The Spy Who Was Left Behind

by Michael Pullara

  The Soviet–East European (SE) Division put in place “draconian measures” to limit access to its ongoing operations and to ensure that communications from the field were accessible only to the employees working on those operations. The results of this heightened security were encouraging: SE Division initiated new Soviet operations that appeared to survive.

  The success of these post-1985 Soviet operations led some to suspect that Edward Lee Howard was the original source of the compromise. A former SE Division trainee, Howard had been hired by the DO in 1981. As part of his training for an initial assignment in Moscow, he had been given access to details about certain Agency operations in the Soviet Union. In 1983, after he made damaging admissions during a polygraph examination, the CIA abruptly terminated his employment. Embittered by what he thought was unfair treatment, Howard decided to retaliate by selling CIA secrets. Subsequent investigation revealed that he had begun talking to the KGB in 1985 and escaped to the Soviet Union in 1986.

  But the 1985 losses could not be attributed to Edward Lee Howard alone. The young trainee simply did not have access to information about most of the compromised cases. In light of this fact, there appeared to be only one plausible explanation: There was a traitor in the Soviet–East European Division of the Directorate of Operations.

  In October 1986 the chief of the CIA Counterintelligence Staff created a four-person “special task force” (STF) to investigate the 1985 losses. The STF was directed to analyze the compromised cases and to identify commonalities among them. In particular, the STF attempted to determine which CIA employees had access to the compartmentalized information about those cases.

  That same month the CIA and FBI learned that two Soviet sources who had worked closely with the FBI had been arrested by the KGB and were about to be executed. The FBI responded by creating its own six-person analytical team (code-named ANLACE) that worked full-time to analyze the compromise of its two sources.

  The STF and ANLACE investigations continued in tandem for eight years, until the FBI arrested Aldrich Hazen Ames for espionage on February 21, 1994. At the time of his arrest, Ames worked at CIA headquarters, in the Counternarcotics Center. He was chief of an Agency task force that monitored drug traffic in the former Soviet Union.

  While in this position Ames had established the “Black Sea initiative”—a pet project intended to develop intelligence sharing and antinarcotics cooperation among countries in the region. Tbilisi had been chosen as headquarters for the initiative and Ames had traveled there in July 1993 for the start-up conference. However, that meeting was called off when at the last minute DCI James Woolsey canceled his plan to attend.

  The New York Times reported on March 14, 1994, that the CIA intended to investigate whether there was any connection between Ames’s treachery and the murder of Freddie Woodruff. Apparently, the proposed inquiry struck a nerve in Moscow. Two weeks later, TASS, the official Russian news service, declared, “Ames Case, Woodruff’s Murder Not Linked.” The article said that some American intelligence officers suspected that Woodruff had been murdered by the GRU because he was providing Shevardnadze (who was at the time chairman of the Georgian State Council) with intelligence on Russian military support for separatists in Georgia. Although the Russians rejected any connection between Ames and Woodruff’s death, they did not deny that Freddie had been killed by Russian military intelligence.

  It was the first time I realized that spies sometimes use newsprint to talk to each other.

  I searched for details about Ames’s professional involvement with Woodruff and found them in the Congressional Record. Three weeks after the TASS article Senator Jesse Helms disclosed that, in addition to facilitating US training of Shevardnadze’s security forces, Woodruff was investigating Georgia’s role as a conduit for heroin being smuggled to the West. “Some informed Georgians think Mr. Woodruff had come to believe that the men Washington had sent him to cooperate with were in fact involved in the heroin shipments,” said Helms. “Had Mr. Woodruff reported this, Mr. Ames would have been the first man in the CIA to receive his report.”

  Although Ames had not yet been debriefed by the CIA or FBI, following his arrest it was assumed that he had given the Russians everything that crossed his desk, including Woodruff’s reports from Georgia. If the Russians were reading Freddie’s dispatches in real time, it might provide a motive for his execution.

  Helms called on the Clinton administration to “clear up any connection between Mr. Ames’s visit to Georgia last year and the murder of CIA station chief Woodruff.” However, according to my heavily censored stack of FBI documents, by the time Helms made his speech on the Senate floor the Bureau was already hard at work investigating the connection.

  Although the name Aldrich Hazen Ames did not appear anywhere in the redacted FBI production, his presence was pervasive. Responsibility for the post-Ames investigation was transferred to the counterintelligence specialists in the Bureau’s National Security Division, the same special agents who had unmasked and arrested the CIA traitor. These elite investigators had the resources, security clearance, and will to accomplish the FBI’s redefined task: “to determine the person or persons responsible for the death of Fred R. Woodruff.”

  The FBI was no longer simply providing laboratory services. It was fully involved in the hunt for Woodruff’s killer. My document chronology revealed that the agents’ initial step was a thorough review of the first FBI investigation. The newly assigned investigators pored over the first case file and identified specific topics and witnesses that required further attention. The FOIA censors had expurgated any statement of these conclusions; however, the context of the redactions allowed me to make certain deductions.

  First, there was a series of transmittal memoranda to and from the FBI Language Services Unit. These memos described the receipt and return of Georgian language materials that were translated into English. One of the translated items was a VHS videocassette tape—probably the recorded confession of Anzor Sharmaidze. The other items were Georgian-language documents that “served to give WMFO (Washington Metropolitan Field Office) a better understanding of the events that occurred on August 8, 1993.” Based on the fact that the agents considered the documents sufficiently reliable to affect their understanding of the murder, I deduced that those documents were investigation materials from a Georgian-speaking professional source—possibly the police or security service.

  I made a note for my wish list. If the FBI could get a copy of the Georgian investigation file, maybe I could too.

  Second, there was a bureaucratic paper trail of travel authorizations. These documents allowed me to see the international destinations that the agents deemed relevant to their investigation—Tbilisi, Baku, Moscow. It was the trail I would follow in the ensuing years.

  In addition, each request included a redacted list of identifiers for the people who would be traveling. Information related to an individual traveler’s technical skills gave me insight into the purpose of the trip. For example, if the request sought approval for a Class 3 Georgian linguist and a Bureau polygrapher to travel to Tbilisi, I could reasonably infer that the agents intended to interview Georgian speakers and to polygraph at least one obliging witness. This kind of extraterritorial FBI investigation implied broad cooperation from the Georgian authorities and hinted that there might be Georgian security officers with detailed knowledge of FBI activities in the country.

  I added another item to my wish list: find a knowledgeable Georgian security officer and convince him to tell me what the FBI special agents did in Tbilisi.

  Each travel authorization included an abbreviated statement about the purpose of the proposed trip. These statements were so thoroughly censored that it was almost impossible to divine any meaningful information from them. However, in the process of analyzing the statements, I learned about FBI protocols for international travel.

  In order to operate in a foreign country, a special agent must obtain approval from the US Department
of State. This approval is called “country clearance.” The Bureau maintains liaison officers at the DOS Office of Foreign Missions to coordinate State’s processing of FBI travel applications. The traveling special agent briefs the liaison officer, and the liaison officer helps the agent obtain the necessary country clearance.

  Insight into this procedure led me to discover one of the singular ironies of this case. During the Bureau’s reinvestigation of Woodruff’s murder, the senior FBI liaison at the DOS Office of Foreign Missions was Robert Hanssen. In 2001, Hanssen was arrested and pled guilty to fifteen counts of espionage committed on behalf of the Russians. It was later revealed that his KGB handler was Victor Cherkashin, the same DC-based spymaster who supervised Aldrich Ames. Thus, as a precondition to their international investigation of the Woodruff murder, the FBI special agents were required to brief one Cherkashin-run Soviet spy regarding the status of their investigation of another Cherkashin-run Soviet spy.

  But before undertaking any international travel, the special agents interviewed the people in America with knowledge of the relevant facts about Woodruff’s murder. This included Aldrich Ames. On April 28, 1994—sixty-six days after his arrest—Ames pled guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit espionage and two counts of conspiracy to commit tax fraud. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. In order to avoid the death penalty, he agreed to forfeit all of his assets; to forgo any profits from book, movie, or television deals; and most importantly to fully cooperate with the CIA and FBI.

  I pondered the utility of Ames’s commitment to cooperate. After all, he was a confessed traitor with a long history of deceit and a demonstrated ability to beat the CIA’s periodic polygraphs. “How do you learn to trust someone that you know is a liar?” I wondered.

  One area of interest to the FBI was Ames’s reaction when he first learned of Woodruff’s murder. Eyewitnesses who were with him in a hallway at CIA headquarters reported that when he heard the news he began sobbing and fell to his knees. This tearful exhibition seemed out of character for a man whose blithe treachery had murdered more than a dozen foreign agents.

  The FBI wanted to know the origin of this extravagant emotional display: Was it grief or remorse? Sadness or guilt?

  I looked into the history of the personal association of the two men and discovered that while Ames was posted to New York, he had rented his house in Reston, Virginia, to Woodruff. The transaction appeared to be arm’s-length and one of mutual convenience. I could find nothing to indicate that Ames and Woodruff had the kind of intimate relationship that would provoke such an intense display of grief.

  Perhaps the explanation lay in Ames’s July 1993 trip to Tbilisi. The FBI interviewed the CIA analysts and officers who had traveled from the US to attend the start-up conference for the Black Sea initiative. Several CIA employees reported that Ames and Woodruff had a loud and angry exchange in the Piano Bar at the Sheraton Metechi Palace. The argument occurred in the evening after the DCI announced his decision to cancel the conference. The witnesses confirmed that Marina Kapanadze, the English-speaking barmaid and confessed spy, was on duty and observed the clash.

  One analyst described a happier interaction: She, Ames, and Woodruff spent a free day touring Mount Kazbek and sampling local wine. It was vaguely disconcerting to learn that Ames and Woodruff had traveled the same route on which Woodruff would later be assassinated. Then a darker question occurred to me: Did the CIA suspect Ames of espionage at the time they authorized his trip to Tbilisi?

  Several months later I put this question to the man who had been CIA Moscow station chief at the time of the murder.

  “No way,” he said. “If the Agency suspected Ames of being a spy for the Soviets, they wouldn’t permit him to get within walking distance of Russia. If he got across the border, the United States wouldn’t be able to touch him. Everyone at the Agency knew what had happened with Edward Lee Howard—and nobody was going to let that happen again.”

  He was right, of course. Edward Lee Howard had rolled out of a moving car in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and eluded his FBI tail. He traveled to Finland, crossed the frontier into Russia, and began a new life in Moscow. He lived there until 2002, when (according to the Washington Post) he broke his neck falling down stairs at his dacha. However, the official Russian news service quoted an unnamed Russian intelligence officer who enigmatically denied “this version of Howard’s death.” Perhaps it wasn’t an accident. Perhaps it was the CIA settling accounts.

  Documents that I received from the Department of State indicated that US ambassador Kent Brown met with then-chairman Eduard Shevardnadze to brief him on the purpose of the FBI’s return trip to Georgia. The ambassador explained that the Woodruff case had continued to attract public attention and was frequently the subject of rumors in Tbilisi. As an example, he cited the recurring reports that Anzor Sharmaidze had recanted his confession and that he was receiving special treatment in prison. In addition, he pointed out that the timing of Ames’s visit to Georgia fueled speculation that Woodruff’s death was part of a broader conspiracy.

  “The US Government continues to believe that the Georgian investigative and legal processes worked well,” the ambassador told the local press. “We remain satisfied with the results.”

  Nevertheless, given the recurring rumors and speculations, the US government requested permission from the Georgian government for FBI special agents to return to Tbilisi in order to review the findings of the original investigators.

  It was artful duplicity. The US wasn’t investigating the worst intelligence breach in its national history; it was simply trying to quash the Tbilisi rumor mill. Notwithstanding the transparency of this diplomatic fig leaf, the Georgians consented and the special agents were granted country clearance.

  About the same time, a small intelligence newsletter reported one of the Bureau’s working theories: that Woodruff was killed because he had discovered Ames’s role in a Russian drug-smuggling operation. This reference to illicit narcotics reminded me of statements made by Senator Helms. “It is public knowledge in Georgia that the security forces of Edward Shevardnadze’s regime are involved in the republic’s rampant drug business,” he said. “So severe has the problem become that even Mr. Shevardnadze recently felt obliged to undergo a heroin test to prove his credibility.”

  This was the state of governance in Georgia in August 1994 when the FBI special agents arrived to reinvestigate the murder of Freddie Woodruff. It was very difficult for the Americans to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

  The purpose of the agents’ trip was to interview Georgian witnesses and to perform a polygraph examination on Anzor Sharmaidze. The agents summarized the results of this initial investigation in a twenty-five-page letterhead memorandum—an FBI report that is prepared with the intention that it will be disclosed to people outside the Bureau. A thoroughly redacted version of this report was produced by the FBI in response to my FOIA request.

  According to the memo, the agents met with Sharmaidze on two occasions. As he had done at trial, he denied any involvement in the murder and claimed that his confession was the result of torture. Nevertheless, he refused to submit to a polygraph. He had been warned that once he was hooked up to the machine the Georgian police would ask him about other crimes and use the results to prosecute him.

  This third-party interference seemed to be a calculated disruption of the FBI investigation. It made me think that someone didn’t want the Bureau to prove that Sharmaidze was telling the truth when he said he was innocent.

  The FBI’s interviews with chief bodyguard Eldar Gogoladze were not much better. Armed with translations of the Georgian investigation file, the special agents quizzed Gogoladze about previously undisclosed details. He acknowledged that between the time he delivered Woodruff’s body to the Kamo Street Hospital and the time he arrested Sharmaidze he went home to take a shower and change his clothes. In addition, he admitted that he did not preserve the clothes he’d been wearing for
later inspection by investigating officers.

  I could only imagine one motivation for this audacious act of personal hygiene: Gogoladze had an urgent need to eliminate evidence. But what was that evidence? Was it something on the clothes that shouldn’t have been (such as gunpowder residue)? Or was it something that should have been on the clothes but wasn’t (such as blood spatter)?

  Another curiosity was Gogoladze’s choice of vehicle. He typically drove a large green four-door American sedan, a car that proclaimed both his importance and (perhaps) his insecurity. However, for the long trip to Kazbegi he chose a Niva 1600, a cramped and uncomfortable Russian-made two-door hatchback jeep. No one from the embassy had ever seen him in this car before.

  I studied photographs of the Niva and deduced a possible reason for the choice: There was no quick and easy egress for passengers sitting in the back seat. Whether intentionally or not, once Woodruff was in the back seat he was essentially contained and controlled in a box. This would not have been true if Gogoladze had driven the four-door sedan.

  The special agents also interrogated the chief bodyguard about his failure to comply with Georgian security protocols. Ministry regulations required that any transport of foreign diplomats outside the city be guarded by a chase car. Gogoladze’s violation of this rule was one of the reasons cited for his (curiously temporary) termination from the security service.

  It seemed likely that the effective use of a chase car would have prevented Woodruff being shot by a drunken soldier standing on the side of the road. But this fact alone did not mean that Gogoladze was involved in a plot to kill Woodruff. It was equally plausible that Woodruff, an operations officer who (according to a colleague) had a reputation as a cowboy, persuaded the security chief to disregard the chase car requirement. After all, it is difficult to be inconspicuous when you’re being followed by an SUV bristling with armed men.