CIA Spymaster_George Kisevalter

by Clarence Ashley III

  At this point, Penkovsky promptly provided technical information on the new SA-2 anti-aircraft missiles of the kind that had shot down Gary Powers, many types of Medium Range Ballistic Missiles (MRBMs), including the ones that would later be deployed in Cuba, and nuclear stockpiles. In addition, from his conversations with high-ranking Soviet personnel, such as Varentsov, he revealed much about Soviet intentions. For instance, he talked a lot about the ongoing Berlin crisis, the slashing of military pay, food shortages throughout the country, and the ensuing morale crises in the Soviet Union. He revealed that Marshal Zhukov had been retired and was out of favor with Khrushchev.1 Most importantly, the team heard from him that there were currently no operational ICBMs in the Soviet Union. The ICBMs were still being developed.

  Penkovsky was very precise. Anything that his questioners didn't understand he would try to explain to George, and George in turn would try to explain to his colleagues. An interesting aspect of the man was his complete openness. Continuously he talked; continuously the team taped. Ultimately, George would translate more than 140 hours of tape. He also listened to the tapes again at hours when Penkovsky was not available and screened them for important messages that should go immediately to headquarters. True to his own meticulous nature, George forced himself, as he had with Popov, to listen, interpret, screen, and annotate all of the tapes.2

  The team soon learned something of Penkovsky's motives and his personality. He was disgusted with the Soviet Communist system and wished for it to be destroyed. He wanted to blow up Moscow and thereby destroy the system. His initial vision was to accept from the Americans a suitcase full of atomic bombs, which he would place in strategic places. He described twenty-eight such locations that would be the prime targets. He would put the bombs in garbage cans at these spots and thereby render the whole Soviet Communist apparatus dysfunctional. Pointedly, the garbage cans in Moscow were not private property; they were "Communist" garbage cans. As the trashcans were picked up, the bombs would be distributed throughout the city, with some of the devices wending near the Kremlin. Of course, his theory was useless because the miniature atomic weapons that he envisioned did not exist.

  This tells something about Penkovsky's motivations, although the term "motivation" suggests a broad concept by definition. There is almost no such thing as a single motivation. Everyone has multiple motivations with respect to almost anything. Some motivations may be more pronounced than others, and they will vary from to day to day. So, it's sometimes quite difficult to pinpoint someone's motivation about a particular matter, even one's own. In defector situations, the motivations become extremely difficult to grasp, yet they are among the most important aspects of the situation.

  Beyond Penkovsky's loathing of the Soviet system, his desire for personal recognition was the thing that most impressed the team. Penkovsky wanted to meet important people, and he insisted upon doing so. He demanded to kiss the hand of the queen. He said, "Look, Yuri Gagarin flies around the world and he has lunch with the queen. What has he done for you? I'm doing more than he ever did for you." The team tried to explain about security and so forth. He then said that he would settle for Lord Mountbatten.

  George recalled that the "Brits" tore out their hair over this one while he and Bulik snickered quietly, keeping their sentiments a secret from the "Brits." Then Penkovsky suggested that when he came to the United States, George and Bulik should arrange for him to see President Kennedy. The CIA officers cringed a bit but assured him that something could be worked out. They told him, "Okay, Oleg, someday when you come to the States, all of these things can be handled." They figured that would be easier to accomplish than his demands on the British.

  The English finally settled on one man, Sir Dick White, the chief of British intelligence, to placate Penkovsky. He came and told Penkovsky of the great importance of Penkovsky's work and how grateful all of the powerful people were for his contribution. Penkovsky seemed to be impressed, although still somewhat miffed at not meeting the queen. This, however, did not end the matter. He then turned to George and said, "If I get two days off, you could throw me on a U.S. airplane to Washington, D.C. I could meet the president and fly right back."

  George replied, "Now, just how could we do this, Oleg?" Oleg's retort floored George. "There's no problem if you want to do this," he said. "You've already done it! You took a GRU colonel to Washington one time and he met Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA. You can do it for me as well."

  "My ears lit up," George remembered. "My God! What was he saying?" George then began another of his delicious anecdotes. "Let me tell you how these things affected us by what he said, as he related this story from his past, one that astounded us to no end, right there in front of the British. Now 30 April of 1959 was the date that Penkovsky was graduated from Varentsov's nine-month refresher course in missilery at the Dzerzhinskiy Academy. His association with the generals in the missile academy later had great importance to us. The day after graduation, there was a holiday, the first of May, a good Communist holiday. He and another man, whose name, I believe, was Borisoglebsky, a general at the academy, went for a few drinks out in the spring sun. As they were sitting down, the general congratulated Penkovsky and so forth; then, in a friendly manner, he said to him, `You know what, Penkovsky, I am a general. Sometimes we are given some damned nasty assignments. We all get these things, don't we? Well, this was a tough one. A few months ago I was made the chief of a court-martial, where we had to condemn a man to be shot for high treason. He was a GRU colonel and an American agent. Do you know, before we caught him, the Americans once flew him back to the U.S., where he met the chief of the CIA, Allen Dulles!'

  "Well, when Penkovsky said this, I about fell out of my chair! For Penkovsky to have mentioned this vignette, as it was related to him by the chief of the Soviet court-martial that condemned the guy to be shot, right in front of the British, sent my blood pressure soaring. I'm sure that it raised their hackles as well. ('And who in the hell was this guy that you flew to CIA headquarters in black? You never told us about him.') The truth of the matter was that I was very familiar with such an incident. What he was describing had to be the same case. Both affairs had similar details and both happened during the same timeframe. This, however, was the first time in two years that we had received any knowledge of the final outcome of the man involved in the operation.

  "The Soviet agent was an illegal who was picked up in France. My good friend Dick Kovich had doubled him, turning him back against his own people, and was his case officer. I met the man. I met him in Berlin while pretending to be a Frenchman. I spoke French to him and gave him girlie magazines from Paris. He thought that he was teaching me how to drink in Russian. This was a joke, and Kovich was dying from laughter because the poor guy didn't know why I could drink like a Russian.

  "Well, as a matter of fact, he was flown black from Berlin. I put him, together with one of our people, on the plane at Tempelhof Airport. They flew toward Frankfurt, then aborted the landing at Frankfurt, swung by Paris, the Azores, and landed at Andrews Airfield. There they were met by some more of our people and taken to CIA headquarters, where they greeted General Cabell, the deputy to our then director, Allen Dulles.3 Cabell put on his air force uniform in order to impress him, right there in CIA headquarters. He was a four-star general, you know. It was all part of the operation. After all, this was our agent, and a high-ranking one. A few weeks later the man went back to East Berlin, and that was the last thing that we had heard of him until now.

  "This guy knew all about dead drops in Karlshorst, East Germany, and had tried to tell us their location. Christ, we were digging up half the railroad tracks and tearing down the station there, looking for the damned things! We never found them. That was one of my ancillary roles there, trying to find out where those places were, while I was stationed in Berlin working with Popov, and that was why Kovich had come to Berlin with the man. Nick Osipoff also was one of our people who worked with him. Nick took him to foot
ball games and whatnot in Berlin. So, our agent was flown back to the Agency black for high operational reasons. The transfer and the meeting with Cabell were pulled off successfully, but now we were finding out, two years later, that the poor guy got caught. We found out even later that he was actually done in by some internal correspondence, which was a stupidity with a capital S. After some period of not hearing from him, one of our people tried to have him contacted inside the USSR, which was a dumb thing to do. Naturally, the KGB was monitoring the mailbox when the letter was deposited. When Westerners were seen making such deposits, the letters were always routinely intercepted and read.

  "Well, this came out of a clear blue sky! Crack, like a lightning bolt striking. Penkovsky was telling us the story for the first time. The Soviets thought that he had met Dulles but it really was Cabell. No matter, they had it close enough. Now, we weren't relating all of the operational history of every asset that we had to the British, for Christ's sake. But the embarrassment, in front of the British, was very extreme. We had to dig up some sort of story to divert their anguish."

  Eventually, at one point during the operation, Shergold said, "You know, we don't know when Penkovsky is going to be coming to the West again. We have to have a way of continuously meeting with him in Moscow. What do you have?" Bulik answered, "We have zilch, with a capital Z-not a damn thing. It's dangerous there." "We have something," Shergie volunteered. "We would like to exploit it. Here's an idea."

  He wanted to utilize Janet Chisholm, at the British Embassy in Moscow. She was living there with her three kids and husband. Roderick Chisholm was a British intelligence officer and known to the Soviets as such. So, with this, Shergold said, "I think that we can use Janet. If Penkovsky can see her officially, with the blessing of the KGB, we will have a resource for passing cassettes or information discreetly back and forth, and this will provide a means of communication in Moscow, right under their noses and with their blessing, for the wrong reason. In the meantime they could initially meet surreptitiously. We'll have to find somewhere that is convenient to them both and would be within the normal routine of both." This was agreed, and it was established that Greville Wynne would deliver to Penkovsky the particulars for meeting Janet the next time he went to Moscow.

  It was recognized by all that the best way to transfer information in Moscow would be at official functions and through an intelligence officer sent by one or both of the countries. The CIA officer would be identified to Penkovsky by wearing a special tie clasp, identical to one given Penkovsky, and would further identify himself by saying, "Colonel Peeke sends his best wishes." In the meantime, it was agreed that Penkovsky would not attempt to transact any espionage business with any member of either diplomatic corps.

  Then, according to George, there came a very interesting phase of the operation. Penkovsky said, "I have to make some hay for all of my friends when I get back." He came up with a shopping list. "But this was not a list," George said. "This was a book! And in this book, some of it written by hand, was `my wife, my daughter,' etc. You could see ladies' footprints, shoe sizes, labels, and directions: `this is Galena's, this is so and so's suit, this is somebody's coat, this guy wants this, this girl wants that.' What a shopping list! The number of hours it took to do this shopping and fulfill anywhere near what this list demanded was really out of this world.

  "The mounds of materials required suitcases that, when filled, weighed sixty to seventy pounds apiece, and it took a number of them. But it was going to be a cinch to get them into Moscow because he had in mind a scheme. He didn't want to carry more than he could or should. The next time Wynne came to Moscow, Penkovsky would meet him at the airport. Then, he would pass Wynne right through customs, dump him in his chauffeur-driven car, pass notes back and forth, and eventually take him to his hotel, minus one or two of Wynne's suitcases. Penkovsky would have all of the goodies and there would be no problem. His clothes would arrive later with Wynne! What a list!"

  George asked Penkovsky about the materials, with a concern for security. "What does your home look like?" "Oh, I've got a mess of good imported china; it's normal," was the reply. "The personnel man didn't even give me any rubles for stuff like the pens." George told him, "Look, the British give them out as favors at the various factories. You get them for free. They open the drawer and dump them in your bag." So Penkovsky was able to bring back medicine, pens, perfume, lipstick, cigarettes, and special gifts for big people like Varentsov.

  After Penkovsky left, the Americans and the British had an incredible amount of work to do: there were the translations, analyses, and distribution of the tapes and many conferences to come. George promptly went back to CIA headquarters after the last meeting with Penkovsky and began the follow-up work that had to be done. It took months to process the tapes even though the Agency and SIS set up a comprehensive task force for the effort.

  Within two months Wynne was back in Moscow. He took with him a couple of Penkovsky's suitcases, 3,000 rubles, some cassettes of blank film, instructions for having the first meeting with Janet Chisholm, and a photograph of Janet and her children so that Penkovsky would be able to recognize her. Penkovsky studied the picture but did not retain it. That way there would be no chance of compromising her if it happened to fall into the wrong hands. Wynne also retrieved some used cassettes of film and some notes from Penkovsky during that trip and passed them on to Roderick Chisholm, who, being with the SIS, would subsequently pass them on to the team.

  Janet and Penkovsky made their first contact in July 1961 in a park that she routinely visited. He did not approach her at first; rather, he waited until what seemed to be an opportune time, with not too many people around, and none of them suspicious. Then he approached her. He walked by discreetly, said hello, dropped some cassettes and some notes of paper into her open shopping bag, offered a piece of candy to the children, said good day, and passed on.

  Penkovsky's notes described the conversations that he had overheard at Marshal Varentsov's homecoming, a celebration in honor of his promotion to chief marshal. The Soviet Union would, Penkovsky heard, sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany in defiance of the Potsdam Treaty with the Allied Nations. (The objective was to require the Allies to recognize East Germany and thereby lay the groundwork for a dominant East Germany, one that contained all of Berlin and one that would be permanently within the sphere of Soviet control.) Penkovsky quoted the defense minister, Malinovsky, as saying that he was going to put up concertina wire in Berlin to stem the flow of refugees to the West. "The Americans would come with their tanks-rubber treads, no stop and stare, and would do nothing," according to Malinovsky.

  The second time Penkovsky came to London he didn't have a delegation. He came in July as an assistant supervisor to a Soviet trade exhibition. He did have freedom of movement in the evenings so the members of the team were able to have more or less continual meetings when wished. During this trip, Penkovsky arranged to place himself in good stead with Serov, who was chief of the entire GRU intelligence system. Serov had been head of the KGB but was transferred to the GRU, in part because of the Popov case.

  According to George, Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov was a man almost universally detested. He had been with Khrushchev in London in 1956 and was declared persona non grata when Lionel Crabbe, a navy commander and frogman, drowned underneath the Soviet cruiser, Ordzhonikidze. While the craft was docked at Portsmouth Harbor, Crabbe secretly tried to examine its hull and ancillary components; he accidentally drowned in the process.4 The British press, in reporting the incident, observed that Serov was aboard and referred to him as the butcher who assisted Lavrenti Beria in executing so many people. They then hounded him out of town, leaving Khrushchev there to salvage whatever relations were left. Thereafter, Serov was never welcome in London.

  George continued, "This did not, however, prevent Serov's wife and daughter from enjoying the city of Big Ben. In fact, they decided to go there during Penkovsky's second trip. Before Penkovsky embarked upon t
he trip, Serov called him in and said, `Look, while you're there in London, just keep an eye open and make sure my wife and daughter are okay. You know, if they need anything, look after them a bit.' Naturally, Penkovsky made a big production out of the opportunity to ingratiate himself with Serov. First of all, when they arrived in London, the muttonheads at their intelligence station didn't have an embassy car waiting, so he called for one. He got it. He took them to a hotel. He wined and dined them even though the CIA-SIS team pleaded with him not to be too friendly with the attractive, young Miss Serov. He took them shopping. They ran out of money. He gave them money-CIA-SIS money! Serov would repay him when he got home. Penkovsky was making out like a bandit. He was getting them all kinds of stuff: sweaters, shoes, etc. They even wanted to get one of those put-it-together-yourself swings that you use in the garden. They needed a steamboat to haul all of this stuff back to Leningrad. The team members began to see that this was par for the course. `When you go there, pick me up this and that,' etc. Every secretary got lipstick, etc. Some of these handouts really got to rare proportions. There was some woman for whom Penkovsky was charged to acquire a whole suite of furniture smuggled from Czechoslovakia. A whole suite! One thousand and twenty rubles! I asked him, `Who the hell is this girl?' `She's the daughter of the chief of personnel,' Penkovsky replied. Rogov, the chief of Penkovsky's GRU section, wound up with an icebox. Something like the Truman days. Somebody even had false teeth on the list!