Spymaster, page 16
He hesitated, perhaps remembering that FBI rules also forbade agents talking to KGB men without approval. Then he continued.
“We don’t get many Russian visitors, although once I escorted a fellow countryman of yours.”
“We’re very grateful to you for your help and courtesy,” I said. “Even though relations between our countries are not too friendly, we’ve encountered only good feelings on this trip. Perhaps some day we’ll be friends. And maybe the time will come when our respective services will work together in peace.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” he replied. “But people should help each other when they’re in trouble . . . By the way, don’t worry about your car. Everything will be all right.”
He said good night to us outside our motel door, then disappeared into the darkness.
The next morning when we walked out to the Volkswagen, we discovered that our FBI surveillance team had gotten up early and had the car repaired. It started on the first try, and we headed back to Washington.
I was so impressed with the friendliness of the FBI agents that, back in Washington, I had the urge to write J. Edgar Hoover and praise the men who had accompanied us on our trip. But then I realized that if my letter were to somehow make it into the American or Soviet press, life wouldn’t be worth living back in Moscow. The impulse passed.
Not long after my return, I passed up another chance to probe the limits of détente. I was at a dinner given by Joseph Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor. At one point, Allen Dulles, the retired CIA director, appeared at the party. I was tempted to talk with him, but I knew he was ill. I also had already been identified by Jack Anderson as a KGB agent, and I was still acting station chief. So I never approached the aging cold warrior, figuring the last thing I needed back in Moscow was an item in the Washington press about my having an intimate dinner-party conversation with the retired American spymaster.
Early in 1969, as the months ticked by, I knew that my time in Washington was drawing to a close. Headquarters had already made it clear that, due to the publicity I had received, there was no way I could be named station chief. Moscow was finding a replacement for me, and I was trying to sort out where I might like to go next. I clearly had little time left. Nevertheless, I still kept trying to develop agents in the United States, and the FBI still kept trying to entrap me, usually with a woman as bait.
In February 1969, I attended a party at the West German embassy, where I met an attractive young woman who had fled Hungary after the 1956 uprising. That in itself interested me, but when I found out that she worked at the State Department, I just had to take a stab at recruiting her. We stayed at the Fasching (Shrove Tuesday) party until four in the morning, dancing and talking, and even kissing a bit. We agreed to meet again the following day. But when we rendezvoused and I asked if I could see her again, she told me it would be impossible.
“Oleg, I like you very much as a man, but I’ve been warned to stay away from you,” she said. “I’m a government employee, and my Hungarian past may damage my reputation, especially if I meet with you again.”
I tried to talk her into having dinner with me later in the week, but she made it clear that State Department security people had sternly warned her not to have anything to do with me.
A fellow KGB officer also had been at the West German party, had met a secretary in a senator’s office, and was pursuing her, as well. That same week, the FBI warned her about my colleague, and their budding relationship ended. Clearly FBI counterintelligence had been at the party, keeping close watch on us.
Before I left the nation’s capital, the FBI made one last effort to entrap me. This final episode occurred in the summer of 1969, when a large group from the Soviet embassy rented a boat and invited dozens of American journalists and politicians to join us on a four-hour cruise down the Potomac River. During the trip, a rather plump but attractive woman approached me and began chatting. She turned out to be an American descendant of Austrian aristocrats and worked as a public relations officer at the U.S. State Department. She seemed unusually friendly, which put me on guard. Then, the following day, she phoned me at the embassy and invited me to come to her house for a dinner party that evening. I was sure it was a setup, and I was right.
That night, I drove to her apartment in one of Washington’s most fashionable neighborhoods, on Massachusetts Avenue. As I parked in front of her building, I noticed a U.S. government car parked nearby, unmistakably FBI.
She answered the door in a sexy dressing gown. As I kissed her on the cheek, I once again thought to myself, Does the FBI really think I’m that stupid?
We were alone in her beautifully furnished apartment. Candles burned on the dining room table, which had place settings for two. The woman fixed me a drink, and I asked her, “But you said you were having a party. Where are the other guests?”
“They’ll be along later,” she assured me.
Jesus Christ! I thought to myself. Unable to get me expelled from the country by planting articles with Jack Anderson, the FBI now wanted to entrap me and arrest me on a rape charge. I could just see it unfold: the woman would start screaming and federal agents, listening through the hidden microphones in her apartment, would burst in and lock me up. I even walked over to her third floor balcony and tried to figure out a possible escape route. I cursed myself for showing up, unsure how far the FBI wanted to take this game.
In any event, we sat down to dinner, and I made small talk with the woman, waiting for her next move. As we were finishing, there was a knock at the door, and she let in another couple. I don’t remember now who they said they were, though I was convinced they too were from the FBI. The couple had a drink, then announced they had to leave. By that time I had enough of the intrigue and said I was leaving.
“Why are you running off?” said the hostess. “Please do stay. Let them go. It’s not late.”
She followed me into the corridor, trying gently but insistently to restrain me. I was politely adamant and, walking onto Massachusetts Avenue, I swore I would steer clear of all such situations in the future.
In mid-1969, a new station chief—Mikhail Polonik—arrived. A career KGB officer, Polonik had been in charge of political intelligence in New York. He was a professional, but it was clear from the start that, compared to Solomatin, he was mediocre.
It was time to go. I had been in Washington nearly five years; Solomatin and I had turned around a lackluster KGB station and run some of the most valuable spies the Soviet Union had during the cold war. But the long hours and constant pressure—particularly since my exposure by Jack Anderson—had left me weary. In late 1969, I heard rumors that Alexander Sakharovsky, the head of intelligence, was considering me for the job of station chief in Tokyo. It was an appealing prospect, especially considering Japan’s growing economic power and world prominence. I waited anxiously for official word of my transfer.
Then, just before Christmas, a ciphered message arrived for me from headquarters that caught me totally off guard: I was being offered the job of deputy chief of foreign counterintelligence. I was flattered but skeptical whether this was the right move for me. Becoming deputy chief of an entire section was an undeniable step up. And the leaders at KGB headquarters assured me that they wanted to vastly enlarge and improve the department, charged with penetrating foreign intelligence services and keeping an eye on Soviets abroad. But at that time, foreign counterintelligence had a reputation for being staffed with people far inferior to those in political intelligence. While many of the officers in political intelligence were cosmopolitan people with good language skills, the personnel in foreign counterintelligence often were unsophisticated men from regional KGB offices, men with little knowledge of the world or its languages.
I mulled over the offer. The cipher clerk told me that Polonik had held the cable concerning my promotion for a week in his safe. Perhaps Polonik had been irritated that I was jumping over his head in the service hierarchy, and would in fact be one of his bosses in Moscow. In any case, when we talked about the offer, Polonik tried hard to dissuade me from taking the job.
“Don’t go,” he said. “You have such a great reputation in political intelligence. You’ll be promoted yet. Why move to counterintelligence? Think of who you’ll have to work with, these hicks from the domestic service. You’ll hate it. Why mix with this crowd? Think about it.”
I did, though I knew it would be foolish to pass up the opportunity.
Washington was lovely that December. The city glimmered with Christmas lights and shoppers filled the streets, and I asked myself if I really wanted to give up the pleasures and thrills of life overseas and return to the Soviet capital. I stalled, in part because I had just bought my wife a fur coat, had not paid off my subscription to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and wanted to pull down my prized hard currency salary a few more months. But early in January 1970 I received a new ciphered cable: the time for a decision had come.
“The vacancy has to be filled at once due to the necessity of concentrating all forces in one section to counteract the main efforts of the enemy’s special services,” the message said. “Cable reply.”
So I was going. I had to take back the fur coat and sell the Encyclopedia Britannica because we were running low on money. In late February, the day came to say good-bye to my coworkers in political intelligence. We gathered in a small, stuffy room in the embassy, and several of the officers who had worked for me gave valedictory speeches. My turn came to speak, and I urged everyone to treasure the experience they had gained in the last five years, to keep running risks and bringing a gambler’s instinct to the espionage business. Our work would come to nothing, I told them, without the aggressive style and daring tactics we had used in recent years. Polonik looked displeased, as if I were trying to plant a mine underneath all his well-crafted, conservative plans.
“The main thing is to always be on the lookout,” I told the men of my section. “It’s like fishing or going on a hunting expedition. You have to be on the alert all the time and never miss an opportunity.”
On February 26, 1970, my family and I boarded an Aeroflot flight for Moscow. I wouldn’t set foot in America again for another twenty years, and upon my return I would no longer be the same loyal servant of the KGB. All told, in New York City and in Washington, I had spent a decade in the United States, and those years had a profound effect on me. I grew as an intelligence officer, and I tasted the freedom of American life.
After Washington, I would return to Moscow and spend another ten years in the heart of the Soviet intelligence apparatus. I would serve my country faithfully and put everything I had into battling the United States, the CIA, and the West. But that decade in America had changed me irrevocably. I had learned to speak my mind and I had learned not to cringe. In the 1970s, as the Soviet Union became more deeply mired in the stagnation of the Brezhnev era, these were not highly prized qualities. Ultimately my outspokenness and my reluctance to kowtow to superiors would lead to my break with the KGB.
And for that, I am grateful to America.
CHAPTER 5
Philby
ONE MORNING IN MARCH 1970, I SAT IN THE INNER SANCTUM OF THE KGB in Moscow, just a few feet from the bulky, imposing figure of Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov. I was there for a meeting of the KGB’s ruling body, the Collegium, which was being chaired by the legendary Andropov. Arrayed in front of me in the spacious, wood-paneled room were a dozen “Gray Cardinals” of the dreaded Soviet secret police and espionage apparatus. At its regular monthly meetings, the Collegium decided all matters of importance to the KGB, and on this cold March morning the powerful, poker-faced members of our agency’s ruling council were assembled around a long table discussing (among other things) my promotion.
The staff in the Personnel Department had instructed me to keep my head up and my mouth shut, and that’s what I did as the Collegium considered my nomination as deputy director of foreign counterintelligence. Alexander Sakharovsky, the KGB’s chief of intelligence, summarized my achievements in New York and Washington. Andropov sat slumped in his chair, his eyes fixed on the papers in front of him. When Sakharovsky finished his talk, Andropov finally raised his head and asked me one question.
“Do you agree to take the position you’ve been offered?” the chairman asked.
“I do,” I replied, with all the solemnity of a man taking his wedding vows.
“Do any members of the Collegium have any objections?” asked Andropov, his eyes surveying the room.
“No objections,” he said. Then, nodding in my direction: “You can go.”
And with that I was inducted into the upper reaches of the KGB and sent off to do battle with America and its NATO allies.
What I found on the front line of the espionage wars was disconcerting. My new directorate, a section of the Soviet intelligence apparatus, had a dizzying array of responsibilities and was—atypically for the KGB—woefully understaffed. Foreign counterintelligence had several major duties. We were charged with penetrating the intelligence, counterintelligence, and police agencies of the United States, its NATO allies, and other nonsocialist countries. We were supposed to penetrate and subvert Soviet émigré organizations, as well as anti-Soviet “centers of ideological subversion” such as Radio Liberty, a U.S. government station that beamed its broadcasts into the USSR. We were assigned to keep watch on thousands of Soviets working overseas to make sure they were not recruited by hostile intelligence agencies and did not defect. And we had to ensure that the more than twelve thousand officers and employees of Soviet intelligence did not go over to the other side and begin spying against the USSR. In short, foreign counterintelligence had a pivotal job in the KGB, and when I came on the scene in 1970 we were not doing it particularly well.
Now, in hindsight, it seems almost comical that KGB intelligence and foreign counterintelligence were viewed around the world as a terrifying juggernaut. Perhaps the CIA saw us as a cold, efficient spying machine, though somehow I doubt it. Anyone close to the KGB’s foreign operations couldn’t miss seeing the tremendous problems we faced and the sloppiness of our work. As I settled into my new job at Lubyanka, I was painfully aware of how much work there was to be done, though I was at the same time proud of the heritage of Soviet intelligence. After all, it was foreign counterintelligence in the 1930s and 1940s that had set up one of the most spectacular spy rings of the century: Kim Philby and the “Magnificent Five” from Cambridge University. Following World War II, Soviet intelligence had helped steal America’s atomic bomb secrets, thus speeding up by several years our development of nuclear weapons. In the 1950s and 1960s, foreign counterintelligence had managed to penetrate deeply into the French, British, and Italian intelligence agencies. In America, we had developed John Walker into a superspy.
But in the halls of Lubyanka there was a growing feeling that our glory was a thing of the past. And as I spent more time in foreign counterintelligence, rising to head of directorate in 1973, it became increasingly clear why we were lacking the fervor of the old days: virtually no one still believed in the Soviet Union. The great spies of the early Soviet days, the Philbys and the Rosenbergs, came to us because of what they saw as our noble Communist experiment. The USSR and Communism looked like the wave of the future, and our best spies—such as the handful of men at the top of French intelligence and the military—came to us in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s out of ideological conviction.
All that began to change in 1956, when Khrushchev exposed the cruelty of the Stalin regime and showed that our socialist achievements had been built on the bones of our own people. True Communist believers such as Philby began to dry up and disappear. And by the time we invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, only the most fervid ideologue could hold any illusions that the Soviet Union was striving to build a socialist utopia. CIA director William Colby put it well when he said in the 1970s, “The Russians sometimes succeed in recruiting Americans on a material basis, making one-time payments for information passed on. They will only be able to recruit people on an ideological basis when they can present convincing proof that their country is the model society of the future, both politically and socially.”
That, of course, was not going to happen.
As disillusionment with the Soviet Union set in, the number of KGB defectors skyrocketed, further damaging our operations. When I first started working in foreign counterintelligence in 1970, the KGB was experiencing a trickle of defections from the ranks. Unfortunately I was foreign counterintelligence chief when two KGB officers defected during the 1970s. After I left the directorate in 1980, the number of turncoats in our ranks swelled to a torrent as more and more KGB officers became disenchanted with our system and fled to the West.
In my first few months on the job I felt forlorn as I sat at my desk and looked over the annual reports of foreign counterintelligence officers from around the world. Much of what these KGB professionals fed to us in the center was half-baked information, rumors, old wives’ tales. My unit, known at the time as Service Two of the Intelligence Directorate, had no moles in the CIA or FBI. Our prized agents in Western European intelligence agencies were dying out. We had managed to penetrate the secret services of many Third World countries, thus boosting the sheer number of spies working for us and meeting or exceeding our annual quotas. But buying up agents in Asia and Africa was no great achievement, and I quickly realized we had to redouble our efforts and focus them on penetrating the CIA and NATO intelligence agencies.
After a decade in America my welcome at Lubyanka was not the warmest, and my new boss and coworkers struck me as an unimpressive lot. The head of foreign counterintelligence, Vitaly Boyarov, was a pushy, argumentative, and self-righteous man who had been expelled from the KGB’s London station in 1969. At first, staring at his puffy face, I thought I was in for a long, unpleasant relationship with my new chief. Yet I slowly came to respect Boyarov, realizing he was highly intelligent and tough but fair. He turned out to be a stubborn, sophisticated man who wouldn’t kowtow to his superiors; in the end, under Kryuchkov, that was Boyarov’s undoing.
