Circle of Treason

by Sandra V. Grimes

  My initial assignment was to a branch in SB Division that provided guidance to the components in the Division that were targeting GRU officers worldwide. A little over a month out of college and certainly not steeped in the world of spying, I had never heard of the GRU. In retrospect, I do not believe I knew of the KGB either. Upon my arrival, Branch Chief Walter Lomac briefed me on our mission. My job was straightforward—familiarize myself with the Soviet intelligence services by reading numerous publications on their organizations and methods of operation, and by attending the basic required division training courses.

  While one has to start at the bottom, the first several months of my CIA career were less than exciting. That was soon to change. One afternoon Lomac told me that the branch’s overt mission of providing guidance to division components on their GRU operations was simply cover for one case—that of Colonel Dmitriy Fedorovich Polyakov, then-Soviet military attaché in Rangoon, Burma. I must note that Lomac did not use Polyakov’s true name. It is used here for consistency. Within the Directorate of Operations we referred to our assets only by their cryptonym or code name. With a case of the importance of Polyakov, few people within the division would have known his true name.

  Everyone in the branch was supporting the operation. As the new kid on the block, I was given the most menial tasks—filing, making copies, cataloging Polyakov’s counterintelligence and positive intelligence information, and extracting his reporting on agents and other personalities onto 3x5 cards. My daily routine remained unchanged until the fall of 1968, when my new supervisor, Richards Heuer, who had assumed temporary responsibility for the branch following Lomac’s reassignment, informed me that I would be attending a month-long operational training course at “The Farm,” the CIA’s primary training facility. I wondered why I was being sent, but did not question the decision. At a minimum, a month out of the office sounded like a nice change.

  The training was invaluable, but more memorable was my meeting SE Division legend Dick Kovich, master Soviet recruiter and agent handler. I was aware from the officers in my branch that there was a controversy of a security nature surrounding Kovich and his assignment to “The Farm” was viewed as banishment from mainstream operational activity. However, to these same individuals Kovich was a wronged folk hero who someday would be vindicated. He was a gifted instructor who spoke clearly and enthusiastically about operational philosophy and tradecraft, peppering his lectures with war stories of the glamorous and difficult world of operations against the Soviet target.

  Some time later I learned that Kovich’s problem was not minor. Angleton believed he was a Soviet mole, an accusation that was totally false yet took Kovich more than ten years to dispel and to restore his good reputation. Ironically, I and many others were ever thankful to Angleton for exiling Kovich to “The Farm” to train a future generation of case officers and operational support personnel in his image.

  For Polyakov and me, 1969 was a year of change. He was reassigned to Moscow from Rangoon and I married Gary, beginning a marriage now more than forty years strong. At work I continued to process Polyakov’s thousands of pages of production. On the surface my paper-processing tasks appeared boring and insignificant, but in reality I had struck gold. Polyakov had become my first teacher on the Soviet Union and its intelligence services; therefore, I was learning about the enemy from one of its senior officers. Gradually I was given more responsibility, such as writing reports disseminating Polyakov’s counterintelligence reporting to various DO components and eventually replacing a senior intelligence analyst in the Branch.

  In 1970 I was told that the division was sponsoring me for conversion to professional status, a process that required psychological testing and an interview with a senior DO officer on the review board. While thankful for the division’s recognition and support, I silently thought that it was about time a wrong was corrected.

  The process went smoothly until the interview. The senior officer noted that I had recently married a non-Agency employee. He then asked when I planned to get pregnant, explaining that motherhood would end my career since I would be required to stay at home and raise the children. Taken aback by the inappropriateness of such a question, I responded by inquiring as to his plans for additional children. The interview ended without further comment by either of us, along with any hope I might have had for professionalization. Fortunately for me and certainly to my amazement, several days later the division notified me that the directorate had granted me professional status. I was officially a home-based SE Division officer. I never found out who within the division pulled the strings after my disastrous interview, but was then and forever remain grateful.

  For the next eleven years I stayed in the Counterintelligence Group of SE Division, holding various positions and titles. This was a conscious decision on my part despite attempts by well-meaning personnel officers for me to pursue other “career-enhancing” assignments in the directorate. In the view of many in the Agency, the field of Soviet counterintelligence was arcane. It offered few opportunities to broaden one’s knowledge, and limited exposure to those who could assist with career advancement.

  That assessment could not have been further from the truth. One by one I was brought into the cases of many Soviet assets and assigned various operational support tasks. As with Polyakov, each source became a teacher. I was not only able to expand my knowledge of the GRU, but also to learn about the KGB. These assets included, but were not limited to, a number of KGB political, scientific and technical, counterintelligence, and communications officers as well as GRU officers worldwide serving under both civilian and military cover.

  Such schooling also afforded me the opportunity for official travel abroad and selection to several counterintelligence special projects: a four-month stint at FBI headquarters to review material on their source Aleksey Isidorovich Kulak in support of the official CIA position that he was a bona fide penetration of the KGB; an analysis of sensitive source leads on possible penetrations of the CIA; and five weeks in Kathmandu to assist in the handling of CIA source KGB officer Leonid Georgiyevich Poleshchuk. Professionally, my world was exciting, fast-paced, and challenging. The home front was equally rewarding as during this period we had two daughters, Kelly in 1972 and Tracy in 1976. Thankfully I did not listen to those who encouraged me to leave Soviet CI operations.

  In the late 1970s there was an organizational change in the CI Group that brought me into direct and daily contact with Jeanne, thus establishing a friendship and professional relationship that thirteen years later culminated in the Ames mole hunt. Specifically, in 1977 George Kalaris, then-Chief of SE Division, ordered Faith McCoy, a division expert on Soviet positive intelligence reports and requirements, and me to review and recommend a change in the division’s handling of counterintelligence reporting from its Soviet and East European sources. There was now an expanded audience in the U.S. intelligence community for this information, which previously had been disseminated primarily only to outside CI customers such as the FBI. Our proposal, which Kalaris adopted, was the formation of two branches in the CI Group—one to handle Soviet CI production and dissemination and one East European CI production and dissemination. Faith headed the new Soviet Branch and I became her deputy. Jeanne was named chief of the new East European branch. After a short period the two branches merged, with Jeanne as the chief. I became her Soviet section chief.

  The mid-1970s to 1980 were busy times for everyone in the Soviet CI Group. (The following are some highlights of selected operations only. Details on these and other cases appear in separate chapters.) Vacations were put on hold during the summer of 1976 as we readied Polyakov’s internal communications plan for his return from New Delhi to Moscow. KGB officers Piguzov and Yuzhin and GRU officers Filatov and Bokhan were abroad and productive. Gus Hathaway met with FBI source Kulak in New York to prepare him for turnover to, and internal contact with, the CIA in Moscow. As with Polyakov, Kulak provided high-level intelligence upon his return to the
Soviet Union. Viktor Sheymov, a communications specialist of the KGB’s Eighth Chief Directorate, volunteered while on an official trip to Warsaw. There was the successful exfiltration of Sheymov and his family from Moscow and the attempted exfiltration of Kulak from Moscow.

  In 1981 after fourteen years in Soviet CI operations I left on a two-year rotation to the Directorate’s Career Management Staff (CMS). While a number of interesting cases remained, the excitement was gone for me. We had lost contact with Polyakov. A year earlier, he left New Delhi on what we and he assumed would be a short trip to Moscow. He did not return. I waited for a year, hoping he would reappear in the West or re-establish contact with us in Moscow, but there was silence. The final impetus for my departure occurred during my participation in a debriefing of a junior-level GRU defector. Thanks to Polyakov I knew more about the defector’s organization and modus operandi than he. Time to move on.

  I was as ill prepared for my new position in the CMS as head of the secretarial/clerical panel as I had been for my initial job in SE Division. However, the change was good for me and what a change it was from the world of Soviet spies and intrigue to secretarial-clerical personnel management. The responsibilities of the new position were to balance the needs and interests of the employee with those of the operating divisions and the directorate. Expectedly, conflict was inevitable and gray areas abounded, although a satisfactory resolution was usually possible. Days were filled with career counseling, promotion panels, irate division chiefs, directorate politics, and egos galore. Despite the times of discord it was one of the most rewarding jobs I ever held.

  In early 1983 my rotational assignment to the CMS was coming to an end. I preferred to return to SE Division—however, not to the CI Group as the division strongly suggested. I wanted a managerial position in SE external operations. This was the front line of CIA operational activity against the Soviet and East European target, and with few exceptions, the closest a person at headquarters could get to field operations. These jobs were staffed by experienced case officers who had served several tours abroad.

  SE Division management reacted negatively to my request. I was an analyst, not a case officer, and had spent only five weeks overseas in a support role. I had neither the knowledge nor the credibility to advise field case officers on how to run their Soviet and East European cases.

  Part of management’s assessment was correct. I would have to establish my credibility. Part was not. During most of my thirteen years in SE CI, the group handled all recruited Soviet intelligence officers abroad, directing the field station on every aspect of its case. That work drew some of the Division’s top case officers between their field assignments. Just as I had learned about the KGB and GRU from many of its senior officers, my CIA instructors in field operations were some of the best—Paul D, Ben Pepper, Don Vogel, Burton Gerber, Gus Hathaway, Walter Lomac, Ruth Ellen Thomas, Cynthia Hausmann, Dick Stolz, Serge Karpovich, and many more. It was time to put that imparted knowledge to work. After some back and forth division management agreed to give me a chance. My new assignment was as deputy chief of external operations in Africa.

  Africa was fertile ground for Soviet and East European operations, with many field stations primarily staffed with enthusiastic and active Africa Division case officers. My first year in the branch was a baptism by fire. At times I wondered if I should have taken division leadership’s recommendation to avoid such a position. Two weeks after my arrival the branch chief announced he would be serving on a promotion panel for the next month and a half. I was on my own. Two months later he announced that he was resigning from the Agency. I was still on my own. I remained deputy chief and was named acting chief, a dubious title I held for the next year. In late 1984 Burton Gerber, then SE Division chief replacing Dave Forden, officially named me chief of SE External Operations for Africa. His approval of my work was reward enough.

  In early 1985 a friend from the past appeared. It was Poleshchuk, the first-tour KGB political intelligence officer whose operation I had participated in while on an official trip to Kathmandu in 1974. He was now in Lagos, Nigeria and had switched his specialty to counterintelligence collection and operations.

  The pace of an already busy branch became frenetic. Large numbers of immediate action cables were transmitted to and from the field on meeting locations, arrangements, and agendas; requirements; compensation issues; emergency recontact plans; and so forth. The operation proceeded smoothly until 2 October 1985. On that date I was notified by the Division front office that Poleshchuk had been arrested. He was gone.

  In January 1986 Gerber called me to his office, where I listened in stunned silence as he recounted loss after loss of the division’s Soviet assets. Poleshchuk had not been the only one. Gerber’s monologue ended with the introduction of the reason for my presence. We had a new source, and I would be part of the Gerber/Paul Redmond plan to keep him alive. Redmond was chief of the division’s Counterintelligence Group and Gerber’s co-crusader in the effort to stop the hemorrhaging. Because we did not know who or what had caused our losses, we would operate on the assumption that our problem still existed. This was the genesis of what was later dubbed the “back room,” an implementation of security procedures never previously envisioned or required in directorate history.

  For the next year I continued my duties as chief (and deputy chief) of the Africa Branch along with the new deep cover role. However, after the first two weeks of multiple assignments I was overloaded and overwhelmed. Recalling Gerber’s order that I reported only to him, I related my need and asked for the assistance of Diana Worthen, an analyst in the SE CI Group. She and I had been friends and co-workers for many years on the Polyakov and other cases. Gerber quickly agreed to the request, noting only that he first had to clear it with Clair (Clair George, the DDO at the time). No one would be given access to information on the new operation without his approval. Quickly, Worthen and I were once again a team.

  These were stressful and demanding times. Not long after the appearance of our GRU source, I was brought into another new operation involving an anonymous write-in to a CIA officer in Bonn. The volunteer, named by us Mister X, dropped a bombshell. Our Soviet sources had been compromised due to a penetration of CIA communications. In exchange for this information and the promise of more, the author demanded that we place $50,000 in a cache or dead drop in East Berlin. The two cases progressed through the summer along with my travel to West Berlin to deliver the second of three packages for Mister X.

  Seven months later in March 1987 Gerber and Redmond summarily removed me from my position in the Africa Branch and put me in charge of the Moscow Task Force. The newly formed group was necessitated by the confession of Moscow Embassy Marine Guard Arnold Bracy that he and fellow guard Clayton Lonetree had allowed the KGB entry to the secure areas of the U.S. embassy. Having no choice but to assume that the KGB had accessed Moscow Station records and/or communications gear, the charter of the task force was twofold. We were to determine the nature and extent of Moscow Station holdings during the period in question and inform all affected U.S. government agencies of the potential compromise of their plans, programs, and personnel. The material collected and reviewed numbered in the tens of thousands of pages and the project took one year to complete.

  After my task force duty I found myself formally back in the SE CI Group as chief of the Soviet and East European Production Branch, the job Jeanne held in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The most important change I made during my tenure was to formalize the “back room,” naming Worthen as chief of the Special Projects Section. New sources continued to arrive and each continued to survive. Additionally, we began an exhaustive and long-term project to computerize thirty-plus years of counterintelligence information.

  In 1989 I stepped down as chief of the Production Branch, requesting and receiving a part-time position in the Special Projects Section. This was strictly a personal decision. My family had made sacrifices for me and my career over the years. It wa
s time I repaid them by spending more hours on the home front.

  By early 1991 I had concluded that it was time for me to resign from the CIA. Redmond had left the division and accepted a position as deputy chief of CIC. Milton Bearden, the chief of SE, and I had completed a running battle about the handling of GTPROLOGUE, a KGB operation designed to mislead us about our losses. Polyakov’s execution still bothered me. Frustration had set in and my enthusiasm for the work was waning. I told Redmond of my plans. Two days later he asked me if I would stay for one more assignment. Would I help Jeanne investigate the 1985 losses? Without hesitation I replied that he made me the only offer I could have never refused. Our dead sources deserved advocates and so began my participation in what later became known as the Ames mole hunt.

  OVERVIEW OF SE OPERATIONS

  FROM THE MID-1960S until the end of the Cold War, operations against the Soviet and East European target were carried out under the same general organizational structure. The biggest change came in 1966, when the East European Division merged with the Soviet Russian Division, creating what was called the Soviet Bloc Division. From then on, the structure changed only in minor ways. There was a component targeting Soviets and East Europeans around the world, and another component responsible for our stations and their operations in the Soviet Union and the East European countries. Additionally, there was a centralized reports and requirements component, an operational support component, and a counterintelligence component. This last-named group was responsible for running those operations that involved KGB and GRU officers, although in the late 1970s the division’s geographic targeting components assumed responsibility for a number of these cases. Additionally, it provided CI guidance, reviewed selected cases, and produced studies and research papers for various audiences. This is the component in which the authors spent much of their careers.