Circle of Treason (6 page)

The study also pointed out that Illegals operations were expensive and dangerous, and were generally only undertaken against priority targets. There were no hordes of Illegals around the world. These well-documented conclusions provoked numerous discussions and had a major impact.

A third study followed a short time later. It focused on KGB residencies abroad and clearly showed that SE did not consider KGB officers to be invincible superior beings. This study, written by Tom Blackshear and based on reporting from sensitive KGB sources, demonstrated that KGB residencies abroad were sometimes poorly managed, that they exaggerated their operational successes in reporting to Moscow, often based their reporting on overt press articles instead of clandestinely obtained intelligence, and made their share of mistakes in running operations.

Jeanne's study on the GRU made some of the same points. While GRU officers had many of the attributes of conventional military officers, and were dogged in their pursuit of human-source intelligence, they were also narrowly educated and had little understanding of the world outside
the Soviet Union. Further, because the GRU had no responsibility for counterintelligence, GRU officers often were not aware of the capabilities of Western services and the pitfalls that a Soviet intelligence officer could encounter in the course of his operations.

In 1973 or 1974, while John Horton was chief and Dick Stolz his deputy, the Soviet Bloc Division was renamed the Soviet and East European Division. This was a recognition that Albania and Yugoslavia and, to a lesser degree, Romania, could no longer be considered “Bloc” countries. What is interesting is that the change took place while Angleton was still in power and pushing the theory that any Yugoslav and Chinese breaks with Moscow were merely a sham. To a great extent, SE Division by this time simply ignored the Angletonian interpretation of world events. To many he had become a joke, a sick joke certainly, but a joke nevertheless.

THE POLYAKOV CASE—THE BEGINNINGS

D
MITRIY
F
EDOROVICH
P
OLYAKOV
, a Soviet military intelligence officer, was the highest-ranking spy ever run against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In 1961, during his second tour of duty with the Soviet military mission to the United Nations in New York, he sought contact with the U.S. government. Working for a brief period with the FBI and then with the CIA, Polyakov spied for the United States for nearly twenty years—in New York, Rangoon, and New Delhi, and while assigned to GRU headquarters in Moscow. During that time, he rose in rank from lieutenant colonel to one-star general.
¹

Polyakov's clandestine contact with us ended in 1980, when he took an official trip to Moscow from his post in New Delhi, and never returned. While we became ever more concerned and anxious over this turn of events, we had tremendous confidence in his ability as a professional intelligence officer to handle any possible security or political problems he might be facing in Moscow.

Many years later we learned that our faith in his ability was justified. It was not he who erred. Polyakov's path had crossed with two American traitors who volunteered to the Soviets—FBI special agent Robert Hanssen and CIA officer Aldrich Ames. Hanssen's 1979 reporting probably resulted in Polyakov's return to Moscow in 1980. Ames' treachery undoubtedly resulted in Polyakov's 1986 arrest and 1988 execution. Had it not been for these two men, Polyakov would have been one of the most successful spies
of all time, his identity and accomplishments known only to a privileged few. Regrettably, he did not live to see the end of the Cold War, to which he had made a major contribution.

According to official FBI memoranda provided to the CIA in 1965, Lieutenant Colonel Polyakov approached General Edward O'Neil, commanding officer of the First Army headquartered in New York in November 1961 and asked to be put in touch with “American intelligence.” Shortly thereafter O'Neil facilitated the introduction of Polyakov to FBI Special Agent John Mabey at a reception to which Polyakov and others had been invited.
²
During a brief exchange Polyakov told Mabey that he had changed his mind and wanted no further contact. Mabey refused to accept Polyakov's rebuff and continued his pursuit, occasionally appearing unexpectedly in Polyakov's path during his daily routine. In January 1962 Mabey's persistence paid off. Polyakov agreed to enter into a clandestine relationship with the U.S. government and in the authors' opinion this special agent deserves the credit for the subsequent decades of the Polyakov, FBI, and CIA cooperation. Meetings between the two professionals continued for the next five-plus months both in New York and in the
Queen Elizabeth
as Polyakov and his family sailed to Europe en route to Moscow and his reassignment to GRU headquarters.

Polyakov's counterintelligence production throughout the New York phase of the operation was noteworthy. In addition to the identification of GRU and KGB officers in the United States, he provided the names of GRU Illegals who had been dispatched to the United States and leads to the following four American servicemen who were spying for the GRU, each providing varying levels of classified information as their assignments would indicate: Jack Dunlap, a U.S. Army sergeant assigned to the National Security Agency; Herbert Boeckenhaupt, a U.S. Air Force staff sergeant and communications technician; William Whalen, a U.S. Army officer working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Nelson Drummond, a U.S. Navy enlisted man who served tours of duty abroad and in the United States.

The FBI did not officially inform the CIA of Polyakov's recruitment until June 1962, when they needed CIA assistance. Polyakov was scheduled for reassignment to Moscow in several months and agreed to maintain communications through ads placed in the
New York Times
as well as dead drops and signal sites that only the CIA's Moscow Station could
provide and service. Admittedly, it would not be surprising to learn that Angleton was unofficially told of Polyakov's recruitment either in January 1962 or in the course of the next several months, given his close relationship with several high-level FBI officers.

Moscow Station provided the FBI with the requested sites, some of which Polyakov accepted and some of which he rejected, as became his pattern throughout our years of cooperation. However, despite repeated attempts by the FBI to initiate recontact in Moscow through
New York Times
ads, Polyakov remained silent until early 1965, when Moscow Station personnel observed a marked signal site and unloaded a dead drop from Polyakov. The drop included a message in which he said he was well and would probably soon be reassigned abroad.

Polyakov arrived in Rangoon in November 1965 as Soviet military attaché and GRU resident. Initially, the FBI met with Polyakov in Burma. This arrangement was groundbreaking—the CIA ceding its authority to the FBI for the handling of a Soviet intelligence officer abroad. In reality the CIA had no alternative, because the FBI recruited Polyakov and it made operational sense for them to re-establish the contact.

To document the agreement, the two organizations adopted a Memorandum of Understanding, which detailed the responsibilities of each in the operation. In brief, the CIA said it would provide any and all field support Mabey required, including communications with his headquarters.

Mabey re-established contact with Polyakov in January 1966; however, after four and a half months it became clear that this arrangement could not continue. A simple but basic problem had developed—a communications barrier. Mabey did not speak Russian. He conducted his meetings with Polyakov in English, but Polyakov's English had deteriorated since departing the United States in 1962. While the language problem did not affect all portions of the debriefings, it did not allow for accurate and thorough discussions on specialized topics such as Soviet military weaponry and other priority collection requirements of the time. The FBI, therefore, decided to turn the operation over to the CIA.

The CIA selected Jim F, an SE Division case officer with a superb command of Russian, to replace Mabey in Rangoon. Jim was a tall, thin man who wore thick glasses and, with the exception of a neatly pressed white shirt with frayed cuffs, always dressed in black—shoes, suit, and tie. He usually held a non-filtered cigarette in his hand, continually dropping
ashes and embers that resulted in scorched fabric and numerous holes in his clothes.

Jim was a man of tremendous intellectual capacity, a graduate of Yale who was well read and knowledgeable in a myriad of fields, particularly the Soviet intelligence services. He did not suffer fools kindly, often looking over his coke bottle–thick lenses to lecture any officer in the vicinity on how to conduct operations against the KGB and GRU. He came across as an opinionated professor who insisted on complete control in his classroom—which consisted of his co-workers and, on occasion, his superiors. While he was usually correct in his pronouncements, this approach did not win him many friends or admirers.

Unknown to Polyakov as he awaited contact with a new case officer, his greatest enemy at the time was not the KGB and not a mole in the CIA or FBI, but a group of people within the organization to which he had entrusted his secrets and his life. Before Polyakov had met or exchanged a word with any CIA representative, these individuals had concluded that he was under the control of the KGB and was not a legitimate penetration of the GRU. Rather, he was an enemy to be feared and certainly not to be trusted. Jim F shared these views. The group even believed it possible that the KGB might try to kidnap him, and he was authorized a firearm for protection. In the minds of these CIA officers, it followed logically that Polyakov's personal security was meaningless and that he was expendable.

How and why did the CIA conclude that a source who had already provided American intelligence with valuable information was a fraud? The answer is not simple and has been the subject of several books that have detailed its history and effect on U.S. intelligence collection against the Soviet Union in general and the personnel of the CIA and FBI in particular. We will not recount this history at length here, but only address how Polyakov fell into this dark hole. The story of other sources will follow.

Unfortunately for Polyakov, he volunteered to the FBI within a year of Golitsyn's 1961 defection. In the eyes of some, Golitsyn's prediction of false defectors had become reality and Polyakov's approach was proof of the KGB plot. First Angleton and then many others forgot, did not want to believe, or did not have the courage to point out that there was no factual basis for Golitsyn's predictions and that they could be nothing more than the ramblings of a paranoid and egotistical defector. Thus, when the
CIA sent Jim F to Rangoon, he had orders to prove that Polyakov was a KGB plant.

One cannot imagine two more different personalities: Polyakov, a military man meticulous in his dress and appearance; Jim F, a civilian with nicotine-stained fingers and teeth, and, in his own words, only owning three suits in his professional career; Polyakov, an accomplished sportsman, with a passion for hunting, fishing, and other outdoor activities; Jim, more comfortable with books and an audience of like-minded dilettantes; Polyakov, an occasional social drinker; Jim, a martini man who enjoyed his silver bullets; Polyakov, an expert in the nuts and bolts world of spy gear and internal communications techniques; and Jim, the big-picture thinker who enjoyed the search for answers to “what if” questions. We can only guess at Polyakov's personal reaction to Jim and to a lesser extent Jim's reaction to Polyakov. Jim was always closemouthed on any discussion of Polyakov the man, and even years later would simply comment that he found Polyakov to be a cold person with beady eyes.

In sum, Jim viewed the operation as an adversarial relationship. To Polyakov it was a business partnership. He provided information the U.S. government needed and it, in turn, fulfilled his requests for career assistance and remuneration. He understood his role and recognized more than anyone the great risk he had taken when he volunteered to the U.S. government in New York in 1961. He was the agent who just happened to be a Soviet intelligence officer and Jim was his case officer. Jim asked the questions and he answered them. Totally unaware of the controversy surrounding him, the only hint of frustration Polyakov displayed during his two years with Jim was with Jim's preoccupation with requirements on GRU Illegals operations of the 1950s.

From 1956 to 1959 Polyakov had been the GRU headquarters desk officer responsible for GRU Illegals sent to the United States, and in this position he knew their true names, false identities, and operational objectives. He even participated in their mission training. John Mabey had debriefed Polyakov on these cases in 1961–62 in New York and again during their recontact in Burma in 1966, but Jim covered the same ground in greater detail and in meeting after meeting. For Polyakov this was history, perhaps intellectually interesting but certainly not of critical or strategic importance to the United States. Some of the cases went back ten years, and none was active. The GRU Illegal in question had either returned to
Moscow or was under FBI control. Polyakov felt that valuable time was being wasted; he had knowledge of many items of more importance to provide the Americans—Soviet military and economic assistance to the North Vietnamese, Soviet-Chinese relations, GRU agent operations in Southeast Asia, GRU collection requirements against the United States, identities of GRU officers worldwide, and an array of other subjects.