Spies : the secret agents who changed the course of history

290 Pages·1994·1.97 MB·English

by  Ernest Volkman

Spies have long existed in the popular
With wit and crisp, journalistic precision,
imagination as glamorous and shadowy
Volkman recounts a number of surprising
figures. But how much is known about the
real-life practitioners of the "black art" of espionage curiosities, including Pope Paul
espionage? In this enthralling look into the Vl's work for the CIA, Graham Greene's less
world of covert intelligence, renowned his- than glorious stint as a British agent, and
torian of espionage Ernest Volkman strips the bizarre story of "Papa's Crook Factory,"
away the myths and Hollywood hype to re- Ernest Hemingway's amateur spy ring in
veal the actual human dramas behind "the Havana. Also included are pioneers of mod-
world's second oldest profession." ern espionage such as the hard-hearted
Spies is a twentieth century "Hall of Infamy" "Fraulein Doktor," Elsbeth Schragmueller.
packed with gripping true spy stories profil- The mother of modern intelligence training,
ing many of this century's most notable she was the creator of the "discard," the
agents, assets, sleepers, spymasters, and deliberate sacrifice of one agent to protect
moles. These are the women and men whose another more important one from detection.
espionage feats have, for better or worse, Her story, along with others such as those of
irrevocably altered the course of history. Laventri Beria, architect of Stalin's police
You'll read of the amazing exploits of leg- state, and of Claude Dansey, the cantanker-
ends such as: ous and much reviled spymaster of Britain's
MI6, bring history to life.
• "Counterfeit Traitor" Eric Erickson, the
A solid reference work and an exciting read,
American businessman who, posing as
a Swedish Nazi, helped stanch the flow Spies offers a uniquely intimate look into the
of oil to Hitler's war machine and end shadowy world of espionage.
the war in Europe
ERNEST VOLKMAN, formerly a prize-winning
• Fritz Kauders, the Viennese Jew who national correspondent for Newsday, has
went from being a small time confi- been a journalist for more than thirty-five
dence trickster to become one of Ger- years He specializes in the dark world of
many's most valued spies and a Soviet espionage, a subject about which he has
double agent written hundreds of articles and several
• Amy Thorpe, the gorgeous American books, including Secret Intelligence—the
debutante turned superspy companion volume to the U.S. television
series by that name, for which he served as
• British agent 17F, Ian Fleming, author
consultant—and Warriors of the Night, a criti-
of some of the most outrageous (and
cal history of American intelligence that is
effective) "dirty tricks" in the annals of
spydom now required reading in several U.S. military
intelligence training courses. Mr. Volkman
• Dutch housewife turned burlesque
has lectured on intelligence at a number of
dancer, turned secret agent Margareta
universities and government agencies, has
Zelle, a.k.a. Mata Hari, who, contrary to
served as a consultant for several foreign-
popular belief, was neither beautiful
produced documentaries dealing with espi-
nor a very good spy
onage, including those done by ITV and BBC
• Brilliant Soviet superspy Richard in Great Britain, and he has appeared on
Sorge, whose intelligence gathering various American news programmes includ-
operation in Japan balked Nazi Ger- ing "Nightline" and "Today."
many's attempt to seize Moscow
Contents

Introduction vii
Glossary xi
The Agencies xv
The Moles

Fritz Kauders: Triumph of the Schieber 2
H. A. R. Philby: The Mole's Mole 8
Anthony Blunt: "The Pope Wants You!" 17
Oleg Penkovsky: Soldier for Peace 23
George Blake: The Manchurian Candidate 31
Nikolai and Nadjeda Skoblin: Death and the Kursk
Nightingale 37
Israel Beer: The Man Who Never Was 43
Vladimir I. Vetrov: The Murder of Line X 48
Defectors: The Storm Petrels

Afansy M. Shorikhov: Flight of the Football Fan 56
Igor Gouzenko: The First Man 61
Anatoli Golitsin: Even a Paranoid Has Enemies 70
Whittaker Chambers: The Man with Two Faces 76
The Legends

Leiba Domb: The Red Orchestra 82
Wilhelm Wassmuss: The German Lawrence 90
Ian Fleming: Art Imitates Life 94
Dusko Popov: The Real James Bond 98
F. W. Winterbotham: The Spy in the Sky 103
Amy Thorpe Pack: The Siren Spy 107
Richard Sorge: The Greatest of Them All 112
Ruth Kuczynski: The Radio in the Teddy Bear 121
Herbert Yardley: The American Black Chamber 127
Eric Erickson: The Counterfeit Traitor 132
Elsbeth Schragmueller: Fraulein Doktor 136
CONTENTS
vi
Margareta Zelle: Mata Hari, The Eye of Dawn 140
Wolfgang Lotz, Eliyahu Cohen: The Eyes of Israel 144
The Traitors

Larry Wu-Tai Chin: The Spy in the Casino 154
Klaus Fuchs: The Man Who Stole the Atomic Bomb 158
Alfred Redl: Feasting with Panthers 163
The Spymasters

K'ang Sheng, Tai Li: Terror in China 170
Markus Wolf: The Hour of Karla 177
William Stephenson: The Saga of Intrepid 183
Claude Dansey: The King of Z 189
Feliks Dzerzhinsky, Jan Berzin: Midnight in Lubyanka 195
Kenji Doihara: The Snake in the Basket 205
The Infamies

Laventri Beria: "Give Me a Man" 210
Reinhard Heydrich: A Terrible Secret 215
Gabor Peter: The Hunchback of Budapest 222
Some Mysteries . . .

Heinrich Mueller: A Nazi in Moscow 230
Rudolf Roessler: The Enigma of Lucy 237
Vitali Yurchenko: The Spy Who Changed His Mind 247
Nicolai F. Artamanov: The Double Agent Who Wasn't 254
. . . and a Few Curiosities

Ernest Hemingway: Papa's Crook Factory 260
Graham Greene: Our Man in Havana 266
Giovanni Montini: The Pope as Spy 270
W. Somerset Maugham: Our Man in Petrograd 277
Index 281
Introduction

"Espionage," former CIA Director Allen Dulles once remarked,
"is not a game for archbishops."
Just so. The game of intelligence—to use the modern polite
euphemism for spying—has been called "the world's second old-
est profession," and it has much of the same tawdry reputation
as its two historical contempories. According to historians, espi-
onage was one of three primordial professions that emerged at
the beginning of the human experience on this planet: shaman,
harlot, and spy. Shamans ultimately became politicians and law-
yers, while spies and harlots evolved into . . . well, spies and har-
lots.
It is a matter of opinion which profession has acquired the
most odious reputation. There is no dispute, however, about
which profession has the most ambiguous reputation. Spies are
alternately reviled and honored, rewarded and ignored, praised
and disowned. This is largely a matter of perspective. Nathan
Hale, the American spy during the Revolutionary War, is honored
by his countrymen for his famous statement ("I regret that I have
but one life to give to my country") upon the occasion of his
execution by the British. But the British view of Hale is very dif-
ferent, understandably considering the number of British sol-
diers who died as a result of the intelligence he provided to Gen-
eral Washington. Similarly, the great Soviet spy Richard Sorge
was posthumously honored by a commemorative postage stamp
issued by Moscow some 25 years after his execution by the Japa-
nese. But Germany will never proffer such an honor, for thou-
sands of its young men died in the snows around Moscow in the
winter of 1941 at the hands of Siberian troops shifted west to
defeat the German onslaught against Moscow—a deployment
that took place after Sorge found out the Japanese had decided
not to invade the Soviet Union.
Even today, in a time of vast national espionage establish-
ments that has made the business of spying institutionalized,
INTRODUCTION
viii
"spy" is still not a nice word. (Which is why espionage organiza-
tions prefer to call themselves "intelligence agencies," and their
employees prefer the job title "intelligence officer.") However
much modern political cynicism might concede the necessity of
snooping on certain other people in a dangerous world, espio-
nage is not a profession parents hope their children will enter.
Spying acquired its unsavory reputation at the moment of
its birth, somewhere around 5,000 years ago in ancient Egypt,
when King Thutmosis III hit upon the idea of concealing men
inside flour sacks to spy on the besieged city of Jaffa. Thutmosis
organized history's first official government state espionage ap-
paratus, an innovation he later had chiseled among hieroglyphics
recording the triumphs of his reign—although he was careful to
categorize his espionage feats under the heading of "secret sci-
ence." They represented a distinctly secondary note alongside
such real accomplishments as the construction of cities and the
filling of granaries that provided food for his people. Thutmosis
may have been a great spymaster, but he sensed there was some-
thing not quite nice about snooping, even on his enemies, and it
is clear that he much preferred to be remembered for other ex-
amples of his statecraft.
The Bible subsequently recorded Moses dispatching spies to "go
spy the land," but it was not until the creation of great nation
states three centuries ago that organized espionage—and spies—
became an integral part of statecraft. At the same time, a distaste
for spies and spying began to develop among the people of those
great nation states. (James Bond is only the latest in a long line
of fictional characters who never seem to dirty their hands in the
real-life grubby world of the spy.)
In the twentieth century, entire armies of spies have been
deployed during a period in history marked by almost continuous
war. And where there is war, there are spies. To confront the more
than 200,000 spies employed by the Soviet Union at the height
of its power, and the slighdy smaller espionage army of the United
States is to understand how deeply spying has woven itself into
the fabric of modern civilization.
This century has sometimes been called "the century of the
spy," because the insatiable quest for information by modern in-
dustrialized states has created the vast armies of spies who have
come to play such a critical role in the course of world history.
This book makes no attempt to consider all the men and women
of those armies. Such a task would be impossible between the
INTRODUCTION ix
covers of any size book; literally millions of spies have practiced
what is still known as the "black art." But there has been only a
relatively small number whose work has had a dramatic impact
on history. These are the men and women who have directly af-
fected the fate of empires, of nations, of history itself.
Be warned, however; none of these people possess the stuff
of greatness. They run the gamut of human beings, from the
brave to the cowardly, from the wise to the foolish, from the in-
telligent to the appallingly stupid. Some are extraordnary people,
some very ordinary, and others somewhere in between. There is
no common thread that unites them, except that all of them have
been governed by the Three Great Spy Commandmants:
I. Thou Shalt Not Get Caught
II. If Thou Ist Caught, We Have Never Heard of Thee
III. Given the Foregoing, No Other Commandments Are
Necessary
This book grew out of some discussions with members of the
American intelligence community—as they prefer to call them-
selves—who like to ruminate on the place of the spy in history.
As those conversations developed, a gradual consensus emerged:
among the many spies who have ever attired themselves in the
metaphorical cloak and dagger, it is astonishing how many of
them had no impact whatsoever. Which is to say either they failed,
or the governments that hired them failed.
The exceptions to that general rule represent the core of
this book. I should emphasize that the men and women ultimately
selected for inclusion in this volume are the result of my own
research and conclusions. I'm certain that a fair number of peo-
ple in the intelligence community will object to the inclusion of
some names, and argue for the addition of others. I take full
responsibility for the final list in this book, along with my inter-
pretations. Readers may find a few familiar names missing—along
with a few surprises.
A word on methodology. The spies discussed in this book
are slotted into a number of categories, including moles, defec-
tors, legends, traitors, spymasters, and infamies, along with sev-
eral people I categorize as "mysteries" and "curiosities." Because
a number of espionage careers overlap, readers will find some
names bold-faced; those names so highlighted are treated sepa-
rately elsewhere in the book. The names in this virtual espionage
hall of infamy—spydom's "greatest hits," if you will—are listed
x INTRODUCTION
in no particular order, chronological or otherwise. Spying, as its
adherents learned a long time ago, is an activity that resists easy
categorization.
As usual, this book would not exist without the advice, support,
and direction of every writer's dream of a literary agent, Victoria
Pryor of Arcadia.
ERNEST VOLKMAN
Danbury, Connecticut
Winter, 1993
Glossary

Like many other fields of human endeavor, espionage has its own
special language. Whenever possible, I have tried to avoid using
the jargon in this book, but unavoidably, there are some unique
terms that have no ordinary language equivalents:
AGENT: A spy in the pay of a nation's intelligence service on a
regular, salaried basis, with the status of government em-
ployee.
AGENT OF INFLUENCE: An asset (a term to be defined subse-
quendy), usually in an important government position, who
is assigned the job of influencing policy, rather than col-
lecting intelligence.
AGENT PROVOCATEUR: An asset, usually under control of a
counterintelligence or police agency, assigned to infiltrate a
political organization and instigate violent action designed
to discredit that organization and justify extreme counter-
measures.
ASSET: A foreigner enrolled by an intelligence service—either
for pay or because of political conviction—to serve as an
intelligence source.
BLACK BAG JOB: Break-in or burglary to gain access to secret
papers, which are photographed and returned, customarily
in the same operation. Such operations are carried out by
highly trained teams to conceal any trace of their presence.
BLACK PROPAGANDA: Propaganda whose origin is completely
disguised and takes the form of a "clandestine" operation
by alleged political dissidents against the target country,
most often by means of a "secret" radio station within the
country's borders or just outside them. The station is actu-
ally created by agents of a hostile intelligence service trained
in such techniques, and is designed to sow discord and con-
fusion while boosting the political fortunes of an "exile"
faction.
BLOWN: Agent or asset revealed to counterintelligence. Also
called "burned."
xii GLOSSARY
BRUSH CONTACT: Rapid, apparently accidental, contact
between an agent or asset and a case officer or control agent
to exchange material, most often in a crowded public place
to confuse surveillance.
CASE OFFICER: Agent assigned to supervise an agent or asset
(or a network—"ring"—of them), in matters of pay, collec-
tion of intelligence, and other details. Also called "control
agent."
CHIEF OF STATION: Agent assigned to head an overseas intel-
ligence unit, normally part of an embassy. In Soviet intelli-
gence parlance, such an agent is known as a rezident.
COVER: Organizational disguise under which an agent hides
connection to an intelligence agency. In American in-
telligence parlance, cover can be "light" (diplomatic) or
"deep" (commercial or other such organizational affilia-
tion).
CRYPTANALYST: Trained analyst who works to break codes
and ciphers by attempting to recover the "key" (specific
method) used in encryption. Currently, such analysts tend
to be mathematicians who work with super-computers to at-
tack computer-generated codes.
DEAD DROP: Site where agents can leave and exchange messages
with other agents or their control, most often in nooks and
crevices in public areas (a hole in a wall is a particular fa-
vorite). Such a technique is designed to avoid any contact
between those "filling" (inserting material) the dead drop
and those "servicing" it (removing such material). Also
known as dubok, from Soviet intelligence parlance.
DISCARD: Agent or asset deliberately sacrificed to deflect atten-
tion from other, more important, agents.
FRONT: Legitimate-appearing entity created by an intelligence
to provide cover for agents and assets. It can take many
forms, from a charitable foundation to a corporate entity.
ILLEGAL: In Soviet intelligence, agent operating in a foreign
country under an assumed identity or cover job.
LEGAL: In Soviet intelligence, agent operating in a foreign coun-
try under diplomatic cover, providing diplomatic immunity
in event of arrest.
LEGEND: Faked biography of an agent to conceal real identity.
LETTERBOX: Person used as a go-between (often called "cut-
out") to receive and pass on messages.