The Spy Who Didn T Get Away

Howard’s explanation was intriguing, if true. Howard and Ames may be pawns in a larger, still mysterious game to penetrate the CIA. In 1983, Howard, now 42, was a CIA officer in the Soviet division, preparing to go to Moscow. when he flunked a lie-detector test and was fired. He then sold the secrets of the CIA’s Moscow operations to the KGB. In 1985, he fled into the New Mexico desert to escape an FBI dragnet and made it to Moscow. Two years ago he left his haven in Russia and moved to Sweden. In 1992, four FBI agents slipped into Stockholm and actually met with Howard and with SAPO, the Swedish counterintelligence service. Howard says that he was warned by his handlers back in Moscow that he would be arrested by the Swedes when his visa ran out. Howard concluded that the only way the Russians could have known was through a mole. “I’ve had other indications throughout the years that there’s been a good source in the U.S. national-security apparatus,” he added. “I can’t go into it.” Howard was in fact arrested in Stockholm in 1992, though the Swedes let him go and he returned to Moscow, Where he again lives-under 24-hour protection from the SVR, the Russian intelligence service.

It is possible that Howard’s defection and the Ames case are directly linked-that one led to the other. After Howard left the agency in 1983, the Russians would have needed a replacement. Ames, the government charges, began his spying two years later. Howard, however, scoffed at a published report that Ames had tipped him off to flee to New Mexico nine years ago. “I was confronted by the FBI [in Santa Fe]. I felt I couldn’t get a fair trial in the U.S. I wanted to get somewhere else.”

It was Vitaly Yurchenko who initially led to Howard’s unveiling. Yurchenko, the KGB man in Moscow in charge of North American operations who defected to the CIA in 1985 (and then changed his mind, and went back to Moscow), told his debriefers of a penetration in the agency, code-named “Robert.” The CIA, which had known for a year that Howard was a risk, but hoped to keep a lid on the case, realized he was pointing to Howard and finally told the FBI. One of Yurchenko’s CIA debriefers was none other than Aldrich Ames. If Ames was indeed a mole, Yurchenko should have known that one of the men sitting across from him was his own agent. Why, then, didn’t he tell the CIA? Was Yurchenko a false defector, sent by the KGB to finger Howard and deflect attention from Ames? Most U.S. counterintelligence experts doubt that. If Howard knows, he isn’t telling.

Despite the newly congenial spirit between East and West, the many questions in the Ames case may prove to be no easier to answer than they would have been in the days of the cold war. In the past two years there has been unprecedented cooperation between the CIA and the SVR, and the FBI and Russian intelligence. Yevgeny Primakov, chief of the SVR, has visited Washington and met with his counterpart at the CIA; and two CIA directors, Robert Gates and R. James Woolsey, have made the same pilgrimage to Moscow. At the working level, the intelligence agencies are talking to each other about working together to fight organized crime, nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

Consequently, there is an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to the Ames case. If Ames was indeed a Russian spy, it would mean that, when both sides amicably agreed to cooperate over the past two years about potential threats to both countries, the Americans knew that a CIA officer was under surveillance as a suspected spy for Moscow, and the Russians knew they had a mole in the agency.

CIA officials say they began to look for a mole when they started to lose agents that Howard could not have known about. Although the Soviets have executed a number of alleged Western spies over the past decade, published reports that Ames was responsible for as many as 10 deaths are far from confirmed. Moreover, not all the CIA spies nabbed by the KGB were shot. For example, Vladimir Potashov, a disarmament specialist at Moscow’s Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada, was recruited by the CIA in the early ’80s and was caught in July 1986. He was sent to the gulag, to the Perm 35 prison, where he met two other former spies for American intelligence. The three were released by President Yeltsin in January 1992. Potashov, still suffering from the effects of brutal conditions in the labor camp, now lives in the United States. “I survived,” he said, “and so did the two others.”

To professional spies in both Moscow and Washington, the accusations against Rick Ames and his wife, Rosario, come as no surprise. Vadim A. Kirpichenko, former deputy head of KGB foreign intelligence, who remains a high-level consultant to the SVR, told me at breakfast last year that the SVR no longer conducts “active measures” in the United States, such as paying front groups. But when I asked whether the Russians would “turn away a new John Walker,” the convicted navy spy, Kirpichenko quickly admitted they would not. ‘We are not saying we are not going to support our agents." Kirpichenko smiled. ‘We have to pay the agents for good work."

title: “The Spy Who Didn T Get Away” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-17” author: “Ida Rice”

Howard’s explanation was intriguing, if true. Howard and Ames may be pawns in a larger, still mysterious game to penetrate the CIA. In 1983, Howard, now 42, was a CIA officer in the Soviet division, preparing to go to Moscow. when he flunked a lie-detector test and was fired. He then sold the secrets of the CIA’s Moscow operations to the KGB. In 1985, he fled into the New Mexico desert to escape an FBI dragnet and made it to Moscow. Two years ago he left his haven in Russia and moved to Sweden. In 1992, four FBI agents slipped into Stockholm and actually met with Howard and with SAPO, the Swedish counterintelligence service. Howard says that he was warned by his handlers back in Moscow that he would be arrested by the Swedes when his visa ran out. Howard concluded that the only way the Russians could have known was through a mole. “I’ve had other indications throughout the years that there’s been a good source in the U.S. national-security apparatus,” he added. “I can’t go into it.” Howard was in fact arrested in Stockholm in 1992, though the Swedes let him go and he returned to Moscow, Where he again lives-under 24-hour protection from the SVR, the Russian intelligence service.

It is possible that Howard’s defection and the Ames case are directly linked-that one led to the other. After Howard left the agency in 1983, the Russians would have needed a replacement. Ames, the government charges, began his spying two years later. Howard, however, scoffed at a published report that Ames had tipped him off to flee to New Mexico nine years ago. “I was confronted by the FBI [in Santa Fe]. I felt I couldn’t get a fair trial in the U.S. I wanted to get somewhere else.”

It was Vitaly Yurchenko who initially led to Howard’s unveiling. Yurchenko, the KGB man in Moscow in charge of North American operations who defected to the CIA in 1985 (and then changed his mind, and went back to Moscow), told his debriefers of a penetration in the agency, code-named “Robert.” The CIA, which had known for a year that Howard was a risk, but hoped to keep a lid on the case, realized he was pointing to Howard and finally told the FBI. One of Yurchenko’s CIA debriefers was none other than Aldrich Ames. If Ames was indeed a mole, Yurchenko should have known that one of the men sitting across from him was his own agent. Why, then, didn’t he tell the CIA? Was Yurchenko a false defector, sent by the KGB to finger Howard and deflect attention from Ames? Most U.S. counterintelligence experts doubt that. If Howard knows, he isn’t telling.

Despite the newly congenial spirit between East and West, the many questions in the Ames case may prove to be no easier to answer than they would have been in the days of the cold war. In the past two years there has been unprecedented cooperation between the CIA and the SVR, and the FBI and Russian intelligence. Yevgeny Primakov, chief of the SVR, has visited Washington and met with his counterpart at the CIA; and two CIA directors, Robert Gates and R. James Woolsey, have made the same pilgrimage to Moscow. At the working level, the intelligence agencies are talking to each other about working together to fight organized crime, nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

Consequently, there is an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to the Ames case. If Ames was indeed a Russian spy, it would mean that, when both sides amicably agreed to cooperate over the past two years about potential threats to both countries, the Americans knew that a CIA officer was under surveillance as a suspected spy for Moscow, and the Russians knew they had a mole in the agency.

CIA officials say they began to look for a mole when they started to lose agents that Howard could not have known about. Although the Soviets have executed a number of alleged Western spies over the past decade, published reports that Ames was responsible for as many as 10 deaths are far from confirmed. Moreover, not all the CIA spies nabbed by the KGB were shot. For example, Vladimir Potashov, a disarmament specialist at Moscow’s Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada, was recruited by the CIA in the early ’80s and was caught in July 1986. He was sent to the gulag, to the Perm 35 prison, where he met two other former spies for American intelligence. The three were released by President Yeltsin in January 1992. Potashov, still suffering from the effects of brutal conditions in the labor camp, now lives in the United States. “I survived,” he said, “and so did the two others.”

To professional spies in both Moscow and Washington, the accusations against Rick Ames and his wife, Rosario, come as no surprise. Vadim A. Kirpichenko, former deputy head of KGB foreign intelligence, who remains a high-level consultant to the SVR, told me at breakfast last year that the SVR no longer conducts “active measures” in the United States, such as paying front groups. But when I asked whether the Russians would “turn away a new John Walker,” the convicted navy spy, Kirpichenko quickly admitted they would not. ‘We are not saying we are not going to support our agents." Kirpichenko smiled. ‘We have to pay the agents for good work."