The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (28 page)

In the fall of 1983, Howard wrote an open letter to the Soviet consulate in San Francisco. The letter appeared to be an ordinary one from a citizen, expressing concern about U.S.-Soviet relations. Howard signed his own name. He told Mary that he wrote it as a “tease,” assuming that the CIA or the FBI would see it and become upset at his direct contact with the Soviets.
23

Howard’s drinking grew worse. He was drunk on February 26, 1984, when he confronted three strangers at a bar outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Howard, who owned firearms and had a license to buy and sell guns, kept a Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum revolver under the seat of his Jeep. He provoked a confrontation with the strangers and at one point aimed the gun through the open window of their vehicle. When one of them pushed it away, the gun fired through the roof. They attacked Howard and seized the weapon. No one was injured by the gunfire, but Howard was beaten and spent a night in jail. He later pleaded guilty to three counts of assault with a deadly weapon and was fined $7,500, ordered to see a psychiatrist, and given five years’ probation.
24

His state of mind was clearly unsettled. He had come out to New Mexico optimistic about starting over, perhaps even running for political office, but Mary recalled that after the drunken brawl he gave up hope.

He “began talking about going to the Soviets.”
25

In May 1984, Burton Gerber, who had been Moscow chief of station from 1980 to 1982 and who had been at the forefront of a generation of officers who pushed for more aggressive methods to spy on the Soviet Union, was appointed chief of the Soviet division. Soon after, the Edward Lee Howard mess fell into his lap. Gerber had not hired Howard or fired him, but now he faced the question of what to do about him. The confrontation with Mills on the driveway was a bad sign. From reading the file and talking to people, Gerber learned that the agency’s psychiatrist had insisted on cutting off all contact with Howard after he had been forced out. Gerber concluded that was a mistake. If Howard possessed sensitive information, then they should not give him the cold shoulder. When Howard applied for reimbursement for half of his psychiatric counseling bills, saying his troubles were caused by his time in the CIA, Gerber approved the payments.

In September 1984, two CIA officials flew to Santa Fe to check up on Howard. They were Mills, the Soviet branch chief, and Malloy, the agency psychiatrist. At a breakfast meeting in a local motel, Howard seemed to be on the rebound and getting his life back together again. He showed up well dressed, seeming optimistic about his future. The CIA officials told Howard that his counseling bills would be paid by the CIA.

During the conversation, Howard made a startling admission. He told the CIA officials he had stopped in the park outside the Soviet consulate and pondered what would happen if he went inside. Howard said he figured the Soviets were cheap, would not give him much money, and in the end he said he decided not to do it.
26

He was lying. He had already done much more. Just days before the breakfast, Howard returned from a trip to Europe with his family. The CIA had inadvertently mailed Howard his family’s diplomatic passports after he was forced out; he used them for the trip. Howard and his family visited Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria.

One night in Milan, quite drunk, Howard disappeared from his family around midnight and returned at 4:00 a.m. He was stopped on the way home by a police officer who noticed he was drunk; Howard showed his diplomatic passport and was released.
27
During those hours, he probably made contact with the KGB. It is not known precisely what occurred, but Howard later boasted to a friend that Milan had been a “cover for action” to meet the Soviets and he had filled a dead drop there. Mary did not see anything unusual on the trip.
28

Howard had only just begun.

In October 1984, he received a phone call at home from a man with a soft, pleasant voice and a slight accent. The man inquired about a manuscript that Howard was offering to sell, and by the way the question was asked, Howard realized he was referring to the letter he had left at the Soviet consulate in 1983. Howard replied that he had nothing to sell and not to call him again. But the man was persistent. He said he could make things very unpleasant for Howard or could make things very good for him. He said he might be willing to pay twice Howard’s suggested price of $60,000. The caller told Howard to think about it, and he would call again at a later date.
29

Cherkashin, the second-ranking KGB man in Washington, wrote in his memoir that he made the call, and Howard expressed “enthusiasm about the prospect of working for us.” Cherkashin added, “I told him he’d have to travel to Vienna to meet his handler and that we’d contact him later to inform him when and how to go there. He agreed.”
30

After the call, Howard sent a postcard to the Soviet consulate in San Francisco, signed “Alex.” It was intended to confirm plans for a January 1985 meeting in Vienna. He received a second call around a month later about the trip.
31

Howard told Mary, “I’m going to get those bastards” at the CIA. “I’m gonna hurt them like they’ve never been hurt before.”
32

F
or Tolkachev, the security scare at his institute had been a jolt. A year later, he was still turning over in his mind what had happened. When he met a CIA case officer on the street the evening of April 19, 1984, Tolkachev passed a thirteen-page ops note, saying he was sorry for having panicked. “Today, sorting in my mind all the events that occurred in late April, 1983, I must admit that my actions were too hasty,” he wrote. He apologized again “for having destroyed so much at that time” and “for not having passed any new information for a whole year.”
1
Tolkachev gave the CIA officer twenty-six pages of notes and schematics on Soviet radars, which he had handwritten from memory, and returned two fully exposed Tropel cameras. He told the case officer that the security situation at the institute hadn’t changed and was still very restrictive, although there had not been any surprise inspections since the previous autumn. He wasn’t sure if this was an ominous sign or if the danger had passed. He wrote that it was possible the KGB knew of a leak but lacked enough details to track it down, or perhaps the KGB was just preparing lists of who knew what—so they could pounce when the time was right.
2

The meeting was the first contact with the Moscow station since the previous autumn, when Tolkachev had revealed the scare. Out of touch for months, the CIA was worried about his frame of mind and in an ops note reassured Tolkachev that he had done the right thing. “You have reacted to a dangerous situation with great courage, realistic caution and admirable self-control,” they wrote. “We understand your desire to leave nothing for the KGB and completely agree with your decision to destroy all evidence of your link to us.”

Then, to “put your mind at ease” about security, the CIA gave Tolkachev a separate memo from headquarters that described how his materials were handled in the United States. The memo said that from the very start of the operation the CIA had established special procedures, including secure locations to store the files in the few agencies that received the intelligence, “and no other material except yours can be kept in these repositories. Neither the material itself, nor excerpts from it can be taken out of the repositories.” Each person who read the material had to sign his name. “In this way we can always know who read which document and when.” Also, the CIA told Tolkachev, only translations were distributed, not originals, and there were strict restrictions on who could even
talk
about the Tolkachev intelligence. The CIA insisted that the “target recognition system” that Tolkachev passed in March 1983 was not shown to experts in the U.S. government until well after the security scare at the institute, so there could not have been a leak from the United States.

The CIA’s soothing words to Tolkachev were accurate as far as they went, describing the safeguards on distribution of his information to
outsiders
. But it did not even raise the idea of a betrayal from within.

In the ops note, the CIA advised Tolkachev that if more threats or investigations appeared, he should halt his work and lie low. “Despite the value of your information and the high esteem in which it is held by the most senior people in our government, your future welfare is a much more important concern to us,” the CIA message said. If threatened, they added, “do not hesitate to destroy all materials and cease activity on our behalf for as long as is necessary.”

But once again the CIA and the military “customers” also wanted Tolkachev to produce more material if he could. The case officer gave Tolkachev two more loaded Tropel cameras, each concealed in a key fob. The case officer also passed to Tolkachev another 120,000 rubles to replace some of what he had burned at the dacha. The Moscow station stashed some ginseng in the package and offered Tolkachev health advice, urging him to relax and cut down on salt in his diet. “We feel you are not only a colleague but a friend; as such, we ask you to please take care of yourself.”
3

Tolkachev had destroyed the Pentax 35 mm camera during the scare, leaving him only one method to photograph documents, using the two miniature Tropel cameras that Morris had given him the previous fall. He wrote in his ops note to the CIA that he had taken the chance and used them at work to copy documents that he could no longer smuggle out of the building because of the tight restrictions. However, his note was vague. He wrote that “from the point of view of security, it’s more convenient for me to do the whole process standing up, not sitting down.” It wasn’t clear where he was standing up, or why. Tolkachev said he found it difficult to hold the tiny camera exactly twenty-eight centimeters from the page while standing. He said that he flattened the top of a knitting needle of precisely the right length, then attached the camera to it with a rubber band, effectively making a tripod. Tolkachev said he feared the needle was casting a shadow on the page, so he took time to photograph some pages twice. “Unfortunately,” he said, “when I was photographing the second time, I was in such a hurry that I may have forgotten to unscrew the cap from the camera lens.” In the future, he wrote, he wouldn’t shoot every page twice because of time—“there’s none to spare.”
4

He didn’t say anything else about photography, and the CIA couldn’t ask. He renewed his request for another Pentax 35 mm camera.

On April 27, headquarters reported that the results from the two Tropels that Tolkachev had given the case officer were “generally excellent” and one document was a “winner.” The handwritten notes he made from memory were “very valuable and crammed with an extraordinary amount of minute detail.”

“Our initial reaction after this preliminary reading is that
cksphere
has almost completely recovered from his scare of the past year,” headquarters concluded, “and is once again taking risks (i.e. photography in his lab) in his determination to inflict as much damage as possible on his system.”

In his ops note, Tolkachev was more focused on his personal problems than in the past. He was still thinking of surgery to correct his broken nose. “You shouldn’t be surprised if I come to one of the meetings with a straight nose,” he wrote to the CIA.

He then revealed he had suffered another health crisis. “It’s well known that health does not improve with age,” he said, describing an attack of acute “chronic antacid gastritis” that hit him in March. “I had high fever, I was sick for two weeks and didn’t go to work,” he said. “After this crisis, the stomach pains continued for over a month. I was forced to go on a strict diet.” A Soviet doctor had recommended rose hip and buckthorn oil, but the pharmacy shelves in Moscow were nearly empty; “it’s practically impossible to get these oils even with a doctor’s prescription.” The medicine could be found on the black market, but Tolkachev didn’t want to try it. “It would be great if you could obtain some rosehip and buckthorn oil for me,” he said. Tolkachev also suffered from gum disease; his teeth hurt upon eating cold food, and he wanted a French medicine that also couldn’t be found in Moscow, with instructions in Russian. He and his wife needed new eyeglasses too; Tolkachev provided the prescriptions. His son needed six to eight more bottles of India ink for his drafting equipment and a bottle of fluid to clean the equipment the CIA had provided him earlier.
5

The CIA was reassured by all these requests. A cable from headquarters to the Moscow station observed that Tolkachev “has recovered his drive and is again determined to gather information for us according to a self-imposed timetable.” Tolkachev “seems to be exhibiting again a compulsive urgency to get on with his self-appointed task,” headquarters said. They began to assemble the items on Tolkachev’s list, adding the German equivalent of Di-Gel and Maalox.
6

In the summer of 1984, the CIA also changed Tolkachev’s code name. Headquarters said it was a routine security procedure, because
cksphere
had already been in use for six years.

His new code name was
ckvanquish
.

By autumn, Tolkachev seemed to have rebounded. On October 11, he met a case officer for twenty minutes, and the officer found him “more healthy and energetic” than in the spring. The case officer came bearing bulky packages for Tolkachev that included 168,750 rubles and much of his wish list. Tolkachev passed to the case officer two Tropel cameras with exposed film and twenty-two pages of handwritten material, including an ops note. He immediately asked about the Pentax camera and whether the case officer had brought it; he wanted it badly. But the CIA had decided not to give it to him, fearing he might take too many risks.

Tolkachev insisted that with the coming of winter, he could resume smuggling documents out of the institute, tucked inside his coat, despite the dangers. He told the case officer that the security situation appeared to be calm at his institute, with no new investigations. When the case officer said he was worried about the dangers, Tolkachev reminded him anew, “Everything we do is dangerous.”

Then Tolkachev revealed why he was standing up when photographing documents with the Tropel cameras. He was taking the documents to a private men’s toilet stall, locking the door, putting the documents on a narrow shelf under a tiny window, and photographing them with the miniature camera.
7

In his ops note, Tolkachev pleaded with the CIA to bring the Pentax camera to their next meeting so he could be more productive, as he had in the past. Sure, he said, he could just make notes, that would be safe. But he added,

It’s impossible to do a lot with such a method, while I’ve always strived, from the very beginning, to gather and to pass on the maximum information possible. And now, under conditions that are more difficult in comparison to the early period of my activity, my drive hasn’t changed. I feel that I am already unable to lessen this drive, it is incited to some degree by the nature of my character. In this case, from my own experience I am once more convinced of the accuracy and truth of proverbs, such as, for example, “character cannot be broken.”
8

Tolkachev’s photographs taken in the toilet were clear, except for a few frames where he failed to press the shutter down all the way. Headquarters said his note offered “the clearest picture we have yet had of a man ‘driven’ by the unchangeable nature of his character to disregard the risks he perceives in order to collect as much information as possible.” But headquarters still balked at giving Tolkachev a Pentax to photograph documents. They decided on a compromise—give him more Tropel miniature cameras to use.
9

Tolkachev’s meeting in October—his twentieth with the CIA—was businesslike, but he was not as personally warm and forthcoming as he had been with John Guilsher and David Rolph. He didn’t mention to the case officer that his son, Oleg, who had figured so prominently in his requests over the years, was married in Moscow on August 1, at nineteen years old, and moved out of the apartment to live with his new wife’s parents.
10

Tolkachev’s notes gave headquarters a sense of renewed optimism about the operation. For the first time since 1982, he had answered the CIA’s specific questions about Soviet weapons systems. The division’s reports and requirements staff, which handled the incoming intelligence and outgoing questions for agents in the field, said Tolkachev’s material “would seem to indicate that he has recovered from his security crisis.”
11
The CIA also prepared an ops note for Tolkachev emphasizing how valuable his material had become and saying they didn’t want him to take any unnecessary risks. “You should clearly understand,” the ops note said, that “the information you provide to us, simply stated, is considered invaluable,” prized not only by technical experts but by those making national security policy.

“To lose such information,” the CIA said, “would be a severe blow to our government, gravely affecting our national posture both now and for many years to come.”
12

Tolkachev was five minutes late to his meeting with the CIA case officer on the night of January 18, 1985. The streets were piled with snow, temperatures plunged to fifteen degrees below zero, and he had trouble finding a place to park. When he arrived, they exchanged verbal paroles, a few pleasantries, and walked back to Tolkachev’s car to stay warm and talk.

Tolkachev asked right away: Do you have the Pentax? The case officer said no, it was too risky. Tolkachev was disappointed but said he would abide by the decision, even though he yearned to return to the days of shooting dozens of rolls of film with the big camera, spreading documents out on the table in his apartment, the camera held by a clamp on the back of a chair, and with a good desk lamp to illuminate the pages.

In the toilet stall at the institute where he was photographing with the Tropel cameras, the window was painted over, in white. The light was soft on the best of days and worse when it was overcast outside. The small, solitary toilet was located in a building adjacent to his office, so he could easily carry secret documents there. There were no document control points in between, but just in case he usually arranged to make a cover stop at a friend’s office to explain his presence in the building. In the toilet stall, he could lock the door and be alone. He told the case officer he had recently photographed a “very important document” using the small Tropel cameras. Tolkachev recited the title of the document from memory: “Overall Special Program of Scientific Research, Experimentation, and Practical Construction Work to Secure the Creation of Front Line and ‘PVO’ Fighters for the 1990s.” The “PVO” meant air defense forces. The document would surely be another intelligence treasure for the CIA—Soviet military aviation plans well into the next decade. Still, Tolkachev said the photographs were made on an overcast day, and he sounded uncertain about his use of the miniature cameras in the dim light.
13

He gave the Tropel cameras to the case officer, as well as handwritten notes, wrapped in a taped package. The case officer handed over several bundles to Tolkachev: five more miniature Tropel cameras; another 100,000 rubles; a meeting schedule for the next three years; and instructions for new signal and meeting sites, including a location for the next meeting planned for June, code-named
trubka
, or “pipe.” The CIA’s schedule and instructions were a clear indication that they planned to carry on with the operation for some time to come. The packages also included three books in Russian and an ops note telling Tolkachev how invaluable and important his material had been to the United States.