Spycraft - Melton [42]
Assigned to Alaska with his fishing buddy, George became the most supervised employee in the CIA. As the only case officer in Anchorage, he was managed by both the Chief of Station and the Deputy Chief of Station. The three were there because Alaska, like Germany, was seen as another critical point into which the Soviet Union could launch hostilities. From a base just across the Bering Strait, Soviet pilots would regularly probe the Distant Early Warning line of U.S. radar and other air defenses protecting the U.S. western and northern borders. However, when budget cuts hit the tiny intelligence outpost a year later, George was ordered back to Washington where, on that early November day in 1962, he deciphered the message that signaled Penkovsky’s capture.
George spent the next two years in SR Division, running a modest number of peripheral operations and learning passable Russian before securing a Moscow assignment where he worked for two stressful but operationally uneventful years. Returning to Headquarters in the mid-sixties Saxe found a changed attitude in the SR Division. Despite the paralysis that gripped operations against Soviet targets, there was a new determination within the ranks of the SR officers to challenge the KGB on its own turf. The idea was to begin taking some risky, but carefully calculated initiatives that would, with luck, lead to productive operations.
Shortly after Penkovsky’s arrest, with Moscow operations all but dried up, a Soviet engineer had walked into an American Embassy outside of the USSR and offered his services. By way of bona fides, he brought with him images that detailed Soviet missile capability. With pressure not to make a mistake, the station provided the “walk-in” with a basic commo plan that included instructions on how to receive shortwave coded messages via OWVL, but no follow-up contact was authorized.
The lead had grown cold by the time George learned of the case. Sensing that an opportunity to reactivate the proposal remained, Saxe received approval to initiate an operation. No one gave him much chance of success, and the passage of time had only complicated an already complex situation. Even if the walk-in wasn’t a provocation, even if he could be recontacted, and even if he responded, the Moscow office had little ability to sustain communications.
Added to these problems was the fact that the volunteer had specified that he could provide detailed technical intelligence, specifically engineering drawings. It was difficult enough to pass printed or handwritten documents securely inside the USSR, but large blueprints presented special problems. Technical drawings could not be paraphrased or readily copied by hand, and they could not be removed from the facility for any significant length of time without triggering security alarm bells.
Out of necessity, the plan George developed departed markedly from operational tradition. First, the operation would be run not from the Moscow office, but out of SR Division at Headquarters. Second, there would probably be no face-to-face meetings. In all likelihood, the agent would never again talk with an American.
George was determined that the operation be handled exclusively through impersonal communications to lower both the political and security risks. “What would happen if this turned out to be a provocation? We could lose one of our few case officers in Moscow. And then what happens? It goes up to the Secretary of State who calls the Ambassador,” explained George. “What does the Ambassador do? He raises holy hell. He yells at the office chief, ‘You CIA cowboys are out there upsetting Soviet-U.S. relations! We have enough trouble with