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

them at the Santa Fe Hilton, a short walk from Howard’s office in the state capitol. Howard agreed.

Jerry Brown’s partner in the planned initial confrontation was Special Agent Michael Waguespack, who was widely recognized as one of the most effective interviewers in the bureau. Phil Parker, one of the key FBI officials running the Howard investigation, had handpicked Waguespack for the interview. Brown was there to provide depth and continuity; he was the “sound man,” the agent most familiar with the telephone tap coverage of the Howard home and thus most familiar with Howard’s state of mind.

Howard arrived at the Hilton to find Brown and Waguespack and his former CIA supervisor, Tom Mills, whom he had not seen in over a year. Mills’s role was to nudge Howard into talking openly to the two FBI agents. After he had given his words of encouragement, Mills left the hotel room. And Edward Howard’s life began to crumble.

Waguespack opened the interview by showing Howard a copy of a Washington Post story on the defection of Oleg Gordievsky to Britain. Waguespack told Howard that Gordievsky had identified Howard as a Soviet agent. That was a lie, a cover story dreamed up by the FBI to protect Yurchenko, whose defection had not yet been publicly reported.

Howard denied the accusation, and Waguespack asked him if he would take a polygraph. Howard said bitterly he would never take another polygraph; that was what had destroyed his career at the CIA. He said he wanted to get a lawyer, and Waguespack told him he had twenty-four hours.

Back at his office, Howard called his wife, Mary, and hurriedly told her that the FBI was accusing him of being a Soviet agent. Howard then drove home, and now the FBI surveillance was open and obvious all the way to his neighborhood. As he drove up to his house, Howard saw two FBI agents trying to talk to his wife. Howard went into his house and immediately called his lawyer, Mort Simon, and told him what was going on. Simon told him not to talk, and Howard went out to get Mary and pulled her away from the agents.

Within an hour, Howard’s psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Dudelcyzk, called to say that the FBI had been asking about him. Howard tried to explain and asked Dudelcyzk for a prescription of tranquilizers so he could calm down.

That night, Howard called Bosch and revealed that the FBI was after him, not Bosch. Finally, before going to bed, he walked around his neighborhood to check out the surveillance. He spotted a utility van not far from his home.

South Padre Island, Texas, 0600 Hours, September 20, 1985

An insistent knock at the door of his beachfront condominium rousted Bill Bosch out of bed. Two men identifying themselves as FBI agents said they wanted to talk to him about his relationship with Edward Lee Howard. Bosch talked briefly with the agents and agreed to meet them again the next day for a polygraph examination.

In Santa Fe, meanwhile, Howard was acting cool. His boss in the state legislature, Phil Baca, had been interviewed by the FBI and knew Howard was in trouble, but he was surprised at how calm Howard seemed. In a formal presentation that morning, Howard didn’t appear to be a man under intense pressure. After lunch, Howard told Baca he needed to take the rest of the afternoon off before a business trip to Austin, Texas, scheduled for Monday. Howard then told Baca that he might be contacted by federal officials, who might ask him questions about him and his travels. It was no big deal, Howard assured him.

After he left the capitol, Howard withdrew $300 from his bank account, stopped by Mort Simon’s office to get the name of an Albuquerque attorney who specialized in federal criminal law, and then drove home to pick up Mary to go shopping. As he and Mary pushed their basket through the aisles of the Santa Fe Safeway, Howard recognized and approached a member of the FBI surveillance team and said he wanted another meeting. The rattled FBI agent made a quick call and then told Howard that Jerry Brown would be waiting for him at the Santa Fe Hilton.

In a brief meeting with Brown and Waguespack, Howard said he would have a criminal attorney by Monday and that he was canceling his Austin trip. They could get together on Monday. By the end of the day on Friday, the FBI believed it had matters under control in Santa Fe.

Moscow, September 20, 1985

In what was to become a recurring nightmare for the CIA, the press release summed up the disaster in clinical language:

Tass is authorized to announce:

The USSR State Committee for Security has uncovered and arrested an agent of the U.S. special services—A. G. Tolkachev, a worker in a Moscow research institute. The spy was caught in the act of passing secret materials of a defense nature to Paul M. Stombaugh, an officer of the American CIA, who acted under the cover of second secretary of the U.S. embassy in Moscow.

It has been established that the American special services provided Tolkachev with specially designed miniature cameras with which he photographed secret documents, as well as with the means of codes, ciphers, and rapid acting two-way communications radio sets, and other materials for espionage work. Potent poisons which had been given to the spy by the Americans were also seized.

The contents, along with instructions from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, discovered at Tolkachev’s residence, indicate that his use as a spy was linked with the CIA’s plans to conduct large-scale subversive activities against the Soviet Union. The investigation continues.

It was no surprise. Still, the Tass announcement darkened the mood at Langley.

Santa Fe, 0900 Hours, September 21, 1985

Edward Lee Howard was moving methodically. He had stalled the FBI until Monday, but that meant he had to make his move now. His training began to kick in. At about 9:00 A.M., Howard and his wife left their