Circle of Treason

by Sandra V. Grimes

  In December 1961, an event took place that was to have a profound and deleterious effect on operations against the Soviet target. Major Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn (KGB) defected to the CIA in Helsinki. He was a CI officer who, before his posting to Finland, had served at KGB headquarters in a component that worked against the NATO target. Golitsyn predicted that following his defection to the Americans the Soviets would send false defectors or in-place sources from both the KGB and the GRU to discredit him and his reporting. Further and of more significance, Golitsyn said that the KGB had designed these operations to deflect any U.S. investigations of a high-level penetration of the CIA. Golitsyn had no knowledge of any false defectors in the wings, but he did have the ear of the chief of the CI staff, James Angleton.

  Within the CIA a maze of double- and triple-think developed toward all operational activity against the Soviet Union. It was later dubbed the “Monster Plot” and its subscribers were known as the “Black Hats.” According to the Black Hat theory, every CIA or FBI success against the Soviet target was really a KGB success, with the KGB controlling the operations from beginning to end—misleading, confusing, and deceiving the naive Americans.1 This cabal was headed by Angleton and his senior staff, the leadership of SE Division, the leadership of SE Division’s CI Group, and the Illegals/Investigations Branch in the SE CI Group managed by Joe Evans and Peter Kapusta.

  The Angletonian Monster Plot mind-set centered around the purported existence of false Soviet defectors—KGB or GRU officers who pretend to be disaffected and who wish to lead a new life in the West. Many defectors have been so accused, most recently (as far as the authors know) Vitaliy Sergeyevich Yurchenko, the KGB CI officer who defected to the CIA in Rome at the beginning of August 1985. Sandy and Jeanne are of the firm opinion that the phony defector is an urban myth that has not existed since at least the end of World War II. The reason is simple and can be summed up in one word—trust. The Soviet leadership could not and would not trust any citizen with knowledge of its “State secrets” enough to have him come totally under our control for more than an exceedingly brief period. Soviet intelligence officers of any rank fell into this category. As we have seen in KGB double agent operations, such “sources” were made available to us only under very limited conditions, and the “source” would describe himself as having only peripheral or infrequent access, despite his KGB connection. In one case the “source” had a duty station outside Moscow and only visited his headquarters on rare occasions. In another case, the “source” was retired and his access was limited to chance conversations with his former colleagues. In a third case, the “source” would make himself available to us for extremely short periods, claiming that he could only skip out on his colleagues for a few minutes at a time. Understandably from the Soviet viewpoint, the risks inherent in a phony defector operation are enormous. Exposure for whatever reason negates the value of the ruse. At a minimum, failure results in highly valuable grist for U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence, not to mention a propaganda coup.2

  Despite the pressures, a few in SE Division did not march to the Angleton drummer. While the division bears the responsibility for its participation in the horrendous treatment of KGB defector Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko, and other unforgivable activities, there was one officer who risked his professional future by speaking out against the perceived theory that Nosenko was a false defector. That man was Leonard McCoy, a brilliant division reports officer, who in 1966 not only put his contrary views in writing but also took a career-hazarding stand when he later sent his analysis of Nosenko’s bona fides to Helms. He decided on such action despite his division chief’s promise that he would be fired if he ever mentioned even the existence of his writings. Thanks to McCoy alone a chain of events was set in motion that eventually led to the vindication of Nosenko and his release from CIA imprisonment. In addition to McCoy, Walter Lomac, Sandy’s first branch chief, whose story is told in a subsequent chapter, put principle over career. Each deserves great credit for standing up for justice and common sense regardless of the consequences, which ranged from ridicule to expulsion from the division and a future without promotions.

  At the same time, in what is a classic example of doublethink, the message from the SE front office was that the business of the division was to recruit Soviet and East European officials. Case officers were told to concentrate their efforts accordingly. While many in Division management may have swallowed the idea that every contact between our officers or our agents was orchestrated by the KGB and therefore, at best, a waste of time, guidance to the rank and file did not reflect this belief. And, over the years, the Monster Plot theory gradually eroded as it bore less and less connection to reality.

  Soviet Bloc operations in the 1960s may have been unduly complicated, involving indirect contacts via an intermediary, known as an “access agent,” or a “transplant,” a CIA officer who showed up in some foreign location in an alias identity to contrive a meeting with a Soviet or East European target. Audio operations, the insertion of a “bug” in a target’s residence, were also in vogue in the early days. Moreover, cold approaches, where we made a recruitment pitch to someone with whom we had no personal relationship, took place from time to time. They were unanimously unsuccessful, and sometimes resulted in physical altercations.

  We had always had volunteers and defectors—individuals who approached us. By the mid-1970s, however, we were actively searching for a Soviet or East European official who was disaffected for one reason or another. And instead of cold approaches, we were developing personal relationships with individuals in whom we were interested.

  While Moscow Station had opened in the 1960s, and had supported the Popov and Polyakov cases, it did not reach a significant level of operational activity until the next decade. One of the catalysts was Gus Hathaway, who served as chief of station from June 1977 to January 1980. He was followed in this position by Burton Gerber, who held the job until September 1982. Both subsequently became chiefs of SE Division.

  At its simplest, the role of Moscow Station was to accept all internal volunteers when they made their initial approach and then separate the wheat from the chaff. What the station had to determine was which volunteers had at least some grasp on sanity, which ones had access to information of importance to the U.S. government, and which ones were “dangles” or “provocations,” false volunteers orchestrated by the KGB and intended to give us some specific piece of disinformation or to tie up our slender resources. The KGB knew that we had had some genuine internal volunteers who were privy to important secrets. The most famous of these was Colonel Oleg Penkovskiy (GRU), who made repeated attempts to approach us in Moscow starting in the summer of 1960. Another internal volunteer of potential importance was Aleksandr Nikolayevich Cherepanov, a KGB officer who provided fifty pages of KGB documents via an intermediary in November 1963. Unfortunately for him, the U.S. embassy in Moscow did not believe his approach was genuine. They turned the documents over to the KGB, although the Station was able to make copies before that happened. Cherepanov tried to flee the Soviet Union but was arrested near the border and later executed.3 Perhaps the most important internal volunteer was Adolf Tolkachev, a scientist with valuable information on Soviet secret research and development projects, who approached us in 1977.

  As part of the process of vetting volunteers, in 1971 Burton Gerber, then a young case officer, reviewed all the approaches that had occurred during the previous ten years. His study was published in July of that year and Burton followed it with briefings to various audiences. This study resulted in a more positive attitude toward volunteers because the research revealed that a number of cases thought to be provocations at the time were in fact legitimate. An additional point made was that there were no intelligence officer dangles. (Subsequently there were at least two attempts using intelligence officer dangles to deceive us about Ames’ activities. However, in each case the person described himself as not having unfettered access to his organization
’s secrets.)

  Another influential study in the same time frame was written by Ruth Ellen Thomas. It reviewed all the Illegals cases known up to that time, and provided a profile of just what constituted an Illegal. It showed that the classic Illegal, a KGB or GRU staff officer under a false non-Bloc identity, was being phased out in favor of the Illegal Agent, generally a true citizen of a third country. A big part of the new definition was that these “agents” were handled by impersonal means such as enciphered radio messages rather than by direct contact with KGB or GRU personnel. It was this handling method that differentiated them from ordinary agents.

  The study also pointed out that Illegals operations were expensive and dangerous, and were generally only undertaken against priority targets. There were no hordes of Illegals around the world. These well-documented conclusions provoked numerous discussions and had a major impact.

  A third study followed a short time later. It focused on KGB residencies abroad and clearly showed that SE did not consider KGB officers to be invincible superior beings. This study, written by Tom Blackshear and based on reporting from sensitive KGB sources, demonstrated that KGB residencies abroad were sometimes poorly managed, that they exaggerated their operational successes in reporting to Moscow, often based their reporting on overt press articles instead of clandestinely obtained intelligence, and made their share of mistakes in running operations.

  Jeanne’s study on the GRU made some of the same points. While GRU officers had many of the attributes of conventional military officers, and were dogged in their pursuit of human-source intelligence, they were also narrowly educated and had little understanding of the world outside the Soviet Union. Further, because the GRU had no responsibility for counterintelligence, GRU officers often were not aware of the capabilities of Western services and the pitfalls that a Soviet intelligence officer could encounter in the course of his operations.

  In 1973 or 1974, while John Horton was chief and Dick Stolz his deputy, the Soviet Bloc Division was renamed the Soviet and East European Division. This was a recognition that Albania and Yugoslavia and, to a lesser degree, Romania, could no longer be considered “Bloc” countries. What is interesting is that the change took place while Angleton was still in power and pushing the theory that any Yugoslav and Chinese breaks with Moscow were merely a sham. To a great extent, SE Division by this time simply ignored the Angletonian interpretation of world events. To many he had become a joke, a sick joke certainly, but a joke nevertheless.

  THE POLYAKOV CASE—THE BEGINNINGS

  DMITRIY FEDOROVICH POLYAKOV, a Soviet military intelligence officer, was the highest-ranking spy ever run against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In 1961, during his second tour of duty with the Soviet military mission to the United Nations in New York, he sought contact with the U.S. government. Working for a brief period with the FBI and then with the CIA, Polyakov spied for the United States for nearly twenty years—in New York, Rangoon, and New Delhi, and while assigned to GRU headquarters in Moscow. During that time, he rose in rank from lieutenant colonel to one-star general.1

  Polyakov’s clandestine contact with us ended in 1980, when he took an official trip to Moscow from his post in New Delhi, and never returned. While we became ever more concerned and anxious over this turn of events, we had tremendous confidence in his ability as a professional intelligence officer to handle any possible security or political problems he might be facing in Moscow.

  Many years later we learned that our faith in his ability was justified. It was not he who erred. Polyakov’s path had crossed with two American traitors who volunteered to the Soviets—FBI special agent Robert Hanssen and CIA officer Aldrich Ames. Hanssen’s 1979 reporting probably resulted in Polyakov’s return to Moscow in 1980. Ames’ treachery undoubtedly resulted in Polyakov’s 1986 arrest and 1988 execution. Had it not been for these two men, Polyakov would have been one of the most successful spies of all time, his identity and accomplishments known only to a privileged few. Regrettably, he did not live to see the end of the Cold War, to which he had made a major contribution.

  According to official FBI memoranda provided to the CIA in 1965, Lieutenant Colonel Polyakov approached General Edward O’Neil, commanding officer of the First Army headquartered in New York in November 1961 and asked to be put in touch with “American intelligence.” Shortly thereafter O’Neil facilitated the introduction of Polyakov to FBI Special Agent John Mabey at a reception to which Polyakov and others had been invited.2 During a brief exchange Polyakov told Mabey that he had changed his mind and wanted no further contact. Mabey refused to accept Polyakov’s rebuff and continued his pursuit, occasionally appearing unexpectedly in Polyakov’s path during his daily routine. In January 1962 Mabey’s persistence paid off. Polyakov agreed to enter into a clandestine relationship with the U.S. government and in the authors’ opinion this special agent deserves the credit for the subsequent decades of the Polyakov, FBI, and CIA cooperation. Meetings between the two professionals continued for the next five-plus months both in New York and in the Queen Elizabeth as Polyakov and his family sailed to Europe en route to Moscow and his reassignment to GRU headquarters.

  Polyakov’s counterintelligence production throughout the New York phase of the operation was noteworthy. In addition to the identification of GRU and KGB officers in the United States, he provided the names of GRU Illegals who had been dispatched to the United States and leads to the following four American servicemen who were spying for the GRU, each providing varying levels of classified information as their assignments would indicate: Jack Dunlap, a U.S. Army sergeant assigned to the National Security Agency; Herbert Boeckenhaupt, a U.S. Air Force staff sergeant and communications technician; William Whalen, a U.S. Army officer working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Nelson Drummond, a U.S. Navy enlisted man who served tours of duty abroad and in the United States.

  The FBI did not officially inform the CIA of Polyakov’s recruitment until June 1962, when they needed CIA assistance. Polyakov was scheduled for reassignment to Moscow in several months and agreed to maintain communications through ads placed in the New York Times as well as dead drops and signal sites that only the CIA’s Moscow Station could provide and service. Admittedly, it would not be surprising to learn that Angleton was unofficially told of Polyakov’s recruitment either in January 1962 or in the course of the next several months, given his close relationship with several high-level FBI officers.

  Moscow Station provided the FBI with the requested sites, some of which Polyakov accepted and some of which he rejected, as became his pattern throughout our years of cooperation. However, despite repeated attempts by the FBI to initiate recontact in Moscow through New York Times ads, Polyakov remained silent until early 1965, when Moscow Station personnel observed a marked signal site and unloaded a dead drop from Polyakov. The drop included a message in which he said he was well and would probably soon be reassigned abroad.

  Polyakov arrived in Rangoon in November 1965 as Soviet military attaché and GRU resident. Initially, the FBI met with Polyakov in Burma. This arrangement was groundbreaking—the CIA ceding its authority to the FBI for the handling of a Soviet intelligence officer abroad. In reality the CIA had no alternative, because the FBI recruited Polyakov and it made operational sense for them to re-establish the contact.

  To document the agreement, the two organizations adopted a Memorandum of Understanding, which detailed the responsibilities of each in the operation. In brief, the CIA said it would provide any and all field support Mabey required, including communications with his headquarters.

  Mabey re-established contact with Polyakov in January 1966; however, after four and a half months it became clear that this arrangement could not continue. A simple but basic problem had developed—a communications barrier. Mabey did not speak Russian. He conducted his meetings with Polyakov in English, but Polyakov’s English had deteriorated since departing the United States in 1962. While the language problem did not affect all portions of t
he debriefings, it did not allow for accurate and thorough discussions on specialized topics such as Soviet military weaponry and other priority collection requirements of the time. The FBI, therefore, decided to turn the operation over to the CIA.

  The CIA selected Jim F, an SE Division case officer with a superb command of Russian, to replace Mabey in Rangoon. Jim was a tall, thin man who wore thick glasses and, with the exception of a neatly pressed white shirt with frayed cuffs, always dressed in black—shoes, suit, and tie. He usually held a non-filtered cigarette in his hand, continually dropping ashes and embers that resulted in scorched fabric and numerous holes in his clothes.

  Jim was a man of tremendous intellectual capacity, a graduate of Yale who was well read and knowledgeable in a myriad of fields, particularly the Soviet intelligence services. He did not suffer fools kindly, often looking over his coke bottle–thick lenses to lecture any officer in the vicinity on how to conduct operations against the KGB and GRU. He came across as an opinionated professor who insisted on complete control in his classroom—which consisted of his co-workers and, on occasion, his superiors. While he was usually correct in his pronouncements, this approach did not win him many friends or admirers.

  Unknown to Polyakov as he awaited contact with a new case officer, his greatest enemy at the time was not the KGB and not a mole in the CIA or FBI, but a group of people within the organization to which he had entrusted his secrets and his life. Before Polyakov had met or exchanged a word with any CIA representative, these individuals had concluded that he was under the control of the KGB and was not a legitimate penetration of the GRU. Rather, he was an enemy to be feared and certainly not to be trusted. Jim F shared these views. The group even believed it possible that the KGB might try to kidnap him, and he was authorized a firearm for protection. In the minds of these CIA officers, it followed logically that Polyakov’s personal security was meaningless and that he was expendable.