Catching A Russian Spy

[Music] welcome to the International Spy Museum I'm Amanda all key director of adult education and I am so pleased to have this incredible group of speakers here today to talk about catching a Russian spy agent Leslie G Weiser jr. and the case of Aldrich Ames and usually I wouldn't be working with a book for young adults but I know sandy and Brian so well and I'm getting to know less and I just thought we we got to have you here for an all-ages program because it's just so amazing and the book is really cool it's written for middle grade readers and it follows FBI agents behind the scenes as they work to keep America safe there two books so far and a third one coming this is the second and since it's for middle grade I might be able to read it so thank you for that Ryan I'm going to introduce the the after I introduce our speakers they're gonna have discussion with each other and then we'll open the floor to your questions and we are recording this for our YouTube channel so if you could come to these microphones there's one on either side that would be fantastic then we'll have your question available when we screen this on YouTube because people who can't be here would like to hear it as well so today Brian Denson is sitting in the middle he's the author of the book he's an award-winning journalist and he's the author of the spies son he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting and winner of the George Polk award Bryan contributes stories to Newsweek and serves as a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Times FBI files is his first series for young readers then this lovely lady sandy Grimes is a 26 year veteran of CIA's Dustin's service she spent most of her career working against the former Soviet Union supporting some of the CIA's most valuable penetrations of the KGB and GRU she joined the CIA in July 1967 when she must have been like two months old shortly after graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in Russian she in the late Jean verda a co-authored circle of trees in which details their personal involvement in the search for an identification of fellow officer Aldrich Ames and Sandy has been featured at the Spy Museum in the original Spy Museum and in this one she is one of our our pillars she is fantastic and then less Leslie G Weiser jr. retired from the FBI after 23 years of service in 2007 this book covers one case from his exceptional career from 1986 until 1995 he served in the FBI's Washington field office and there he was primarily assigned foreign counterintelligence and asked to foreign counterintelligence and espionage matters in September 1992 he was promoted to the position a field supervisor and directed the espionage investigation of former CIA officer Aldrich Ames and for that he received the National Intelligence medal of achievement from the director of Central Intelligence so we have a powerhouse of intelligence service here and you're in good hands with your wonderful author thank you all for being here [Applause] you really peed it up well because these two are clearly among the coolest people I've ever written about in my long long career as a journalist it's worth noting by the way that this is the first time that the two of them have been in the same building for 25 years both of them played instrumental roles obviously and unmasking and later apprehending alder James I'm gonna ask him a whole lot of impertinent question maybe not in perfect I'm asked to ask them some questions about all of that but I first want to do just three things I want to I want to set the historical backdrop here because most of the story took place during the certainly the CIA part of it came during the actual Cold War and this was a time when the United States obviously had thousands of missiles pointing at the Soviet Union and vice versa we were occasionally seemingly very close to World War three potentially and there were people like sandy who were out there trying to make sure that that didn't happen and the assets that that she got to know weren't gonna let that happen so what you had was you had this cat-and-mouse game between the KGB and the CIA in all of these foreign ports of call the major cities in the world we're trying to learn about what their intentions are what their military capabilities are what their finances are like and all that sort of thing and they're doing the same thing with us so these these these you know what we would call intelligence officers on our side and spies on their side we're working against each other was a very exciting time secondly let me do this because so many people get this wrong I think probably I got it wrong early in my career the CIA and FBI have very different missions the CIA is an intelligence outfit just as I was describing working and cultivating assets around the world to help us find these secrets the FBI is you could think of it it is a law enforcement agency the CIA can't arrest people they don't arrest people but the FBI that is their job and so when a spy known to be working inside the CIA as alder James was they do what is sometimes called the predicate they do the the investigation that shows that somebody might have done this and then the FBI is invited in to have a look and sometimes the FBI is already a little bit involved and then they they conduct the criminal investigation and less here was the was the case age if he was the he was the Supervisory agent who managed this case and it's an extraordinary story thirdly let me just tell you a little bit about the villain of the piece Aldrich Ames went by Rick Rick games he prided himself on his knowledge of the KGB and often I think lorded it over CIA officers and so just like both of the people sitting next to me here Ames took an oath to protect the United States against all of its enemies foreign and domestic and unlike these two folks he violated that in a very big way obviously in 1985 for reasons that I spell out at some in some length in the book Ames switched teams and began working for the KGB and he sold them some of our deepest secrets all around all around the DC area and and gave up the names of Russians who were had long been working for the United States back even when it was the Cold War and these folks had risked their lives to help us and he dropped their names in a bag of documents and carried them into a restaurant not too far from here and ten of those aged 10 of those assets ultimately were were killed by the KGB for this when the names divulge their names or their code names or whatever and so that he's been called the killer spy because of those deaths we know of at least 10 that were killed as a result there may have been more sandy Grimes as it happens new Rick Ames he was a brother CIA officer before and after he became a traitor to our country and I was gonna ask you Sandy's first we're gonna we'll start with Sandy and we'll go go to less because that's the way it kind of went in the investigative trajectory what can you tell us about Rick games long before his betrayals the man that I used to used carpool yes I carpool with Rick Ames can you hear me okay I carpooled with Rick Ames back in the 1970s there were four of us called CIA officers and the brick I knew then was everybody would like him he was funny he was intelligent intelligent we had a wonderful time together but I will say one thing excuse me about Rick that set him apart from everybody else he was the worst dresser you have ever seen he was always late for the carpool whether he was driving or whether he was a writer and he run out of his apartment shirt never pressed hair never calm socks never matched ah and as I say he was always late but we enjoyed one another's company and to this day I swear that the Rick Ames I knew in those days would never ever have committed treason he had neither the courage the anger or the soul to do what he did you would have loved wait Wow well so in 1985 sandy the CIA began to learn about these losses as they were known inside the agency the losses of these assets they were being arrested they were being put to death a single bullet in the back of the head it was really awful and it must have been awful because you know inside the agency these are the people you worked with what was the reaction the original reaction when you began to discover this horrible thing well the reaction we had during in the Soviet news European division we were horrified we lost for fact of essence KGB and GRU officers in less than four months with absolutely no idea as the reason excuse me as to the reason for their loss or their disappearance it had never ever happened before in our history ever in the Soviet needs to European division as it turns out in the middle of this mess in January 1987 1986 we had a new source and what are we going to do we had to go on the defensive particles we had to find some way to keep this one alive now there were two theories we either had a traitor a mole or our communications have been compromised in other words the Soviets were reading our traffic to address the mole in the equation possibility of a mole we instituted what we called draconian security measures what we did was we limited the number of people within CIA and that includes the higher-ups to no more than seven people who would be told about this new asset to secure our communication staff communications relative to Soviet operations we chose not to use them no cable traffic to and from CIA headquarters during this period on that particular case so how do we communicate well we went back to basics but with the technical twist we sent our case officer Ian alias indirectly to the new assets location once there he went nowhere near the US Embassy met the SS safehouse after each meeting he did you turn to its hotel room where he would transfer his meeting notes to a laptop computer and then encrypt them after the meeting cycle was finished he returned it the agency returned to Washington again and directly once back at headquarters we decrypted the meeting results now I do want to say and this is based on personal experience in excuse me in 1986 a laptop computer with encryption capabilities was not the ordinance and let me just say it was the least user-friendly software I have ever encountered you were just crossing your fingers you would be able to break that traffic out sandy one of the Soviets killed in this sort of Soviet purge of the assets was it was general Dmitri Polyakov you knew him personally and as a man he knew him as a man trying to stop the US and Soviet Union from actually getting into World War 3 I'm wondering what you could tell us about Poliakoff himself his motives for working with the CIA and what the loss meant to you personally well first let me give you a little bit of background on the general he was arrested one day after his 65th birthday in July 1986 July 7 he was the highest-ranking Soviet intelligence officer this country had ever run we had over a 20 year history with him he was crown jewel and as has been mentioned this one was very very personal more than half of my 26-year career was intertwined with this operation beginning from the second month after I joined the CIA as a 21 year old recent graduate college graduate who knew nothing nothing about the world of spying a little bit of background on him he gave us so many things because he was a general that he's probably the best source that I know we've ever had volunteer to the FBI when he was in the States and basically it was on his way out the door returning home to Moscow we had con impersonal contact with the mid Moscow dead-drops and such he came out to Rangoon as the military attache this Bureau officer came out but there were problems because Poliakoff's English had deteriorated considerably since he uh returned to the Soviet Union and for more than I think it was about five years so then the case was turned over completely to the agency so we ran him in Rangoon of course every time he went back to Moscow he came out to New Delhi as the Soviet military attache and while there he was promoted to general to have a general in the Soviet intelligence service be it KGB or GRU is a big deal and he had second tour in New Delhi and maybe I I want to say about a year after he was there he told us he was to return to Moscow to take care of or to attend a Soviet military attache conference that was being had little did we know at that time that this recall was due to an FBI special agent who had agreed to work for the Soviets Robert Hansen that was the reason for polyakov's return of course Ames later gave up his name to the KGB and that was the reason for his being tried convicted and executed so we have his demise was resolved up to American spies sandy inside the CIA that were in the wake of the 1985 losses of these assets there were multiple teams of officers working tirelessly for some time and you know with some lapses between the investigations I think I wonder if you could just maybe hit the highlights of those early investigations just to give them the backdrop of what goes on inside the agency when there's been a breach like this well nobody knew in what had happened the office of security had one part of it and what they did was they interviewed all CIA employees permanently assigned or had been assigned who had traveled t2i to Moscow station thinking that Moscow could well be a center of where this might have happened concurrently the co-author of my book our book circle of treason Jean verda a return to Washington from an assignment in libreville gabon I'm certain does anybody here been to Gabon after five years you're about the fifth one [Music] Jean was put in charge of a small task force in the counterintelligence center to investigate our losses and try and determine why they had had happened now this was primarily as it turns out an analytical effort Jane and her four senior officers all experts in Soviet operations reviewed all the cases we had lost and by this time we had lost many more so you were talking about safes filled with material they reviewed all the old cases they look for patterns and commonalities but in the end there was no answer so in the early 1990s you saw your old friend Rick James again inside CIA he was a changed man what did you observe about the new brigades all right you remember what I said about the old one I forgot to throw when one thing had very yellow teeth because he was a heavy heavy smoker and his fingernails were stained yellow other than that as I said nice guy in those days anyway the new Rick Ames showed up at headquarters I don't know I want to say that 1987-88 he was on assignment to Rome along with his new wife Rosario and Rick came back for some reason to headquarters and I just saw him in the hallway I almost didn't recognize him he had on the most beautiful Italian suit you have never seen he had on Italian loafers that must have cost $700 a pair even in those days his teeth were capped his hair was quaffed his fingernails were manicured this was not the rigged games I couldn't believe it the biggest change in him was the air about him he strolled down that hallway as if he was in charge of the entire world I know something that you do not know I mean it was truly a personality change even with all the the trappings the gentle Ric I had known before it was gone so there was an internal CIA hunt that took a dramatic turn on April 19 one in the CIA's new deputy chief of counterintelligence Paul Redmond who is by the way a lot of the larger-than-life characters that equal to both of these folks here harvard-educated bowtie-wearing very funny also very profane been known to drop a few f-bombs so he attend he attended a meeting at FBI headquarters with G and vertically gand close friend and this changed the course of the hunt for this this mysterious traitor whoever it was why can't you tell us about the meeting and and and then you were later conversation with red moon well gene and Paul went to FBI headquarters downtown Washington to discuss a matter totally unrelated a sensitive matter totally unrelated to our losses in the mid-80s and to this day I have no idea what they discussed during the meeting Redman just happened to mention that gene was gonna take another look at the whole cases that we had lost 85-86 period and the bureau immediately asked if they could join up Redmond said sure not a big deal later that same afternoon Paul and gene returned to headquarters and I received a phone call from Paul asking if I would join the group he knew I was planning on resigning from CIA and that only an opportunity to determine why we had lost general Polyakov or another case I was very involved in personally Colonel Paulus Duke would keep me working I immediately left the Soviet East European division went to the counterintelligence staff to join Jean and Paul later our two FBI colleagues arrived Jim Milburn a Soviet analyst Jim Holt an FBI special agent who had some real skin in this game because he happened to be the case officer the FBI case officer on one of our assets who was one of those killed later we added a fifth member of our team special edition young officer Dan Payne CIA office of security employee and Payne was the one who handled all the information and activity relative to Ames's finances and that became known as the Ames new hunt team so one of your key duties in that mole hunt team was to create a ginormous timeline of events I think it was on a spreadsheet like an Excel spreadsheet right something like that right no it wasn't worth fancy yeah it was a word processing but it was state event date event so I prefer Oaks who have never done an investigation like that particularly really complicated one why would you put together a chronology of events and what was the key data that you punched into this timeline that might be able to point you toward whoever it was that might might have done this well the chronology wasn't started really as an analytical tool we started it where I started it because my husband and I were going on vacation to Austria and Jean could never recall okay what date did Rick around Julie what day was this and I was always the winner had to come up with the the little pieces of paper okay so I decided I'm just gonna start a chronology as I say later this total over 500 pages it was text searchable and among the things that I entered in here were all of bricks and it's one of the reasons it was so huge all of his ins and outs at CIA badge ins it means enough now Rick was a very heavy smoker and at least once an hour he'd go out for a cigarette but this particular chronology allowed one to look for gaps we are all and what's the word I want we all have our patterns and you do not you go through your daily routine really the same every single day Rick was known for never as an example known for never ever showing up at work on time you're supposed to be there at 8 o'clock he might roll in at 9:00 however after going through all of these as well as all kinds of other information we collected we noticed that there were certain days and I know I'll get the days wrong but say a Tuesday or Wednesday maybe every second month or every third month ripp would be at work by 8 a.m. and it was quite useful because what he was doing why was he at work so early well he had business to do whether it was unloading a drop loading a draw marking a signal site so the chronology turned out to be probably more important to the FBI than it was to us but it was certainly a godsend for me because all I had to do was say go to this area gene this is the information you want so damn pain one of your colleagues on the mole hunt team he comes up with a it hands you a stack of papers one day and it's a bunch of banking records Ames is banking records which had finally been turned over and gotten into Dan's hands and you punched them into the chronology and and what did you what did you what you find well among the material there were three cash deposit slips after Dan finished adding the information to his spreadsheet over the cubicle well the sandy and I just added to the chronology in the meantime Rick was developing a Soviet arms control specialist named Chewbacca and who was assigned to the embassy here in Washington Chewbacca was not an intelligence officer there was also nothing unusual about Rick's participation in such activity in those days the FBI just didn't have sufficient manpower to cover the target and often CIA Soviet GOP and division case officers would help the bureau out this is what Rick was doing with chuvakin I do want to add one thing she Valken was not an intelligence officer not a KGB agent certainly neither KGB nor GRU the first deposit slip I am given by Payne is dated 3 July 1985 I and it was for let me see I know school if I don't get this right 9,000 in cash I typed the information into the chronology and gee what a coincidence the day before Rick had lunch with Chewbacca that's kind of interesting the second deposit slip Dan passed me was dated 5 July and this one was for 5,000 in cash obviously July 4th government holiday banks closed that year the banks were closed on July 3rd on July 2nd Rick had lunch with Chewbacca the last the third deposit slip we had was dated July 31st 1985 and this one was for $8,500 in cash Rick had lunch with chuvakin that same day well that was it for me I shared what I had found with Jane with the two gems and obviously Dan and headed down the hallway to tell Redmond and here I'm going to apologize in advance for what I had to say not to worry I realized their children here anyway I walked into Redman's office I closed the door and I said it does not take a rocket scientist to see what's going on here rick is a blankety-blank no I will add Redmond and I are still arguing over my exact words but that's not unusual what was important this was the first link that would lead to Rick's arrest and conviction it was cash it was after meetings with a Soviet national we finally had a Soviet connection and in each of the three cases we had at that time three instances we had at that time BRICS deposits were below the $10,000 reporting limit that the feds had placed on the banks as dan pay and for me sandy he's structuring his deposits so this information was presented to the FBI and not to not to last but to others in the FBI and they declined to to open a criminal investigation against Ang's what how was that met by you well this was a very difficult time for gene and myself first our task force was drawing to a close and one a bit Jim Milburn the FBI FBI analyst who served on our task force was given the task to write this material up this is what we found now this was an FBI document it was not a CIA document and we didn't see any reason it was our document right the four of us we all agree Jane and I certainly had input in the draft stages the document was released by FBI headquarters in March and I understood it also now the FBI not gene and I saw great quality great was eligible to retire from CIA and it was certainly within the realm apostolis that you do so okay oh sorry oh boo young son Paul get online and head or Columbia where all of her villagers lived where he and she had property and were gene would ever say they live the rest of their lives there on these lemons and we would not be touching fortunately though I choose my words carefully yeah this is from a book and this was with a long time ago I've served other things in common and more informations but additional information he handed it did not do not identify great names in Africa but it's certainly pointed in this direction most importantly important the FBI the opportunity to investigate through things using all it will be 25 years February 21st and today [Music] so I'm going to go to less now because this is where you think of it is but I want to do you want to say this both of these folks have London Tuesday that I need to point out that while they are the heroes of my book it were a whole lot of heroes a whole lot of folks working with the FBI had you know a huge team he was sent out this to settle and manage and certainly there were multiple teams and you know underside work was it quick from the FBI so we can walk going on and walking out folks so unless you're your boss I led a bear drive was one of you that this case a 93 you were new to Roger especially assessment what was going through your mind as you and what we came down as the nightly routine you know got underway in the end with investigators professionally trained spy who was surgery on the lookout for you know and gonna tail him as were then how do you approach this case in this time well first I was really privileged to a rapport with a wonderful team of men and women normally an FBI supervisor supervises squad of Ages and we might have 100 or 200 cases to manage and I was supervisor of a squad at that time probably the least sexy squad the office was I was fairly junior supervisor I've just been appointed about here before and I was called in to mr. Brian's office and told me they've had this opportunity for me and I was probably receive it I understood immediately this was a huge case they're submitting is and instead of having these other cases or 100 cases to look at we had one case again so I have a different role for me but we had a team of people that all had their own mold rules that we mended together and these folks were actually both of them were senior to me in experience again FBI so we've got a man I didn't really know them so Allah here comes this what you have in your supervisors just gonna leave this space and so but they were really gracious and that works writing together and to produce what is you were entering the investigation and that's were getting read and learning about the kids and how what we were the goals of you want to be actually the first thing is a damn paint and to us Brian's office and went into this room which was a mystery cousin evils tell honored and Alberto and and have a slide of projected on the wall showing the a Shabazz's and and I said Wow no matter what he's doing he's guilty of structuring which is a felony when you tried to hide to defeat the money-laundering statutes so it was pretty clear and one of the mantras that we like to follow is follow the money and the money oftentimes will leave you to the result so the the particulars that we had is that rigged games was a trained CIA officer who was trained to work in countries where their intelligence their security services would be watching him so we denied area operations so we knew that we had somebody that was different than the normal criminal that an FBI team might be tasked with investigating so we had to be really careful so we got the authority to do electronic surveillance that means wiretaps and we began that there was the case was already going for about two weeks before I was assigned and a headquarters supervisor was working in the Washington field office and the mr. Brian didn't really like that he wanted an F he wanted to Washington field office agent to be working it so that's why I was there and that there had been a plan to put a heavy physical surveillance on him and I called that off because I said here's a experienced officer that might discover our surveillance let's get the wire up so that we can learn more about him and let the wire help us figure out what he was doing those days so we began to try to pull all of his financial records together we used electronic surveillance and we began to assemble lists of people that would know him and then we would have pretexts we're going to speak with them to learn more about him and then we'd gathered records like the Quran or a chronology but also other CIA records to help us get a better picture and so we had more of a comprehensive understanding of the way he operated our goal was to catch him in a dead drop and a dead drop is that he would put the documents down in a secret hiding place and he would leave and the KGB officer at this time actually the SVR officer would come and pick it up and take it and then the money would work the opposite way oftentimes so that was our goal because we thought that at the end of the day if we want to convict him I think the jury would like to see this kind of thing in action rather than make a strictly circumstantial case so you want to keep eyes and ears on this guy ultimately you did it through the wiretap Ness or a thing what kind of surveillance did you conduct early in the investigation well we had a group of folks they are called the special surveillance group the SSG we call them the Gees and they're not special agents what their job is to follow people and they're really good at it I one day I said it's like they know magic they can do things they make it happen and they're really extremely professional and it's a great career path I mean people could go out and be involved in some of the biggest cases in the FBI because the big cases get the surveillance resources so they would follow and but to make their job easier we wanted to put a beacon in Ames's car now you say beacon because you're thinking well why wouldn't you use GPS this must be forged yeah okay so this was just beep beep and and and the Jaguar was kind of funky when he would turn the windshield wipers on it would turn the beacon off so over the radio you would hear the geeze person the tech guys and and they would have to jeez and have to get up closer and then reactivate the beacon but that's what they had to use its this you know this was before the great science we have to work with today so you also put up a pole camera can you explain what that pole camera is you just somebody goes out and an FBI agent goes out in the truck that looks like he's with the telephone company or something climbs up the telephone pole and sticks a camera on there it's not you can't tell it's a camera but then we could have that we could watch that remotely so we didn't have to have somebody sitting in a car across the street and you could tell when he would come and go and that helps the surveillance be able to sit back a little farther and pick him up in their cars as he would leave it was made a little easier I think didn't you guys have a residence that you guys you know rented or we rented I yeah but sometimes we buy but we find a house for rent and we rented it and put a couple there to live there and and they would watch that it was CCTV back then this was not quite not quite what we have these days but I they we could we could see his comings and goings from that camera when you say you put a couple in it's two FBI agents of male and female I think they were actually yeah I think there were jeez but right whatever they didn't live there all the time but but they were there enough that people would say to the dead neighbors so I'm gonna flash forward a little bit so in June 93 about a month into the the night mover investigation you and other agents go over to CIA one late night Ames has been reassigned to the counter-narcotics Center where he's actually kind of getting involved in a whole new life and he's really enjoying that work and so you go over there what did you find over there I think that you're referring to the time we found diskettes and these were they're all happy because they were serving and they were on his desk and we printed them out and there was a stack of documents this high secret and top secret documents and of course this is kind of new because carrying these documents out physically was different than carrying out these four diskettes and we we were very concerned about that so we didn't want him to be able to transmit those those diskettes so in the book we talked about a very cool operation with the with the GPS the non GPS tracker the beacon and it's in the it's still in the Jag his he had a Jaguar sedan which you could carry the kid to school with and that's what I think late summer 93 the night mover team didn't have any really hard evidence that Ames was was a spy or was working for the Russians so you start looking for clues in Ames his trash I don't wonder if you could explain what a trash pull is and and I might have got the timing of the disks wrong it might have been a little bit later during the case but a trash cover is that under the cover of darkness we go and look in somebody's trash and to see what's in there and it's it's a normal investigative technique and you might find baby diapers and chicken bones and things but we didn't find those at Ames his house was right but and he wasn't party but in the so in this case though we have a CIA officer it's a little different it's a little more of a challenge in weed so we had a pretty good plan to go up and I gave them certain parameters and so the SSG would arrive at night and they had a trash can that looked exactly like his and they would switch that can and they would take the trash and put it into a sluice and separate it it would go down back into his trashcan they would look for things in there and then they would go back and switch his trash can for them for the phony one and in that trash can in September the Gees found a torn-up posted note so once again I've got this sighs you know the little 3m things that everybody writes on it's only that big and the tour it was torn into nine pieces and we found or we I wasn't there they found eight of them and put them together and it was a note from Ames to the Russians about a meeting in Bogota it was pretty significant event was huge yes yeah can you show up that work the next day there's a blow-up of this thing sitting there in your office right no we weren't that sophisticated I'm sorry I hate to say no I got in there's just a little black-and-white photograph that they developed quickly I got a call they picked that up you know so it's 2 o'clock in the morning they know about it they call me and and I came in I got in around I don't know six o'clock in the morning and and I got this this little photograph and yeah not a big blowup so okay you all right man but it's just a little foot what black-and-white photograph and it was pretty clear what it was so I was waiting for mr. Bryant to come in to takes show it toe it was a big day we're we're pretty happy yeah because we'd had some problems be earlier so there's a there's a there's an old rule of thumb and any kind of a story that an author will write and that is to keep your heroes in trouble so I actually open the book before the before the great discovery I have the other post-it note and it's I describe it as the worst thing for your career I was in trouble all right yes September 9th 1993 would you just tell them what happened that day that there were a couple of miscues and yeah we had a pretty good sense that Ames was going to be operational that day but between and this might sound crazy between the budget constraints of how many people I could have on a particular times we tried to to maximize our resources and and so I gave instructions about what time the SSG should be on station at the near the house ready for surveillance and that it was like the telephone game by the time it got to them it turned out to be a different time and so they were a little bit late and he had gone out and put a chalk mark on a mailbox that morning I think yeah somebody told me you have the mailbox here's everybody yeah got the mailbox yeah so so he had gone out and come back so they he went out at 6:03 Quebec 633 they looked on the pole government said oh we missed them so that was bad I was kind of upset but you know I wasn't Oh anyway my my family's here so I really can't lie so I just I was angry but what are you gonna do and then I was over in headquarters getting chewed out and this is one of the times when being close your field office plus the headquarters really doesn't work to your advantage so they called me over and they were I mean they've had a chew yacht so and then at one point I said hey look he's you know I got to get back out there because he's gonna go out again so we went back out and there had been a terrorist attack at CIA headquarters some time before that and as a result the the CIA security folks were much more aggressive and it expanded their perimeter outside their fence line and we had been instructed by some powers at CIA that they didn't want us to have our surveillance people on the compound so they had to be out but because the because of the the Kazi killings near a mall Kazi they had to push out and he went out and the aircraft couldn't get into the air at the appropriate time and lickety-split he was gone and so we were over to that day and I was a little down but this is America and baseball is the pastime and you get right three strikes in America so so that evening our surveillance teams were able to follow him and he went it was very clear as operational we just didn't know what he was doing and what he was doing is looking for a that his dead drop that he made me afternoon was picked up and and so we went where he had stopped for an inordinate time and we looked and we looked and we looked we looked for something a sign that that told him now that here's the funny thing he was looking for for nothing because what happens when when he'd put a chalk mark down if the when the Russians picked up the dead drop they've come and erased the chalkboard so we were looking for something and didn't see it he was looking for nothing and saw me so we were able to put that together later but we he was clearly operational that night and I saw I felt much better but it was a pretty rough day so when your boss came in that day after you found in a trash bowl and you found this post-it note that's obviously a signal to the Russians hey I'm gonna meet you in Bogota Colombia and we'll have this meeting and I'll get money or whatever you took some delight in going in to show your boss us this note right because then we've got you know evidence right yeah what this note was so there was a couple extra pieces there was a draft like they started and got a few words and then stopped and then the this one was a draft and then there was a third one that wasn't in the trash because that was on top of the package that he had delivered or seen so that one went to Moscow but this draft that we found was pretty good and yeah I was pretty happy I went in and and showed him he was really happy too but he also described that as the the greatest piece of insubordination history because you weren't supposed to be doing the trash well I hid told me not to do it but but we did it anyway it's not a great recipe for success in a career but I felt really confident in the SSG I really believed that we could do this and he his premise was that that Ames was really sophisticated and wouldn't really a good officer probably and he was afraid we'd get caught and I really believe we wouldn't and knowing more about him and so it was it was a risk you know and you have to be careful because you don't want to be labeled like a loose cannon and you know so I had to you know had to balance that but it was great work by wonderful dedicated professional folks that got it done because I didn't do it I just told them to go and they did it and I'm so proud of him I was just I was pretty happy and he mr. Bryant is a special person because not every boss would hear that the subordinate did something against his I'll say wishes but actually their orders and and he would be gracious about that and he was very gracious so I'm grateful for that we only have another minute before we're gonna go into Q&A but I wanted you to sort of describe later after piece of evidence has come through you know you get authorization to go and search the house right to go in oh yeah we did we did in fact it's kind of interesting for any lawyers in here we didn't have a search warrant we went under the power of the president and after the case was done Congress said well you know yeah that's good but maybe we should pass a law that allows you to do so we could go to the FISA Court music before flies it was only for a wiretap electronic surveillance and they added a physical search component so when Ames was gonna be gone for a weekend we had an entry plan this is a this is a surreptitious entry we wanted to go in and go out without him even knowing and so in there we had a team go in they installed some microphones and we got the authority to do the search as well and they found a note from the Russians in his in the pocket of a suit and it was further confirmation about what he was doing it was it was instructions about a meeting that was going to be held in Bogota Colombia and and we went to cover that meeting in Bogota to surveil him down there and interesting because it was at a time if you've heard of Pablo Escobar when Pablo Escobar was pretty active and it was that fall later on in December that he was killed by the Colombians but everybody was on edge about that at the time but but we went down on their surveillance and then we hope to catch him in a dead drop but we weren't able to do that and we were concerned because he was going to be traveling to Moscow on official CIA business and we just couldn't let that happen so we went ahead and made the arrest in February president's day not too far from his house yes yeah well right yeah just we let him get about a block away and then block the meeting that we wanted to I didn't want him to be interviewed in the same room and his wife was I wanted I didn't want them to be arrest to be able to communicate with each other that was a part of the interview strategy so so I think sandy and less will answer any questions that you might have I'm certainly happy to answer any questions about the book or the series yes oh great I've got some questions here first of all when this is for sanding when rich turned was it really because of the expensive divorce or the expensive new wife and the other is did he start to dress better before he met Rosario or after and the last one I'll answer asked his I read that he just wanted to get $50,000 and quit but the Russians never I'll this do the CIA do the same thing the answer to the last one is no okay he did it for a couple reasons one he had the divorce coming and he did not have the money I mean he was dirt poor they lived in a hovel in pimmit Hills and he wanted to keep her he really did love her and wanted to keep her in the way she'd been accustomed to living and oh my gosh she spent money the charges at Neiman Marcus and Garfinkel it was office awful she wouldn't shop at panties of Sears that's just who she was and to Rick was it a point this is real subjective he was at a point in his career where he knew he was going nowhere he was a dead end all of his fellow career training officers that it had been in that class they were GS 15 16 and Rick was angry it was one of these I am going to get even I am going to show you and he did unfortunately and Jean and I have always said this Rick could have gotten that money and not given up human lives he had access to so much material that the KGB would have paid any amount of money he wanted but no he had to give up human lives without blinking and I and the first case he gave up happened to be the one that my branch was running and interestingly enough he tried to talk me that that day it was just a terrible thing we were dropping dead drop to polish Duke in Moscow he was going to be on home leaf from Nigeria and I had argued and recommended that we should do this because he wanted the money we owed him from Nepal because he didn't take it then anyway long story short division chief sides with me Rick comes up to my branch he had never never stepped foot in that branch and he said sandy you absolutely going through with that dead drop it it's too dangerous it's too dangerous I'm argument wouldn't be dangerous it's not a problem you'll since our branch agrees with me Gerber briefed now Rick Ames well he's arguing this to me had already provided his KGB handlers with Polish Dukes true name and the location and timing of the dead drop so you ask yourself did he do it because he was feeling guilty or did he do it to have an alibi because he knew he was gonna be that polish dude was gonna be picked up the whole ball of wax that way he can see say see I told you sandy and Gerber were wrong I was right and that's what I have to say I could never forgive him and one thing he's serving a life sentence without possibility of parole you might say well why didn't he get the death sentence because the statue didn't make that possible then and as a result of this case the statute was amended exactly and which was I think wonderful for us as Americans because it was you couldn't get the death penalty during peacetime well it was it had to do with a case involving the death penalty in general and it said that aggravating factors had to be added but they had never amended the statute that was passed in 1917 so so as a result of this case yeah both FISA and the Espionage statute and actually another one were amended but the worst part reeks very happy I have to tell you he's just happy as can be he's got friends I've heard now these are rumors he's sort of the jailhouse lawyer he answers all of his his mail I can tell you that oh she's like the dog I'm sending him I just can't yeah not worth it we now cut the stamps off of the mail before they get it because they're hiding powdered fentanyl the drug underneath stamps and so they're doing this all across the country so he complained about that more the letters I think cut his stamps off cutting his stick it's not like he's doing fentanyl in there anything no any other questions anybody so since the rest happened in 1994 Soviet Union following in 91 just curious from all of you what effect that had if any on aims on the Russians operations with him and so forth Thanks thank you sp there was really no change except in one regard there were certain things that we worked together on one happened to be counter-narcotics and that's where Rick was assigned when he was arrested now he had legitimate reason to be meeting with the KGB right we were working together I think one one of us TD wise was the Black Sea resort well he was going to when the Black Sea in there exactly initiative and that's we wouldn't yeah you know but so yeah there were certain things that we could agree on that didn't mean that we were buddy buddies on all things to two different cultures exist one of the great things was that we built bridges in this case and a lot of great things happen because of that it's one thing to be able to send over a formal letter it's another point to be able to pick up on the phone or just to go visit and talk to somebody who knows you and trust you and so and that you trust so that those were great things and I have great friends at the CIA to this day because of that and great respect for them and and like Paul Redman is a hero to me but the culturally it's different agency collects information what I would go into Russia house there was a sign of that it said espionage is a good thing that's just not the case and the agents have to also when we provide information when we testify in court I mean we would be cross-examined by usually pretty good defense counsel so it's just a different mindset on how we collect our information and how we have to make sure if it's just a different culture a different way of think I get weird but it works it just works because when you put the two things together in the it's a really wonderful partnership and a lot of it really is personalities yeah sorry I have to trust one another yeah I have two questions and they're completely unrelated to each other the first is was Rosario aware or is there any sort of evidence that she knew she was married to a spy well he told me her he told her at some point he had already volunteered and told her at some point and we intercepted in the trash cover actually intercepted we come from the trash cover we got a typewriter ribbon now I know that you might not know it ma penis typewriters but we recovered a typewriter ribbon of a note from him to the Russians and in and it said my wife is accommodating herself to what I'm doing of it in a very supportive way and she also was in the car the night that he went to look for the signal that wasn't you know that they had erased this was important from a prosecution standpoint because now we have leverage that we can use so we can put her as into the charging documents and we did to provide to provide some leverage on Ames because he what he looked we knew he loved his son without without a doubt he won he was he wanted to be a really good father he really loved his son and he loved his wife but and he also loved his wife because he wanted her to take care of his son so threatening his wife with prison or a longer term was it was part of the hardball leverage that we were play now initially if you can imagine this he meets Rosario in Mexico City she's second secretary of the Colombian embassy and she's looking for a male she comes from a well educated family and South America and she's in her late 20s and she's not married that's just not that doesn't happen down there and here's Rick games Geographic that's and he works for the United States Department of State's I mean the Department of State well you can imagine good match yes well good match but she has no idea for whom he really works then she finds out then when they come back or he comes back here then she follows him in order to marry she has to take a polygraph and there has to be a background investigation of course he didn't tell her about the polygraph and I can't imagine the pellagra for having to give Rosario appalling well and then they live in a dump and then that was part of it he just had to get money had to get money now my second question and thank you for that my second question is goes to so Brian your book is geared towards sort of middle school readers yeah yeah and I know there are a lot of like kids here so I'm not looking for a career in either the FBI or the CIA but I'm wondering if for those for those young people who are what what's the path to get to where you got first first oh great first first thing is keep your nose clean live a life live a life that won't I just for the last six years until August I I taught at the University of South Carolina so I had this question all the time there's no single way to get there but the first thing you have to do is you have to be able to pass the background investigation so live your life in a way that will allow you to be a CIA officer an FBI agent and write if you do that you're going to be ahead of 50 percent of the pack anyway so that's one and then the other thing is read a lot know a lot about the world make sure that you have a mind that is analytical and an inquisitive and then the third thing is accomplished things this the FBI is looking for people that accomplish things so that they can work independently you can get things done and then they harm the average age of an FBI agent go into the Academy is thirty so if you if you understand that I was twenty nine and a half if you understand that then that means that that you have to have a plan B to get the plan a so and then then it's kind of tough to get in so you better be happy with plan B so don't pick something that you think is just gonna do it so you can get to the FBI make sure that you can be happy with that and I have just one quick story my first polygraph and you have to go in and talk to the polygamy they go over the questions and the rest of it and if you fail this you're out of luck you happen to hope employment and I remember saying to him I said I don't know if I can do this and he looked at me and he said you see all the people in this building do you think they're all Saints you'll do just fine relax and he was right he said this is a you know this is a a big organization that's filled with people have all kinds of faults but they have all wonderful attributes to you know not everybody is an A student not everybody's a B student you've got to have all levels but it works and you're right work hard learn every single day I think this is true of all jobs learn something new every single day last question sure a question for Brian the author did you get any direct information from Rick or attempt to get information and and secondly is there any laws against somebody taking advantage of a situation like that could Rick write his own book against that gossiping I'm sorry missed the last part of it I said the second question or is there any laws against some in a situation like there's someone writing their own book and profiting from it so yeah so Eames can't give interviews unless I don't know if that's true of Eames today he's in what's called a communications management unit as out there in Indiana Terre Haute it's the same prison where they they execute a Timothy McVeigh and he he's able to have mail the the the the villain in my first book which is Jim Nicholson Harold James Nicholson who was a the only two-time turncoat in US history also work for the CIA great embarrassment for the CIA who volunteered right after Ames he he's not allowed to have any communication at all with anyone other than his parents and only by phone and and and letters and his sister he could talk with his sister I think and brother so but Ames seems to have free run but I know that if I had if I sat down for an interview with him first off the the wardens of the federal prisons won't let a journalist in anymore so I can't go interview Ted Kaczynski which is something I really wanted to do years ago but I will say that they Ames has been very not forthcoming but he's been chatty in in these letters to me and responses and in the first book I asked him about polygraphs and how you could pass them and how you know and that sort of thing and he said well you might be able to pass the polygraph but ultimately the FBI's gonna come get you and he was right I don't think you can profit he can't profit from you cannot profit yeah answer the second question he cannot profit from any of it in any way shape or fashion okay we have alai know people want you to sign the books and I know sandy has to run off so I'm gonna thank you so much for being here spent incredible and you'll you'll be outside at a table at this end signing the books right yeah sorry I I see people go ahead and promise them an hour thank you so very much [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: International Spy Museum

Views: 91,127

Keywords: spy museum, international spy museum, museum, spies, spy, Aldrich Ames, Russia, FBI, CIA, Leslie Wiser, Sandy Grimes, Bryan Denson

Id: SbLDUE67gP0

Length: 75min 26sec (4526 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 06 2020