Authors: Brian Haig
“My manner was fine. You don’t get it.”
“What don’t I get?”
“He needed the shock treatment.”
“They teach you that in law school?”
“Our client is drowning in self-pity. Hard to detect, I know, but the clues were there.”
“And the shock treatment is supposed to . . . what?”
“To sober him to the realities of his situation.”
“But it has nothing to do with your dislike of our client?”
“Not a thing,” I replied, halfway believing myself. I asked, “And what about you? Was all that true? Everything you told him in there?”
“Everything?”
“Did you actually turn down Harvard Law?”
“I never applied. That’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
“And your IQ and won-lost record?”
“I might’ve gotten them mixed up.”
“Oh shit. Please tell me you really speak Russian.”
She smiled. “Are you questioning my integrity?”
A
t 8:00
A.M.
, William Morrison was shackled to the table as Katrina flipped on the tape recorder she’d thoughtfully brought along. As with the night before, Morrison appeared moody and disgruntled, and like my whole life before this moment, I could barely stand to look at this pompous, bullying jerk.
I began, “Okay, General, start with this. If you’re innocent, why do you think they arrested you?”
“I told you, Drummond, I don’t fucking know. I never betrayed this country . . . I swear I didn’t.”
Katrina placed a hand on my arm and interjected, “We’re your attorneys. You’ve got our presumption of innocence. Help us think this through.”
“All right. Maybe somebody was jealous of me.”
Actually, I knew him, and he didn’t have my presumption of innocence, so I said, “Jealous enough to do this?” punctuating my words just so.
“Maybe . . . why not? Sure.”
Katrina quickly said, “Okay, it’s a possibility. Can you think of others?”
“I was framed.”
She asked, “By who?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be sitting here, would I?”
“Oh, Christ!” I exploded.
Katrina looked at him, then at me and asked, “Are you two enjoying this?”
I tried to look innocent. “Enjoying what?”
“This shit has to stop,” she said. “Why don’t I step out of the room so you two can pound the crap out of each other?”
Morrison said, “He needs to remember my rank. I won’t put up with his disrespectful attitude. He’s exploiting my position.”
I replied, “Oh, horseshit.”
“You,” she said, pointing at Morrison, “you asked him to be your attorney. Why?”
“I needed a JAG officer.”
“There are hundreds of JAG officers. You asked for him.”
“I was fucking desperate.”
“So desperate you asked for the guy who used to date your wife? Help me out here.”
“Okay, because he’s a prick . . . a first-rate prick. In a situation like mine, that’s what you look for. A real bastard.”
“It sounds to me like you know him well.” She began whirling an arm through the air, like she was reeling words out of his mouth. “Because you were with him in Lebanon and know he’s not a guy who’ll take no for an answer? And you know he’s tough and resourceful and smart, right?”
I smiled and nodded. That was me all right. No question about it—the girl had read me like a book.
“You’re overstating it.”
“Which part did I overstate?”
“All right,” he sullenly conceded. “I read about a few of his cases. I know he’s a good lawyer.”
“And you.” She wheeled that finger in my face. “Could we be having a macho pissing contest here?”
Now Morrison was smiling, and I replied, “Hell no.”
“Eddie Golden’s going to love you two.” She looked at him and explained, “He’s the stud they picked to prosecute you. Wait till you see him. The military has nine men on death row, and he made the reservations for four of them. You’re on his calendar as number five.”
This background had come from Imelda, I realized. She faced me and said, “And he’s got a six-month head start on you. Not to mention all those people he’s got working under him. So cut the shit.”
Wow. Morrison and I stared at each other.
Nobody spoke.
I finally asked, “So, sir, did you have any indication you were under suspicion?”
He replied, “Good question, Major. No, my first indication of this whole thing was the day they arrested me in Moscow.”
“You saw no signs, nobody hinted . . . ?”
“Never.”
“Where were you assigned in 1988?”
He stared up at the ceiling. “That was the year before I got married . . . Washington.”
“Doing what?”
“Working at the CIA.”
“Isn’t that an unusual place for an Army officer to work?”
“Yes and no. Each year the Army selects a few officers to work in other intelligence agencies.” He couldn’t stop himself from adding, “It’s a plum job for elite officers.”
Did I really have to put up with this? “And where were you working in the CIA?” I politely inquired.
“Soviet Affairs.”
Having already reviewed his record I knew he was a Soviet Foreign Affairs officer, had been sent by the Army to the language school in California, then for a graduate degree in Russian
studies at Harvard, and then spent six months at the Russian Center in Garmisch, Germany. Presumably, Morrison did well at his training, as the Army tries to hide its dunces and uglies rather than assign them to other agencies.
I asked, “Did you have access to knowledge that would’ve been helpful to the Soviets?”
“I saw everything.”
Katrina said, “Describe everything.”
“Military assessments, what you’d call spy reports, the most sensitive satellite shots and electronic intercepts. If I asked for it, I got it.”
I asked, “Was this material controlled?”
“There were safeguards. You’d get a paper with a control number stamped on it, so you had to keep the original. The office copiers had control methods, too. But sneak in a camera and take a picture, and nobody would ever know.”
“Like Ames did?”
“Exactly.”
Katrina asked, “Did you have any dealings with the Soviets?”
“Not then, no. I got occasional invitations to cocktail parties at the Soviet embassy, but I always reported those contacts to the Agency.”
I leaned forward. “Did you ever go?”
“Are you kidding? I knew why they were inviting me.”
“Why?”
“To see if I was vulnerable.”
When I didn’t reply to that, he continued, “They first try to establish social contact with a target. They charm you. They probe to see if you’re disaffected, or need money, or are vulnerable to flattery or sexual overtures. They make their try, and if it works, the game’s on. If it doesn’t, they invite someone else to the party.”
Katrina asked, “Did you know any Soviets?”
“A few. Mary’s job put her in much more contact than mine. That rubbed off, though.”
I asked, “Why? What was Mary doing?”
He stopped and leaned back in his chair. “Wait a goddamn minute, Drummond. I’m not dragging her into this.”
I drew a deep breath and very nicely said, “Neither am I, General. But yours wasn’t just any marriage. There are all kinds of possible intersections we’ll need to sort out.”
He considered this. “You’re not going to involve her in this?”
“She’s already involved. She’s interviewing lawyers. Would you prefer I learn these things from Eddie Golden in the courtroom?”
A truculent scowl shifted into place. “Okay, okay. But you better be damned careful with what I tell you about her activities. You got that?”
Surely, this was the appropriate moment to remind him that I used to sleep with her, too. Okay, right . . . perhaps not.
He said, “Mary was a case officer. She was controlling some assets.”
Katrina said, “Like spies . . . agents . . . targets?”
“All the above. Mary was in a cell that worked the Soviet embassy and the large contingent at the UN.”
“And how did that bring
you
in contact with Soviet citizens?”
“It didn’t. I knew who she was meeting with, though. I’m only warning you about this in case any of those people were exposed.”
“How about 1989? What were you doing then?” Katrina asked.
“That was the year the disintegration began. Suddenly all the intelligence agencies were critically short of people.”
“Why?”
“Because Eastern Europe and the Soviet republics were coming apart at the seams.”
“Tell us about that,” I said.
“We called it the Big Bang. It happened so fast that Gorbachev’s own apparatchiks couldn’t understand it.
“Neither could we. Over fifty years we’d built this massive intelligence kingdom to watch the Soviet Union. Presidents and their advisers became spoiled. The thing we were watching moved half an inch and legions of analysts immediately wrote thousands of papers to explain why. We were experts at watching water freeze.”
Katrina scratched her head. “What did that have to do with you and your responsibilities?”
“The White House was screaming for information, and we couldn’t keep up. I was rushed through the Georgian desk, then the Azerbaijani desk, and then the Chechen desk.”
“Doing what?”
“Producing assessments. I was flying to those places, interviewing officials, meeting with country teams, trying to get a handle on it.”
I suggested, “And meeting Soviet citizens?”
“Of course. I went to Moscow five or six times that year and I met with plenty of Soviet officials in the republics.”
“Did you form any special relationships?” I asked, slyly homing in on the one relevant fact I’d learned from the news releases.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you form any long-term bonds with Russians?”
He suddenly looked very nervous. He rubbed his lips with a finger and was obviously struggling with something. Uh-oh. He replied, “Drummond, I, uh, I can’t discuss this with you.”
“You have no choice. Besides, I’m not only your lawyer, I’m an officer with a Top Secret clearance. And Katrina had her Top Secret restored last night.”
He studied our faces. “You don’t get it. I could get court-martialed for
whispering
this name.”
“No shit?” said Katrina, in every regard an appropriate sentiment.
Still we had to weather thirty seconds of hand-wringing,
heavy breathing, and idiotic indecision before he said, “Have you ever heard of Alexi Arbatov?”
“No.”
“Alexi is currently the number two man in the SVR, one of the two agencies that split out of the old KGB . . . the one with responsibility over external affairs.” He paused in a transparent attempt at melodrama. “I met Alexi that year . . . I cultivated him.”
“Cultivated?” Katrina asked.
“It means I didn’t succeed in fully turning him. But I got him halfway there.”
“And halfway there is . . . what?” I asked.
“Alexi sometimes passes me information. It’s always his choice and usually his volition. In our jargon, he’s an uncontrolled asset.”
“He still is?” I asked.
“Yes. I was his controller. Eventually we brought in Mary also. I was assigned as the military attaché in Moscow and she was assigned as the station chief to put us right next door to Alexi.”
I was gaping, mouth hung open, the whole nine yards. Morrison was claiming he’d “acquired” the number two guy in Russia’s most important spy agency. That’s like owning the deed to the Empire State Building: You see all kinds of things from a really great vantage point.
Obviously impressed, I said, “Holy shit.”
And he replied, “Now, asshole, do you see why Mary took me over you?”
Actually, I’m just good at mind reading—what he really said was, “You’re understating it. I brought home the biggest intelligence catch the CIA ever heard of, and look what those bastards have done to me.”
We stared at each other for a while, a sort of awkward pause, contemplating the possible ramifications of this news.
I finally asked, “How did it work?”
“Alexi wouldn’t let others be involved. He knew better than Mary and I did how penetrated we were. He made it a stipulation.”
Katrina deduced that my interest in this topic was something more than idle curiosity and decided to join the play, asking, “Weren’t there safeguards or something?”
“Alexi insisted on one-on-ones, but every time we met, the Agency required me and Mary to write extensive reports. It’s a standard procedure.”
“Explain how that works,” Katrina said.
“You compose it immediately afterward to reduce the risk of memory lapses. You try to recall everything that was said, the target’s mental state, the general mood.”
“Who gets copies of these things?”
“Arbatov was so critical, and so sensitive, that distribution was limited to the deputy directors for intelligence and operations. Oh, and a psychiatrist.”
We both looked and were in fact confused, so Morrison added, “Part of our responsibility was to sustain his willingness to feed us, to handle whatever psychoses or neuroses he was experiencing. There are tremendous undercurrents of guilt and fear for a man who’s betraying his country. The shrink would comb through our reports, look for hints of problems, and advise us how to handle him.”
I found this curious and asked, “And was this Arbatov stable?”
“He had his reasons and he thought they were good ones.”
“And what were those reasons?”
Morrison was hunched over, toying with his manacles, and from my perspective, he appeared evasive. Conceivably, he was merely nervous about disclosing such sensitive information. Or conceivably there was something more here.
He finally replied, “I think Alexi selectively gave us things he considered . . . What’s the best way to put this? If Russia was doing something he felt was morally repugnant, he’d report on
that. But, for example, he never gave us the names of American traitors, like Ames or Hanssen. He gave us no counterintelligence information.”
“Did he ask you for information?”
The ugly frown on Morrison’s face implied that he finally realized where this line of query was heading. “Fuck you, Drummond. Of course we discussed things. I always included my responses in my reports, though. I never told him anything that was a betrayal.”