A Spy's Journey Read online

  I didn’t know what to expect at this meeting. I believed then, as I still do today, that good officers never lie to their agents or their developmentals, that is, the people a case officer has deliberately developed a relationship with to assess their access to secrets and the possibility that they would agree to work as a spy for the U.S. government. There were only two questions: would he show up and would he accept recruitment to work as an agent for the U.S. government? He did show up, but he then went into a long rambling monologue about how he simply could not accept working as a secret agent for the U.S. government. After a while, I looked him in the eye and simply said, “I am sorry to hear that—and I think our National Security Advisor will be disappointed.”

  “You mean the National Security Advisor knows who I am?” he asked.

  I told him that no, he didn’t know his identity—only a handful in my agency did—but that the National Security Advisor had received some of the reports I had prepared from our meetings and commented very favorably on them.

  “OK,” he said, “in that case, I accept.” He became one of our best reporting assets, motivated ideologically to help the United States, whose presence in Asia he considered essential in keeping peace in the region.

  I made a second recruitment that was, frankly, easier. This involved a well-known author who traveled frequently to denied areas of Asia. Again, we had been meeting for some time when I proposed to him that I would like to hire him to gather information that I could not gather myself, since I could not travel to denied areas as an American. He gave me a funny look and said, “I suspect you are CIA, but don’t tell me. The answer is, yes, I will service your request for one thousand dollars per report. I need the money to buy myself a fancy car that I cannot afford. You also need to know, however, that after I earn enough to pay for the car, I will want to stop working for you, and want your agreement to that.” I was pleased, and I did agree to his terms. Interestingly, when I reported all of this back to my headquarters, everyone kept sending me messages that he would obviously continue to work past his stipulated time, for the money involved. I responded many times that no, I believed he meant exactly what he said. He worked for me very successfully for several years. Then his company assigned him to a job in New York City, where he would cover events around the United Nations. According to our agreement, we terminated our relationship as he was leaving the country; he had earned just enough, and he had in fact purchased the car he so desired. The postscript came two years later, when I returned home for a visit and was asked to go contact him in New York, and renew our relationship. I argued strenuously that it was not a good idea—that the man meant what he had said, and that we should honor our agreement. Nonetheless, I was ordered to go make contact. I did, and he was delighted to see me until I asked him if there were any chance he would assist us again. He told me he enjoyed meeting and working with me personally, but that he meant what he said and asked that I honor our agreement. Chastened, I told him I understood and would insist that my headquarters not bother him again. To my knowledge, we have honored that agreement, although several snide comments were made when I reported that I did not control this man to the liking of headquarters. True, I did not, nor did I want to. He had fulfilled his promise, and it was our turn to fulfill ours.

  Just working in the office was a new experience for me. In my previous tour, I worked under a cover outside of our office. So I was new to working around the talented—and at times quirky—people who do this business. The CIA workforce is the most diverse in the government. Coupled with the CIA-instilled ethic of telling it like it is, this diversity and quirkiness can lead to some funny episodes.

  My second chief during this stint was an excellent manager—and ambitious. He was determined to increase the number of intelligence reports we put out, thus quantifying our progress under his leadership. We would get together every week, and the chief would go around the room (we had a lot of officers) and ask, “How many intelligence reports are you putting out this week?” The pressure was designed to keep us meeting our agents and pushing for more and better intelligence, but it didn’t always work. I remember one time when the chief insisted that one officer had not produced enough for the week in progress. Finally, the chief asked the officer to try to get something from one of his agents.

  The officer sputtered, “OK, I’ll write one on [the subject] right away.”

  “Good,” responded the chief. “When did you meet him?”

  “Next week,” responded the officer to the assembled laughter.

  This same chief was aware that I was running an agent who had access to important information about China. Consequently, he was determined to get a scoop when Chairman Mao Zedong died after a long illness. The chief called me at home and ordered me to call my agent and have an emergency meeting to get a report about Mao’s death, the aftermath, and other information. First, I told him that this was not a subject for telephone conversation (we always assumed our phones were tapped). Second, I said I didn’t want to endanger the agent by doing so under these circumstances since any phone conversation could bring the agent to the attention of the local intelligence service. And third, I believed that the agent would not have access to anything of interest that I could not get later at a meeting I had scheduled in several days. The chief was furious.

  “I am ordering you to go make that call!”

  “OK,” I responded, “but this is stupid and inappropriate.”

  I then went out into the late evening, did a surveillance detection run (SDR), and stopped to call my agent’s telephone number. When the agent answered, I hesitated, then hung up without speaking. There was no way I was going to call this agent out after my chief had discussed things over open telephone lines. Additionally, my agent lived in a compound with colleagues. In short, it was an order that I could not accept at the risk of endangering my agent for information I knew he would not have.

  The next morning the chief called me in and asked what I had gotten from the agent. “Nothing,” I replied. “He hopes to have something for me when we meet in a few days.”

  “Dammit! You didn’t call him did you?” responded the chief.

  “Yup, I called him,” I responded truthfully. It was a silly, dangerous game that I refused to play.

  While this episode illustrates the chief’s belligerent side, he could also be inventive and supportive. We had been struggling for some time to try to penetrate the mission of a denied-area embassy located in the country—all without success. Finally, in a stroke of luck, we learned that one of the embassy’s senior officials would go far outside of the city on Sunday mornings to watch model airplanes being flown at a local club. Armed with this information, I went to the area several times hoping for a chance encounter, but to no avail. I saw the official and could confirm that he went there regularly, but I still couldn’t meet him. Finally, the idea hit me. Join the club, become a regular member, and make his acquaintance that way. Several of my colleagues pointed out that this would be time consuming, costly, and the weather was freezing. Nonetheless, I approached the chief, who immediately approved all expenses for this operational approach. I learned how to fly as well as build my own remote-controlled aircraft, and I was finally invited to join the club. Sure enough, on my second outing as a club member, another member introduced the target individual to me. Over the next couple of weeks, I persuaded the fellow to have a try at flying my remote aircraft himself under my direction. He was reluctant to do so, given the value of the aircraft. Nevertheless, one freezing-cold Sunday morning he agreed. After I had launched the aircraft, I let him take over the control, and he promptly flew the plane into a dive and into a frozen river. It was a beauty of a crash. The poor fellow was beside himself, and I suggested to him that we could go out for a warming brandy and that this was all a part of the business of learning to fly the aircraft. He accepted my invitation, we began to meet regularly, and he produced some important intelligence for the U.S. government.

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nbsp; We had a senior Asian officer of substantial talent who had served in country for some time. During a weekly meeting debate, the subject came up as to how we could terminate an agent who, we discovered, had been falsifying information. We generally liked to leave all assets feeling decent about themselves and their relationships with us regardless of what ended the relationship. It’s just really important to intelligence operatives that there aren’t disgruntled former agents running around. In this particular case, we had initial discussions on ending the relationship with the agent, but he demanded absurd amounts of cash. Since we knew he was a fabricator—which he would not admit—we had no inclination to give in to what we viewed as blackmail just to end the relationship peacefully.

  We had discussed the issue ad infinitum, when the Asian officer volunteered to try to talk some sense into the agent. We all agreed that we needed someone who was more senior and more persuasive. In the end, the officer came back with the agent’s agreement to accept our original proposal. Very impressed, I later went into his office to find out how he did it. I asked him, “How in the world did you get him to accept our proposal where other officers have failed?”

  The officer looked at me, leaned back in his chair, reached into his pocket, and extracted a long switchblade stiletto. “I don’t know,” he responded. “He seemed to change his mind as I was paring my nails.”

  Good fortune is also essential in good intelligence operations. On one occasion, we had been sitting around brainstorming trying to figure out how to get an officer in touch with a senior KGB counterintelligence officer in hopes of securing an important defensive agent who could report on that service’s efforts against us. Finally, one of our officers noted that this target had been invited to a reception at the home of a Third-World diplomat he knew. He suggested that he could get me an invitation, and, with luck, I might be able to find our target in the huge crowd that was sure to be there. As with all operations, you try everything until you find the right solution. And there were two other problems: we didn’t have a photo of the target, and the home of the diplomat holding the reception was in a part of town where it was difficult to navigate the streets. So my wife and I set out by car to find the reception. We found the area, but could not find the address. No one we asked could help. Now the reception was in full swing, and I decided we’d be better off on foot. So we parked our car and set out on foot. After several blocks with no luck, a black Mercedes-Benz pulled up next to us. The driver rolled the window down and asked in a heavy Russian accent, “Could you please tell me where [the address of the reception] is located?” I told him no, we were looking for that address ourselves. He suggested we could do better together, and asked us to hop in the car. We did so, and as we introduced ourselves I almost fell over—he was the target we were going to the reception to meet.

  We drove around together exchanging chitchat until we finally found the reception. As we got out of the car, the target asked me, “Since you were on foot, could I give you a lift home after the reception?” Although it meant leaving our car overnight in a strange location, of course I agreed. After the reception, he drove us home, and I invited the target and his wife in for a late evening drink. It was the beginning of a long—and successful—effort against the target.

  Since he was a senior KGB officer, he was an important target for us to recruit. And I really needed to develop this relationship so we could use him as a source of information inside his own country. But just as important, as a KGB officer he could provide us with information about KGB efforts against CIA operatives both in our country and other places he had served. It would be a counter-intelligence bonanza.

  After the earlier meeting, things moved well and rapidly. With many intelligence officers on both sides of the Cold War during this period, liberal use of alcohol was commonplace. In the case of this fellow, it was a daily event for him. He drank like a fish. Given that, and my desire to move the relationship into a private venue, he was most amenable for us to have a series of exchange dinners at his place and mine. The only problem was that when we were at his place the flow of liquor began within minutes of entry and continued in many cases well into the night. He also liked baiting my wife with questions like, “So, you think I am trying to get you drunk?” in an effort to force her to drink more than she wanted. Fortunately, she remained relatively sober on these occasions so we could get home safely. But I awoke many mornings after drinking way too much vodka, vowing, unsuccessfully, that it would never happen again.

  But the cultivation and development of this target had other repercussions on my activities. He was responsible for my being wrapped up by the local national police force. It developed after one of our late evening visits to a local nightspot where, this time, we were nearing the final negotiations on whether or not he would become a spy for us. Everything hinged on our guaranteeing that we could get his 16-year-old son out of his country if necessary. We could not make such a guarantee, and that turned out to be the deal breaker. We had most of the final discussions in a bar downtown, and things stretched way past the midnight hour. We were both really tired, and I suggested that we reconvene in several weeks. He agreed, and, as was our custom, one of us would depart 30 minutes ahead of the other. This time, I went first.

  After I exited the bar, I immediately looked up to the top floor of the building and noticed a local man in a dark suit with a small red button in his lapel. I was sure he was a local government policeman, since he was glancing into windows of shops that had been closed for hours and wandered away when I appeared. Just to be sure, I took the first elevator, and when I reached the ground floor, I took a stroll around the building. I saw two other people in dark blue suits with red buttons in their lapels, and knew now that I had been identified by the police and picked up as their surveillance target. I also suspected that it was probably surveillance of the KGB officer that then led them to me.

  I returned home and first thing the next morning I reported my suspicions to my immediate boss. We set up an elaborate SDR for me, including a place where we had total photographic coverage. Sure enough, a full six-man local surveillance team was on me. Back at the office, we were discussing the fact that my time and usefulness were now severely limited, when my immediate boss was called to the chief’s office. When he returned, he was agitated. He immediately informed our personnel in the office that the head of the host country’s counterintelligence service had just visited our chief, and had laid out before him photographs and written accounts of my full activities over the past two weeks—including phone calls I had made, the SDRs I had taken, and more. This evidence also indicated that the counterintelligence service police had fielded a full 24-person team to cover me 24 hours a day. It was damaging evidence indeed. He then informed me, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “Fella, it looks like your career is finished. You better pack your bags.” I tried to explain to him that I had taken exceptional measures to ensure the security of my operations, and that the surveillance was not directed at me but at the KGB officer. He would have none of it, and I detected more than a little smugness on his part. Shortly thereafter, I was summoned to the chief’s office. “Farewell, pal,” my boss intoned as I went off for what I dreaded would be orders to go home immediately.

  Well, was I surprised. The chief laid out all of the photos, surveillance reports, and other evidence of all of my activities, and I suspected I was in for a stern reprimand—or worse. Before I could defend myself, he remarked, “Damn, I hope all our officers do their work as well as you do. Damn good tradecraft!” Even though I had been “made” by the host country’s counterintelligence service, and the evidence was laid out for my own chief to see, he understood that counterintelligence had gotten on my tail because of the KGB agent, and not through any fault of my own. I felt an enormous burden lift. The chief continued, “The chief of counterintelligence asked me how much longer you would be in country. I told him you would be here until your tour ended this summer. He suggested sev
eral times that it might be better for you to leave earlier, but I told him you would finish what you came here to do. The only thing he did demand was to meet with you personally to ask you about your operations and work here. I told him he was free to see you at any time, and he asked to make a car pickup of you this evening at the corner of [such and such] street. I told him you would be there. Keep up the good work, and keep your mouth shut when you see him.”

  I floated back to my office, where my immediate boss, smirk and all, asked, “When do you leave?”

  “This summer, as scheduled,” I replied. He sat in silence. Immediately thereafter, the chief called all the supervisors to his office, showed them the materials, and instructed them, “Make sure your officers see this and that they do their operational work as well as Mr. Paseman.”

  That evening I briefed my wife on my close call with career ruination. I told her I was going out that evening on business, not mentioning the upcoming car pickup, since I didn’t want to worry her. I went to the designated site, and, right on time, up pulled a black chauffeur-driven Mercedes. The back window came down, and a most impressive man leaned out and said, “Please get in, Mr. Paseman.” I got in, and the chief of counterintelligence introduced himself and suggested, “Mr. Paseman, let’s go back to your place where we can talk.” I did not object, but when the Mercedes pulled into the driveway and the two of us walked inside, my wife was certainly somewhat curious—and concerned. I told her everything was fine, that this fine gentleman and I needed to conduct some business, and she went upstairs. For the next hour, he interrogated me. “Mr. Paseman, are you running any citizens of my country? Are you willing to provide me with a list of your agents?” I assured him that no, I wasn’t of course (I was), and no, I wasn’t doing anything other than working against the KGB (I was), and no, I could not provide him with any additional information. The gentleman stood up, thanked me for my “helpfulness,” and ended a rather strained conversation. As he exited the door he commented, “Mr. Paseman, you are very good. However, I suggest the remainder of your tour should be rather boring.” I assured him that was very likely.