Circle of Treason (13 page)

One morning Sandy, then chief of SE External Operations for Africa, received a cable from Lagos describing a walk-in who said, “I come from the land of the tall mountains.” The walk-in requested that this message be sent to Washington and promised they would know who he was. Sandy immediately recognized that it was Poleshchuk, the young KGB political intelligence officer whose case she had supported in Kathmandu in 1974. What were the odds that eleven years later they would be on the opposite ends of the same cable? Even more incredibly, Jeanne in Libreville received a copy of the cable and, like Sandy, recognized the case. As it happened, the CIA chief from Lagos was vacationing in Libreville to enjoy the beach and some French cuisine. His deputy thought he should be advised of the walk-in.

Headquarters immediately informed Lagos that they did indeed have a new source, provided them with the history of the case, and advised them to hold on for the ride of their life. This asset would try everyone's patience and the operation would require careful, detailed planning to ensure his safety.

After the first sit-down meeting with Poleshchuk it was clear that he was a changed man. Thankfully for all, headquarters' initial warnings were wrong and history had not repeated itself. Erased from Poleshchuk's personality were his earlier brashness, impulsiveness, immaturity, and self-centeredness. In its place his new handlers found a soft-spoken, reflective, cautious individual whose drinking had moderated and who would never consider a precipitous operational act that might compromise himself or his family. The “wild one” had metamorphosed into an ideal agent.
Additionally, he was no longer a political intelligence case officer but had switched to the counterintelligence line of the KGB, a specialty that would allow him fairly wide access to information on KGB penetrations of and operations against members of foreign intelligence services, particularly upon his reassignment to Moscow from Nigeria.

In late May 1985 a discussion took place at headquarters that would have a profound effect on the future of the Poleshchuk case. It involved his request for the $20,000 he was owed, his desire to take the money with him on his upcoming Moscow vacation, and his concern about smuggling the money past the KGB border control. Sandy and several others argued that the situation was a perfect opportunity to convince Poleshchuk of our ability to communicate securely inside the Soviet Union during his eventual permanent reassignment there, rather than sit back and wait another five or ten years before he was reassigned in the West.

The argument was straightforward. Just pass him the money via a dead drop that contained no spy paraphernalia and no secret messages. In a worst-case scenario, if he were caught with the money, the KGB would suspect criminal activity, but they would have no proof of espionage. There would be nothing to connect Poleshchuk to American intelligence assuming, of course, that the designated Moscow Station officer did not place the drop until he or she was surveillance free.

Rick Ames, as chief of the Soviet Branch of the Division's CI Group, had an advisory role in operational decisions involving division sources and developmental cases outside the Soviet Union. For the first time in Sandy's experience in the Africa Branch, Rick not only exercised his role on one of her cases, but did so forcefully. He was adamant in his disagreement on the passage of funds in Moscow and repeatedly argued that the potential risk of compromise to Poleshchuk was too great. Division chief Gerber sided with Sandy, and Poleshchuk agreed to retrieve his money via a Moscow dead drop.

In July 1985 Poleshchuk and his family departed Lagos for their vacation with an anticipated return to Nigeria in September. Poleshchuk failed to appear for his first scheduled recontact in late September. He was also a no-show for number two. Worry set in and on 2 October Milt Bearden, then deputy chief of SE Division, called Sandy to his office and showed her an excerpt of a cable from an unidentified field station. The reporting was obviously from a sensitive source and it was a DO officer's worst
nightmare. Poleshchuk had been arrested. It would be Sandy's job to inform his field case officers.

How do you convey the sense of loss and the fear that we individually or collectively may have made the mistake or mistakes that cost this man his life? After much thought, anguish, and inability to say anything else, the message was simple and pointed. “There is no easy way to say this. GTWEIGH has been arrested.” Everyone involved in the case from Lagos to Moscow to Langley remembered the day they learned of the tragedy. As we assumed at the time and learned later, the unmentionable consequences became a trial, a conviction on 12 June 1986, and a bullet to the head on 30 July 1986 for the thoughtful, reasoned man who by the time of our contact in Lagos had truly come to understand the risks on his path of treason.

What had gone wrong? The analysis began the next day. After a review of all aspects of the operation we concluded that the Moscow Station officer had been under KGB surveillance when he put the money down. Thus, the KGB was able to establish the link between Poleshchuk and the CIA. Ames had been right; the risk was too great. Nine years would pass before Sandy, the Moscow Station officer, Poleshchuk's Lagos case officers, Gerber, and others could publicly unload their burden of guilt for their agent's compromise. Poleshchuk's death was the direct result of Ames' treason. Early in his treasonous activities he informed the KGB about Poleshchuk's relationship with the CIA. Long before the Moscow Station officer loaded the dead drop, the KGB knew for whom it was intended, where it was located, and approximately when it would be retrieved.

General Rem Sergeyevich Krasilnikov, who directed KGB operations against CIA personnel and agents in Moscow from 1979 to 1992 while serving as chief of the American Department of the Second (Counterintelligence) Chief Directorate of the KGB, discusses the compromise of Poleshchuk in a recent book. Krasilnikov assigns initial responsibility for the loss of Poleshchuk to the CIA Moscow Station, which failed to note KGB surveillance and led them right to the spot where he placed a secret container for an unknown individual. On 2 August 1985 a heavy-set man of middle age, who turned out to be Poleshchuk, cleared the dead drop. In a subsequent investigation and trial, the details of Poleshchuk's treason were revealed. Not surprisingly,
Krasilnikov makes no mention of Ames' role in Poleshchuk's capture and, to the contrary, calls Ames a “scapegoat” for the failures of Moscow Station.
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However, Viktor Ivanovich Cherkashin, the senior KGB counterintelligence officer in Washington in 1985 and Ames' first case officer, contradicts Krasilnikov's account of the Poleshchuk loss. According to Cherkashin, Ames betrayed Poleshchuk. The KGB's story of the latter's unmasking was nothing more than an ornate fabrication by the Second Chief Directorate.
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Ames, of course, freely admits that he betrayed Poleshchuk to the KGB.

Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Mikhaylovich Piguzov, a KGB political intelligence officer code-named GTJOGGER, was recruited by the CIA in Indonesia in 1978 through a bizarre chain of events. A CIA case officer had developed a close friendship with Piguzov that subsequently led to a recruitment approach. Piguzov agreed to cooperate with his CIA friend, and headquarters and the field geared up to handle the new source. Then everything fell apart. Amid photographers and the local press, the Soviet ambassador to Indonesia lodged an official protest with the Indonesian government, accusing the United States of attempting to subvert Soviet diplomat Vladimir Piguzov. There was shock and disbelief in our office in Jakarta and at CIA headquarters. How could we have been so wrong about the nature of our officer's relationship with Piguzov and his commitment to cooperate?

Fortunately, all was not lost. Several days later Piguzov contacted our officer, informed him that he told his KGB security officer about our approach, and was now ready to work for the CIA. In explanation Piguzov reasoned that KGB counterintelligence would never suspect him of being an American spy because he had reported our advances, claiming that he had turned them down. He was now above reproach.

For the remainder of his tour in Jakarta Piguzov provided information on KGB officers and agent operations in Indonesia, to include those being run by the KGB residency in Jakarta and the sub-residency in Surabaya as well as in other Southeast Asian countries. One of the most important agent leads provided by Piguzov was that to David Henry Barnett. Barnett, a former CIA officer, had resigned in 1970 after completion of a tour in
Indonesia. He remained in the area and, in late 1976, following the failure of a business venture and faced with large debt, he approached the KGB and offered to sell them classified information. During the period of his cooperation with the Soviets he provided details on a CIA collection program targeted against Soviet military weapons, and identified CIA case officers and assets. The KGB wanted him to re-apply to the CIA but, faced with the prospect of being polygraphed, he demurred. He had, however, put out feelers to other U.S. government components.

Barnett was indicted on espionage charges on 24 October 1980. He pled guilty and was sentenced to eighteen years in federal prison. He was paroled in 1990 after serving approximately ten years.
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After completion of his tour in Jakarta, Piguzov returned to Moscow, where he was assigned to the Andropov Institute, the KGB training academy. He eventually assumed the senior position of secretary of the Communist Party at the Institute, a position he held at the time of his February 1987 arrest. Having been given up by Ames in the summer of 1985, Piguzov was subsequently tried and executed.

Boris Nikolayevich Yuzhin, encrypted KAHLUA by the FBI and GTT WINE by the CIA, is one of the luckiest men alive. A KGB officer in San Francisco under TASS journalist cover, he was recruited by the FBI in 1979 and run by them for the next three years. The CIA played a subordinate but important role in this operation, because one of our officers, Colin T, participated in some of the meetings to obtain information for dissemination to the U.S. intelligence community. We also provided technical support in the form of a miniature spy camera that Yuzhin used to photograph documents. Alas, he was subsequently obliged to confess to his FBI handler that he had lost this camera somewhere in the Soviet consulate.

In 1982, Yuzhin returned to Moscow for a new assignment. His FBI handlers did not want the CIA to run him in the Soviet Union, and he had not been issued any means of internal communication. We heard nothing about him until the defection of KGB CI officer Vitaliy Sergeyevich Yurchenko at the beginning of August 1985. Yurchenko reported that the KGB had found the spy camera in a recreation room in the Soviet consulate and had launched an extensive CI investigation. This
inquiry was later bolstered by some vague reporting from Edward Lee Howard, the former CIA officer who volunteered to the KGB in 1984. Eventually the field of suspects had been narrowed to a very few. One of those was Yuzhin.

Yuzhin was arrested in 1986, tried and convicted, and sentenced to prison. He was released in 1991 as part of Boris Yeltsin's general amnesty. In retrospect, it is amazing that he survived. He was first compromised by his own carelessness, then by the treasonous activities of the CIA's Howard and Ames, and the FBI's Pitts and Hanssen.