SPY LORD 4 & 5

In January 1997 CIA defector Edward Lee Howard introduced Robert Eringer, his book editor, to former KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov. Both were unaware that Eringer was working secretly for FBI counterintelligence.

Eringer rused the Soviet spy lord to believe he would orchestrate publication in the West of his memoirs. Eringer leaned on Kryuchkov in Moscow to answer scores of sensitive questions that would “improve his book”—questions designed by FBI analysts to shed light on a variety of issues.

In addition to answering Eringer’s numerous questions, Kryuchkov wrote 40 pages of material that has never been published--until now--marking the first time a KGB chairman has written for publication in the West. (Kryuchkov died in November 2008 at the age of 83.)

For the whole story, order a copy of Ruse: Undercover with FBI Counterintelligence (Potomac Books Inc, 2008), available at amazon.com.

SPY LORD CHAPTER FOUR: HUMINT

Under my stewardship the First Directorate and the KGB in general engaged in heated arguments, at all levels, on whether or not science and technology methods are more important than human intelligence (HUMINT) i.e. the use of agents.

I have come to believe that HUMINT was and will always be the main bread-and-butter of operational activities. It is through secret agents that the most valuable information is obtained.

The CIA managed to infiltrate a number of Soviet defense institutions and scientific-industrial organizations, and gain access to our most important state secrets, at a cost to us of billions of roubles. Countering these infiltrations was extremely difficult. The starting point was always a signal of some kind—an indication of an information leak. We had to pick up a thread and then unravel a whole ball of yarn.

I was once given the task of visiting a foreign country to meet a particularly valuable recruit. Elaborate security precautions were taken. We met for 26 hours, during which we took brief naps. This agent cooperated with us for ideological reasons, and his knowledge, experience and connections within the country in which he operated were immense. His grasp of the political and economic situation of his country was superb, and his information was crucial to uncovering the identity of an important spy working in our midst.

Agent information is the most sacred of any intelligence service. Nothing is more guarded than the agents themselves. It is, therefore, extremely rare that they are caught in any matter other than betrayal from within one’s own service. Our recent failures in this arena can be explained in no other way.

Soviet intelligence has always worked side-by-side with the services of our close allies. But we never exchanged information on agent networks.

Once, an intelligence chief of a socialist country offered me a list of their agents. I politely refused, explaining to my surprised colleague that I should not know; that if his network was corrupted, I should not be part of the circle requiring investigation.

CHAPTER FIVE: INTER SERVICE RIVALRY

Relations between the First Directorate and the other organs of state security, such as counter-intelligence, were less than ideal. Criticism and rivalry prevailed. The First Directorate was called The White Bone, and thought by other organs to be snobby. This was based on envy: employees of the First Directorate had the opportunity to go abroad, for short or long periods, which inadvertently gave them profitable financial advantages.

I firmly resolved to put an end to such bickering; to create conditions for healthy, friendly relationships between intelligence and counter-intelligence. To this end, I initiated regular meetings between leaders of both groups, and intensified professional contact. We even conducted exchanges of officers.

It did not solve the problem, but relations were improved.

PIATTI CROCKPOT: BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE

Bob the Bounty Hunter, king of quips, is laying low of late in deference to Chippy, a could-be sumo wrestler slow on his feet but fast on the comeback. Boosted by Bostonian Brian, who looks, talks and tipples like Ted Kennedy, Chip has taken the offense—and his ribbing is relentless.

It is usually Worthen, a male cougar, who trades barbs with Colonel Bob. But now Worthen rebounds to the bounty hunter’s defense, fondly reminiscing the time they took on a one-legged Chinaman. “They’re not family,” Worthen hisses about these recent defectors from Café del Sol. “I’m the only one allowed to badmouth Bob.”

“But every time the Colonel re-tells one of his stories it has a different ending,” Brian bellyaches, exhibiting his obsession for our favorite bounty hunter.

“Look at the bright side," I offer. “It just makes it more interesting when we have to hear the same stories over again.”

Dwayne, a former major leaguer, finds in this session an opportunity to convey his own tale of woe. “First time Bob ever saw me at the bar he asked where my probation officer was.” Since Dwayne is a man of color (maybe one of two in Montecito), he perceived Bob’s comment as racist.

“Nah,” I say. “Nothing to do with your skin, Dwayne. The Colonel says that to everyone, one of his best lines. He’s an equal opportunity insulter.”

In addition to his mission at Piatti (“bread and cheap red”), the Colonel presides over coffee mornings outside Pierre Lafond, a midget-toss across the piazza from Piatti. Yup, outside indeed. While most everyone else in the United States hibernates during the coldest winter in a hundred years, most mornings we Piatti Gangsters sit in the open-air, shirtsleeves, sun blazing on our faces.

“I wonder what the poor people are doing today?” the Colonel sighs rhetorically while scooping crumbs off Luigi’s plate.

A woman pulls up, alights from her Lexus, locks it.

“You must be from out of town,” the Colonel catcalls, attempting recruitment for his Witches of Westwick.

“Huh-me? How’d you know that?”

“Easy—no one from around here locks their door. Where ya from, honey?”

She’s from West Palm Beach, turns out they knew each other 20 years ago--or maybe it was two other people.

And then there’s Andrew.

Andrew.

What to do about Andrew.

Eight-sixed from Piatti.

He’d been warned about helping himself to leftovers.

But he was hungry.

I remember drinking with him at the bar as he eyeballed a pizza, three slices oozing with sausage and peppers, humming his name from a deserted table.

“Ya think I can grab that pie?” he drooled.

I shook my head. “Wouldn’t do that. The lurks are onto you.”

I excused myself to use the facilities and, wouldn’t you know it, upon my return Andrew is standing at the bar shoving pizza into a sheepish grin on his face.

Even if the sun packs heat mid-morning, the Montecito night is cold. And poor Andrew’s been out there ever since, like a John le Carre novel in reverse. He sits, forlorn, shivering, grazing on celery sticks from Pierre LaFond. If he wants a beer, he’s reduced to flowing downstream with the effluent to Café del Sol.

By day (maybe every fourth), Andrew is a process server. Which means he’s even less popular with those he sees at work than with Piatti’s management. He works for a lawyer who operates under an assumed mane.

Andrew has a great gambit: He lays in wait for a mark, strums a guitar, and looks like a beggar. The mark wanders past, flips him a quarter—and Andrew smacks the Samaritan with a summons.

Now back to Bostonian Brian. “You can’t believe anyone around here,” he grumbles. “So what do you do?”

I shake my head. “If you think everyone else’s story is unbelievable, you definitely don’t want to hear mine.”

“But how did you meet Bounty Bob?” he asks, reverting to his obsession.

I tell him.

A couple nights later, standing at the bar, Brian looks at me and asks, “So how did you meet Bounty Bob?”

I tell him again.

Next night, Brian buys me a glass of wine and asks, “So how’d you meet Bounty Bob?"

Clearly, the only absorption going on is grape oriented.

SPY LORD 3

In January 1997 CIA defector Edward Lee Howard introduced Robert Eringer, his book editor, to former KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov. Both were unaware that Eringer was working secretly for FBI counterintelligence.

Eringer rused the Soviet spy lord to believe he would orchestrate publication in the West of his memoirs. Eringer leaned on Kryuchkov in Moscow to answer scores of sensitive questions that would “improve his book”—questions designed by FBI analysts to shed light on a variety of issues.

In addition to answering Eringer’s numerous questions, Kryuchkov wrote 40 pages of material that has never been published--until now--marking the first time a KGB chairman has written for publication in the West. (Kryuchkov died in November 2008 at the age of 83.)

For the whole story, order a copy of Ruse: Undercover with FBI Counterintelligence (Potomac Books Inc, 2008), available at amazon.com.

SPY LORD CHAPTER THREE: INTELLIGENCE

In all, I spent 24 years in high positions at the KGB, 15 of them as chief of the First Directorate, the agency responsible for foreign intelligence. I came to the First Directorate by order of my mentor, then KGB-chairman Yuri Andropov, in June of 1971. Before that I was chief of the KGB Secretariat.

“We cannot postpone it any further, Volodya,” Andropov told me. “It is time for you to decide your future. The First Directorate needs a fresh deputy. You are suitable and I need you here. What do you think?”

I did not conceal my apprehension, knowing he difficulty of intelligence work. But I also knew the decision had already been made.

I plunged myself into my new job—first deputy chief—and came to terms with the intelligence apparatus by listening to chiefs of station from around the globe, and by studying all covert operations underway.

I generally found my officers to be highly educated and enthusiastic about their work. Most of them spoke second languages and possessed detailed knowledge of the countries in which they worked.

I made it my task to delve into all aspects of the intelligence business; to reach every operative. I was, at this stage, responsible for European operations, our analytical department, and cooperative relations with socialist countries.

Generally, I was well received, though with some guardedness, as I had arrived with a reputation as “the chairman’s protégée”—a political appointee, not a career intelligence officer. The First Directorate, known inside the KGB as The White Bone, was famous for snobbery, stemming from its privileged segregation from the rest of society.

Intelligence work is dangerous. It demands both physical and intellectual strength, and self-sacrifice. Only a handful of people will ever know about an intelligence officer’s achievements, and these do not include his wife and children. That’s the upside. The down-side is having to spend months, sometimes years away from family, risking imprisonment. Occasionally, the price of failure is one’s life.

Some qualities necessary for an intelligence officer are bestowed only by nature. But special training is vital. For this reason, the KGB has its own college for training its personnel. What began, before World War II, as a small school, has evolved into a first-class academy of higher education. After Andropov’s death in 1984, it was named after him.

An intelligence officer is doomed to violate most of the biblical precepts; to act against most of the rules taught to him during childhood. Just imagine a spy who could not steal nor tell a lie!

Yet we do not subscribe to brute force alone, nor the concept the end justifies the means—a vulnerability of many intelligence services that leads to moral degeneration and failure.

Soviet intelligence paid a lot of attention to education. We worked out a behavior code, the rules of the game: which methods are acceptable, which lines should never be crossed.

Intelligence is the eyes and ears of a country. It ensures that vital information reaches a country’s leadership. The information and analytical services of intelligence agencies are more important now than ever before. No country can function effectively without intelligence. Its positive qualities outnumber the negative.

It is a delusion to think that intelligence agencies bring tension to international relations. Certainly, intelligence operations are sometimes responsible for a decline in relations between two countries, but such deterioration is only temporary and rarely causes serious damage. More often, intelligence agencies soften tension and strengthen tension and strengthen trust; they bring clarity to difficult situations. Intelligence agencies have practically become an arm of international law.

Intelligence parity is important for peaceful coexistence—to ensure that one side cannot secretly develop new weapons that destroy an harmonious balance.

PIATTI CROCKPOT: THE RANDY QUAID RECEPTION COMMITTEE

You don’t need to watch television in Montecito. The entertainment is at Piatti. So are the entertainers.

Into this tony trattoria strolls Steve Martin, baseball cap shielding his eyes lest anyone attempt penetration of the dark glasses perched upon his nose an hour after the sun has set behind Butterfly Beach. Steve wants the most private table, far end of the patio, near the fireplace, but he nonetheless parades up and down like Inspector Clouseau to ensure it is truly the most private of all. Or, ironically, to make a spectacle of himself--a ritual he performs each visit.

Problem is, some of these entertainers are not so entertaining when they’re not being paid a zillion dollars to perform. Christopher Lloyd is practically catatonic when he masticates a meal in the bar, always alone, immune to conversation.

At a dinner party for eight, Jeff Bridges sits quiet, expressionless, zoned in a state called Purple Kush.

It’s almost as if these dudes don’t know who they be when not pretending to be someone else.

Carol Burnett stops in for ravioli when she needs a break from Lucky’s. There was a time when this Queen of Comedy appeared at tables adjacent to mine three times a week at various restaurants in Montecito and Santa Barbara, leading me to suspect dear Carol of stalking me—a disguised Man in Black dispatched by The Supressors (not the local News-Suppress, the global sort).

TC Boyle pops in, heeled in red Converse sneakers (his hallmark), either for anchoring a carrot top or because he hopes the Smithsonian will call to request a pair. Bob the Bounty Hunter heaves laterally to intercept him, but TC is funny in appearance only, not conversation, and the Colonel’s quips are curtly curtailed.

That’s where Jonathan Winters enters the picture. The venerable comedian arrives arm-in-arm with a botox babe, and he is always funny. Again, Colonel Bob’s bountiful frame launches from chair to intercept, smack in front of our robust reception committee.

Whenever approached, Mr. Winters stiffens and performs an eight-minute soliloquy from part of his brain that has no return address. During this lapse, his date announces, “I’m Kelly LeBrock,” as if we’re supposed to recognize her from Weird Science.

“Who’s Kelly LeBrock?” I say, not ever having seen the 1985 teen classic—and even if I had, recognition would not come easy. (Much about Kelly has been reconfigured since the eighties.)

“I’m Kelly LeBrock.”

Again, I’m struck by the supercilious emphasis this one-time celluloid siren imposes upon her name. (Okay, so she was married to Steven Seagal, “a man of diverse character whose spiritual beliefs and humanity are woven into every aspect of his life”—Seagal’s official website. Question: Is diverse character a euphemism for schizophrenia?)

“Who’s Kelly LeBrock?” I say again.

Desirous of a hasty exit-stage-right, Ms. Weird Science prods Jonathan, who remains rigid until his trance-channel is broken by a telepathic signal from Ork.

Presently, we’re watching for Randy Quaid and his wacky wife Evi to manifest. We presume the deranged duo will stuff themselves stupid with strozzapretti--then bolt for the door the moment their check arrives.

Needless to say, the Colonel is already poised for pursuit (or prosciutto).

GLOBAL WARMING HEATS UP

Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years, experts predict

Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus16 degrees Celsius, forecasters have warned.

Cold weather kills scores

New Delhi - At least 17 people died as towns and cities in India's northern states were hit by cold weather, officials said on Friday.


Once in a generation cold snap forecast for NC

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Forecasters say the coldest stretch of weather in years if not decades could be heading for North Carolina.

U.S. East Coast Faces Deep Freeze; Florida Oranges Threatened

Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. East Coast faces the coldest night of the season as frigid air spills south and threatens agriculture in Georgia, Alabama and the orange crop in Florida.

SUNDAY FUNNIES

SPY LORD 2

In January 1997 CIA defector Edward Lee Howard introduced Robert Eringer, his book editor, to former KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov. Both were unaware that Eringer was working secretly for FBI counterintelligence.

Eringer rused the Soviet spy lord to believe he would orchestrate publication in the West of his memoirs. Eringer leaned on Kryuchkov in Moscow to answer scores of sensitive questions that would “improve his book”—questions designed by FBI analysts to shed light on a variety of issues.

In addition to answering Eringer’s numerous questions, Kryuchkov wrote 40 pages of material that has never been published--until now--marking the first time a KGB chairman has written for publication in the West. (Kryuchkov died in November 2008 at the age of 83.)

For the whole story, order a copy of Ruse: Undercover with FBI Counterintelligence (Potomac Books Inc, 2008), available at amazon.com.

SPY LORD CHAPTER TWO

In early July 1941, my family was the first on our street to receive a “pokhoronka”—notification that my older brother, Konstantin, had been killed in Latvia. Soon, “killed-in-action” notices appeared in our neighborhood with great regularity. The postman developed a perpetual look of grief. He would say a few simple words of consolation, then turn to wipe his own tears.

On the evening of August 23^rd, 1942, the first German air raids thundered over our city. I was in the center of town, bombs bursting around me, buildings collapsing. Whirlpools of smoke and dust rose high into the sky, fire everywhere, cries and groans. And aircraft kept coming in waves.

When victory was finally ours, inconsolable mothers cried their last tears; tears of joy, for those sons who had survived and returned. Not one family escaped the grief of lost relatives.

To this day, I’m still surprised how we managed the grandiose reconstruction of our country in so short a period.

I enrolled at the Saratovsk Law Institute and embarked on a career in law, working as a prosecutor in the Kirov region of Stalingrad. In 1951, the year my father died, I was chosen as a candidate for the School of Advanced Diplomacy. In Moscow, deputy foreign minister A.V. Bogomolov grilled me. I told him I wanted to be a diplomat. The school accepted me.

My first assignment was to learn Hungarian.

When Stalin died on March 5^th, 1953, the people cried. No one knew what would happen tomorrow.

After graduation, I was assigned to the Hungarian Section of the foreign ministry. A year later, in 1955, I was assigned to our embassy in Budapest. Thus began my acquaintance with Yuri Andropov, our ambassador to Hungary, a man who would become my mentor and play a decisive role in my future career with the KGB.