Circle of Treason Read online

  CIRCLE

  OF

  TREASON

  CIRCLE

  OF

  TREASON

  A CIA ACCOUNT OF

  TRAITOR ALDRICH AMES

  AND THE MEN HE BETRAYED

  SANDRA GRIMES AND JEANNE VERTEFEUILLE

  NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS

  Annapolis, Maryland

  Naval Institute Press

  291 Wood Road

  Annapolis, MD 21402

  © 2012 by Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Grimes, Sandra.

  Circle of treason : a CIA account of traitor Aldrich Ames and the men he betrayed / Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-61251-305-81.Ames, Aldrich Hazen, 1941– 2.United States. Central Intelligence Agency. 3.United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. 4.Intelligence officers—United States—Biography. 5.Espionage—United States. 6.Intelligence service—United States.

  I. Vertefeuille, Jeanne. II. Title.

  JK468.I6G76 2012

  364.1′31—dc23

  2012024310

  This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  201918171615141312987654321

  First printing

  All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official positions or views of the CIA or any other U.S. government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. government authentication of information or Agency endorsement of the authors’ views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

  To General Polyakov

  And to the others

  Who were executed or imprisoned

  And to their families

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Chapter 1. Jeanne’s Story

  Chapter 2. Sandy’s Story

  Chapter 3. Overview of SE Operations

  Chapter 4. The Polyakov Case—The Beginnings

  Chapter 5. The Polyakov Case—The Middle

  Chapter 6. The Polyakov Case—The End

  Chapter 7. Early Major Cases

  Chapter 8. Later Major Cases

  Chapter 9. Things Begin to Go Wrong

  Chapter 10. First Attempts

  Chapter 11. CIC Formation

  Chapter 12. Beginning of the Focus on Ames

  Chapter 13. The Investigation Gets New Life

  Chapter 14. Ames Emerges as a Major Focus

  Chapter 15. The FBI Takes Over

  Chapter 16. Reactions to the Arrest of Ames

  Chapter 17. Ames the Person, Ames the Spy

  Chapter 18. Hanssen and Ames—A Comparison

  Chapter 19. Final Thoughts

  Honor Roll

  Selected Chronology

  Notes

  Selected Bibliography

  Index

  PREFACE

  MANY BOOKS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN about Cold War espionage in general, or about particular aspects, cases, or periods. The great majority of these books suffer from the same deficiency—they are written by outsiders with an imperfect knowledge of the main organizations, methods of operation, and personalities involved in this struggle. Other books, whether written by outsiders or insiders, also suffer from being written by persons with an axe to grind, or who are besotted by a pet theory, or are simply more interested in producing a marketable commodity than in searching for truth and accuracy.

  This book attempts to avoid these pitfalls. It is written by insiders. The authors can speak with authority and in detail about the CIA’s operations against the Soviet—and to a lesser degree, the East European—target. We were there, starting at the bottom but working up into increasingly responsible positions. Also, we were at the center of what became the Ames mole hunt. The book mainly covers the period 1961–94, the years of our greatest personal involvement.

  The reader may wonder why we have chosen to air material previously considered classified. We wish to emphasize that we are not “leakers.” All of our contacts with the media stem from a project conceived by the Agency to tell its side of the Ames story. After Ames was arrested in February 1994, the FBI, as is customary for that organization, launched a campaign to let the public know of their success. In the Agency’s view, the decisive CIA contribution to this roll-up was getting lost. Therefore, it was decided that five of us—Sandy, Jeanne, Paul Redmond, Dan Payne, and Diana Worthen—would be tasked to participate in media interviews on the subject of the CIA’s operations against the Soviet target, the devastation wrought by Ames, and our investigative efforts, which resulted in his identification as a Soviet mole. All of our early contacts took place on Agency premises and were monitored by an Agency official. Some were taped. Initially this project made us quite uneasy because we are of the old school and had been indoctrinated with the dictum that one was to avoid the media at all costs. Later we became more comfortable with the idea and continued to cooperate in selected interviews, but all of our media contacts were approved in advance.

  The reader may also wonder why we have chosen certain KGB and GRU operations for extended treatment, while providing only a cursory summary for others. Throughout we have tried to adhere to one criterion: Is the information we are including already known to the KGB and its successors because of the treason of Ames, Hanssen, Howard, and the others? When this holds true, we have seen no reason to withhold it from the general reader. On the other hand, when it comes to information we believe the opposition does not know or that could prove harmful to certain individuals, we have suppressed it in our book even though sometimes it would add useful background to our story.

  With this limitation in mind, we generally chose those cases that were the most significant in terms of intelligence and counterintelligence production, those in which we had the most personal engagement, those that were intrinsically the most interesting, and those where the Soviet participant paid for his involvement with his life. We regret that, with the exception of Tolkachev, we have not been able to give more coverage to the great majority of those cases that did not involve intelligence officers. While some of them were significant in the Agency’s overall Cold War effort, we in the counterintelligence world often did not focus on them. We also have omitted East European cases, though some of them were of major importance and some of their stories would make fascinating reading, again because we did not focus on them on a continuing basis.

  On the reverse side, our discussion of the U.S. intelligence officers who volunteered to the KGB is limited to Ames, Hanssen, and—to a lesser degree—Howard. We have not covered Richard Miller and Earl Pitts of the FBI or Harold (“Jim”) Nicholson of the CIA, despite the fact that all of them have served prison time for their espionage activities. While they certainly did cause damage, compared to Ames and Hanssen they are minor players.

  The authors make no pretense of neutrality. We have our opinions, and have expressed them as warranted. However, we have tried to be scrupulous about separating fact from opinion and have made every effort to concentrate on the former. Also, we have attempted to avoid writing a book overly concerned with exposing or “getting back” at those whose beliefs and actions have, in our minds, taken the CIA down the wrong track in its Soviet operations, sometimes with tragic consequences. This material does
appear when it is pertinent, but for the most part it has not been given undue emphasis. Our purpose has been to give a balanced, in-depth depiction of our operations with as much accuracy as we can command. We believe that we have a story well worth telling.

  As might be expected, the two authors do not agree on every point. Where the differences are significant, they have been included.

  A few definitions are in order at the outset. “Counterintelligence” and “counterespionage” have been defined and redefined to the point of exhaustion over the past decades. Nonetheless, sometimes they are employed interchangeably. This book will generally use the term counterintelligence or CI. In our context CI includes all the efforts, both defensive and offensive, used to counter the attempts by foreign governments and their intelligence services to penetrate our government or to neutralize the clandestine activities of our government.

  The offensive aspect of CI is exemplified by CIA and FBI recruitment of foreign intelligence officers, thus becoming privy to their services’ operations. The defensive aspect includes such mundane practices as security clearances and need-to-know compartmentation, but focuses most strongly on organized attempts to uncover the moles among us.

  Two other necessary definitions: This book examines at length our activities vis-à-vis the two Soviet intelligence services. These services are the KGB and the GRU. The KGB has had many names since the 1917 Bolshevik revolution: Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, and so on. Its function has been to preserve the security of the Soviet state and it has interpreted its mandate in the broadest sense. In 1954 it took the name KGB, from the initials for the Russians words for Committee of State Security, and retained that title during most of the period covered in this book. In 1991, the KGB was broken into several distinct organizations. The foreign operations component of the KGB became the SVR, from the Russian initials for Foreign Intelligence Service, while the main internal counterintelligence component became the FSB, or Federal Security Service. For simplicity’s sake, however, we will use “KGB” throughout our text.

  The GRU’s name is derived from the Russian words for Main Intelligence Directorate and it is a component of the General Staff of the Ministry of Defense. It has changed little in form or function since the end of World War II, its mission being now as always the collection of strategic intelligence. It does not have a CI role, and does not target foreign intelligence services, but it has run a number of very successful operations against the U.S. government over the years, obtaining valuable information, primarily in the military and scientific/technical fields.

  A note about transliteration: The majority of the Russian names have been translated from the Cyrillic using the National Geographic Board on Geographic Names. This was the standard used by the CIA’s Directorate of Operations during the period under discussion. However, in a few instances where the individual has carved out an identity in the West we have used the transliteration preferred by this individual. Therefore, we use Gordievsky, not Gordiyevskiy and Andrei, not Andrey, Poleshchuk.

  The CIA’s Publications Review Board (PRB) is responsible for clearing any texts written by former CIA officers. They require the following disclaimer: All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official positions or views of the CIA or any other U.S. government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. government authentication of information or Agency endorsement of the author’s views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

  In general our experience with the PRB has been a frustrating one. Although more than 90 percent of the disputed issues were eventually resolved in our favor, and the book below reads essentially as it was originally conceived, it took us more than three long years to come to terms. Some of the requests for deletions were valid and we made them without quibbling, but, in our view, others stemmed from flaws in the process itself.

  Finally, we could not have written this book without some help from our former colleagues. We consulted Dick C, Myrna Fitzgerald, Bob Fulton, Burton Gerber, Walt Lomac, Len and Faith McCoy, Dan Payne, Jack Platt, Andrei and Svetlana Poleshchuk, Paul Redmond, Dick Stolz, Diana Worthen, and some others who prefer to remain anonymous. This includes those who graciously provided access to their personal archives. All of them have our gratitude. We owe a special vote of thanks to Gary Grimes, who plowed through our numerous drafts and offered balanced commentary.

  JEANNE’S STORY

  OCTOBER 1954. THE KOREAN WAR WAS OVER, and we had not yet become embroiled in Vietnam. I had graduated from the University of Connecticut in the spring. The job fair representatives who visited the campus during my senior year included one from the CIA. He spoke very vaguely about what the Agency did, but indicated that there would be possibilities for travel. This was what I wanted to hear. A typical product of the 1950s, I thought only in passing about equal rights for women and had no overriding visions of a rewarding professional career. My major goal was to work and live abroad, preferably in Europe.

  The representative told me that the only openings he had for women were clerical, and he urged me to acquire secretarial skills. Thus after graduation I went to business school and learned how to type and take shorthand while awaiting the call from the CIA to tell me if I had been accepted.

  When that call came, I took the train to Washington. My first assignment was in the unclassified typing pool, where a group of newly hired young women typed 3×5 cards listing North Korean scientists, as their names appeared in professional journals. Probably we got a lot of the names wrong, but it didn’t seem to matter. We were marking time until we were called for our polygraphs and, if we passed, given a real assignment. I did pass, after having a philosophical argument about whether Chiang Kai-shek was a boon to China, and whether one could characterize the Communists as agrarian reformers. My answers must have been reasonably orthodox; in any event I had studied Far Eastern history in college, and knew more about the subject than my examiner.

  As part of the assignment process, I was asked if I would be interested in serving overseas and, if so, where. “Europe” was my first answer, but the personnel officer successfully got me to add that I would not rule out a posting in some other part of the world. Shortly thereafter, my assignment came through: the Near East and African Division.

  After I had worked there for a short time, the personnel officer offered me a position as an administrative assistant in an outpost in French West Africa. I did not know where it was, and neither did the personnel officer, but we hunted it down on a map. And, after mulling it over for a day or two, I said I would go.

  In those days, a woman’s educational background and linguistic accomplishments meant nothing. I minored in German in college, with six years of that language under my belt. I also had two years of French, but my command of it was pretty shaky. However, the only criterion was the ability to type, and that I could certainly do.

  Fortunately, there was a hitch in the assignment, so I got to spend almost a year in Washington before heading overseas. My friends and I were all short of money, but managed to do our share of sightseeing and partying. In those days the CIA was located in World War II temporary barracks downtown, along the reflecting pool between Constitution and Independence Avenues, so we were right in the thick of things. I traveled by bus to work and, in those more innocent days, while waiting at the bus stop on Constitution to go home, I would sometimes see President Eisenhower on the golf green behind the White House practicing his putting. Among my most pleasant memories is taking my ice skates to work in the winter, and skating on the reflecting pool during my lunch hour.

  Two agreeable years in West Africa followed. I had an excellent Chief of Station, John Edwards. A Harvard-educated gentleman of the old school and a veteran of World War I and World War II, he had spent the interwar years in France or Francophone countries in Africa and spoke polished French. Under his tutelage my French became r
easonably fluent. He was an indulgent boss and let me do a lot of traveling around West Africa. My longest and most adventurous trip was by train to Bamako, Mali, and then by boat around the northern bend of the Niger River, with stops at exotic places like Mopti, Djenne, and Timbuktu.

  The West African tour also gave me a different perspective on life. For the first time, being white put me in the minority. This struck me when I first got off the plane and it took a while before I became comfortable with the concept.

  However, once I settled in I enjoyed Africa so much that I asked for a second assignment there. This time East Africa was my destination.

  The East African post had its pleasant aspects. At an altitude of more than seven thousand feet, the climate was excellent and flowers bloomed year-round. Also, we were above the zone of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, poisonous snakes, and similar tropical health hazards. Sometimes we took a weekend break, going down the edge of the Great Rift Valley to the Red Sea to swim and snorkel. It was a hazardous two-hour journey, over a narrow road with more than one hundred hairpin turns, but the views were magnificent. Often we encountered baboons and dik-diks (a tiny gazelle), on the way and giant manta rays were a common sight once we reached the sea.

  The only downside to this tour was that I did not get on with my boss, and there were only the two of us. Anyway, despite the after-hours and weekend adventures, I was beginning to have enough of working in Africa. As my tour wound to its end, I was offered a job in yet another African post. The duties would be the same clerical and administrative ones that I had been carrying out for years, only this time I would also be expected to be the Chief of Station’s interpreter because the designated officer did not speak French!

  By now I had developed some rudimentary career goals, and this did not sound like it would be a satisfying assignment. Furthermore, it was the African component’s policy (freely expressed in those days) not to promote women above GS-07. I had attained that grade long ago. Looking for advancement, I sought a job outside of Africa, and found one—in Helsinki, Finland. Not only would this give me the opportunity to see a different part of the world, the job was rated as GS-09, one of the few such slots available to women then, although the situation was beginning to change.