The Main Enemy by Milton Bearden (epub e reader txt) 📕

been the right decision. The casuals could have been part of a KGB surveillance team or Soviet citizens who reported what they saw to the KGB.

“It was the casuals,” he repeated. “They spotted him wandering around in the field.” The warning from PIMENTA was the first hard evidence of an agent actually being arrested since Tolkachev.

I glanced over at Redmond, whose demeanor offered no clues as to what he was making of all of this. After the meeting broke up, I took Redmond into my office.

“What do you think?”

“Three possibilities. One, the casuals did their socialist duty and snitched on our guy, and the KGB eventually found the rock and staked it out. Two, they weren’t casuals at all, but KGB surveillance, and they found the rock and staked it out. Three, we’ve got a bigger problem. Take your choice.” Redmond’s manner telegraphed his growing conviction that there was a cancer at the heart of the CIA.

“What’s your choice?” I asked, already sensing his answer.

“Three. We’ve got a problem.”

“Tell me why.”

“Too many fucking problems all at once. It never happens this way. We lose operations, but not like this. TAW goes dead. Bokhan gets an elaborate but phony recall. Stombaugh gets busted with VANQUISH. MILLION gets called home early from Lisbon, and now WEIGH gets rolled up in Moscow. Add to that the fact that the British ran Gordievsky for years without any problem, we figure it out in March, and then he gets called back to Moscow. The KGB’s got too much good luck all of a sudden. Life doesn’t work that way. You tell me if we’ve got a fucking problem.”

   12   

Washington, D.C., September 18, 1985

The decision was finally reached at FBI headquarters on Wednesday, September 18, to close in on Edward Howard the next day. Over the previous three weeks, the FBI had maintained discreet surveillance and had tapped his home telephone. They had established a post near Howard’s house, where one agent could keep watch and alert other agents whenever Howard left home.

Jack Platt, Howard’s old instructor in the Internal Operations course, was worried. No one had officially told him that Howard was under investigation, but the signs were all around him. Security officers had come to ask him if he could list all of the trainees who had taken the IO course, been slated for Moscow, and later been fired. Platt said there was only one—Edward Howard. He figured out that Howard was the target of the spy probe launched after Yurchenko’s defection and went to see Burton Gerber.

Platt told Gerber he wanted to warn the FBI about Howard’s countersurveillance training, so the bureau would send its best watchers—nicknamed “the Gs”—out to Santa Fe. The Gs were the only FBI surveillance agents who could keep up with a trained CIA officer, Platt believed. If the FBI used local agents against him, Howard would play them like fools.

But Gerber had never liked Platt, and he had little time for him. The last thing he wanted now was to have Platt freelancing, and he didn’t bother telling Platt he’d already warned the FBI that Howard had taken the IO course.

Irritated at getting the brush-off from Gerber, Platt used his personal contacts at the bureau to arrange for the agents handling the Howard investigation to officially request an interview with him. On September 9, he briefed FBI Special Agents Bob Noonan and Mike Anderson on Howard’s training. He told them that he’d evaluated Howard as an above-average student and that Howard had gone up against the FBI’s best surveillance teams and done well. By now, both Gerber and Platt had warned the FBI that Howard was a man with a dangerous combination of skills and cunning.

At the same time, the FBI was taking an interest in another former CIA employee, William Bosch. After a disastrous tour as a case officer in Bolivia, Bosch had been fired by the agency. In February 1984, Bosch and Howard met in New Orleans to commiserate, and Howard suggested that he and Bosch join forces to get even with the agency that had dismissed them. Why not go to Mexico City and volunteer to the Soviets? Bosch stared at him. Was he kidding? Later, Bosch claimed he had serious doubts about Howard from that time on.

Bosch was living on South Padre Island off the Texas coast when two FBI agents began to ask about him at a nearby apartment complex where he had once lived. Bosch, who by coincidence was in the management office at the time, overheard them and told them who he was. The two FBI agents were not prepared to deal with him directly and waved him off, claiming they were looking for someone who spelled his name differently.

But Bosch wasn’t buying that story, and he called Howard in Santa Fe to complain. He told his friend he thought the CIA was snooping around him, using phony FBI credentials. Howard, by now convinced that his telephone was tapped, didn’t say much during Bosch’s phone call. But he realized that the FBI was looking for Bosch because of him. And he knew he’d said some incriminating things to Bosch. The most revealing conversation had occurred just two and a half months earlier, on South Padre Island. Howard had told Bosch that he had taken the final step against the CIA. “I did it,” Howard had told Bosch. “I’m really playing hardball. What do you want, five, ten, fifteen thousand dollars?”

Howard would later tell Bosch that he was only joking, but Bosch came away from the outing convinced his friend’s life had become very complicated indeed.

The FBI would not learn this until September 21, almost seventy-two hours later.

Santa Fe, 1330 Hours, September 19, 1985

The call came at 1:30 on Thursday afternoon. Special CIA Security Agent Jerry Brown told Howard there was an important matter he needed to discuss with the FBI. As David Wise wrote in his 1988 book on the Howard case, the FBI wanted Howard to meet