Undercover with FBI Counterintelligence
Moscow, July 1994
After emptying my head of notes while inside my Radisson hotel room, I descended to the lobby to reconnect with Edward Lee Howard.
We drove to Howard's office so he could check on
incoming faxes.
Howard told me his wife
and son would arrive in Moscow five days hence and stay a month. They wanted to visit St. Petersburg, he said, so he intended to accompany them and play tour guide.
"How
are you able to maintain your marriage like this?" I asked.
"It's
tough," said Howard. "Mary and
I see each other at Christmas and during the summer. I don't ask her questions and she doesn't ask
me any. It's what you'd call mature love."
"And
when she's here, it's as if nothing has changed?"
"That's
right. My in-laws are coming, too,"
Howard added.
"Everything's
cool with them?"
"It's
okay now. At first they didn't want Mary
to see me again. It took some time. But we got over the emotional difficulties. I've got their support. And that's the main reason I want this book
written. I just want my side of the
story out there where my family can see it. Then I can move on."
"And
your son?"
"We
have a good relationship. We had a long
talk when he was eleven, after he found a copy of the David Wise book. Lee knows I'm not a spy. I'm a political refugee."
I
told Howard that National Press planned to submit his manuscript to the CIA for
review.
"They have to," I
said, "to protect themselves from accusations of receiving and publishing
classified material."
"I
see." Howard was displeased by this
news, not least because he anticipated, correctly, that the CIA would try to freeze all monies due him, and likely succeed.
Traffic
had slowed because twelve large crates of bottled beer had fallen from a truck
in front of us.
Cars veered around the
mess; some motorists jumped out of their vehicles to loot the few bottles that
lay unbroken in the street.
A
half-mile later, Howard parked and we crossed the street to his office, which was housed
within a yellow cinderblock structure. "I'm in a medical building," said Howard. "It's cheap."
We
walked through an unlocked front door.
A
few yards on, first door on the left, Howard keyed a single lock and we
entered.
The drab, two-room office was
illuminated by dim wattage. It reeked of
stale tobacco. Cigarette smoke had
permeated the carpets, the furniture, and stained the walls brown.
Howard
checked for faxes. None.
"Who
are your clients these days?" I asked.
"Some
Germans, Swedes. A Spaniard. He paid
for me to meet him in Vienna last month."
"So
you manage to travel a bit?"
"Yeah,"
said Howard. "Neutral countries
mostly, like Switzerland and Austria."
"How
do you find clients?"
"Through
advertising. I started with the International Herald Tribune, but that
was terrible. I only got people who
wanted to sell me things. The Economist is best."
Howard re-locked his office and we walked down the road to a Tex-Mex restaurant called
Santa Fe.
"They've only been open
four months but doing pretty well," said Howard. "It's a good thing we're eating
early. It'll be packed later, with a
line to get in."
Santa
Fe was quiet at 5:30 p.m., a few barflies.
The maitre’d sat us with menus printed in English, priced in U.S. dollars.
I
ordered Heineken; Howard, a tonic. He
lit another Doral and chained his way through dinner:
beef fajitas for him, a chicken sandwich for me.
"Your
book is going to need some new hooks," I said. "So let's talk about that now."
"Fine."
"First. Your knowledge about Russian spies inside the
U.S. Government beyond Ames."
"There
are plenty of them," said Howard.
"Okay,
let's expand on that. Start with the
American who tipped you off about your wife cooperating with the FBI during
your secret trip to the U.S. in ‘86.
Where would he have worked to gain access to the documents he showed
you?"
"Probably
the Justice Department," said Howard. "The KGB showed me
psychological studies that had been prepared by the U.S. government saying that
I was suicidal. That would have been
CIA."
"Ames?"
"Maybe."
"Or
the KGB could have made it up," I said.
"Why?"
"To
convince you not to take the trip."
"Uh-huh,"
said Howard. "I guess that's
possible. But I went, and they helped me
with false documents and re-entry."
"Speaking
of Ames," I said. "Why didn't
the Russians rescue him? They must have
known he was under investigation."
 |
| Col. Igor Batamirov |
"Yeah,
they knew he was in trouble," said Howard. "Last September, one of my KGB contacts, a man named Batamirov,
showed me a picture of Ames when we were at a restaurant on the river. He asked me, 'Do you know this man?' I said I didn't. I should have known then something was going
on. They knew Ames was in trouble."
"So
why didn't they exfiltrate Ames?" I asked.
"Like the Brits did with Oleg Gordievsky?"
"They
could have," replied Howard. "It would have been very easy. The KGB wanted to get him out. It
went up to [President] Yeltsin for approval and he shot it down."
I
almost fell out of my chair. "Why?" I asked.
"Because
it would have been too sticky politically," said Howard. "Look, when there was a $400 million aid
package for Russia working its way through Congress, some Congressman tacked on
a rider saying it was contingent on the Russians giving me back! Yeltsin didn't want
another one like me messing up aid packages.
It was more politically expedient to let Ames get caught than bring him
here, where'd he'd become a major political and economic issue.
 |
| Aldrich Ames |
"And I'll tell you something else about
Ames," continued Howard. "He wasn't the incompetent fool
they made him out to be in the American press. My KGB contacts say he was a brilliant spy, very professional."
"You
wrote in your manuscript that your KGB friends cracked out the champagne when
Ames was caught. Why would they
celebrate the loss of such an important agent?"
"You
have to understand," said Howard, "these guys have been bashed away
at for five years. It boosted their
morale to be seen to have put one over on the CIA."
I
asked again about Russian spies inside the U.S. government.
"Look,"
said Howard. "We have thousands of
intelligence officers around the world whose job it is to recruit spies. So does the KGB. With all those people, and a big budget, do
you think they don't recruit anyone? If
they didn't, the money would stop. Of
course they have spies everywhere. When
I was living in Sweden, my KGB contacts told me in advance everything that was
coming down on me. They said, You're
about to be detained and arrested. They
knew! I'll tell you, Igor Batamirov, the
man Dick Cote met? He was Ames's handler."
As Howard chewed beef fajitas, he confirmed for me what he had told the
Dickster: His book was the KGB's
idea.
"They asked what I
wanted," said Howard. "I said,
Just give me a new car. They said
fine."
I
ordered a second Heineken; Ed, another tonic.
The restaurant had begun to fill up, mostly expatriate American
businessmen.
Talk
turned to the new capitalism in Russia, Howard's pet peeve.
"In the old days," said Howard,
"I had a little book, and in it were special vouchers and phone numbers
for getting seats at the Bolshoi [ballet] or anywhere else in Moscow."
"You
don't have that any more?"
"No
one does," Howard griped.
"Everything is money now."
