Circle of Treason (31 page)

Although Rick tried to keep the relationship somewhat discreet because people knew that he was married, they did go places together and Rick took her to at least one office party. By the end of his tour, the romance had become quite serious.

Rick left Mexico City after serving a minimum tour of two years. Among other shortcomings, he never obtained a useful grasp of Spanish, and he never brought any of his contacts to operational fruition. Leaving Rosario behind, he headed for Washington and a job at CIA headquarters.

Again, we see the hand of fate. Many have asked why Rick, after a lackluster performance in Mexico, was chosen to head up one of the most sensitive branches in SE Division. Rod Carlson was the group chief in SE who was responsible for three branches. One branch, headed by Jeanne at this time, was responsible for all CI production from defectors and in-place Soviet and East European sources. The second branch was responsible for monitoring all East European developmental operations and recruited sources from a CI point of view. The third, now headed by Rick, had the same responsibilities for Soviet cases. Jobs in these branches, important though they were in the overall scheme of things, were more geared to persons with an analytical or research bent. Therefore they were not always highly popular with operations officers who liked on-the-street work and often there were few applicants for vacant positions. As an officer with overseas operational experience against the Soviet target and observable intellectual capabilities, Rick was a strong candidate and thus got the job.

Not long after Rick had settled into his Washington job, he was joined by Rosario. The precipitating event was the death of her father in December 1983. Rosario had been close to her father, and his death deeply affected her. Rick did his best to console her long distance, but she soon gave up her job and moved in with him in his rented apartment in the Virginia suburb of Pimmit Hills. His wife Nan was still in New York and, for all practical purposes, their marriage was over.

Now Rosario no longer had an income. In her defense, it should be pointed out that she was in the United States on a visitor's visa, which would have limited her job opportunities. She also had to return to Colombia every few months to renew her visa. However, it seems that she spent her ample free time spending Rick's money. For a time, Rosario's mother visited them and joined in the spending spree. As always, Rosario
wanted only the best for herself. One cannot imagine her shopping at Wal-Mart. Nordstrom and Nieman-Marcus were more her style. The same applied to dining out. No McDonald's, but evenings spent at the Palm, Galileo, and other upscale restaurants.

As time went on, Rick could see himself falling ever more deeply into debt as a result of Rosario's extravagances. Moreover, he was still married to Nan and knew he would have to make some sort of financial settlement with her. She held pension rights to his salary and they owned a townhouse together in Reston, a middle-class Virginia suburb. Along with all this, he could see that he might have reached an impasse in his career. It was still not clear that he had seen his last promotion; however, it was evident that he was not a candidate for fast-track advancement.

Whether there were any precipitating factors is not known, but by the early spring of 1985 Ames had decided that the soundest way out of his financial difficulties was to commit espionage. It is difficult to comprehend that a person would take this drastic step, but the psychological studies of Americans who have committed this crime show that they have one factor in common: narcissism. In their minds, what is important is self-gratification or self-interest. In order to achieve their selfish goals, they generally require substantial sums of money. That they are betraying their colleagues, their organization, the lives of other people, and their country as a whole seems not to weigh in the balance. From what we know, this appears to be true of most of the important American spies of the past thirty years, although revenge can also be a factor, as in the case of Edward Lee Howard, and the rare ideological spy, such as Cuban spy Ana Montes, still exists.

As outlined in
Chapter 14
, on 16 April 1985, Ames had scheduled a meeting with Soviet embassy arms control specialist Sergey Dmitriyevich Chuvakhin. This was a sanctioned contact, and the planned meeting was known to the FBI and CIA. However, Ames intended to use this contact as a cover for making his approach to the KGB. Ames had suggested to Chuvakhin that they get together for drinks at the Mayflower Hotel, a short distance from the Soviet embassy, and Chuvakhin had agreed. Ames showed up on time, but Chuvakhin never appeared.

Fortified by several vodka martinis while waiting for Chuvakhin, Ames eventually strolled over to the embassy. He knew that the receptionist at the entrance would be a KGB employee and he handed this
individual an envelope he had intended to pass to Chuvakhin at the Mayflower. The outer envelope was addressed to the local KGB chief in true name. Inside was a second envelope, this time addressed to the same KGB chief by his operational pseudonym. This was designed to get the KGB's attention because no one outside the KGB would be privy to this name. Ames had of course gotten it from the CIA/FBI debriefing of either Sergey Motorin or Valeriy Martynov, the two penetrations of the KGB in Washington. (Throughout, we provide the story of these events as Ames told them to the FBI after his sentencing, supplemented by other information on Chuvakhin and local KGB CI chief Cherkashin compiled by the FBI at the time. The version given by Cherkashin in his recent book varies considerably in the details. According to his own statement, Cherkashin retired in 1991, and subsequently had no access to KGB records. Therefore, while the broad outline of events is correct, his recollection of individual episodes may be faulty.)
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The double-wrapped envelope contained a message. According to Ames, he provided information on two or three cases that the CIA Station in Moscow was handling. He says he believed that these cases were being run against us by the KGB, and that he was not giving information that would harm anyone. They would, however, help to establish his bona fides as a CIA insider. Also included in the envelope was a two-page telephone list, containing the names of all SE Division management personnel down to the deputy branch chief level. He says that he underlined his own name because he had no intention of concealing his identity. The message asked for fifty thousand dollars in recompense for the information he had provided. He had chosen this sum because, while he was in Mexico, the KGB had made a recruitment approach to a CIA transcriber/translator, and had offered him that amount. Ames thought therefore that this would sound like a reasonable offer to them. He also suggested that Chuvakhin be used as a go-between because they already had an overt relationship that, halting as it was, had been approved by the FBI and CIA.

Having made his overture, Ames settled down to wait. He knew that no decision could be made locally; the facts would be sent to Moscow, and Moscow would determine what to do next. From time to time, Ames called Chuvakhin with an innocuous-sounding suggestion that they get together, knowing that if the decision had not yet been made, Chuvakhin would put off meeting with him. Then, in mid-May, the breakthrough
came. Chuvakhin, who had previously never taken any initiative in the relationship, called Ames and suggested that they get together for a drink at the Soviet embassy and then proceed to lunch at a local restaurant.

On 15 May, Ames showed up at the Soviet embassy as scheduled. There Chuvakhin turned him over to Cherkashin. Because Cherkashin was afraid that the FBI could have bugged the room in which they met, or possibly that Ames was a provocation and had come to the meeting wearing a recording device, they merely exchanged written messages and did not speak out loud to each other. Cherkashin informed Ames that the KGB accepted his offer and that he would be paid the fifty thousand dollars he had requested. Further, they agreed that Chuvakhin could be used as the go-between for the time being.

There was no lunch with Chuvakhin that noon. It was postponed for two days. Then the routine was established. Ames and Chuvakhin would lunch periodically. Each would carry a shopping bag to the lunch, and the bags would be exchanged. Ames' bag would contain classified documents and perhaps an operational message for the KGB; Chuvakhin's bag would contain press handouts from the Soviet embassy, plus perhaps money, Russian vodka, and a message from the KGB. After each lunch, Ames would write up an official CIA communication for the FBI and for CIA's Washington Station, with a ho-hum account of the non-operational aspects of the meeting. His aim was to make the contact seem mildly worthwhile, so that he would not be told to break it off, while at the same time not making it sound so promising that it would attract undue interest.

According to our best calculations, Ames passed Chuvakhin what has become known subsequently as the “big dump” on 13 June. This was a collection of documents that provided information on all of the major cases that the CIA and FBI were running against the Soviet target—information that directly led to the deaths of a number of these assets. The KGB appreciated the value of Ames' offering because a few months later he received an operational message from them stating: “Congratulations, you are now a millionaire!” The KGB had set aside two million dollars for him.

If we accept Ames' statements that the big dump took place on 13 June, then we have a puzzle. Oleg Gordievsky, the deputy KGB resident in London and a longtime British source, was recalled to Moscow
on 17 May and interrogated, although not arrested. Either Ames has, innocently or deliberately, given the wrong date, or Gordievsky was betrayed by someone or something else.

To deepen the mystery, Cherkashin tells a hard-to-swallow story about a “Washington-based British journalist” providing the KGB with information that tipped Cherkashin off that Gordievsky was working for the British, and Cherkashin told his KGB boss about this case personally during a visit to Moscow in the spring of 1985.
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This simply does not fit with reality. First of all, as far as the FBI has ever been able to determine, Cherkashin did not leave for Moscow until 20 May, while Gordievsky was recalled three days earlier. Secondly, the Washington-based British journalist has all the earmarks of being a false lead planted by Russian intelligence to cover up the real story. Surely Cherkashin had to submit his manuscript to the SVR for approval before he published it, just as we have to do.

One could speculate that the real story of Gordievsky's downfall has not yet come out, and that the Russians have some good reason for obfuscating. One plausible explanation is that Ames gave up Gordievsky in April when he made his first approach. However, in that event, why are the Russians trying to fool us more than ten years later? Ames readily admits that he gave up Gordievsky, but believes that it took place in June, at the time of the big dump. Surely the date is not important enough to warrant concocting a false scenario. As far as the two of us are concerned, Gordievsky's compromise still remains a mystery.

On 31 July, Ames and Chuvakhin had a planned lunch meeting at Chadwick's in Georgetown. To Ames' surprise and consternation, they were joined by other Soviet officials, including Cherkashin. One reason for placing the two in the same place at the same time had to do with KGB worries about the CIA's polygraph requirements and their unfortunate attempts to solve the problem. If asked during a polygraph examination whether he had met any KGB officer in Washington, Ames could reply in the affirmative and point to this luncheon. However, despite the KGB's best efforts, Ames was faced with a dilemma. Up to now he had been dutifully reporting each outing with Chuvakhin, who was not an intelligence officer and not of high interest to the FBI. If he reported this contact honestly, to include Cherkashin's presence, it would shine a spotlight on him, something he needed to avoid. If he reported the meeting
but stated that only he and Chuvakhin were present, he had to consider that Cherkashin was the focus of intense FBI coverage. What if the FBI had him under surveillance that day, and tracked him to Chadwick's?

When faced with this knotty problem, Ames did what he often did—he procrastinated. Indeed, he never wrote a report on this meeting. He had good excuses for getting behind in his write-ups, because on 1 August KGB CI officer Vitaliy Yurchenko defected and Ames was chosen to be one of his debriefers. Also, he was deep in wedding plans. Thus, despite repeated requests he managed to avoid putting anything on paper. And soon he was in full-time Italian language training, away from the headquarters building except on Fridays and hard to reach by telephone, because he was in class.

Some have tried to give a sinister cast to the connection between Ames and Yurchenko. However, Ames did not choose himself for the job of debriefer; it was chosen for him by division management, probably because he was knowledgeable about the KGB, had some Russian, and was available. Furthermore, he was only one of a team of three CIA debriefers, with the FBI fielding its own team. To cap it off, Yurchenko had round-the-clock guards from the CIA's Office of Security. (As it happened, Dan Payne, a prominent figure in this book, was one of them.) In sum, before his defection Yurchenko could not know the circumstances he would be held under, and Ames only knew after the event that he would be involved in the debriefing. The two did have one or two semiprivate conversations at an early point but there's no reason to think they touched on Ames' espionage activities. And in September Ames left his debriefing activities to start Italian language lessons and had no further contact with Yurchenko.

Rick and Rosario's wedding celebration was a low-key affair, although he now had enough money to allow for more of a splash. It took place on 10 August, not long after his divorce was finalized. The ceremony was held in a Unitarian Church. It was attended only by family members and a few close friends, including Diana Worthen. Rosario was a Roman Catholic but the Unitarian Church was selected because of Rick's divorce. Rick himself is not known to have been a churchgoer, or to have had any particular interest in organized religion once he reached adulthood. By this time, Rosario had become a U.S. citizen, which was required by CIA regulations. She had also successfully completed a CIA polygraph.