Looking for moles

Powers, Thomas

with all its faults, you can be a Buddhist, snake which swallows its tail. We are tunate; the average liberal says that it is, or Catholic, or Taoist, and you can't, asked to find...

...Since it now pened after Golitsin gave the CIA his trying to find a mole already in place...
...thought he was crazy, and one of them September, and was found dead on Oc- But in thebusiness of intelligence, suspi- was William Colby, who fired Angleton tober 1, with scuba-diving weights cion is tantamount to conviction...
...ing if recent espionage cases indicate ever with him...
...For differing periods, ual for the spy satellite known as the certain man seemed to fit the bill did not their agents even ran the counterKH-11 to a Soviet intelligence officer in necessarily prove he had been a spy...
...A MOLE is a small burrowing ani- disclosures-of spies in several NATO He had reaspns for everything...
...which strongly suggest that talk of a mole genesis in either of the first two...
...But Angleton's reputation in the Second, a retired CIA analyst named in public places, no unusual requests for CIA was decidedly mixed...
...The West lacks will now be- James Jesus Angleton, who ran carcerated in a padded basement cell...
...The complication serves ever, in late 1961, when a major in the telling the truth...
...worked his way into the heart of an intel- now the Directorate for Operations...
...some people, and they aren't the poor, or KGB, Anatoli Golitsin, defected to the Not long after the publication of Epsour children...
...a lot of people John Arthur Paisley disappeared in late information outside his need to know...
...there is no such thing as a dead file in the New York, but contradicted by Golitsin...
...Which brings us back to the old city business of catching spies...
...years, and we have heard next to nothing some CIA people to be a double-agent One of the basic rules of counter- of what they're up to...
...cause nothing in our culture or our educa- counter-intelligence for the CIA until he Nosenko's story was importantly cortional system encourages the develop- was fired in December, 1974, has said roborated by an FBI-run Soviet agent in ment of anything like a thought...
...sion to learn in the past year, is also that the KGB had an agent, a mole, You can bet that he said what he was something else-counter-intelligence planted inside the CIA's clandestine arm, asked to say, and if asked by his superiors jargon for an enemy agent who has then called the Directorate for Plans (and he would have said the opposite thing...
...They had described a Soviet agent run by the ton between two factions of the intelli- have been hard at work for the last 30 FBI in New York, a man suspected by gence community...
...Helms once told Ben Bradlee of the Agency's Operations Center, and vestigators never came up with damning the Washington Post that was what he wondered if he had been "burned"- evidence of the sort which might settle had worried about as director of the that is, exposed-by the Soviets to pro- the matter in court-no unexplained CIA-not Nixon, or Vietnam, or Watertect someone higher up...
...thing about spies, counter-spies and there's anything in this, and Turner will These are only the bare bones of the moles, are people professionally in- ask his chief of counter-intelligence, and typically convoluted and ambiguous volved in counter-intelligence...
...it is there with Carter, and will no something is going on...
...but in China they will more or less necessary...
...THOMAS POWERS Commonweal: 104...
...When Guy Burgess and guard which began to leave the CIA in denying that he was the FBI agent, Donald MacLean defected from Britain 1973-are convinced the United States code-named "Fedora...
...classified Soviet studies for the CIA, he ing to those who know him...
...it followed that there had been a mole, figured out who had been in London on One of Angleton's favorite subjects is and that he must still be at work...
...A couple wound behind his left ear...
...Now we produce people who rise are no joke...
...Coming less than two It was one of ttie favorite Nixon-era de- there is a mole in the CIA...
...followed Golitsin's story is still a subject masters of any particular skills they This is not the sort of thing which of debate within the CIA...
...Maybe that is A really, in China...
...But they won't find writers have made tentative efforts to do counter-intelligence organizations in the mole...
...A system can feed on itself, CIA in Helsinki...
...Of course increased defense spending was correct, he said...
...If servative says that the necessity is unfor- JOHN GARVEY Solzhenitsyn says that the West lacks a sense of itself, lacks a will, it is because he is a foreigner who lives in Vermont Of several minds: Thomas Powers and hasn't visited the rest of the country...
...intelligence services, for example-but team player, like the publicists for Mobil But a mole, as we've had occa- none more startling than his conviction Oil, the AMA, and the tobacco industry...
...For another, it 25 years ago, suspicion fell on Kim has recklessly exposed itself to penetrawas thought that the CIA never found the Philby right away...
...It's not hard to counter- intelligence experts who work pathy to find out, which is precisely what weave them into a case, and a number of for the FBI, the CIA, or the other the old guard is after...
...The poor were better off A SOVIET SPY IN THE CIA...
...the Soviets and their allies have peneliam Kampiles was arrested, tried and That, however, was only the begin- trated just about every Western intelliconvicted of selling an operational man- ning of the argument...
...During his long debrief- tein's book last spring, surfacing Golitlike the gnostic symbol oroboros, the ing Golitsin made a number of startling sin's name for the first time, Washington 2 March 1979: 103 conversation began to bubble with talk of is only the visible portion of a clandestine Counter-intelligence people are ordispies and moles...
...Outsiders tend to make Golitsin did not know the mole's name, was told to say, since the desire to pro- fun of the business of intelligence, dis- but he offered three clues-a physical duce people who can think and work in- missing its practitioners as gumshoes, description, the date of a meeting in Londependently isn't really the point any- Boy Scouts and paranoiacs...
...The first point to be made side his administration...
...if there ever was one, he's long so...
...There are two other factors, however, Washington, with heavy odds on their gone...
...buy Coke, and that makes them OK...
...Then, in intelligence is that once you start looking have chosen to break their silence now is April, a high-ranking Soviet official at for a mole in the right place, you find him that some of them-in particular, the old the UN defected, and in short order was right away...
...This is the sort of thing year...
...He had works in Washington, and indeed is some old friends, "We have no counterbeen working as a consultant on highly- something of a man about town, accord- intelligence now...
...It isn't at all honest to all the way back to the case of Walter had thoroughly muddied the waters...
...sums of money, no attempt to evade tails gate...
...It 1930s...
...So the and reorganized the practice of counteraround his middle, and a 9 mm...
...For one thing, Epstein bureaucratic battle going on in Washing- narily the most laconic of men...
...I'm afraid he does...
...the average liberal says that it is, or Catholic, or Taoist, and you can't, asked to find the current state of affairs unfortunately, necessary...
...The Agency helped him to of years later the Deputy Director of Cendeath was officially ruled a suicide, but find another job, and he still lives and tral Intelligence under George Bush told there were a lot of loose ends...
...The other day I saw one of Carter's- white mice defending the LOOKING FOR MOLES new budget...
...At the very least ceiver," and he had been a good friend is that the only people who know any- Carter will ask Stansfield Turner if and frequent visitor of Yuri Nosenko...
...they are cowards before it, Kissinger, neither of them frivolous of Lee Harvey Oswald in Moscow, and and they need the rewards and the esteem men, have both been quoted as wonder- that the KGB had no connection whatwhich the systegi promises team players...
...In- intelligence staffs of the British and West Athens in February and March of last deed, he vigorously denied it, many German services...
...the date in question, had access to the "the threat," by which he refers to the Two other cases soon fueled the suspi- information in the mole's reports, and fit highly sophisticated intelligence services cions: the mole's physical description-and he of the Soviet bloc...
...The reason they really working for the Russians...
...CIA people darkly speculated who other DAP officers took his side, and which keeps intelligence officials awake had assigned the 23-year-old Kampiles to Angleton and the Office of Security in- at night...
...but as parts of some- ordinarily makes its way into public Golitsin's name might never have thing, they are dependent on the whole, print, but in the last few months there has emerged if he had not been involved in which can maul them if necessary...
...The question is were never resolved, despite three years doubt be there as part of his successor's what...
...There is just months after the assassination of John P. signations, "team player," and the same enough fact in the public domain to lend Kennedy, Nosenko's neat story inevitaslimy creature ''vas there in Kennedy's weight to their suspicions...
...bullet mole-if he was in fact a mole-was intelligence inside the Agency...
...He was a mal, hard to find and hard to kill...
...Richard Helms and Henry that he, personally, had handled the case things now...
...The average con- dime's worth of difference...
...of interrogation while Nosenko was inentourage...
...But moles don, and the substance of several of the more...
...say "the world is more complicated Krivitsky, a Russian defector of the Since the stories of Nosenko and of now," as if that were an explanation...
...The been a good deal of high-level another CIA dispute over the bona fides fact that you seldom meet brave bureau- discussion-perhaps gossip would be a of a later KGB defector named Yuri crats doesn't have anything to do with better word-on the subject of moles in Nosenko, who told the CIA early in 1964 their genes, but with a system which runs Washington...
...The same thing hap- tion in the last few years...
...At one time or another First, a young CIA officer named Wil- came up with a name right away...
...The old guard's approach is a crude had been a contributor to the satellite This explains why no mole turned up one, but it will probably work...
...He would probably believe anything he ligence service...
...The story properly begins, how- Golitsin collided, they could not both be is, certainly...
...Teng-now he does understand us...
...They are not mole described by Golitsin...
...Clearly, bly aroused the CIA's suspicions...
...Where people were produc- not, he found, the secret of man's true described at length in Edward Jay Eping real things for people who really allegiance was to be found in the past, stein's book Legend, was simply closed needed them, something unclouded went and certain roots of the CIA mole stretch by administrative fiat, but not before it on between them...
...Nothing manual sold to the Russians by Kam- in the wake of recent speculation, but it captures a President's attention like a piles, the boat from which he disap- does not explain the rumors themselves, news story, especially a news story peared was outfitted with a highly sophis- which are something more than the work suggesting a spy is about to explode inticated radio set called a "burst trans- of idle gossips...
...The the chief of counter-intelligence will ask facts which have been used to support stories related by Helms, Kissinger and his staff, and the staff will answer that it public suggestions the CIA has been pen- other Washington figures all come from needs time, money, extra men and symetrated by a Soviet mole...
...would be threats...
...The fact that a gence service...
...The investigation which within systems...
...As often as Eventually the argument over Nosenko, directories...
...These pocket...
...then ever, he said...
...Paisley's fired in 1963...
...appeared that it was Golitsin, not three clues about a CIA mole back in they are trying to make sure there won't Nosenko, who had been telling the truth, 1962...
...If there is a mole in the CIA it mole's reports...
...Angleton triangulated-that is, he be one...
...If they were honestly is a serious matter...

Vol. 106 • March 1979 • No. 4


 
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