Spycraft - Melton [89]
On August 1, 1985, Commander Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko,28 deputy chief of the First Department of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (foreign intelligence), called the U.S. Embassy in Rome and offered to defect.29 Later that afternoon Yurchenko provided the chief, Alan D. Wolfe, with information about two penetrations of U.S. intelligence, one at the National Security Agency and a second, code-named ROBERT, within the CIA itself. 30
Yurchenko claimed not to know ROBERT’s true name, but offered two important clues: ROBERT had sold classified information to the KGB in Vienna in the fall of 1984 and trained for Moscow operations, but was taken off the assignment just prior to departure.31 Two days after receiving Yurchenko’s information, the CIA’s Office of Security informed the FBI that ROBERT was almost certainly the former CIA officer Edward Lee Howard. 32
Howard, who joined the CIA in 1981,33 had been selected in 1982 to become a case officer in Moscow. Since he had always been under cover as a CIA employee and had not been posted abroad, he was considered clean and less likely be identified as an American intelligence officer.34 In preparation for the Moscow assignment, Howard and his wife, Mary, received six weeks of intensive training on the clandestine tradecraft necessary for operating against the KGB in their own backyard.35 Training in detecting and evading surveillance was particularly rigorous with field exercises conducted against FBI surveillance teams.36 Then, during a polygraph examination before his scheduled departure for Moscow, Howard admitted to drug and alcohol abuse, petty theft, and cheating during training.37 The CIA fired Howard in early May of 1983.38
Bitter and angry at the Agency, Howard moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he took a job as an economic analyst with the state legislature. But his troubles with alcohol and debts continued.39 A series of bizarre telephone calls Howard made, including one to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, were so troubling that on September 24, 1984, a former supervisor and a psychologist were dispatched to interview him at his home.40 Howard revealed the unsettling news that in October of 1983 he loitered outside the Soviet Consulate in Washington, D.C., while considering whether to volunteer to the Soviets.41
Following receipt on August 3, 1985, of the CIA information identifying Howard as ROBERT, the FBI began surveilling Howard, but by the end of the month, Howard, sensitized by his training, detected the surveillance.42 In early September the FBI began monitoring his telephone conversations.43 Howard was under twenty-four-hour physical and technical surveillance.44
A little more than two weeks later, on September 19, the FBI confronted Howard with information that he had been identified as a Soviet agent.45 To protect the real source, Yurchenko, the FBI attributed the information to KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky.46 Howard did not confess, but refused a polygraph test.47 Interviewed again the next day, he stated his intent to engage a criminal attorney over the weekend and agreed to another interview on Monday, a meeting he never intended to attend.
During his CIA countersurveillance training, Howard had learned to use the JIB and how to roll out of a moving car while slowly rounding a corner. 48 Lacking an OTS-designed JIB, he created a field-expedient version with a toilet plunger, coat hanger, and Calvin Klein field jacket taped to the top. The dummy’s head was a Styrofoam wig block and commercially available Jerome Alexander wig issued during his disguise training at “The Farm.”49
Howard and his wife departed for dinner at a local Santa