 |
| Richard N. Cote with British Traitor/Russian Spy George Blake Moscow, May 1994 |
Undercover with FBI Counterintelligence
May 1994, Washington, D.C.
Ten
days after our spook writer, Richard N. Cote, departed for Moscow, he traveled back through the looking glass, arriving at my house in Bethesda at 5:33 p.m. blasted and spacey from jet lag.
Understandable, as he had just flown, economy, four
hours from Moscow to Paris, eight hours from Paris to Washington, and had all
but lost his voice to laryngitis. He
begged for a glass of milk and we sat in my sunroom.
An
awestruck Cote was in his glory, if out of his depth.
"I just had the most exhilarating ten
days of my life!" he erupted.
Edward Lee Howard had introduced The Dickster to George Blake; they'd lunched at a Moscow bistro called Tren Mos.
The
British traitor/Russian spy Blake wanted Cote's help to write his own book (a sequel to an
earlier memoir), so the Dickster intended to get back to Russia on his own nickel as soon as
humanly possible. (He never did.)
"Moscow
has no logic," Cote rasped. "At
least not our logic. It has a logic all
its own. You're not in control in
Moscow. Moscow is in control of
you. Everywhere you go, the answer is
no. I call them nyet-nyuks."
"Slow
down," I said. "Let's start
from the beginning."
Cote
rubbed his Adam’s apple and asked for another glass of milk.
"I asked
Howard the entire laundry list of questions the FBI and CIA would dearly like
to ask him, if only they could,” he said, not realizing that they did, and pretty soon they'd have their answers. “I'll send you 50 pages of interview transcripts.”
So
rather than talk substance, we'd talk color and gossip, and do this over pizza
and white wine at nearby Melio's in Spring Valley Center.
"Howard
has a 1700 square-foot apartment in the second nicest neighborhood in
Moscow," whispered Cote. "He
was able to buy it, but he doesn't live there.
He uses it to overnight in town and put up business associates."
This
was where The Dickster had lodged.
"His
apartment is on the second floor," Cote continued. "This was convenient because the
elevator was broken the whole time. Two
bedrooms, one has twin beds. The other
is fitted as a home-office with computer and laser printer."
I
asked Cote if he thought he'd been watched.
"Not
for one minute."
But what about Ed's security contingent?
(Howard had written of a 24-hour, 16-bodyguard
arrangement.)
The
Dickster shook his head. "It
doesn't exist. I asked him about
it. He said, 'Sometimes I have a
tail, maybe two, if they're training somebody new.'"
"Did
he drink any booze?"
"Not
one drop."
"Did
you go out to bars with him?"
"Yep." Cote nodded.
"He drank soft drinks. Oh,
you'll like this: Every head bartender
in every bar in Moscow is a KGB agent.
Anyway, Ed just doesn't drink.
The Russian police can stop motorists for any reason. They don't need reasonable cause. And they come down heavy on drunk
drivers. Ed says it's not worth chancing
it. He wants to be a good Russian."
"What
do you mean, a good Russian?"
"Ed
doesn't consider himself an American expatriate any more," said Cote. "He has Russian citizenship and he
considers himself Russian. That's his
self-image. He's in Russia for good and
he's going to live a Russian life. None
of his friends are American..."
"Who
are his friends?"
 |
KGB Colonel Igor Batamirov with Richard Cote.
Moscow, May 1994 |
"Ed
has very few friends," replied Cote. "Igor Batamirov, a
KGB colonel I met, is probably his best friend.
And George Blake. I loved Blake. He's like a big teddy bear. I wanted to put him in my suitcase and bring
him back with me. And, yeah, he's a good
friend to Ed."
"Girlfriends?"
"Yes,"
replied Cote. "He has a few. Ed has an interesting perspective on
this. He says his wife knows that he's
screwed around, that he has girlfriends.
But as long as it's vague, it's cool.
He doesn't want to get into specifics in his book because then it would
be un-cool. But, boy, his first three
years in Moscow were wild. All he did
was drink and screw every woman he could get his hands on. Igor vouched for this. But that's over. Ed's settled down. He's really a quiet country boy at
heart."
"You
think so?"
"Absolutely,"
said Cote. "He's sober and serious
and very self-sufficient."
"What
about a sense of humor?" I asked.
"Ed
doesn't have a well-developed sense of humor," said Cote. "If you try to be funny, he misses it
nine times out of ten."
The
Dickster reached into his sport-coat and extracted a pack of color
photographs. “Ed took me to places where
tourists never travel.
"Our
government," Cote whispered, "spent $250 million on a manhole
cover. Can you believe it? Here it is."
Cote showed me a shot of Howard kneeling over
a manhole cover. "That's it, the
manhole cover, a quarter of a billion bucks!"
I
flipped through the deck:
Howard hunched
over a laptop in his dacha.
Howard picking through food at open-air stalls.
None of the photos showed Howard full-face, but he was clean-shaven; gone, the
mousy mustache, and his hair was turning gray.
"Ed
didn't want any full-face shots," explained Cote "He doesn't want the FBI to have an
up-to-date picture of him."
"What
makes Ed think the FBI would see your photos?"
"You
kidding? Ed was convinced they'd meet me
at the gate at Dulles Airport and confiscate my tapes and photos."
"Really?"
"Yeah. He's really pissed at the FBI. Now, this is in confidence, not for the book,
not for the guys at National Press, but just for you: Ed told me that his assistant, Larissa, came
to the U.S. to visit relatives. She was
intercepted by the FBI and forced to give testimony before a grand jury. She was upset. Ed was livid.
He's had it with the FBI.
"As for
Joel Joseph's suggestion about making a deal?
Ed says no deal-making. He says
no truce with the FBI, no compromises.
His attitude is, you won't leave me alone, so f--- you, you want to play
games? I'll reveal everything I know."
I
perused Cote's other photos:
1) The
Dickster with Colonel Igor Batamirov, a senior KGB officer whom the
powers-that-be in Moscow had wheeled out for his first-ever interview with a
Western writer. (When Howard first
arrived in Moscow, it was Batamirov who met him at the airport.)
2) The Dickster with George Blake.
"George
didn't really want a photo taken of him," said Cote. "Nobody knows what he looks like any
more. I assured him it won't be used in
the book."
This much was obvious:
The Russians had put on a
good show for The Dickster. They were
very much behind Howard's book.
"Ames?"
I asked.
"In
the transcripts."
"Tell
me something," I prodded,
mindful that Special Agent John H would fly in from Albuquerque next day to be briefed by me on Cote’s trip.
"Okay." Cote sipped water. "I put to Ed the Yurchenko theory, that
Yurchenko was KGB stage-managed to take the heat off Ames at Ed's expense. Ed doesn't buy that. He believes Yurchenko was genuine and knew
that Howard was on a KGB target list because they knew he was unhappy and ripe
for an approach.
"So Yurchenko gave his
debriefers hints about whom the KGB might
target, the FBI ran with that, pinpointing Howard, and they assumed the worst
because they knew the KGB had been getting secrets from someone, from
Ames.
"Ed says the FBI are gradually
discovering that things they thought the KGB had gotten from him had really come
from Ames."
"Do
you believe him?" I asked.
"Look,
I was in the Air Force," said Cote.
"I had a minor clearance.
And I was taught, if something is stamped secret, it's secret. It doesn't matter if the Russians already
know about it. It's illegal to tell
anyone. Period. Clearly, Ed has done this. It's obvious to me he has given secrets to
the Russians."
(The Dickster, essentially, just declared himself a potential witness in court against Ed Howard.)
"Anything
else?"
"Yeah,
this is good," said Cote. "Ed
told me that the Russians gave him a Toshiba laptop, a value of $3-4,000, to write his book. And
they promised him a new car when it's finished."
Surprise, surprise.
Added Cote, "Ed also said they wanted him to include CIA operations he knew nothing
about: CIA operations in Latin America and CIA media propaganda operations."
(Perhaps the KGB was hoping to take the heat off Aldrich Ames by creating a distraction that would leave Howard to blame for secrets Ames had betrayed.)
The
Dickster was spent. By now, he'd been traveling
for almost 24-hours.
Just past 8 p.m. he set off again, bound for another flight followed by a long-sleep in Charleston, South Carolina, from whence he came.
