CHAPTER TEN

She was a mystery to me, a curious puzzle that tugged at my consciousness throughout that Sunday afternoon and far into the evening. Huddled alone under the under the covers that night, the enigma that was Lea Myers began to haunt me as I encrypted an urgent communication; and with each passing day thereafter, it weighed more heavily upon me. 

Still without answer four days later, I pulled my car to a stop in front of Angleton's house at precisely 7:00 PM. Stubbing out my cigarette in the overflowing ashtray, I picked up an annotated copy of my report to the Board of Directors and climbed out upon the grass. Angleton's approval of the report was important to me for financial reasons; so I paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and wished myself well before climbing the narrow path to his door.

Angleton must have been waiting for me, for he opened the door almost immediately. He greeted me politely and shook my hand before waiving in the general direction of a couch, placed just beneath the bay window. He excused himself, and disappeared down the short hall that led to the kitchen. 

Taking advantage of his absence, I glanced around to survey my surroundings. The house itself had surprised me; for it was an ordinary suburban residence, indistinguishable from the thousands of others that littered the North Arlington area. It reminded me of the house I had grown up in, a fact that I found disconcerting. For I knew that Angleton had inherited a substantial fortune; and in a town given to ostentatious displays of wealth and power, it seemed odd to me that a man of his renown would inhabit such a modest dwelling. 

From my position on the couch, the interior of his house seemed equally unremarkable. The furnishings were tasteful and perhaps expensive, but far from luxurious. It had a comfortable and lived in appearance, accentuated by the piles of magazines and books stacked in one corner. One the coffee table before me lay a half dozen unfamiliar periodicals, devoted - apparently - to art and perhaps architecture.

I was toying with the notion of opening the top magazine and flipping through it when Angleton returned, with might have been a scotch and soda in hand. He briefly apologized, before seating himself in an armchair against the wall. 

I excused him as a matter of course while he was making himself comfortable, and told him truthfully that I was honored to be his guest.

He smiled softly, dismissing my comment with a wave of his hand. "I presume you know the purpose of this meeting?"

Taken aback, I cleared my throat. I presumed that it had something to do with the report I had submitted to the Board of Directors, and I had come prepared to discuss it. I was opening the manila envelope when he stopped me.

"No, I'm not concerned with your report. I read it, and have no objections to it or to any of your recommendations. If there are no objections from the Board, you may proceed with your plans…

Relieved, I set the envelope back down on the couch beside me.

He looked at me sternly. "I am not terribly interested in administration. That has never been my forte, so I will leave that task to you, as executive director. General Richardson tells me that you are an excellent manager, and I trust in his judgment. But I am concerned about your lack of background…

He leaned forward and looked at me intently. "Tell me, have you completed Golitsyn?"

He was referring to KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn, who had just published a book entitled New Lies for Old. Golitsyn had first come to the attention of the United States in 1954, when Peter Deriabin defected to the West. Also a KGB major, Deriabin has served with Golitsyn as a counterintelligence officer in Vienna; and in the course of his debriefing, he had identified Golitsyn as a potential defector. Golitsyn had been recalled to Moscow before the CIA could approach him; and until December 22, 1961, he remained no more than a name on a file card at CIA headquarters.

But on that date he arrived at the US Embassy in Helsinki in the midst of a heavy snowfall. Identifying himself to the Marine guards as a Soviet diplomat, he asked to see the CIA's chief of station. In accordance to the established protocal governing walk-ins - that is, potential defectors that appear unexpectedly - he was admitted to the embassy. To prove his bona fides, he presented the chief of station with a sheath of classified documents from the KGB's files, and promised more in return for asylum. A deal was quickly cut, and on Christmas Day a U.S. Air Force transport lifted off from the Helsinki airport. In addition to the diplomatic pouch that served as its pretext, it carried Maj. Golitsyn, his wife, and their daughter, to freedom.

It was a spectacular Cold War victory for the CIA, later celebrated in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Topaz. But there was far more to the story than Hitchcock ever knew.

Golitsyn's tour of duty in Vienna had been both unremarkable and unrewarding. As far as the CIA was able to determine, he had been a minimally competent counterintelligence officer. To the best of their knowledge, he had failed to recruit even a single penetration agent in any of the Western intelligence services. But as later events made clear, this was due to temperament rather than ability. Reassigned to the KGB's headquarters in Moscow, Golitsyn quickly proved himself an exceptionally capable staff officer.

After serving as a NATO analyst at Moscow Centre, Golitsyn was re-assigned to the KGB Institute. The Soviets formally represented the Institute as a "think tank" comparable to the U.S. Government's Rand Corporation, and that was perhaps partially true. But the larger truth was far more sinister, for it held within its walls the KGB's strategic planning group.  Formed at the express direction of then-Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev, it was charged with developing a long-range policy for destroying the West. Golitsyn had been assigned to this group, and it was there that he began planning his defection. Convinced that the Soviet state was implacably aggressive, he took upon himself the task of warning the West. Lest he arouse suspicion, he carried out his duties with fervor and dispatch. Working late nights and weekends, he committed hundreds of classified documents to memory while planning his escape.

After arriving in the West, Golytsin was subjected to an exhaustive debriefing. During the course of his interrogation CIA officers were stunned by his detailed knowledge of the NATO intelligence services. Unwilling or unable to believe that he had actually handled the classifed documents he claimed to have analyzed in Moscow, they subjected him to rigorous tests. Hundreds of authentic documents were intermixed with thousands of fabrications; and as he systematically identified the genuine with unfailing accuracy, their doubt turned to horror. The fact that Golitsyn not only knew the names and identification numbers of hundreds of top-secret NATO documents but could also identify them on sight proved beyond doubt that NATO's security had been breached on a massive scale. Worse yet, Gloitsyn proved by deduction that Soviet moles had penetrated most and perhaps all of the Western intelligence services; and he provided specific and often detailed clues as to their identities. Beyond doubt, the British, French, West German and American intelligence services had all been compromised; and there was no way to assess the extent of the damage. The only thing that could be known with certainty was that KGB agents were operating with impunity throughout the highest levels of the Alliance.

The harm done to NATO and the NATO intelligence services was presumed catastrophic; but according to Golitsyn, that was merely the tip of the iceberg. For the KGB was no longer operating as a traditional intelligence service. Following the Shelepin reforms of 1956-1958, the KGB had emerged as the primary offensive instrument of the Soviet State; and its mission had been recast from traditional espionage to strategic deception.

Convinced that the USSR could not hope to defeat the West in open battle, Khrushchev had devised a strategy of indirect aggression that would in time lead to a complete Communist victory. His plan included support for what the Soviets euphemistically called "wars of national liberation," international terrorism, so-called Active Measures operations against the Western political systems, and diplomatic initiatives designed to separate the United States from its European allies. To cover the inherently aggressive nature of their actual deeds, the Soviets would publicly pursue a policy proclaimed as Peaceful Co-Existence. Their ultimate objective was to persuade Western policy-makers to accept a convergence of Communism and capitalism upon Soviet terms, through an admixture of force, fraud and enticement. To ensure that Western policy-makers would not recognize their peril, the KGB was recast and reconstituted to systematically mislead the Western intelligence agencies and the governments they served with a steady stream of carefully crafted disinformation.

After reading Golitsyn, I recognized the theoretical danger of such an attack; but nonetheless, I had remained skeptical. The practical difficulties of mounting such an operation seemed to me overwhelming, and I suspected that any such effort would collapse under its own weight. Yet I lacked the sort of high-level experience that would enable me to make a reasoned judgment as to the practicality of the Soviet plan or the actual threat it posed to the United States and its allies; and so I weighed my words carefully under Angleton's dispassionate gaze.

Shifting on the couch, I finally answered. "Yes, sir, I have read it. But it is a remarkably complex and complicated work, and I would prefer to study it at length before commenting upon it."

Angleton nodded casually, and shook another Virginia Slim from the packet. He lit it with a match and inhaled deeply, then told me that he agreed. Golitsyn was difficult, and that was especially true for someone who lacked a solid background in counterintelligence. And indeed, it was altogether impossible without a working knowledge of Operatsia Trist.

"Trist?" I asked quizzically.

Angleton nodded. "Operation Trust, in English. It saved the Soviet Union from early destruction and, in a very basic sense, it is the source of our problems today."

In puzzlement, I shook my head. "I'm sorry, but I have never heard of it.”

Angleton smiled softly. "Very few people have. It has almost been lost to history; and that, for better or for worse, is why you are here this evening. It is essential that you understand the Trust operation. That’s why I am going to give you the same lecture that I gave to the new trainees down at the Farm."

He took a heavy drag off his cigarette, then stubbed it out in the ashtray he had balanced on the arm of his chair. He leaned back and looked at the ceiling, and began speaking from memory.

"Despite the passage of almost 80 years, the precise origins of the Trust remain obscure. But in retrospect, it seems as though Lenin’s address to the Ninth Congress of Soviets on December 23, 1921 marked its advent."

He leaned forward and clasped his hands together, resting his elbows upon his knees. "It was there that Lenin ratified the New Economic Policy that temporarily restored private enterprise to Russia; and it was there that scholars assume that he approved, inter alia, the strategic deception so closely associated with it.”

"Communist rule was then far from assured. The Bolshevik's had little popular support, and the victorious Allied Powers of the First World War were arrayed against it. The danger was not immediate, for the Russian people were prostrate and the British, French and Americans were war-weary and distracted. But the Bolsheviks recognized that internal opposition would become acute as their economy recovered; and the external threat would steadily increase as the million or more Russians who had fled abroad coalesced. Some of the émigré organizations they formed in exile had the tacit support of Western governments and the actual support of their intelligence services; and so the Bolsheviks understood it was only a matter of time before they would face internal and external opposition combined. It was therefore essential to neutralize both, severing them in the process from all sources of foreign support.

"A few weeks before Lenin’s address to the 9th Party Congress, a senior employee of the Soviet Ministry of Waterways had been arrested after returning from an official trip to Western Europe. En route back to the USSR, A. A. Yakushev had stopped in Tallin, Estonia, where he had met with a Yuriy A. Artomonov. According to some accounts he was in love with Artomonov’s wife, and hoped to persuade him to grant her a divorce. According to others he was having an affair with Artomonov’s cousin, and stopped only to deliver a letter. Whatever the actual case, Yakushev was a member of the anti-Communist underground and Artomonov a member of the external resistance.

"At this meeting, Yakushev informed Artomonov that the underground had so thoroughly penetrated the Soviet government apparatus that they were subtly transforming the regime. Anti-Communists had gained such power that it was only a matter of time before they achieved secret control. A silent coup d’etat was in progress, and it held every promise of success. For that reason Yakushev advised Artomonov that armed action against the regime should be abjured, lest it awaken the Communists to their danger. An enthusiastic Artomonov promptly forwarded a detailed report of their conversation to his superiors at the Monarchist Council, then located in Berlin. Somehow the letter was intercepted by the Soviet intelligence service, then known as the Cheka.

"With Yakushev in captivity and with Artomonov’s letter in hand, it was a simple matter for Soviet intelligence to deduce the biases, beliefs and expectations of the external resistance and to craft a strategic deception carefully tailored to fit them. A plausible cover story was concocted to account for Yakushev’s disappearance, and a disinformation agent posing as his friend was dispatched to provide Artomonov with an even more detailed report on the underground’s activities. Under threat of death, Yakushev was then “turned” to the Soviet cause and released from prison. Yakushev returned to the resistance as a Soviet penetration agent and, with his active assistance, the Cheka suborned its operations. Perhaps within a year, it achieved effective operational control over extensive portions of the underground by maneuvering ever increasing numbers of penetration agents into positions of influence, power and authority."

He paused for a moment and reached for his glass. After swishing it around, he took a deep drink and placed it back upon the floor. He lit another cigarette, and leaned back in the chair. Gazing off into space, he resumed the lecture.

"Having tamed the underground, the Cheka next moved against the external resistance and the Western intelligence services supporting it. Building upon the line of communication first established through Artomonov, they completed their feedback loop by establishing formal liaison missions in the major cities of Europe. Although some members of the external resistance harbored strong misgivings as to the underground’s authenticity, the leadership nonetheless accepted it as genuine. Because the external resistance freely shared information with the underground’s liaison, it was not strictly necessary for the Cheka to penetrate its inner sanctum.

"A flood of disinformation soon appeared in the West, most of it channeled through the liaison offices. Always, the message was the same: Don’t attack the Soviet Union, for great changes are taking place – and given time, these are sure to result in the peaceful overthrow of Bolshevism. This was convincing because it was carefully modulated to conform to the beliefs and expectations of the external resistance’s leadership, and because the underground  – by now almost entirely under Cheka control – provided further proof. Having established clandestine crossings along the Soviet frontier, the underground guided members of the external resistance in and out of the country on an almost routine basis. Unaware that their reconnaissance missions were in fact carefully staged deceptions, members of the external resistance were convinced by their own observations. They were thus easily persuaded to refrain from offensive operations against the USSR; and so were the intelligence services supporting them.

"Having achieved this most pressing objective by the summer of 1923, the Cheka proceeded to use the cross-border operations to selectively eliminate members of the external resistance. To maintain the fiction that the underground was engaged in dangerous game of cat and mouse with the regime, border crossings were often made hazardous. Reconnaissance teams were sometimes fired upon, and agents killed or captured. The occasional disappearance, death or apprehension of external resistance leaders during border crossings was therefore attributed to misfortune. Only much later did it become apparent that they had been targeted for assassination. Foreign intelligence services supporting the external resistance were drawn in as well, and many of their intelligence officers and agents suffered a similar fate. It was by this means that the Cheka captured and killed the legendary British master-spy Sidney Reilly.

"A deception of this magnitude could not be sustained forever; and after seven years, the days of Operatsia Trist were clearly numbered. Like the New Economic Policy, Trist had been conceived as a temporary expedient to assist the Soviet regime as it consolidated power. By 1927 this initial objective had been long achieved, as had other objectives later added.

"In April of that year a senior underground-leader-turned-Chekist by the name of Eduard Opperput forced it to a close when he sought sanctuary in Finland. Whether he defected as claimed, or was dispatched as most scholars argue, remains unknown. In either case, he caused chaos in the external resistance and the foreign intelligence services that had supported them by serializing his account of the Trist in a Russian language newspaper. Having invested all of its hopes and expectations in Trist – and most of its resources as well – the external resistance received a blow from which it never recovered. The closely associated Finnish, Estonian and Polish foreign intelligence services were also severely damaged. The British and French foreign intelligence services were similarly affected, though to a lessor extent.

"The Soviet regime which had been so precarious in 1921 was now safely established in power, where it has remained ever since.”

"The same, I might add, applies to the KGB."

I leaned back upon the couch in stunned silence. I had taken my first undergraduate degree in history, and the focus of my studies had been the Soviet Union. Yet I had never heard of the Trust, nor the central role it had played in saving the Bolshevik regime. I fumbled for a cigarette in my shirt pocket, lit it, and said so to Angleton.

I had been concerned that he might take offense; but instead he leaned forward and smiled kindly. "As I said, the Trust has almost been lost to history. Save for the handful of senior officials that were actively involved in the effort to overthrow the Bolsheviks, its significance went largely unnoticed at the time. Which was fortunate for them, for they had been swindled on a grand scale. Had the Western publics noticed, it would have ended a great many careers."

I nodded thoughtfully. "And you believe that the Soviets are running a replay of the Trust against us?"

Angleton looked at me crossly. I didn't say that. I said you cannot understand Golitsyn without understanding the Trust.

Clearly irritated, he said, "I'm afraid you miss the point." 

He picked up his glass and drained it. "Its impossible to run a major deception for any length of time using a conventional organizational structure. Penetration is a fact of life, and in the intelligence business it is a way of life…

"For that reason, a deception of the scale posited by Golitsyn has to be accompanied by an entirely different command and control system. It cannot be located within the intelligence service, because no matter how well defended it is, that service is vulnerable to penetration and compromise…

"The command and control structure must therefore be located outside of the intelligence service. It must be entirely separate from that service, and physically distinct. And indeed, the service in question must not even know of its existence. At most, the head of the service and perhaps one or two of its most senior officers will know the source of their orders and directives…

"The service therefore ceases to be an intelligence service in any conventional sense of the term, and becomes instead the operational arm of a strategic planning group that is nameless, faceless, and indeterminately located. It becomes in effect a mere front for hidden powers that be; and for that reason, its activities tell us nothing at all with regard to the strategic objectives that they are pursuing…

"You have to understand: states have intelligence services for a reason. Intelligence services conduct operations in support of actual rather than declared policies. Historically, an accurate analysis of the activities conducted by a states intelligence service has been sufficient to reveal its true intentions…

"It has been the gold standard by which states have been measured.

"In the past, we had assumed that a careful analysis of the KGB's global activities would reveal a more or less accurate image of the Soviet's true intentions. But if Golitsyn is correct, they have constructed an impenetrable Inner Line…

I leaned forward. "A what?"

"An Inner Line. It’s a term of Russian origin that refers to the command and control structure I have just described. The external resistance actually tried to construct one in the early 1920's, but their senior leadership had already been penetrated. One of the members of their Inner Line was a Bolshevik agent, as you will learn from your readings…

"The point is this: if an Inner Line is successfully constructed, it vanishes into the mist. The intelligence service it controls becomes a mindless automation, doing the Inner Line's bidding without even knowing of its existence. At that point it becomes impossible to accurately infer anything from its operations. It is no longer possible to distinguish bona fide operations from cover or diversionary operations, even in theory. By the same token, it blinds us to the state's true purpose. No matter how accurate our own intelligence, it is impossible to know whether their declared policy of peaceful relations is their actual policy, or an elaborate charade designed to mask aggressive intentions…

"In other words, the successful construction of an Inner Line by an opposition service l places us in a position of total ignorance."

He looked at me carefully, studying my reaction. Lost in thought, I lit a cigarette and gazed off in the distance. Angleton had just overturned my intellectual applecart, and it had made me extremely uncomfortable. 

"What you need to grasp is one single, simple fact: If the Soviets have succeeded in constructing an Inner Line, everything - and I mean everything - we thought we knew about the KGB, the Soviet Union, the entire Communist movement…has been cast into doubt. Our intelligence has been reduced to rubble; and yet our policymakers must still make decisions of consequence upon it…

"There is a realistic possibility that the Soviet Union is engaged in a deception of enormous magnitude, one that is designed to ensure our destruction. And yet we have no way to either prove or disprove the suspicion…

"At this point, we must assume that whatever evidence we may successfully gather is misleading and probably deliberately so. Logic and reason collapse in the face of such uncertainty."

I was by then speechless. I desperately wanted a drink, but I lacked the temerity to ask. Instead, I lit another cigarette; and after several deep drags, I finally nodded my head. "I see."

Angleton continued to gaze at me impassively as I smoked my cigarette. His cold blue eyes finally became too much for me, and I asked him if there was anything else.

"Write this down." He waited as I fumbled for my pen, and hoisted the manila envelope that held my report onto my knee. I turned it over so I could make notes upon the back.

"Do you have a copy of Sun Tzu?" He was referring to the Chinese military scholar's classic treatise On War. I nodded in reply. "It was required reading at Quantico, and again during graduate school. I have a copy for reference."

"Good. I want you to re-read it carefully, with particular attention to the use of intelligence for strategic purposes. Chapter Five, as I recall…

"Then I want you call around to the used booksellers and find a copy of Geoffrey Bailey's book, The Conspirators. It is the only authoritative, public source account of the Trust, and I expect you to master it."

I nodded as I scribbled down the author and title. "Yes, sir." I looked up at him, and asked if that would be all. 

"No, we will meet here each Tuesday night at 7 PM. You will receive the same course of instruction that I gave the boots at the Farm, when I used to teach counterintelligence…

"From time to time the Rock will assist with the more detailed aspects."

I looked at him quizzically. "The Rock?"

He waved his hand dismissively, and glanced at his watch. "Ray Rocca. He was Deputy Chief of Counterintelligence for Analysis. He's an authority of great stature."

Angleton stood, and asked me if I had any questions. Taken aback, I could only offer a feeble joke. "Its ironic that we will be meeting on Tuesdays."

I was referring to the fact that the Soviet Politburo met on Tuesdays as well. A hint of a smile flickered across Angleton's gaunt face, but he quickly suppressed it. "Ironic, perhaps, but I doubt that they would see the humor. I would advise you not to make light of them, or your own current circumstances."

I was by then standing, prepared to take my leave. But Angleton's comments had raised a red flag. "Shall I presume that the Security and Intelligence Foundation and its activities are of interest to the opposition?"

Angleton paused, and seemed to weigh my question carefully. "We shall be raising issues that have been carefully hidden from the public's view for many years, and the Soviets do not stand to gain from that…

"We will surely arouse their interest; but whether or not they choose to pursue the matter is in the end a question of economics. The KGB Rezidentura is operating in a hostile environment, and it has limited resources at its disposal…

"They will of course use cut outs and intermediaries to obtain our publications, and they will no doubt analyze them carefully…

"But you wish to know whether or not you will become a target for hostile intelligence activities."

I nodded. I was already in deep, and I wanted to know if I was getting in deeper.

"Perhaps. As I said, it is fundamentally a question of economics. They have a very large station here, and they would no doubt like to achieve total coverage. But as a practical matter, they have to prioritize carefully, as does every other intelligence service…

"So I would be inclined to say no. But there is no way to be certain, so I would advise you to exercise due caution."

"Yes, sir." I said. 

Angleton had started to open the door for me when I interrupted. "I understand that the likelihood is small, but if I were to become a target …what in your judgment would be the most likely axis of attack?"

He turned back to face me, with a look that was deadly serious. He paused for a moment, weighing his words carefully.

"An inexperienced young man? Unmarried? If I were the Rezident, I would put someone close to you. A young girl, one that is attentive and pretty but not overly so…

"Someone vaguely reminiscent of your mother, so as to lull you into complacency."

As he turned back to the door, I couldn't help but wonder.