Spycraft - Melton [56]
The report George received was astonishing. When the film was processed, only two frames out of fifty were illegible. All significant contents of the policy paper had been captured. With more than twenty years in Soviet operations, this was, to his knowledge, the first time that top-secret documents had ever been photographed by a CIA agent inside a Soviet embassy’s referentura. TRIGON had more than proven he could use the T-50 operationally.
The report added that the information had gone to the “seventh floor” at Headquarters from whence the DCI hand-carried it to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was quoted as saying that the copied document was “the most important piece of intelligence that he had read as Secretary of State.”4
TRIGON had yet another surprise in store for George at the end of the next training session. He said, “Oh, and by the way, please get me something to kill myself, in case I think I’m going to be caught.”
Despite the fiction in espionage novels, lethal substances, called L-pills, were rarely deployed and not available as an off-the-shelf stock item from OTS. Only when an agent could not be dissuaded and after approval by the DDP himself would an L-pill be produced.
George reported the request to the case officer, who cabled it to Headquarters. An immediate answer firmly stated that the request had been reviewed by the Soviet Division chief and the Deputy Director for Operations and the answer was “No way.”
Since this was an “agent handling” matter, the case officer broke the news to TRIGON that his request had been denied. An L-pill would not be issued.
“Okay, fine, I won’t be working for you anymore,” TRIGON replied.
A furious field-to-Headquarters cable exchange followed. Headquarters asked if the agent was bluffing. The case officer asked George’s assistance in preparing a considered response. TRIGON and his handler, even prior to the steam room recruitment, had spent considerable time together in Bogotá. And while TRIGON did not speak English, the case officer, who was fluent in Russian and Spanish, used both languages to build confidence and trust. Their relationship included informal evenings sitting on street corners at night drinking and talking about politics, philosophy, and personal interests. The case officer was certain he knew TRIGON the person as well as TRIGON the agent, and George had just spent several intense weeks training the diplomat in espionage. The two agreed the cable should read: “EITHER HE GETS AN L-TABLET OR WE DON’T HAVE AN OPERATION.”5
OTS was instructed to produce an L-pill and conceal it in the barrel of a pen identical to the one that held the camera.
With his tour in Colombia at an end, TRIGON returned to Moscow in 1975 as part of the normal pattern of diplomatic rotation. From the Agency’s perspective, TRIGON could not have received a better Moscow assignment. Appointed to a key post in the American Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, TRIGON’s job gave him access to read and photograph reports from Soviet ambassadors around the world.6
Since Soviet officials returning from overseas were watched carefully by the KGB for signs of corruption, no immediate contact was attempted. Then, after a cooling-off period of several months, TRIGON recovered a dead drop containing new one-time pads, a commo plan, and the T-50 spy camera. Thereafter, he began providing a steady stream of documentary intelligence detailing Soviet policy, confirming the quality of both his training and equipment.
To maintain operational security, with a single exception, TRIGON never met his Moscow case officer. The operation relied on communications conducted using OWVL and written instructions passed through dead drops. TRIGON never met the case officer who loaded and unloaded the drops. Had he done so, he likely would have been shocked.
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