The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (38 page)

31.
FBI report, 287. Cherkashin also says there was a system of using postcards sent to the consulate in San Francisco.

32.
Ibid., 277. This appears to be an FBI interview with Mary Howard on the day it was confirmed that Ed had defected.

1.
Headquarters to Moscow station, April 27, 1984, no date-time stamp.

2.
Moscow station to headquarters, April 20, 1984, 201316Z.

3.
Headquarters to Moscow station, Feb. 22 and 23 and April 27, 1984, no date-time stamps.

4.
Headquarters to Moscow station, April 27, 1984, no date-time stamp.

5.
Ibid. This cable includes the translation of the Tolkachev ops note from the April meeting.

6.
Headquarters to Moscow station, May 25, 1984, no date-time stamp.

7.
Moscow station to headquarters, Oct. 12, 1984, 121213Z.

8.
Headquarters to Moscow station, Oct. 31, 1984, no time-date stamp.

9.
Ibid.

10.
A confidential source close to the family.

11.
Headquarters to Moscow station, Nov. 1, 1984, 010133Z.

12.
Moscow station to headquarters, Nov. 27, 1984, 271314Z, the draft ops note for the next meeting.

13.
Moscow station to headquarters, Jan. 19, 1985, 191038Z; Royden, “Tolkachev,” 30.

14.
Moscow station to headquarters, Nov. 27, 1984, 271314Z, which includes the draft ops note for delivery to Tolkachev in January 1985.

15.
Moscow station to headquarters, Jan. 19, 1985, 191038Z.

16.
Headquarters to Moscow station, Jan. 31, 1985, 311535Z.

17.
Headquarters to Moscow station, Feb. 4, 1985, no time-date stamp.

18.
Ibid.

19.
Headquarters to Moscow station, Feb. 6, 1985, no time-date stamp.

20.
On the wrong
fortochka
, see Royden, “Tolkachev,” 30.

1.
FBI report, 10. Records of the Legislative Finance Committee in Santa Fe, New Mexico, showed that Howard was absent only one morning, on the ninth for an illness. He apparently went to Vienna over a weekend. Later, one week of his desk calendar was found missing.

2.
FBI report, 285, Mary Howard’s interview with the FBI on Oct. 17, 1985. Mary’s name is redacted but her identity is clear from the context.

3.
FBI report, 10.

4.
Ibid., 287, 399.

5.
Ibid., 1390. The FBI interviewed someone at the UN agency and reported that the interview was set for April 25, but “shortly before that interview was to take place, Mr. Howard called a representative of the UNRWA and cancelled the employment” application. Howard’s letter to the UN is at FBI report, 1086. The FBI’s chronology suggests that Mary told them that Howard opened a Swiss bank account at this time, but the details are not clear, and she also told the FBI that he received payment for his information only later, in August 1985.

6.
Howard,
Safe House
, 59. Mary gave conflicting accounts to the FBI about a side trip to Zurich. At one point, she said he made such a trip to open a Swiss bank account. But later she said he went to open that account in August when he was alone.

7.
FBI report, 11, 100–101, 112–17. Bosch is not directly identified, but context makes it clear. For more on Bosch, see Wise,
Spy Who Got Away
, 103–8, 118–23, 160–64.

8.
Howard,
Safe House
, 141, 143.

9.
This is reported in
Ampule with Poison
, Vakhtang Mikeladze, writer and director, a film made for Russian television, 1997. Mikeladze told the author the film was based on original materials and interviews provided by the Federal Security Service, a successor to the KGB. Not all assertions about KGB counterintelligence in this film are plausible or believable, but original footage and interviews provide interesting additions to what is known about the case. Vakhtang Mikeladze, interview with author, Sept. 19, 2011.

10.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “An Assessment of the Aldrich H. Ames Espionage Case and Its Implications for U.S. Intelligence,” Nov. 1, 1994, pts. 1 and 2, U.S. Senate, 103rd Cong., 2nd sess. Also see Cherkashin,
Spy Handler
.

11.
The exfil was in late May. See Grimes and Vertefeuille,
Circle of Treason
, 72–75; Bearden and Risen,
Main Enemy
, 29.

12.
In 1981, the CIA received an envelope from an anonymous scientist that contained extremely detailed and valuable information about Soviet strategic weapons but left some questions unanswered. For several years, the Moscow station attempted without success to locate the scientist to fill in the gaps. In early 1985, the CIA thought it had identified a possible source and made an approach in Moscow with a letter carrying instructions on how to contact the CIA. But the letter somehow fell into the hands of the KGB. The original scientist was never identified. “Stas” informed Sellers that the approach had gone awry and the KGB knew of the CIA letter. See Bearden and Risen,
Main Enemy
, 50–59.

13.
Sellers, interview with author, Jan. 28, 2014. Also see Bearden and Risen,
Main Enemy
, 59. Also Sellers’s Web site,
http://mdsauthor.thejohncarterfiles.com
, and Antonio Mendez and Jonna Mendez,
Spy Dust: Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations That Helped Win the Cold War
, with Bruce Henderson (New York: Atria Books, 2002), 120.

14.
This account is from a source with direct knowledge. Bearden and Risen,
Main Enemy
, 29, says “the tapes were blank,” but the situation was more complex; the cable had stopped transmitting useful information.

15.
Headquarters to Moscow station, April 1, 1985, no time-date stamp.

1.
A confidential source close to the family.

2.
Moscow station to headquarters, June 5, 1985, no time-date stamp.

3.
Mikeladze,
Ampule with Poison
.

4.
Libin, “Detained with Evidence.” Libin was a close family friend.

5.
Mikeladze,
Ampule with Poison
.

6.
Libin, “Detained with Evidence.”

7.
A confidential source close to the family.

8.
Headquarters to Moscow station, April 26, 1985, no time-date stamp.

9.
Royden, “Tolkachev,” 31.

10.
Moscow station to headquarters, May 23, 1985, 231358Z.

11.
Royden, “Tolkachev,” 31.

12.
Sellers, interview with author, Jan. 28, 2014. Sellers was a case officer in the Moscow station at the time.

13.
Wallace and Melton,
Spycraft
, 124, reproduces the CIA drawing of
trubka
.

14.
Moscow station to headquarters, June 13, 1985, 132347Z. Stombaugh is not identified by name in the cables but was identified in Bearden and Risen,
Main Enemy
, 11.

15.
Moscow station to headquarters, June 13, 1985, 132347Z, and June 14, 1985, 141518Z.

16.
Moscow station to headquarters, June 13, 1985, 132305Z.

17.
Ames was asked as part of his duties at the CIA to review the file on Tolkachev and the arrest of Stombaugh and to prepare an analysis of what had gone wrong but never finished it, according to Grimes and Vertefeuille,
Circle of Treason
, 77. The CIA continued to suffer major compromises in what became known as “the 1985 losses,” which extended into 1986 and beyond. Howard could not have accounted for all of them. Who or what had caused it? For a while, the CIA believed there might be a leak in communications. Headquarters and the Moscow station put in place new, strict precautions and compartmentation. But communications were not the problem. What the CIA did not know then is that Ames continued to sell out its agents and operations. Ames not only provided confirmation about Tolkachev and
ckelbow
but also betrayed a U.S. intelligence report on the
zaslon
radar and compromised the “Gerber rules” for vetting volunteers. He betrayed Dmitri Polyakov, the general in Soviet military intelligence who had been the first to experiment with Buster, the handheld communications device, and “Stas,” the guttural KGB officer who provided the sample of “spy dust,” later identified as Sergei Vorontsov. Both were executed. According to a damage assessment by the CIA, nine of the agents whom Ames identified on June 13 were executed. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said Ames admitted compromising over a hundred U.S. intelligence operations of the CIA, FBI, military, and allied governments. The committee said “his betrayal stands as the most egregious in American history.” Still more damage was caused by Robert Hanssen, an FBI specialist on counterintelligence, who offered his services to the KGB in October 1985. Hanssen and Ames remained Soviet agents for years to come. On Ames, see Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Assessment of the Aldrich H. Ames Espionage Case and Its Implications for U.S. Intelligence,” 53; also statement by the director of Central Intelligence, John Deutch, Dec. 7, 1995; and Grimes and Vertefeuille,
Circle of Treason
. For details on Hanssen, see “Statement of Facts,”
United States of America v. Robert Philip Hanssen
, July 3, 2001, Criminal Case No. 01-188-A, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division.

18.
Gerber, interview with author, Jan. 30, 2013.

19.
Headquarters to Moscow station, July 12, 1985, no time-date stamp.

20.
Headquarters to Moscow station, July 8, 1985, no time-date stamp.

1.
Gerber, interview with author, Jan. 30, 2013.

2.
In one of the truly bizarre moments of the Cold War, the CIA sent Ames—already secretly carrying out espionage for the KGB—to greet Yurchenko at Andrews Air Force Base, ride in the car with him, and begin the debriefing. Yurchenko was spilling KGB secrets in front of a CIA man who was most certainly playing them back to the KGB. Within months, Yurchenko grew disillusioned. He wanted his arrival in the United States to be kept secret, but it had leaked. An attempt to rekindle an old romance failed. On November 2, while at a restaurant in Georgetown, he walked away from his inexperienced CIA handler. On November 4, at a press conference at the Soviet embassy, he claimed he had been abducted in Rome, drugged, and held against his will. Then he flew back to Moscow. There has been speculation that Yurchenko was a diversion to distract attention from the Ames operation, but CIA officials discount this, saying his information was too sensitive. CIA officials believe Yurchenko was a genuine defector but simply changed his mind. CIA officials, interviews with author; transcript of Yurchenko news conference, via CREST, CIA-RDP88-01070R000301930005-9.

3.
In a memoir, Milton Bearden, who was Gerber’s deputy at the time, recalled that he and Gerber informed the FBI about Howard on Saturday, August 3, 1985, at a meeting in a parking lot in Virginia with James Geer, head of the FBI’s intelligence division. Bearden and Risen,
Main Enemy
, 83. Gerber also recalls the meeting in the parking lot and that he told the FBI who Howard was and why he believed that Howard was ROBERT. Geer said he did not have such a meeting that day in the parking lot with Gerber and Bearden but recalled meeting CIA officials somewhat later in a parking lot en route to being introduced to Yurchenko at a safe house. However, Geer said he does not recall discussing Howard then. Geer’s deputy, Phil Parker, said he recalled no such meeting and Geer had never mentioned it to him. Geer, telephone interview with author, Sept. 10, 2014. Parker, correspondence with author, Sept. 12, 2014.

4.
FBI report, 12; on the Swiss bank account, ibid., 289–90.

5.
Ibid., 309–12, reports on contents of the box that was excavated by the FBI on October 17, 1985.

6.
This account of the early FBI response is from Phil Parker, who was deputy assistant director for operations in the bureau’s intelligence division, responsible for counterintelligence and counterespionage investigations at the time. Parker, correspondence with author, Sept. 12, 2014.

7.
FBI, “Disappearance of Edward Lee Howard,” Albuquerque Division, administrative inquiry, Dec. 5, 1985, 3–4, released to author under FOIA. This report, on the actions of the FBI in monitoring Howard, is separate from the FBI investigation into Howard’s espionage.

8.
FBI report, 12.

9.
Ibid., 4, 17–18.

10.
Ibid., 20.

11.
FBI, “Disappearance of Edward Lee Howard,” 3–4.

12.
Ibid., 6–8.

13.
FBI report, 6. Howard claims in his memoir,
Safe House
, 91, that they had been watched since they were at the restaurant, but the FBI reports do not support this. Mary Howard later told the FBI that the Jack-in-the-Box worked because the FBI was following the Oldsmobile so far behind, but this is at odds with the FBI record, which shows the surveillance team did not follow them and only deployed later in the neighborhood. Howard said the taped call to his psychiatrist was his idea to put the FBI off his trail.

14.
Wise,
Spy Who Got Away
, 223.

15.
Details of the ticket, FBI report, 38.