I knew through conversations with George and I would later learn through Nosenko that surveillance people observe patterns in their quarry. If they had witnessed Little Guy going to a signal site and posting a signal, they would have kept constant surveillance on him, the site, and anyone interested in the site. If they had seen Popov going to the site, the KGB would have made a connection between him, the signal site, and Little Guy. Popov would have become a suspect commencing with his first approach to that site. Little Guy, of course, was supposed to communicate with Popov. The KGB did not realize it, but Popov was the man. Of course, had he been suspected, Popov never would have left Moscow to go on to Schwerin, and the CIA never would have been able to continue working with him. Obviously, the KGB did not make the connection.
George continued, "Nosenko also told me that Popov ultimately was compromised by surveillance of our personnel in Moscow. The KGB covered our embassy like a glove. Our people might as well have been in a glass bowl. Everywhere they went they were followed. Almost all of Langelle's contacts with Popov were routinely monitored. But there were opportunities that they had prior to that time that could have alerted them, and there was something later: a set of papers that came to our embassy in Moscow in late 1963. This gave us some more insight into what they could have known, and it also confirmed how they did succeed in unearthing the fact that Popov was our agent. Now, listen very closely. This is very, very important. There was a disgruntled KGB officer by the name of Cherepanov who had a violent internal disagreement in his professional relations with the people for whom he worked and he was fired."
I was to learn that Alexander Nikolaievich Cherepanov was an intelligence officer of the Second Chief Directorate of the KGB. The First Chief Directorate was intelligence; the Second Chief Directorate was counterintelligence; the Third was military counterintelligence; etc. Cherepanov worked for more than twenty years in intelligence. During the Second World War, he worked with partisan detachments. The Soviet Union had contacts with the Czechoslovakian, Yugoslavian, and Polish partisan detachments. Cherepanov was in liaison with them; thus, even when working with the partisan detachments, he was associated with intelligence. After the war he studied at the Military Diplomatic Academy and then went to work in the First Chief Directorate. His assignment in the 1950s was in Yugoslavia. There it appears the KGB counterintelligence people started suspecting him. Little things occurred that created suspicions-rumors that his wife had slept with an American, for instance. It had also been reported that he made an aborted attempt to contact the American Embassy in Yugoslavia. Evidently, however, no one in the KGB seemed sure of this.
In 1961 Cherepanov was recalled and offered a job in counterintelligence, serving in the First Department of the Second Chief Directorate, with responsibilities in the Consulate Department. The First Department was targeted against the U.S. Embassy. He soon became bored and ineffectual in this position, and the KGB decided to throw him out. Surveillance, the Seventh Directorate, wanted to take him and even offered to make him the chief of a section, but members of the First Department, Second Chief Directorate were opposed. Forced to retire in August of 1961 from the KGB, he found a job at Mezhkniga, the state-run enterprise that distributed books. Mezhkniga had an international bookstore that many foreign nationals frequented. Occasionally, Mezhkniga employees were sent overseas to buy books. Since he knew English quite well, the international bookstore wanted to send him overseas. The KGB said no. This made him very angry.
While previously in Yugoslavia, Cherepanov had saved some money, and when he returned to the Soviet Union he bought himself a small dacha, just outside of Moscow. When he had this falling out with his masters he took action on a plan that had been in his mind for some time. Within this retreat he kept several boxes in which he collected various documents describing numerous classified operations of the KGB. One of his KGB jobs had been that of a destruction officer of classified material. Routinely, he destroyed excess classified material, but he had kept some of it for himself. On some of the papers he had written analyses of KGB operations described in the documents. There was no record of these documents within the KGB. They were not registered and were not missed.
In the fall of 1963, a couple from the United States, simply tourists, were visiting the Soviet Union. The man, Prof. Laurence H. Miller of the University of Illinois, and his wife, both librarians, were taken on a tour of libraries. Their guide was Cherepanov. On the last day of their tour, 4 November, there in the Mezhkniga building, Cherepanov thrust upon Mrs. Miller a package and implored the two of them to take it to the American Embassy. His action was not witnessed by anyone. Professor Miller took Cherepanov's package to the embassy and presented it to the consul. The consul took it directly to the first secretary in charge of the political section of the embassy.
George interjected, "Now, as you know, there are jackasses in every profession in the United States, including jackasses in intelligence and jackasses in the Foreign Service of our country. In this particular instance, the jackasses in the Foreign Service took over."
When the Cherepanov papers came to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, the ambassador at that time was Foy Kohler, but he was out of town. So the deputy chief of the mission, the charge d'affaires, was in command. He and the first secretary of the political section deliberated overnight, trying to decide just what to do with these papers. The next day, they agreed to return the papers to the Soviets. Moreover, they determined that it should be done promptly. A telephone call went out from the American Embassy to the Soviet Consulate Department:
"I want a meeting with you," said the American.
But the Soviet said, "Hey, we're tied up now. It's too late. We're securing now. We'll be here tomorrow."
"No, no, now; we're coming now. It's very urgent," insisted the Foreign Service officer.
It was at that time that they called in Paul Garbler, the CIA chief, to advise him of what they were going to do. Paul, keenly aware that the American Embassy in Moscow stood like a beacon of hope for those who wanted to help rid the people of their tyrannical government, had made a special agreement with Ambassador Kohler. Essentially it went like this. Whether it be 4:00 A.M. or 9:00 P.M. or whatever time, regardless of what was going on, if anything like this came into the embassy, he, Paul, would be called within one hour and apprised of the situation. Sixty minutes. It was now twenty-four hours later that these two, in the absence of the ambassador, were notifying him. At that instant, the charge was still clutching the package of papers to his chest. Paul asked, "Can I see that?"
Very reluctantly, the charge let him see the package. It was about an inch thick and contained extracts from the boxes of material Cherepanov had in his dacha. At a glance Paul could tell that the material must have come from an intelligence officer. It appeared to him to have originated within the Second Chief Directorate of the KGB, the organization responsible for monitoring the activities of foreigners in Moscow and mounting operations against them. It had to have come from a KGB source.
The charge said, "Well, we're turning it back."
Paul asked, "Why? We'd be giving them back something that is a jewel in the intelligence field. Why give it back to the Soviets? These papers are of significant value. This is what the hell intelligence is all about, looking for things like this."
"It doesn't make any difference," was the retort. "We're turning them back."
"You can't do that," continued Paul. "This is how the Penkovsky case got started. Furthermore, you're sacrificing this guy to the KGB. They'll kill him immediately. They'll find out within an hour who the source of these documents is."
"We are returning it," the charge continued.
Paul said, "Give me an hour to go over them." He was allowed to take the papers. At the time, the Agency had one photographic duplication machine in the embassy. This was before the days of Xerox. Paul could not get a hold of the warrant officer who worked for the army attache, one of the few people who could run the machine, so Paul
photographed the whole thing manually. He put his copies into his safe and then took the original Cherepanov papers back to the charge.
Within these papers was information with respect to operations of the KGB against the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. There were a lot of routine data such as the results of monthly surveillance against this or that target and plans to work on other targets. There was also information on the drinking and sexual habits of some of the U.S. Embassy personnel. Much of it was low-grade stuff, kept for possible blackmail purposes. Prominent among them, however, were descriptions of surveillance techniques.
From Nosenko and others, I would learn that the KGB had many means of aiding their surveillance. If, for instance, a known Agency person were housed in the embassy and he had a chambermaid, that maid would be KGB. It would be her duty, among other things, to impregnate the soles of his shoes with a substance that could be tracked. If that individual did not have a maid, then the surveillance people might enter the car that he drove and impregnate the pedals with the substance. The KGB called it Neptune 80. Male dogs readily would detect the odor of this substance because its main component was an extract taken from female dogs in heat. Thus, the target could be surveilled, then released. The target would think that he was no longer being tailed. He would not know that the dogs would shortly thereafter pick up his trail, or that he might be turned over to another team of surveillance agents with other dogs.
Another means employed against CIA personnel involved the use of an invisible powder sprinkled onto the clothes of embassy residents by their KGB chambermaids. Even in minute quantities, electronic devices could sense it. If the maid sprinkled a little into a jacket pocket, then an object placed in that pocket would acquire a bit of the powder. If the object placed in that pocket were a letter that he intended to mail, then KGB in the post offices would detect the powder. All of the post offices in the Soviet Union had electronic devices that could detect even a microscopic amount of the chemical. Likewise, if an individual were to get the substance on his hands, then everyone with whom he shook hands would bear a trace of the chemical and thereby could be tracked. A TV-like camera-say, concealed in a briefcase-could also detect the chemical. The substance could be placed on the soles of the shoes; it then would leave spots wherever the subject wandered. Thus, once again, the surveillers could follow the target's paths at a distance, never "spooking" the subject. The KGB referred to this invisible powder as metka. CIA personnel called it simply "spy dust."I
The package also contained information on the Popov case. The material related directly to the discovery of Popov as an agent for the CIA, what the KGB knew about him, and when they knew these things. One document revealed how the KGB had tracked a U.S. Embassy employee to the letter drop where he had mailed a fateful letter to Popov. This confirmed what Nosenko had told George when they met in 1962. Moreover, the subject matter of these papers revealed that Cherepanov couldn't be anything other than a knowledgeable intelligence officer.
The papers were supposed to be taken at noon back to the foreign office, and it was now five minutes to twelve. Paul was in the charge's office and had the papers in his hands. He said, "Look, you're making a terrible mistake; don't do this."
"Paul, you're beginning to annoy me," replied the charge.
Paul's response was something to the effect of: "I'll annoy the hell out of you until the end of time if you give these papers back."
"All right," replied the charge, "I'll call the first secretary and let you talk with him on the secure line."
Paul said, "I don't want to talk with him. I want to talk with you."
"Okay, let's all three go into the secure room and we'll talk," replied the charge.
In the secure room, Paul raised the first objection to the return of the papers to the first secretary: "You know, you are killing this man."
The first secretary responded, "Well, you guys kill people every day. What's one more?"
Paul then said, "Shut up. Don't say another stupid word. I want to talk to the charge."
In the hierarchy of the embassy, the first secretary is a very senior guy. He is next in seniority to the charge. So, he was not supposed to be talked to like that, certainly not by CIA personnel. Eventually, the charge said, "I'm going to give these papers to the Soviet foreign consul. Our man is going to take them over right now." He called in a courier. The courier came, took the papers, and left. By now it was about three minutes to twelve. Paul immediately pursued the courier. Not wanting to wait for the slow embassy elevator, he ran down nine flights of stairs to catch him. The courier was standing in the courtyard, waiting for the car that would take him over to the foreign consul, when Paul got to him. Paul snatched the papers away from him-right out of his hands-and went back up to the charge's office. This trip, however, was on the elevator, the creaking old elevator. When he arrived in front of the charge he said, "Look, over my dead body are you going to take these papers out of here. You can't do it."
The two State Department people then got together for the last time and they decided that there was no alternative to sending them back. They knew of an army attache in Warsaw who, just a couple of weeks before, had accepted a package from an individual on the street. Some guy had run up to him and handed him a bunch of papers that contained information about missile sites, etc. The moment the attache had them in his hand, the Polish intelligence people came up and grabbed him. He was then PNGd, disrupting the embassy. That is what the charge and the first secretary were thinking of.
Paul knew that these papers from Cherepanov could not have been delivered as a provocation, however, since they came right into the embassy and their nature was far too sensitive to be such a ploy. The KGB would never find them because they could not reasonably come into the embassy and search for them. Also, these papers were totally different from those in the Polish incident. If they had been about rocket motor plans, missile sites, or whatever, that's one thing; but these papers were about intelligence operations. The CIA people knew about some of these matters, but they didn't think that the KGB knew that they knew about them. Now, the KGB would know that the CIA knew. Moreover, there were many things contained in the papers that Agency people had not previously known. The embassy had absolutely no responsibility to return them. Eventually, however, Paul reluctantly took the package back down to the courtyard where the courier was waiting to drive off with them. He looked at Paul as if he were some sort of lunatic.
Later, George told Paul that he strongly disagreed with what he had done. George's position on the Cherepanov papers was that Paul should have kept them and locked them up in his safe. Then, the State Department people could not have gotten to them. When he talked with Paul about the matter, Paul explained that if he had committed such an insubordination, the CIA in Moscow promptly would have been closed down. Paul certainly did not believe that it was the appropriate thing to do. After all, he was sent to Moscow as the CIA's first chief and part of his responsibility was to establish a functioning operation that was respected by the ambassador. The charge actually was a fine gentleman, but the ambassador wasn't there and the charge didn't want to screw up. The best way to prevent a screwup, he believed, was to give the papers back. In his mind that was the safest thing to do, although the ambassador never would have done this.
I asked George, "How did we know that the Cherepanov package was for real? Was he reliable?"
"He's dead. How much more reliable can you get? This was what got him killed. They had a national internal hunt for him because of our stupidity in returning the documents to the KGB. Not often does the KGB, because of dumbbells like these, receive intelligence leaks by returned mail from our embassy. We had a conflict in acumen in what to do: to return or not to return these things. Our embassythat is, the charge-decided to return the package."
When the courier delivered the package to the Soviet foreign consul, he made only one short comment: "Here, it's yours; take it!" Then he left. Not another word was spoken. When someone
in their consulate department opened it, he put in a call to the minister of foreign affairs, Andrey Gromyko. Gromyko made a call to the KGB chairman, Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny, and sarcastically impugned, "Listen, Semichastny, send somebody down to take your documents here, the ones that the Americans just brought in to us. Semichastny then contacted General Gribanov, the chief of counterintelligence of the KGB.
The KGB knew that it had a major screwup. For a short period this was really hush-hush within the KGB because of its embarrassing nature. Within a day or two, however, they knew who had been the perpetrator. Since Cherepanov only recently had left the KGB, since he had been disgruntled when he left, and since he probably was very angry about being turned down in his request to travel overseas, he was the prime suspect. They were afraid to put surveillance on him right away, however, because he had been an intelligence officer with enough experience to recognize such an action. He would be spooked. So they contacted some of his close friends, who they thought would have an easy time talking with him. This ploy backfired. Cherepanov immediately felt that he was suspected and he planned his escape.
Every morning, Cherepanov would go for a walk in his exercise suit. One morning he went out and disappeared. He never returned. The military secured all of the borders of the Soviet Union in order to prevent his escape. The borders into Finland, Poland, or any of the so-called democratic states were monitored, and of course those into Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and all over the southern regions were closed.
CIA Spymaster_George Kisevalter Page 26
