examinations. She was trembling as she took the test to become a citizen, but she passed. As George said, "For laughs, to get her passport, she had to raise her right hand and swear this, that, and the other thing, the whole bit. Everybody knows you are a liar, but you have to go through the ritual anyway. I had three passports in three different names. I had to lie each time. She actually didn't lie, but her answers to some questions were just as ridiculous."

  CHAPTER 8

  Berlin

  Ostensibly, George was in Berlin to help with the review of the "tunnel traffic"; this was to be his cover. The tunnel was a CIA project involving an underground intercept of Soviet and East German intelligence communications. From a location on the edge of West Berlin, an 1,800-foot subterranean passage was dug. Nine hundred feet of this was into the East German Sector, where a tap into communication cables was accomplished. It allowed intercepts for a period of eighteen months up until its "discovery" in April of 1956. In actuality, the Soviets knew of the intercept project but kept quiet about this knowledge. To reveal their awareness to the West would jeopardize the cover of George Blake, one of their agents who was placed high in the British Secret Intelligence Service. There were restrictions on the type and quality of information transmitted on these lines, but the restrictions themselves were limited and some good information was transmitted. Otherwise, too many Soviets and East Germans would realize that the tunnel had been compromised and they could not be trusted to keep this knowledge from the West. Similarly, very few people knew of Popov. This operation was kept extremely close, more so even than the tunnel, which the CIA continued to believe, at the time, was a very secure and successful operation.1

  The tunnel project in Berlin was the exclusive domain of Bill Harvey. He kept it under very strong security wraps. Officially, George had nothing to do with the tunnel or its take, although the CIA people who were not aware of George's contact with Popov believed that he was assigned to the tunnel operation. Since he was there, however, he was available, on an ad hoc basis, to help Bill clarify some peculiar intercepts that were received. One doesn't always get straight talk from a telephone conversation intercept-it's usually garbled. George tried to straighten out some of the intercepts with information that he had obtained from Popov. There were some really tricky circumstances.

  In the reference safe in a special room were cards made up for all of the Soviets that the CIA personnel in Berlin were studying. Harvey called this office the "Target Room," and annotated on these cards were abstracts of these individuals. Whenever information that had originated from the tunnel was available about an individual, the card would be annotated with "PSM," meaning "please see me." No details from a tunnel intercept would be on that card, and the individual who wanted the information would have to see Harvey. If he were cleared for tunnel intercept information, Harvey would augment the information that was on the card.2

  George described the atmosphere as follows: "Harvey's safe was always a mess but he was responsible for the security of its contents. I kept Popov material in there-things like gold hidden in soap barswhich were part of my operational equipment. I had to unearth Harvey's safe for him a few times; I would come to his rescue. One time, some people who were responsible for such things were doing an inventory and had to report the results to headquarters. They couldn't find the gold and said, 'Why did you steal the damned gold, Harvey?' Harvey said, 'I didn't steal any gold. It's in the safe, I think.' 'We didn't see it' was their reply.' 'Oh, yeah?' he said. At this point I yelled, 'Of course you didn't see it, you mutton heads. It's camouflaged in the soap!' Harvey forgot about it. He didn't care.

  "I was overwhelmed with work at this time, so the Agency sent in
someone to help me. June was an attractive, well-educated lady with graduate degrees. She could speak Polish, excellent Russian, and, most importantly, she could type very well. She came over to Berlin to help me process the take from Popov. Harvey was controlling his operations and we were handling ours. He knew, of course, about the Popov operation and that June and I had this private room. There we processed the tapes. I listened to them three times! I labored over the tapes religiously for at least 5,000 hours. That's an average of about twenty hours a week for five years. We had a binaural system with two microphones, two receivers, two amplifiers, and two sets of speakers. With something like that you can tell from which direction the sound is emanating; you can attenuate the volume of, or cut out, one conversation and emphasize another when you are reducing the data. It's like the situation when you mentally accomplish the same thing, say at a cocktail party, by ignoring one conversation while listening to another.3

  "The purpose of this exercise was to make the information useful to others. I would dictate to June the proceedings of the meetings with Popov and she would type them. When all of the tapes were transcribed, if I had some time, I would listen to the tape for a second time, just myself, in order to correct any mispronunciations, omissions, or errors that I might have caused by yapping to June when she was typing. This process, then, would bring her up to date.