The Spy Who Knew Too Much, page 29
She hurled their lies back at them. Her husband’s activities “were certainly not confined to the overt side.” The autopsy had been a charade; the height and weight of the body pulled from the bay had no resemblance to John Paisley’s. The CIA’s and FBI’s claims that there were no fingerprint records for her husband were ludicrous. And why, dear God, had there been such a rush to have the body cremated? She hadn’t even had a chance to see the corpse.
Her concluding charge: She did not believe it was John Paisley who had been cremated.
It had felt good to say that. Yet she had not told them everything. She had protected her secret. But she had shared enough. Now she waited to see what they would do with it.
The initial response left her enraged. The letter came from CIA director Stansfield Turner. The agency, he wrote, had no investigative powers and “must defer to the Maryland State Police.”
And then she grew frightened. Her lawyer discovered a tap on her telephone. He believed there were listening devices planted elsewhere in her home. After consulting with electronic specialists, he charged that a sensor had been installed in the chimney to send a signal whenever someone entered or left the home.
After that, things only got worse. Out of the blue, James Angleton called and invited her to lunch. He said he was retired, but she knew there was more to the story: he’d been forced out of the agency. But she went anyway. She was desperate. The secret was killing her. Perhaps he could take on some of her burden. Perhaps the famous spymaster could ease her pain.
They met at the Army and Navy Club in downtown Washington. They drank martinis. He asked lots of questions about her husband’s career, about his overseas travel. And when he was done, he told her that he believed her husband was a traitor. That at some point in his life, John Paisley had decided to work for the Soviet Union. What do you think? he challenged.
Maryann did not know what to think. So she excused herself and left. And she took her secret with her. She would continue to endure its oppressive weight rather than give Angleton, or any of them for that the matter, the prospect of revenge.
And so she did not tell anyone about the postcards that had been received. A different one every month. One was posted from Valparaiso, Chile. “How is everybody? How is the family? Hope to see you?” It was signed “Sandy,” and the only Sandy she knew was a friend of John’s who had disappeared when his flight to Sri Lanka had vanished from the radar screens; neither the plane nor any bodies had been found. In another card, “Sandy” quoted the final lines from John Masefield’s “Sea-Fever.” It had been her husband’s favorite poem, and he knew the words by heart:
“And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.”
It was nearly destroying her, but she decided to keep her secret close to her heart. The long trick was over, and now she would grant him his quiet sleep. She would not tell anyone that she knew John Paisley was still alive.
A Note on Sources
WHEN PETE BAGLEY, THE HERO of this story, died, the obituaries made quick work of summing up what had been a varied and complicated public life. “Played a key role in the controversial handling of Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko,” was how the Washington Post’s lede encapsulated Bagley’s activities. The New York Times’ opening graf stuck to this territory, too, albeit in a more nuanced fashion: “a former CIA officer who helped a mysterious Soviet spy betray his country, then tried for a half century to prove that the defector was actually a Russian double agent.”
Yet while the Nosenko affair was indeed central to Bagley’s professional life (the “Rosetta stone,” he called it), I began my exploration of his remarkable career with the intent of focusing on what had struck me as a more important truth: how the case opened his detective’s mind to the belief that the CIA had been penetrated by a mole. And as I set out to tell this story, to recount the perils, pitfalls, and ultimate success of Bagley’s long-running mole hunt, I was also prodded by an observation Ed Epstein, a groundbreaking investigator into the secret workings of the US intelligence community, had offered on his friend Bagley’s quest. “How he found the answers on his own could provide the plot of a great Hollywood spy movie,” Epstein had provocatively written—before his essay, to my frustration, had quickly moved on to other matters.
From the outset, therefore, I was guided and encouraged by two ambitions. I would tell the story of a real-life pursuit of a traitor. And I also was determined to shape this tale as a nonfiction narrative mirroring the actual adventure Bagley had lived.
Yet as I proceeded, I discovered, to my increasing consternation, that I had entered an investigative minefield. At every stage of my inquiries, I encountered a good deal of resistance. There were seemingly knowledgeable individuals in the covert world who for a variety of deeply held reasons—some intent on protecting at all costs the reputations of the institutions they’d served, others bristling with surprisingly durable personal antagonisms—refused to engage with the reality of the events that I’d uncovered and shared with them. Battle lines, apparently, had long ago been drawn and with the passing years had become reified. And in this grudge war (a taste of which I try to give in my tale), the truth—and its crucial implications—became in many quarters an irrelevancy. The official mindset was, in effect, to let sleeping moles lie.
And no less an obstacle to a writer trying to get to the bottom of things with some authority, sources who were (only after considerable prodding in most cases) willing to talk were nevertheless reluctant to allow themselves to be identified. Time after time, they shared critical, previously unreported information, yet they were adamant that their names could not be used. Part of their logic was professional: spies, they felt, should remain in the shadows. Yet another large component, I discovered with dismay, was their fear of reprisals; character assassination, as my account suggests, was an often-deployed weapon in the spy vs. spy wars that to this day rage within our intelligence services. And this apprehension also affected the friends and family of both Pete Bagley and John Paisley. I talked to several of them at length, and still they acceded to these interviews (many spread across multiple days) only if I promised that I would not identify them.
It is an agreement that I am honor bound to keep.
And yet this book suggests some startling new truths.
So how did I go about getting to the bottom of things? How did I manage to take the reader on a journey that culminates on a snowy afternoon at the entrance to an ancient, venerable cemetery in Moscow? And how can I satisfy the reader that (as an in-house CIA journal sniffed about Bagley) while some of my sources are “conveniently unnamed,” this is a true story?
And, no less of a challenge, how did I craft a narrative that tries to have the intrigue of a mystery and the momentum of a thriller—while also being a true story? Specifically, how did I accomplish this without resorting to a sputtering narrative, one that tediously reiterates the sources underlying the highly charged drama shaping each incident I recount? That doesn’t trudge on like an academic tome?
Here, then, are the cardinal rules that guided me as I wrote this story: If a statement is in direct quotes, it is information that was conveyed to me in that precise form in an interview, a government document, a published book, or a press report. And if an incident is depicted, its details were shared directly to me by at least two mutually confirming sources, or substantiated in government documents or previously published accounts.
Consider, for example, the sections on Maryann Paisley that bracket the gist of the narrative. She died years before I began my research; I did not interview her. Her thoughts and opinions, however, were conveyed to me by members of her family, documents obtained by the Freedom of Information Act, interviews with her friends, interviews with individuals who had spoken with James Angleton in the months before his death and had knowledge of his luncheon with Mrs. Paisley as well as his long-gestating beliefs about the significance of the Paisley case, lawyers’ briefs filed on Mrs. Paisley’s behalf against the CIA and Justice Department, the transcripts of the insurance trial after the car crash involving her son and the death of a passenger in the car he’d been driving, and statements previously published in books and newspaper reports.
In the course of my research for the entire book, I conducted eighty-three separate interviews, including several that were quite lengthy. I also relied on many recently declassified government documents, including, for example, the FBI file on Yuri Nosenko (File Number 63-68530) that ran to 718 pages; CIA files on Pyotr Deriabin, especially those newly declassified accounts of his behind-closed-doors testimony to the Warren Commission; and hundreds of pages of Freedom of Information documents on the John Paisley case that had been originally requested by members of the Paisley family and their lawyers.
Also invaluable were the convincing firsthand accounts Pete Bagley had written (Spy Wars and Spymaster); the many books and articles on the Paisley case (particularly Widows by William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento, and Joseph J. Trento, and the investigative reports in the New York Times by Tad Szulc and William Safire); and a tall mountain of books on the CIA mole hunt (most helpfully Wilderness of Mirrors by David Martin; Molehunt, by David Wise; The Ghost, by Jefferson Morley; The Secrets of the FBI, by Ron Kessler; and Angleton Was Right, by Edward J. Epstein).
What follows are the principal sources for each chapter of this book.
Prologue: William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento, and Joseph Trento, Widows (New York: Crown Publishers, 1989) [Widows]; Interviews with Paisley Family Sources [Paisley]; Maryann Paisley v. The Travelers Insurance Company Depositions [Paisley Depositions]; Fairfax County, Virginia, Courthouse Records (Law Numbers 325748 and 34684) [Fairfax Courthouse]; Wilmington News-Journal, May 20, 1979.
Chapter 1: Interviews with Bagley Family Sources [Bagley]; Tennent Bagley Collection #1833, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University [Collection 1833 BU]; David E. Hoffman, The Billion Dollar Spy (New York: Anchor Books, 2016) [Billion]; Maris Goldmanis, “The Case of Aleksandr Ogorodnik,” Numbers Station Research Information Center; Martha Peterson, The Widow Spy (Wilmington, NC: Red Canary Press, 2012); Bob Fulton, Reflections on a Life (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2008); Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield (New York: Basic Books, 2001) [Sword]; Duane R. Clarridge, A Spy for All Seasons (New York: Scribner, 1977) [Seasons].
Chapter 2: Tennent H. Bagley, Spy Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007) [Wars]; Bagley; Collection 1833 BU; Widows; Paisley; Raymond Rocca Collection #1832, Howard Gotlieb Archival Record Center, Boston University [Collection 1832 BU]; Tad Szulc, “The Missing CIA Man,” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 7, 1961 [Szulc]; Internet Archives, Full Text of John Arthur Paisley, FBI, https:archive.org/stream/John Arthur Paisley [Internet Archives]; documents.theblackvault.com/documents/fbifiles/coldwar/johnpaisley.pdf [Black Vault]; US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Jan. 1, 1979, to Dec. 31, 1980, 97193.pdf [Senate]; Paisley Depositions; Widows; Paisley; Maryland State Police Report first cited in Widows; Joseph Trento, “The Spy Who Never Was,” Penthouse, March 1979; Maryland Park Service Report, IR-45-78-268; Coast Guard Documents; CIA Security Memos, FOIA [Security]; Interviews with Intelligence Sources [IS]; Wilmington News-Journal, New York Times, Washington Post coverage [Press]; Colonial Funeral Home, Falls Church, Virginia, Records, first cited in Widows [Colonial Funeral]; Edward Jay Epstein, The Annals of Unsolved Crime (New York: Melville House, 2012) [Annals].
Chapter 3: Paisley; Wars; Tennent H. Bagley, Spymaster (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2015) [Spymaster]; Edward Jay Epstein, James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right? (New York: FastTrack Press, 2014) [Right]; David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2018) [Wilderness]; David Wise, Molehunt (New York: Random House, 1992) [Molehunt]; “Moles, Defectors, and Deceptions,” Center for Security Studies Conference, Georgetown University, March 29, 2012, edited by Bruce Hoffman and Christian Ostermann [Conference]; Tennent H. Bagley, “Bane of Counterintelligence: Our Penchant for Self-Deception,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 6, no. 1 (1993) [“Penchant”].
Chapter 4: Bagley; Wars; Spymaster; Sword; Wilderness; Molehunt; Right; IS; “Peter Deriabin, 71, a Moscow Defector Who Joined CIA,” New York Times, Aug. 31, 1992; Peter Deriabin and Frank Gibney, Secret World (New York: Ballantine Books, 1980) [World].
Chapter 5: Bagley; IS; Collection 1832 BU; Jefferson Morley, The Ghost (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017) [Ghost]; Right; Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton: The CIA’s Master Spy Hunter (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991) [Cold Warrior].
Chapter 6: Bagley; IS; Right; Conference; Widows, particularly interviews with Petty; Molehunt; Wilderness; Wars; Collection 1833 BU.
Chapter 7: Widows; Bagley; Cold Warrior; World; IS; Ghost; Molehunt; Wilderness; Right.
Chapter 8: Wars, particularly for quoted dialogue; Wilderness; Ghost; Bagley; IS; Molehunt; Right; Internet Archive Freedom of Information Act FBI Nosenko Files, identifier-ark: ark./13960/14dn92285 [FBI Nosenko]; Sword; William Hood, Mole: The True Story of the First Russian Intelligence Officer Recruited by the CIA (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982) [First]; Clarence Ashley, CIA Spymaster (Gretna, LA: Pelican, 2004) [Ashley]; John Limond Hart, The CIA’s Russians (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003) [Russians]; David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977) [Battleground]; Seasons.
Chapter 9: Bagley; Wars, particularly for quoted dialogue; FBI Nosenko; First; Russians; Battleground; Wilderness; Ghost; Molehunt; Right.
Chapter 10: Wars, particularly for quoted dialogue; Bagley; IS; Russians; Ghost; Battleground; Cold Warrior; Wilderness; Conference; Collection 1832 BU; Collection 1833 BU; “Penchant”; Billion.
Chapter 11: Wars; Bagley; House Select Committee on Assassinations, 95th Congress Hearings (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1979) [Assassinations]; Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1964)[Report]; Cold Warrior; Right; Edward Jay Epstein, Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978) [Legend]; Press.
Chapter 12: Wars, particularly for dialogue; Assassinations; Legend; Right; Ghost; FBI Nosenko; Collection 1833 BU; Collection 1832 BU; Bagley.
Chapter 13: Wars, particularly his interview with Abidian; Bagley; Ghost; Report; Sword; John Barron, KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1974); Jerold L. Schechter and Peter S. Deriabin, The Spy Who Saved the World (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992) [Saved]; Oleg Penkovsky, The Penkovsky Papers (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964); Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor (New York: Crown, 2019); “Penchant”; Conference; Billion; Leonard McCoy, “The Penkovsky Case,” Studies in Intelligence, declassified September 2014; First.
Chapter 14: Wars, particularly for dialogue; Ghost; Legend; Report; Assassinations; IS; Bagley; Conference; “Penchant”; FBI Nosenko; Sword; Cold Warrior; “The Analysis of Yuri Nosenko’s Polygraph Examination,” Richard Arthur testimony to Select Committee on Assassinations, US House of Representatives, March 1979 [Polygraph]; Wilderness; Molehunt; Press.
Chapter 15: Wars; Bagley; Richard J. Heuer Jr., “Nosenko: Five Paths to Judgment,” Studies in Intelligence 31, declassified Fall 1987 [“Paths”]; Right; Ghost; Wilderness; Molehunt; Polygraph.
Chapter 16: Bagley; IS; Wars; Collection 1832 BU; Collection 1833 BU; “Paths”; Ghost.
Chapter 17: Bagley; Wars; Widows.
Chapter 18: Wars; “Ex-CIA Employee Held as Czech Spy,” New York Times, Nov. 28, 1984; Cynthia L. Haven, The Man Who Brought Brodsky into English (New York: Academic Studies Press, 2021); Tracy Burns, “Life During the Communist Era in Czechoslovakia,” https:/www.private-prague-guide.com; Richard Cunningham, “How a Czech ‘Super Spy’ Infiltrated the CIA,” The Guardian, June 30, 2016 [Cunningham]; Ronald Kessler, “Moscow’s Mole in the CIA,” Washington Post, April 17, 1988 [Kessler]; Ronald Kessler, The Secrets of the FBI (New York: Crown, 2011) [Secrets]; “Unknown Spy Sites,” International Spy Museum, https://www.spymuseum.org [“Sites”]; Conference; Sword; Fairfax, Virginia, court records, cited first in Widows (at Law No. 38430) [Court]; Billion; Right; Press.
Chapter 19: “Sites”; Cunningham; Kessler; Widows, particularly Fairfax, Virginia, court records; Conference; Wars; Bagley.
Chapter 20: Wars; Spymaster; “Paths”; Cunningham; Kessler; Conference; Billion; Sword; Widows; Bagley; IS.
Chapter 21: Wars; Bagley; IS; Spymaster.
Chapter 22: Bagley; IS; Polygraph; Widows; Molehunt; Ghost; Bagley Testimony, House Assassinations Committee, Doc ID: 32273600; FBI Nosenko; “Paths”; Legend; Right; Szulc; William Safire, “Slithy Toves of CIA,” New York Times, Jan. 22, 1979 [Safire].
Chapter 23: Russians; Wars; Bagley; John Steadman, “Forget ERA, Sivess’ True Passion Was for CIA’s Game of Intrigue,” Baltimore Sun, March 17, 1966; Widows; Spymaster; Ghost; James Disette, “Cloak, Dagger, and Chesapeake,” Parts I and II, https://www.chestertownspy.org/spies-pf-the-eastern-shore; Ann Hughey, “The House That Hid the CIA’s Secrets,” Wall Street Journal, April 19 1991; Polygraph; Collection 1832 BC.
Chapter 24: Widows, particularly Coast Guard records and family interviews; Ghost; Cold Warrior; Szulc; Safire; Internet Archives; Black Vault; Paisley; IS; Paisley CIA biographical file, FOIA[Biog File]; Bagley; IS; Press.
Chapter 25: Wars; Widows, particularly Paisley family interviews; Paisley; Deposition; Black Vault; Internet Archives; CIA, “Standard Assessment of Paisley,” May 14, 1957, FOIA; Robert D. Vickers Jr., The History of CIA’s Office of Strategic Research (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2019); David Shamus McCarthy, “The CIA & the Cult of Secrecy,” 2008 Dissertation, William & Mary ScholarWorks [Dissertation]; Joe Trento, Wilmington News Journal and passim regarding P.O. box; Szulc; Safire.
