A Spy's Journey Page 10

  And it was a good thing I did. Several years later, we received an emergency message from headquarters that our agent was in flight, so we activated the plan. This was exciting. We had a good lock on both the agent’s travel and on the pursuit team, we made the pickup at the designated spot, and got the agent to safety.

  Under the new leftist government, local intelligence and police would no longer help us in our struggle against regional terrorist organizations. In one instance, we acquired some excellent and disturbing intelligence indicating that a Libyan hit team—a group of thugs who engaged in officially sanctioned murder—had entered the country to assassinate the U.S. Ambassador. We had acquired a photo of one of the reputed team members from the reporting agent, and we learned that the hit team would operate out of a bar downtown, the Red Lion. We also knew approximately when the team planned to assemble in the bar. Our deputy—an officer who had earned the Intelligence Star, the Agency’s highest decoration for valor, for his work behind enemy lines in Laos—was a good friend of mine. He went to the local police and reported the information. They worked out an agreement—if our deputy would go to the Red Lion at 8:00 that evening, the police would arrive shortly thereafter. The deputy would finger the terrorists for the police, who would then arrest them.

  The deputy asked if I would help him with the identification and arrest. Understanding his request for backup, I agreed. As we prepared to leave the office, he called me in, opened his safe drawer, and asked me, “Which piece would you like to pack?” I chose a Smith and Wesson 6-inch stainless-steel revolver. He picked up a 14-shot 9-mm Browning automatic. We stuck the pieces in our waistbands and headed for the bar. We arrived about half an hour early, as planned, to get the lay of the land before any action started.

  The bar was almost empty, just a few patrons and a couple of hookers. We sat down, ordered a couple of beers, and sat back. After a couple of sips, I noticed that we’d sat near a corner of the bar, which was quite a distance from the door. It seemed like a safe place to wait for the Libyans (and, we hoped, police) to arrive. Right on schedule, four gangly Libyans entered the bar. Two carried heavy duffel bags, which possibly contained weapons.

  The Libyans sat on stools at the bar, between us and the door. Suddenly feeling uncomfortable, I whispered to the deputy that things just didn’t look right. He agreed, but suggested that we hang tight and wait for the police. By 8:30, it was obvious that the police weren’t coming. Meanwhile, the Libyans kept looking at us, and I told the deputy that I thought we should get out of the bar. He agreed, and then motioned to two of the prostitutes to join us for a beer. They sat down with us, I ordered four beers, and after a few swigs, I invited them back to our room for a little fun. They agreed, and we escorted the women to the door, keeping them between us and the four Libyans, two of whom were now within arm’s reach of their duffel bags. After we exited the bar, the deputy gave the hookers a couple of big bills, bid them goodnight, and we proceeded to vacate the area with all due haste. We had been set up, and the local police had no intention of helping us.

  The good news that we later learned from our agent is that the four Libyans aborted their mission because they knew we were onto them. I never felt heroic about the incident, but I felt pretty good that we thwarted the Libyan’s plot to assassinate our ambassador. I felt pretty good about making it out of that bar alive, too.

  In another story of courage in the line of duty, one officer got a lead to meet a lieutenant colonel in Libya, one of our priority terrorist target countries. The officer found the home where this colonel was to stay for the next two or three days. Our officer had secured headquarters’ permission to determine by reconnaissance if we could provide enough security to send our officer into the home to attempt to recruit the colonel to work against his own government. We knew we could get close, and we did our homework and set up several radio surveillance points to alert us to any signs of unfriendly cohorts in the area. The officer asked if I would drive him up to look around the area, and I agreed. Our instructions from headquarters were very specific: “Under no circumstances attempt the recruitment without prior additional headquarters approval.”

  I was not surprised when I picked up our officer and he laid two loaded 9-mm automatics on the seat between us. We drove up into the area, confirmed via radio that our trial surveillants were in place, and drove up to the house in question. The officer turned to me and asked, “We’ve come this far—why don’t I just go up, knock on the door, ask if the colonel is there, and if so, set up a follow-up meeting?”

  While his proposal made me nervous, I understood his reasoning. Someone was eventually going to have to take the risk, so I agreed and made him assure me that he would remain in my immediate sight. Sticking the 9-mm pistol into his waistband, he went right up to the front door.

  I could see everything. He rang the bell, a young lady appeared, he said a few words, and a man, obviously our target colonel, came to the door. I could see them exchange a few words, and then our officer nodded his head and went into the house. I immediately called our surveillance team on the radio and told them to stand by, that we had launched and that we needed to maintain radio silence at all costs. I then chambered a round into my automatic, laid it on my lap, glued my eyes to the door, and dripped huge beads of sweat.

  Half an hour later, our man was still in the house. Just as I radioed surveillance to proceed to the area, telling them I was going in, the door opened and our man came out. He shook the colonel’s hand and came back to the car. I could only ask him, “What the hell did you go into the house for?” “I thought I might only have one chance to make our pitch—so I took it,” he replied. The colonel turned down our recruitment pitch, and headquarters was most displeased with both of us.

  The most difficult and potentially fatal incident of my entire career followed shortly thereafter. It occurred during the ill-fated hostage rescue attempt at Desert One in 1980, during the Iranian hostage crisis. I had been working very hard—as had many of our officers in many locations—and our primary intelligence mission was to locate where the hostages taken from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran were being held, so they could be rescued. I was interviewing a hundred people a day from those who were streaming out of Iran seeking safety—all with the goals of getting information about the hostages and putting an agent back into the country to report on the crisis in real time. It wasn’t unlikely that the high profile I would acquire from this would lead to the Iranian Intelligence Service—the Ministry of State Security—identifying me as a CIA officer.

  I managed to recruit an exceptionally brave and knowledgeable Iranian citizen, who agreed to my proposal to go back inside and help us locate the hostages. He was well educated and well motivated to help us. He had seen Ayatollah Khomeini destroy his country’s gains toward modernization. He made a number of trips back inside Iran on our behalf, but after many trips and several months, the tension was beginning to show. I was meeting him late at night in a park outside of town. He developed a facial tick from the pressure and danger, and pretty soon both of us were nervous wrecks, but he provided us with exceptionally useful information about events inside Iran. He also provided information that helped us locate the American hostages and proved helpful designing Eagle Claw, the Iran hostage rescue attempt.

  I could block out of my mind most thoughts about the danger we faced, and I was already taking normal security measures. I never took the same route to or from the office, I never came or went at the same time, and I avoided any routine patterns, whether I was going to the gym, playing tennis, or going to church. I was very cautious. I was also training to run a marathon, as was one of the embassy counselors, and we varied our training route and time for security reasons as well.

  Then, early one morning as we were returning from a 12-mile training run, we came around a turn and headed uphill toward my house. We spotted, perhaps 100 yards away, a man in a turban and gown lying against a bank and aiming a rifle at my house. It scared the hell out
of me. This was about the time my wife got up for her morning coffee, and all I could think of was that this SOB was going to kill someone in my family. I yelled to my partner, “Get to my house and take care of my family!” And I screamed bloody murder to the bastard aiming a rifle at my house.

  I obviously scared him, and he got up and started running away. I closed my distance to him within 50 yards and was gaining ground. Suddenly, he scrambled up the bank, and a Volkswagen pickup truck with three people in turbans and gowns in the bed appeared. They grabbed him and made their escape.

  I managed to get the license number and color of the pickup, and I got a good look at the guy. So we went to the local police with the description of the vehicle and the man with the rifle. They promised to check out our story. Several days later, we received a written report that said, “There is no such vehicle or license number in country.” I can’t say we were surprised, given the political direction the country had taken. But this did leave us, and me in particular, in a difficult situation. We knew that I had been targeted for assassination. We didn’t report most of the details to headquarters, at my request. My chief immediately offered me the opportunity to depart country. However, I felt then, and still do today, that you simply cannot give in to terrorism. I told the chief that I preferred to stay for the remainder of my tour—I had a year yet to go. I pointed out that if the terrorists who attempted to kill me learned that I fled the country, they would simply try again with another officer. He agreed and thanked me. Later, when I returned to my office, a revolver and a box of bullets—obviously from my deputy’s collection—were lying on my desk. I picked the pistol up, and it never left my side for the remainder of my tour.

  That still left us with a problem—what to do about the Volkswagen pickup and the men in it? Then, one of our officers asked if I had a spare hundred dollars or two so he could ask one of our former agents in the police to check things out. So I gave him the money and license number. Two weeks later, we received a note from the former agent that the vehicle and occupants were no longer in country and would pose no further risk to me or anyone else. We didn’t ask any questions.

  I had to tell my wife about the episode, and I asked if she and the kids wanted to return home early while I finished my tour. She refused, and stayed with me through the end of my tour. It was a tense period, as things continued to deteriorate in the country. Six of our cars were blown up, two servicemen were killed in a bombing at a bar frequented by the U.S. military, and a policeman was shot guarding our embassy. For my part, I redoubled my personal security efforts. I changed my routes and times of activities daily. I often waited until the last minute to decide what to do, and I never accepted invitations to functions in restricted areas for the rest of my year.

  The U.S. Embassy in Beirut was bombed at this time, and it struck us like a bolt of thunder. The Agency’s national intelligence officer for the Near East, Robert Ames, was killed, along with several other Agency personnel. I had spent several days with Mr. Ames before his death discussing our work against targets in the Mideast, and I was devastated by our nation’s loss of this fine and highly respected officer. Additionally, I was close friends with two of the slain officers, and I knew two others fairly well. This wasn’t the first time I lost a friend in the line of duty, and it wouldn’t be the last. This is one thing that you never get used to.

  As with my other tours, we also had some lighter moments. In one instance, I was using the car of a local national support agent for many of my operational meetings, particularly after the attempt on my life. I kept the car far away from my residence to keep it clean. Late one afternoon, I had taken my normal surveillance detection route around town en route to picking up the car, which I had parked in a neighborhood slightly outside of town (I never parked it in the same area twice for security). It was dusk and it was getting harder for me to see things when I was about two blocks away from where I had parked the car. Suddenly, as I looked up, I saw my car being driven away. After everything else that had happened to me, I was incredulous. Surely, it couldn’t have been my car. I searched the neighborhood in increasingly wide concentric circles looking for my car. Did I park it somewhere else? All sorts of scenarios swirled through my head, and I finally called the deputy and told him that my operational car had been stolen. He was also incredulous, and he asked me a lot of what I thought were silly and insulting questions like, “Are you sure you parked in that neighborhood?” “No one would have stolen your car—did you give a key to anyone else?” and, the closer, “By any chance have you been drinking for lunch, and maybe just can’t remember where you really left it?”

  That did it. I went home, but I didn’t sleep. Fortunately the next morning I received a message from my agent telling me that a woman in the neighborhood had seen the vehicle parked overnight and called the police, who then called him and asked if he knew his vehicle was parked in that neighborhood. He was well trained and told the police that yes, he had parked it there and took a taxi home because he had drunk too much. He told the police that he would retrieve the car immediately, which he did. It was my agent who took my car, and he did it for my security. Later that morning, I marched triumphantly into the deputy’s office and told him the details. He just waved me away, but I felt exonerated.

  And sometimes funny things can happen in the midst of an operation. No matter what claims are made about our many advances in how we create, duplicate, disseminate, and destroy documents, we still make tremendous blunders on occasion. In this instance, I needed to rent a car for my operation. I had all the alias documents I needed, but just as I was ready to hand over my driver’s license, I noticed that it was valid only for the operation of farm equipment. I pulled the license back, sputtered something to the clerk, and semi-gracefully said that I didn’t need a car after all. Later I discovered that I wasn’t the only one with this error on their alias documentation. Things eventually got cleared up, but more than a few technical document experts were aggravated at me for making this an issue. But I did feel that this mistake needed to be brought to everyone’s attention to correct the error and to get people to pay a little more attention to the details of our work.

  I guess shit happens even when you’re well trained, well documented, and well prepared. I had one episode during this tour that nearly blew my cover. I was working under an alias and a false identity outside the capital city and had just registered into a hotel. All went well until later that afternoon, when the manager stopped me in the lobby and told me how ironic it was that my ambassador had just checked in and wanted to invite me to cocktails and dinner. It was a serious problem because the ambassador already knew me by my true name. Fortunately, I left a message for the ambassador in my alias, stating I was looking forward to seeing him, but that I had another engagement. For the next several days, as I completed my business I took great care in coming and going from the hotel to avoid running into him.

  In another funny episode I had been seeing a communist bloc party official for several months in an attempt to recruit him. It was difficult to get him alone, since his country’s regulations required its officials to travel in pairs—to prevent the type of activity I was engaged in. Finally, he suggested to me at one cocktail reception that he was going out on his own to deliver some goods, and that he could stop by briefly at my home and chat with me alone. This was a breakthrough, and good news indeed. I knew that he would be coming in around dinnertime, so I had only a brief window of time to give him room to maneuver.

  At about 6:00 in the evening, I saw his vehicle drive up. But as he got out and started toward the house, I noticed two other officials coming in with him. I knew immediately that somehow he hadn’t managed to get out on his own. I opened the door, and he quickly and loudly said, “We’re here for dinner as you suggested.” The other two officials nodded and said how pleased they were to have been invited to our home. We really did have a problem, since we had no dinner planned nor enough food in stock to pull this off.
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br />   Nonetheless, my wife and I welcomed them graciously. My wife kept them entertained with drinks and a videotape of the first space shuttle landing (no tap-dancing!). I dashed out the back of the house and drove at breakneck speed to a little local restaurant. Running out of breath, I asked the proprietor what he had immediately available. He told me he was grilling a bunch of ribs for a large party. I pulled a wad of bills out of my pocket, and told him I would take them all. Given the substantial profit he was likely to make, he was more than willing. He and his staff bundled everything up, including some vegetables and salads, and helped me carry it all to the car. I sped off again at reckless speed, parked behind my house, carried the ribs in, and put them in the oven.

  I walked back into the living room and announced, “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse us for a couple minutes, we’ll go into the kitchen and finish preparing dinner.” With that, my wife and I scurried about in the kitchen and produced a wonderful meal for the guests, but with all the nervous tension in my stomach, I could hardly eat. Oddly enough, the party official never asked how we had been able to prepare this meal for the extra unexpected guests.

  In another memorable moment, I was sent off to oversee our efforts to thwart a hijacking in Malta. The airplane, with a number of U.S. citizens aboard, was stranded in a country with which we had no diplomatic relations. Consequently, it required the presence of an intelligence officer who had a reason to be in country. We noted that an international tennis tournament was scheduled to begin shortly after the hijacked aircraft landed. Since I was a noted player, I went into the country in alias and signed up to play in the tournament so I could be there to assist in our efforts against the hijackers. So far, so good. I registered at the club and went to play a few practice rounds. Then I went back into the clubhouse—a magnificent edifice built by the British during their reign. I took a locker, undressed, and walked into the shower area. To my amazement, a large sign on the shower-room door said, “Gentlemen: No boys under 12 years of age allowed with you in the shower.” I showered pretty quickly, and on my way out asked the club manager about the sign. “Yes, sir,” he replied, “we’ve had a devil of a time since the Libyans took over the club.” I took my remaining showers during the tournament at my hotel. Fortunately, we were able to end the hijacking with good diplomatic negotiations and saved the American passengers.