← The Redefector
The Redefector
Joyride | Chapter 8
00:52:16
Some old veterans from the Soviet and Eastern Europe division decide to take matters into their own hands and start a new hunt. It's unconventional, it's personal, and this time, it's successful.
Loading summary
Transcript104 lines
- [00:00]
Paul Redmond
If you love your phone but not.
- [00:02]
Rick Ames
Your carrier, just switch to T Mobile.
- [00:04]
Sandy Grimes
You can keep your phone, keep your number and we'll help pay it off up to $800 per line. You can also use our savings calculator.
- [00:11]
Paul Redmond
To compare our plans and streaming benefits against Verizon and AT and T. So.
- [00:14]
Sandy Grimes
Switch and keep your phone, keep your.
- [00:16]
Rick Ames
Number and keep more of your moolah.
- [00:17]
Paul Redmond
@T mobile.com up to 4 lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device, credit.
- [00:24]
Sandy Grimes
Service port in 90 plus days with device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a'@usaa.com bundle restrictions apply. This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Okay, so to recap, Vitaly Archenko had redefected back to Moscow, where to everyone's surprise, he was greeted as a hero. In his wake, people began screaming themselves hoarse about whether or not he was a plant, and the CIA was instantly besieged with finger pointing inquiries, investigations and Senate hearings. As all that was happening, though, prized CIA assets, Soviet officials who were secretly working for the CIA continued to disappear. These assets were all meant with families. They had been knowingly risking their lives to help the CIA, many of them for years, and they were being arrested, imprisoned, and often tortured, sometimes for months on end. Classic KGB interrogations involved methods like electroshock therapy, suffocation techniques, or binding a prisoner in the Lestocka position, where victims have their hands cuffed behind their backs and are then hung by their wrists. Guards starved, these men threatened their families, drugged them and brutally beat them. And after surviving all that, then they were murdered, their bodies buried in unmarked graves. Each loss carried its own sickening weight and the SE Division was anxious to stop any more bloodshed. When Yurchenko had told the CIA of the betrayal of Edward Lee Howard, a guy who'd been briefed and trained on most Soviet assets when he was being prepared to work in Moscow, the agency thought they had found the big leak. They had been looking for the person responsible for all the deaths and blown missions from early on in the year. Only these new compromised assets were men that had begun working for the CIA after Ed Howard was fired. So as the body count kept rising, the fear roiling in the wake of Yurchenko's mind blowing departure was Had Yurchenko been sent to cover for the real cause of those first deaths? Basically, had Howard just been, upon sacrifice, calculated to save a queen to hide a much bigger breach? The most obvious way to know the answer to that was to figure out what exactly that breach was and then determine could Yurchenko even have known about it? And if so, how might he have been connected? After his departure, the SE Division immediately ratcheted up its security protocols. Among other things, no cable traffic whatsoever was to be sent about new assets. Their handlers would meet with sources in person and then type up notes in an air gapped steel cased computer and fly home by a circuitous route to update Langley in person. Those new measures sealed up the handling of new assets and successfully kept new walk ins safe. But older assets, those who had volunteered their services before 1985, before the mysterious leak, continued to be compromised one after another. Meanwhile, the CIA also ran a series of tests to determine if their communication lines had been hacked or bugged. And eventually they determined that no, this was not likely a comms breach. It was something else. By October of 1986, the SE Division put together a task force led by an old battle axe named Jean Verdefey, whose mission was to get to the bottom of what by then was being called the 8586 losses. Unfortunately, for a number of fascinating reasons, Gene's task force was diverted down dead end corridors for five whole years. Partly it was because of a sort of ghost the CIA was battling with, and partly it was a series of brilliant and successful Soviet deception campaigns. But to keep things moving here, let's fast forward five years to 1991. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has been removed from power and there are tanks now.
- [05:11]
Dan Payne
In the streets of Moscow.
- [05:13]
Sandy Grimes
Good evening.
- [05:13]
Jean Verdefey
In a week of remarkable developments, another.
- [05:16]
Sandy Grimes
Stunner tonight from the Soviet Union. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced he is resigning as head of the Soviet Communist Party and recommended that the party's ruling Central Committee be disbanded, which in effect would mean the end of communist rule in the Soviet Union. In December of 1991, the Soviet Union officially collapsed. Now by that point, the murder rampage of the CIA's Soviet assets had trickled to an end. Basically because there was no one left to kill. The CIA's SE division had lost almost every single one of their Soviet assets who had been recruited before the year of the spy. So before 1985, and because the deaths had stopped, many thought the damage of the leak had come to an end. That included Milt Bearden, who had recently been Bumped up to the new head of what used to be called the Soviet East European division and was now called Russia House, which was a nickname given to it because of the Sean Connery film of the same name that had just come out. Paul wasn't ready to let go. Not of the Cold War. He thought the FSB and the SVR were just new names for the same old KGB and not for the hunt for the leak. He pushed back on both so hard that Milt kicked him out of Russia House. Basically, he sent him off to the counterintelligence center, another organization created partly because of Yurchenko's Redefection, where FBI and CIA personnel teamed up on counterintelligence cases.
- [06:47]
Paul Redmond
In 1991, Mil t got rid of me and I went up to the.
- [06:53]
Sandy Grimes
CIA center is the deputy, Milti is Milt Bearden. The first day Paul got to the CI center, he bumped into none other than Jean Verdefey. Her task force had been disbanded by that point, but in the last months before her forced retirement, she had asked to keep working by herself to try to find answers for the families of the fallen assets.
- [07:17]
Paul Redmond
And she and I talked about it and Jean said she was very upset. She never got anywhere. I said, well, I don't get this, you know, I probably turned the air blue. These fucking idiots. We're going to start it up again.
- [07:32]
Sandy Grimes
So in 1991, six years after Yurchenko redefected, the hunt for the leak suddenly kicked into a new high gear. This time it would actually succeed. And the leak, it wasn't a listening device or a hack of the CIA communication cables. It was a mole, a person, someone they knew well and someone you guys actually know pretty well by now too. From Waveland, I'm Julie Cohn and this is the Redefector. This is Chapter eight Joyride. Paul and Jean's first order of business was to build a small team. And Paul immediately wanted Sandra Grimes for the job. Sandy had led the team back in 1986 that implemented most of the new ratcheted up security measures. She had been responsible for keeping new agents alive and safe.
- [08:33]
Paul Redmond
I mean, Sandy was one of. I knew her very well and she was one of the few people I trusted and was smart and was capable and knew the business.
- [08:46]
Sandy Grimes
Though Sandy's health prevented her from being able to do an interview for this podcast, here she is in a lecture she gave in 2013 at the International Spy Museum in Washington.
- [08:57]
Dan Payne
Redmond knew I was planning on resigning from the CIA and that only an opportunity to find out why we lost General Poliakov and my colonel would keep me working.
- [09:13]
Sandy Grimes
She's talking about General Poliakov and Colonel Polishchuk. They were two victims of the 85 bloodbath caused by a mole this team was determined to find. Sandy had spent half her career handling both of those men personally. Over the years, she'd come to know the general, the colonel, and their families really well. Their deaths still kept her up at night. Here she is in an ABC interview in 1997.
- [09:39]
Dan Payne
What would you do if your best friend is murdered? You look inside your soul and you say, what did I possibly do wrong?
- [09:48]
Paul Redmond
Did I blow it?
- [09:49]
Dan Payne
Did I blow it? Did I make an operational decision that cost this person his life?
- [09:57]
Sandy Grimes
Paul and Jean Hand selected the rest of the elite team of people. And like Sandy, every person on this new mole hunt team knew one of the victims well. Besides Sandy, there was Dan Payne. Remember Dan? He was Vitaly Yurchenko's old bodyguard and a hardworking member of Gene's previous task force. The hunt for the leak had occupied almost all of his years at the CIA thus far. He could not bear the idea of walking away without answers. There were also two FBI agents, both named Jim, one of whom had been Pimenta's FBI handler. And he hated that Pimenta's murderer was still walking free. It wasn't a glamorous affair. The team would meet in Jean's office, which was the size of a large mop closet. But it had a great dynamic. Paul and Jean were human opposites. Jean was a patient, meticulous rule follower who excelled in analysis. And Paul was an impatient, blustery, shoot from the hip kind of guy with an expertise in operations. In a way, Paul had a superpower for throwing a tantrum right when it was most needed.
- [11:05]
Paul Redmond
I remember yelling out. I had no idea. I said, we're going to be investigated by everybody except the goddamn Red Cross. We got to get this thing moving. That's exactly what I said. Or maybe Salvation army. Or both. I can't remember. And she was. She'd go along like this, slowly, and we had some major rows about this. But she was a very difficult person. And of course I have all the right answers.
- [11:35]
Sandy Grimes
Sandy and Jean's relationship really gets me.
- [11:39]
Paul Redmond
They were very close, very, very, very close friends, you know? Cause Andy, in effect became her sister. And they were extremely close.
- [11:51]
Sandy Grimes
Sandy was married with kids, dressed elegantly, and was very social. Jean was a no nonsense single woman in her late 50s who avoided most social functions and dressed like a librarian. She was a big fan of the turtleneck under a long dress kind of look. And yet the two became inseparable. Years later, when Jean was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Sandy visited and sat with her every day, including her last. Meanwhile, Dan Payne got along with everyone and everyone knew their role. Dan's was investigation and in particular, forensic accounting. To start, the group drew up a list of CIA personnel who, by virtue of their work in 1985, could be expected to know some or all of the operations or assets who were compromised.
- [12:38]
Paul Redmond
I used to say, I'd lecture, we had this list of 200 people and Verda Fay had been in the yard. No, it was 198. I mean that was. We had a list of 198 people that had access. Obviously you couldn't investigate 200 people under 98.
- [13:01]
Sandy Grimes
Though they were able to narrow the list down to 160 possible candidates, the number was still too big. And here is where things got interesting fast. Gene's last task force had boiled the ocean to make tea, so to speak. This time they would do things differently. Here's Sandy from a lecture she gave at the US Naval War College.
- [13:24]
Dan Payne
Now we've got a real problem. There is no way we can investigate 160 without an army or a navy. So we got to find somewhere to prioritize and it is Jean to the rescue. Her approach was simple, was not scientific, and I will add, it was roundly criticized by individuals in positions of power and influence. What we did is we asked all four members of our team to list, no consultation here, list on a piece of paper, four or five or six if you wanted individuals who made them uneasy and whom they believed we should take a close look at first. Now, I will point out, by uneasy we don't mean. And we didn't mean someone you had an argument with over an operational decision or you simply didn't like the way they dressed. We're looking for a traitor here.
- [14:40]
Sandy Grimes
Part of the thinking behind this method was that Jean and her task force knew all 160 people on that list.
- [14:46]
Paul Redmond
And when we were looking for the spy, we said, whoever it is, we're going to know him well.
- [14:52]
Dan Payne
We knew he wouldn't be a stranger, he'd be a co worker, a colleague, someone we had known for probably 20 plus years, as well as someone we saw frequently in the hallways of our headquarters building.
- [15:11]
Sandy Grimes
Jean also knew her team was a bunch of great CIA officers who in their training as spies or spycatchers had spent years professionally honing a gut feel for people, fine tuning their bullshit meters. So why shouldn't they use that to their advantage? People wrote down their lists, and Sandy collected them.
- [15:29]
Dan Payne
Gene and I took the submissions, and then we assigned a numerical value to first, second, and third, and so on. Anytime your name appeared in the number one position, you got six points. Number two, five points. Obviously, you didn't want to win this contest. And we totaled the points. Big surprise.
- [15:58]
Paul Redmond
What?
- [16:00]
Dan Payne
Rick won the contest. He had the most points. 21.
- [16:06]
Sandy Grimes
Rick.
- [16:07]
Dan Payne
And yes, he was a co worker for me personally, a carpool member. We grew up together as young officers in the Soviet East European division.
- [16:22]
Sandy Grimes
Aldrich. Rick Ames. Remember Rick? Rick. Vitaly Yurchenko's other CIA debriefer besides Colin. Rick, the guy who picked Vitaly up at the airport late smelling of booze and disheveled. Rick who got up in FBI Mike Rochford's face about never debriefing Yurchenko alone. Rick the debriefer, who Mike and his partner Reid described as constantly cutting off Yurchenko's answers and never letting him finish a full thought. If it was true, it was a bombshell. Sandy Grimes was the only one who ranked Rick in the number one position. And part of the reason she did, part of the reason Rick even got a second look at all, was because of the gut feeling, in particular, of the women at the CIA who had known him. Because the thing was, Rick let his guard down around them because Rick thought less of them.
- [17:22]
Dan Payne
He respected us, but we were still dumb broads. It made him a lot more comfortable that those from CIA looking for a mole in CIA were two female officers.
- [17:36]
Sandy Grimes
I asked Dan Payne about this, and I found the conversation fascinating. So I was curious if he was like that to the guys as much as he was to the women, or do you think he was more.
- [17:48]
Jean Verdefey
The guys are more likely to say, hey, Rick, you know what? Fuck you. You know. You know what I mean? I never heard a guy bitch about Rick being arrogant. There was almost a little bit of a dismissiveness.
- [18:07]
Sandy Grimes
This, if you will, by guys about him or by him.
- [18:13]
Jean Verdefey
Yeah, by. By guys about Rick. I don't know. I. You know, it's.
- [18:19]
Paul Redmond
It's a.
- [18:19]
Jean Verdefey
It's an interesting question that you pose, but. But I don't. I don't know the. The answer to. To that. I. You know, I don't think he had a great deal of respect among the guys, but. But it wasn't.
- [18:36]
Sandy Grimes
But like, around you, for instance, would he ever. Was he a big braggart?
- [18:42]
Jean Verdefey
No, not at all.
- [18:46]
Sandy Grimes
Yeah. I wonder if he thought. She describes him as Treating them like they were dumb broads. And I. I wonder if maybe he let himself be more of a jerk around them, or what you're saying is maybe.
- [18:59]
Jean Verdefey
Or felt he could.
- [19:01]
Sandy Grimes
Yeah, you know, or felt he could because they wouldn't tell him to f off.
- [19:08]
Jean Verdefey
Yeah, Right.
- [19:09]
Sandy Grimes
That's interesting. Rick had left for an assignment in Rome shortly after Yurchenko had redefected. Four years later, in 1989, around the time Gene's first task force was losing steam, Rick returned, and that's when one of his colleagues, Diana Worthen, suddenly noticed something was off. Diana had been very close friends with Rick and knew his wife, Rosario, well because she was on assignment in Mexico with Rick. When the couple had first met. Diana had gone to her friend Sandy grimes in confidence, very upset. And soon, Sandy and Diana went to tell Dan, who served as the forensic accounting investigator.
- [19:49]
Jean Verdefey
What Diana told me is, she says, look, she says, something's not right here. She says, a number one. I know Rick had access to all the operations that went bad. And she said, in 1985, she said, when, before Ames went to Italy, she said there was no evidence of any kind of money on his part. And she said, in fact, it was the exact opposite. She said, you know, he drove a ratty car. He was always unkempt. You know, he needed a lot of dental work.
- [20:27]
Paul Redmond
And.
- [20:27]
Jean Verdefey
And she went on and on about, you know, what a slob Rick was. And she said, but then he got to Rome. And she says, I start getting expensive gifts like Gucci scarves, Gucci purses, things like that, she says, which are totally out of line for. For Rick. And she says, then Rick comes back, and she says, he immediately buys an expensive home in. In Arlington. He immediately starts refurbishing the kitchen, the most expensive part of the house to refurbish. He starts re. Landscaping the grounds. And then the things that got Diana was Diana just happened to be installing custom draperies in her house, so she knew how expensive it was. And she says, and Rick is doing this throughout his. His whole house. And. And she says, and now he's driving a jaguar. And she said, none of this computes. And she says, and I know the money's not coming from Rosario because Rosario, her family's not wealthy either. And she said, the reason why I know they're not wealthy is because there were some times in Mexico City that Rosario couldn't go shopping because her paycheck had not hit the bank yet. So she said, something's wrong here.
- [21:51]
Sandy Grimes
Dan immediately checked into Rick's finances. He Went to Arlington County Court hunting for Rick's mortgage, but he found nothing. Rick had purchased the $540,000 home in cash, which was definitely suspicious. But maybe Rosario just hadn't inherited the money yet, back when she knew Diana in Mexico. So the CIA hired a Colombian investigator who came back saying Rosario's family were millionaires. To be extra certain, the CIA polygraphed Rick and he passed twice later, one of those polygraphs actually earned Rick Ames the informal cryptonym joyride. During one of the interviews, Ames reasserted that Rosario had come into a lot of family money and that he was just along for the ride. It turns out, unbeknownst to Dan or the rest of the SE desk, that Colombian investigator they had hired was so lazy he would later be fired for his incompetence. And although Rosario's family were Colombian royalty, so to speak, they actually had very little money. In any case, it seemed at the time that Ames spending checked out. He definitely wasn't the only guy who drove a Jaguar at the CIA. There were dozens in the Langley parking lot. Nor was he the first officer to have suddenly inherited money. This wasn't the FBI after all. The CIA was formed by a bunch of Ivy Leaguers from fancy families. Officially, the trail had gone cold on Rick in 1989. But privately, Diana still wasn't buying it. And neither was Sandy, because it wasn't just the money. That was different when he got back. Here's Sandy.
- [23:32]
Dan Payne
The Rick Ames that I knew in those days, he was an absent minded professor. He was a complete slob. Dirty fingernails, I think he wore the same white shirt and blue shirt he'd exchange maybe every other week. But Rick was a. A sort of a gentle sort. He was a happy go. Lucky, as I say, absent minded professor. The other thing is he had absolutely zero interest, zero concern for anything material. But when he returned from Rome and returned to headquarters In September of 1989, that wasn't the Rick Ames I knew. September, big guy, tall, who was always slouched. Rick stood up very straight. His hair was coiffed, his nails were done. He was in, even in those days, $800 Italian loafers. The suits were magnificent. But the big change in Rick Ames was that gentle person I knew was gone. His ego, it wouldn't fit in this room. He was smarter than anyone else. He knew better about everything. It was frightening. That person was gone. That personality was gone.
- [24:59]
Sandy Grimes
The thing is, that frightening ego had been kept more in check around the men in the office. To them, Rick just seemed to have Gotten a good makeover, stylish new wife, and a stint in Europe. Sure, he looks better. So what?
- [25:13]
Jean Verdefey
So the. The only thing I knew when he. When he came back was there. There was the. The. The money issue. And. And certainly a big change in his lifestyle and his demeanor. Demeanor? From the sense that, you know, he was now wearing tailored suits. Aside from the change in his appearance, I didn't notice any difference.
- [25:37]
Sandy Grimes
The women, though, saw a changed person, not just a new wardrobe. Okay, so the women helped flag him. But how on earth did this team finally catch him? And as for how it all relates to Vitaly Yurchenko, Just wait, you guys.
- [25:57]
Julie Cohn
I just found the most incredible Mother's Day gift. It's called Goldbelly. Goldbelly is this amazing site where you can get the most iconic foods from restaurants all across the US Shipped anywhere in the country for free in time for Mother's Day. We're talking cakes from ina garden and Martha Stewart, Magnolia bakery's famous banana pudding and New York bagel brunches. Make Mother's day perfect with Goldbelly.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code MOM. That's Goldbelly.com, promo code MOM. Moms deserve our very best, especially on Mother's Day. There's only one place I trust to deliver high quality mom Approved rose bouquets. 1-800-flowers.com this year, 1-800-Flowers wants to make sure all the mothers in your life get the best with double the roses for free. When you buy one dozen, they'll double your bouquet to two dozen roses. To claim the double roses offer, go to 1-800flowers.comsxm that's 1-800-flowers.comsxm. the official florist of Mother's Day.
- [27:01]
Sandy Grimes
The team had a huge hunch about Rick, but they'd have to make sure it was true. They'd have to find proof. First. They ran searches through the CIA and FBI databases to find every shred of detail they could about him. And then Sandy typed it all into a 200 page document in chronological order on a computer. Which is a big deal when you consider the first task force started out in a room with nothing but a typewriter. At the same time, Dan Payne was delving into Rick's finances again. Because, yes, they had stopped looking into his finances in 1989 on account of Rosario's family supposedly being loaded. But since the new task force still collectively had ranked him number one most suspicious, Paul Redmond wanted to do a deeper dive on those finances. Again, immediately.
- [27:49]
Paul Redmond
So I said, we need to do his money. And Vertifey didn't want to. We're not ready. And we had a major row, you can imagine. So I went across the room to a guy named Dan Payne, who was working on, who was an office of security guy. So I went over and I physically marched up to Vertify and I said, would effing doing his finance Rick's finances. Now.
- [28:20]
Jean Verdefey
Paul had come to me and he said, Dan, he says, is there any way we can get at his bank accounts? And I said, let me take a look. And I actually found a law that we had never used before. I still even remember the site number, 12 USC 3414. It said, Any US government agency involved in counterintelligence investigations or positive intelligence collection can access the records of financial institutions without a search warrant or a subpoena. And when I saw that, I went, you know, am I seeing this right? And so I showed it to Paul and Paul said, run it past the lawyers. And so I took it to our general counsel. He took a look at it and said, you're good to go.
- [29:11]
Sandy Grimes
What Dan's describing are now more commonly known as FISA letters. And soon Dan was burning the midnight oil to study all the data those letters allowed him to collect.
- [29:21]
Paul Redmond
Eventually we gave Dan one of those green eye shade things. He'd be at his desk and the be adding machines with the paper would go across. There was so much, but he did.
- [29:37]
Jean Verdefey
Get me a green eye shade. And I remember there is one time it was like 7:00 in the evening one day and I was doing all kinds of calculations and literally had a pile, a tape, you know, from the, from the adding machine. I had like a pile of adding machine tape like just piled up on, on the desk. And I was sitting back in my desk like, like this because it had, it was. I was so tired at that point. And Paul just walked past my, the area where he could look straight down the cubicles and see me. And he just started laughing out loud when he saw me sitting there with a pile of adding machine tape and me just kind of like with my head back and eyes closed like.
- [30:28]
Sandy Grimes
And then all of a sudden one day In August of 1992, it all clicked into place. Dan had just gotten a hold of Rick's cash deposits in a particular bank and handed them to Sandy, who inputted them into her timeline. And here's what she saw. 17th of May 1985, Ames has lunch with Chuvakin. Chuvakin was a Soviet diplomat, 18th of May. AIM deposits $9,000. 31st of July 1985. Ames has lunch with Juvakin that same day. Ames deposits $8,500. And so on and so on.
- [31:11]
Dan Payne
Jean referred to it. It's my epiphany, I told Jean, I told the gyms, told Dan, and headed down the hallway to let Redmond know. And I will apologize in advance for what I'm going to say next. It wasn't particularly ladylike, but that was okay. I went into Redmond's office, shut the door, and I said, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell what's going on here. Rick is a goddamn Soviet spy. Redmond and I are still arguing over my exact words, but I think I'm remembering them correctly. He would have said it a different way.
- [31:54]
Paul Redmond
Sure this happened, but she claims it didn't. She says I say she came in and leaned up against the doorway and said, we got the son of a bitch. She claimed she didn't, but she did.
- [32:07]
Sandy Grimes
Once the FBI finally became convinced of the mole hunt's findings, they made quick and serious work of catching Rick. They rented a home right near Ames property where an undercover FBI couple watched Rick's house around the clock. They installed a tracker on his car. They tapped his home phones. There were planes circling overhead, constantly surveilling his movements. And stealthily, they were going through his trash. On one of the trash poles, the agents found something the FBI refers to lovingly as a Flynn. A fucking little note. It's usually a Flynn that finally incriminates someone. Sure enough, Ames had written the details of his next illicit dead drop on a yellow post it note. The note had been ripped up, but the FBI pieced it back together and it confirmed Rick was the mole. On the day of his arrest, the FBI didn't take any chances. There were over a hundred undercover agents at checkpoints all over the neighborhood that morning when Rick got a call telling him to come to the office about an urgent cable. Not true. The FBI just wanted to get Rick out of the house so they wouldn't be handcuffing him in front of his son. At an intersection near his house, Ames suddenly found himself boxed in by four cars. According to the author, David Weiss, Mike Donner, a hulking SWAT team agent, and Del Spry approached Ames car. Spry showed his FBI credentials and asked Ames to get out of the car. Ames sat there incredulously. And so, and I kind of love this Donner, the SWAT guy apparently pulled Ames cigarette from his mouth and tossed it on the ground. Then repeated the command, get out of the car and put your hands on the vehicle. You're under arrest for espionage. Ames had the nerve to play dumb and even said something like, you're making a big mistake or you've got the wrong man. But within minutes, he knew it was game over. His house was full of damning evidence. A senior CIA official was arrested today.
- [34:08]
Dan Payne
For moonlighting as a spy.
- [34:10]
Sandy Grimes
Authorities say Aldrich Hazen Ames and his wife passed on secrets to the Soviet Union, then to Russia for cash. And now Washington says they'll pay the price. Rosario was also arrested. The wiretaps showed she was well aware of what her husband was doing and gleefully shopping on the blood money. In his confession, Ames was full of excuses. Low self esteem, a disenchantment with the CIA, a need to level the playing field between the superpowers, a desire for power and importance. But ultimately, he said, he did it for the money. Rosario had met him when he was on assignment in Mexico posing as a diplomat, meaning the CIA had supplied him with a comfortable home, a nice car, and money for wining and dining people. Once he and Rosario returned to the States, Rick was just a regular guy on a low income government salary whose net worth was about to be halved by his divorce. He just loved Rosario so much that he couldn't handle disappointing her. And since she had expensive tastes, what else could he do but sell out his country and his own soul? You know, here's one of a few clips of Rick Ames from an interview he did.
- [35:24]
Paul Redmond
Well, the reasons that I, that I did what I did in April of 1985 were personal, banal, and amounted really to kind of greed and folly. Simple as that. I knew quite well when I gave the names of our agents in the Soviet Union that I was exposing them. I did the same thing for reasons that I considered sufficient to myself.
- [36:05]
Sandy Grimes
Did he do the same thing because Dmitri Polyakov gave up military intelligence to the CIA to avert World War three and wanted nothing in return? Meanwhile, Ames gave up Dmitry Polyakov to the Soviets to buy a new Jaguar. So it's not giving same thing to me. It's giving more like night and day opposites, you know. Look, I don't really feel like dwelling too much on the scumbag of a human being, but it is interesting to note that Rick Ames was a legacy hire. He was the son of a CIA officer named Carlton Ames. Carlton had been pulled from clandestine services and relegated to a quiet desk job and counterintelligence on account of his alcoholism. And you know it's bad if the CIA in the 70s thinks your drinking is a problem. Ames was a college dropout. He was too busy acting and having fun in the theater department to care much about classes. Despite his poor grades, he was still able to get a job at the CIA, in large part because of his father. Sometimes it's hardest to see a betrayal when it's from someone inside the family, so to speak. There are teams of people who do nothing but try to study the data of what might make a person turn on their country. Maybe Ames had an inferiority complex related to his deadbeat dad or his own unglamorous path in the CIA. Maybe he had low self esteem after his divorce. Honestly, none of it justifies what he did. He gave the KGB the names of every single Soviet asset working for the CIA that he knew of in exchange for a few million dollars. The shiver of power and inability to pathetically peacock for his wife. But what is interesting to me is that as I think back to the first day that Ames and Yurchenko met, and if I assume Yurchenko was a real defector while Rick Ames sat across the table from Vitali, it might have felt like looking in the mirror. It could not have been lost on Rick that he himself, in that scenario, represented everything he was afraid of. A mole inside the KGB someday tattling on him. And they shared some interesting commonalities. Both claimed to have been disillusioned with their own countries. Both were desperate to do whatever it took to spend time with their girlfriends. Both had just left broken marriages. And both had friends in high places in their respective intelligence agencies. Then again, there was a lot about the two men that was different. And this is where some people might say yeah, because one of them was a plant and one of them wasn't. Maybe, maybe not. And either way, the differences are really interesting. Batali was a teetotaler. Ames was a drunk. Vitaly wasn't motivated by money. He walked away from a million dollars and even gave away his earnings in Vegas. Rick Ames was eager to flaunt his cash with designer clothes, flashy cars and big homes. Rick gave up the names of 22 moles, knowing they'd be murdered. Yurchenko gave up the names of two moles and knew that at worst they would be imprisoned. Yurchenko didn't give up enough information to ruin the KGB's ability to spy on America. Ames managed to take the CIA's intelligence edge over the Soviets and reduce it to rubble. Consider that before Rick Ames betrayed America. The CIA's power, penetration and knowledge of the KGB was profound. Here's Sandy.
- [39:44]
Dan Payne
We had been so successful against the KGB and the GRU that it is not an exaggeration to state that we perhaps knew more about these two organizations than any single individual working in them. As one senior and former KGB officer would say about this early period, the CIA didn't have one station in Moscow. They had three. The traditional one in the American Embassy, second one GRU headquarters, and the third one at the KGB headquarters.
- [40:26]
Sandy Grimes
After Ames, in 1999, the US ambassador to Moscow claimed that Moscow taxi drivers were better informed about Putin's rise than the CIA. In the end, Aldrich Ames would go down in history as the biggest traitor the CIA had ever known. He's currently serving a life sentence in a prison in Indiana. I tried to reach out to him, but he's under communication management and the warden wouldn't allow his correspondence with me. The only people who can permit his correspondence with media are at the CIA and they don't really want to give the guy a mic at all. And who can blame them? Okay, but what did all of this mean about Vitaly Yurchenko?
- [41:16]
Stephen Engelberg
Dreaming of a modern oasis all modern has you covered with the best of modern furniture and decor. All in one place and all hand vetted by our design experts. Whether you're on the hunt for a new outdoor dining set or a versatile sofa, our premium quality designs bring form and function to any space. And they're available in every style of modern. For real. Every single style. Oh, and did we mention it's all delivered for free in days, not weeks. That's modern made simple. Shop now@allmodern.com how many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer?
- [41:51]
Sandy Grimes
Too many to say here. Multi vehicle discount Safe driver discount New vehicle discount Storage Discount.
- [41:57]
Julie Cohn
How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com autodiscounts restrictions apply.
- [42:05]
Sandy Grimes
When I first learned about the Rick Ames twist on Yurchenko's story, I thought it immediately proved that Yurchenko had been the real deal. Doomed from the start. Let's play back the T. Remember how the day Yurchenko arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, Rick, AKA Phil, showed up late and worse for wear.
- [42:24]
Jean Verdefey
Phil showed up and was somewhat disheveled. And we found out later on down the line that he had gotten drunk the night before and had a bit of a rough night.
- [42:39]
Sandy Grimes
If you believe that Yurchenko was a real defector, then, from the moment Rick Ames had been tapped to debrief him 24 hours earlier, there was a chance the new walk in might well know about the fact that Rick was a mole. Supposedly, it all happened so fast that Rick hadn't had time to alert his handlers of the problem. So in this version of events, Thursday night of August 1, before Yurchenko's arrival the next morning, Rick might have contemplated coming home and confessing to his wife. She didn't know at that point, uprooting his family and then attempting to flee to another country. But Rick wasn't big on spine, so instead, he decided to get drunk and convinced himself there might have been a chance, somehow, that Yurchenko hadn't known about him. Remember in episode four, when Phil had brought his bride to Yurchenko's second safe house? People had looked the other way because it made Yurchenko happy. But in retrospect, it was a much bigger red flag, especially as it wasn't Rick's first time shrugging away safety protocol and acting with impunity. Years earlier, before he even began spying for the Soviets, Rick had brought a different girlfriend to a safe house in New York that a woman named Janine Bruckner was running. Janine had actually reported it to senior leadership and suggested it was a fireable offense. But just like in the Yurchenko case, Rick had been let off with just a reprimand. Now that we know Ames was working for the Soviets, let's play back his first interaction at the safe house with Mike Rochford.
- [44:13]
Rick Ames
But as I'm going in, this guy Phil comes up to me, and he puts his finger in my. Up by my nose. So I'm going thinking to myself, what is this guy doing? And he starts yelling at me. He goes, hey, I'm Phil, and I'm with the CIA, and this is a CIA case, and you will never talk to him alone by yourself ever again. I'm thinking to myself, how many ways can I break his finger and stick it up his ass before I go back into the. Into the diner?
- [44:42]
Sandy Grimes
If Yurchenko was a real defector, it would make sense that it would have made Rick nervous to watch Yurchenko talking alone, quietly with the FBI on day one, before anyone knew the extent of what other intel he might be spilling. It also makes sense why Rick was so often hurrying Yurchenko along or finishing his sentences, having a heavy hand in guiding the debriefings rather than letting him ramble on. If Yurchenko was a clever plant, then why was Ames so anxious to let him talk freely and what about Valentina? If Yurchenko was a genuine defector, then from the moment he landed, he had been pouring his heart out to a Soviet agent. Meaning the KGB knew that Yurchenko had pinned all his hopes on Valentina. Having her reject him would cut him at the knees.
- [45:30]
David Major
As I understand what happened. He went there and went up to her apartment, knocked on the door. She came to the door and said, I loved you as a Soviet man, but I hate you as a defector. I never want to see you again. She's in the apartment alone, we think, but I'm not sure he's alone. I think the KGB knew that he was coming up there, and I think that was manipulative because that would have broken anybody's heart because they would have gone in and talked to her and said they would never not talk to her. They knew that he was coming and they would have been with her. So I'm convinced that they knew and that she was not alone and that that was all a psychological game that they played against him that worked very well. That's what I believe.
- [46:17]
Sandy Grimes
I don't know if you remember this part, but Valentyna had been in Moscow the week before Vitaly arrived to see her. The CIA thought the KGB had questioned her about whether or not she knew about Yurchenko's whereabouts, when in reality, it's possible they weren't questioning her at all. By that point, they were commanding. It's possible Valentina didn't let Vitaly into the apartment because likely her apartment was bugged and she was effectively at gunpoint. A month into Yurchenko's stay in America, Rick Ames left Colin Thompson as the sole debriefer while he went to study Italian for his new posting in Rome. Remember how an instructor at the language school came to tell Rick that Yurchenko was about to be on TV at a press conference redefecting. Remember how Rick had said, I felt a true sense of panic? It wasn't panic for Vitaly. It was for himself. He told the writer Pete early, that as soon as he was pulled out of class, quote, I felt a true sense of panic. I thought about simply running away because I truly believed that I had been caught. I thought another defector had come over and identified me as a mole. But those who believe Yurchenko was sent believe that the Rick Ames of it all finally answered the question of if he was sent, then why? After Ames gave his Soviet handler a bag full of six pounds of documents, the lists of every single Soviet asset working for the CIA. The KGB ran into a small bullet problem. It's a little complicated, but the short version is that Gorbachev, the head of the ussr, wanted those traitors arrested. And that put the KGB in a bind. Arresting them all at once, like they wound up doing, would light up a neon sign that there was a mole. And the arrests would essentially be a bloody trail to Ames door. The KGB had to protect him. Those who think he was a plant believe that this is where Yurchenko comes in. Serving up Edward Lee Howard on a platter. Pawn sacrifice. Howard would have been able to account for many of the same names that Ames had also given up. Then when Yurchenko redefected the kgb created sophisticated deception campaigns, including two double agents, who for a time successfully convinced the CIA that they had had a leak that wasn't a human. One of those agents claimed the KGB had managed to hack Langley's communication lines. The other implied that poor tradecraft by the American handlers had gotten their assets killed. So maybe people like Paul Redmond argued, maybe Yurchenko had just been the first of those double agents. Here's Joe Augustin, a decorated CIA officer who for a time served as the head of defector resettlement.
- [49:14]
Rick Ames
He had to have known about Aldrich Ames. Yurchenko came to the defected and came to the United States, I think in August or late July or August. Aldrich Ames started spying in April. Okay, so he knew that Ames was an internal. Or the KGB knew. And it made sense to me that they would put somebody like Yurchenko out there to distract the CIA from focusing too much on Ames. Ames had already given up Tolkachev. Right. Probably a major spite. He also gave up Gordievsky. So in KGB headquarters mind, this guy Ames is golden. This guy is golden. We have to protect him. So let's give up Pelton and let's give up Edward Lee Howard, who we know that CIA has already kicked him out. So to protect Ames seems to me to be was incredibly important for the kgb.
- [50:27]
Sandy Grimes
But could it have even been possible? We discussed in the last episode why it's harder to be a fake defector than a double agent. What about truth serum? What about the hours of debriefing? Here's Paul Redmond. Once you found out many years later that Aldrich Ames had been debriefing Vitaly Yushchenko from day one, what went through your mind at that point?
- [50:50]
Paul Redmond
Oh, shit.
- [50:52]
Sandy Grimes
Yeah. So what does that mean? It means that the. That the Soviets knew.
- [50:56]
Dan Payne
Yeah.
- [50:56]
Sandy Grimes
Can you step me through?
- [50:57]
Paul Redmond
No. This was the argument we Hashed this over for years. One of the arguments was that they could. They wouldn't have sent him Yurchenko because they wouldn't dare put an officer who knew a lot into our evil hands. Which makes some sense. Except, no, they had Ames greeting.
- [51:37]
Sandy Grimes
Paul's comments really stuck with me. Ames was the lead debriefer. The Soviets didn't need to worry about Yurchenko's debriefer drugging him because that was their guy. When I spoke with David Major from the FBI, my opinions swung back the other way. Though David founded the Counterintelligence center and has taught and lectured on the Year of the Spy extensively, it may have been likely that Rick would be tapped. He was, after all, the head of the Soviet branch of the SE Division's counterintelligence, and he was one of the few who spoke conversational Russian. It was never a complete guarantee. It was a decision made by his CIA bosses and the kgb. Hate taking risks like that. What if Ames wasn't tapped to debrief their guy? What if it had only been Colin?
- [52:27]
David Major
You could never have arranged that. You could never have controlled the fact that Ames is going to meet him at the airport. You have no control of that. The KGB didn't have any control of that. He just was selected by the CIA to go down to that meeting, not by the kgb.
- [52:43]
Sandy Grimes
It makes complete sense to me that the press at the time were more compelled to think like Paul because from the outside, without the nuance of the full story, it seemed even more suspicious. Here's Stephen Engelberg, who at the time was the young intelligence beat reporter for the New York Times.
- [53:00]
Paul Redmond
But I just find it very, very, very hard to believe that the quality of the people he gave away was such that they were people that had no value and that the person he didn't give away had immense value. And then, having put us off the trail, he goes back. If it wasn't a setup operation, it certainly achieved some magnificent goals. That's the minimum you can say about it. If he's not. If he was not a scent defector. It was magnificent.
- [53:37]
Sandy Grimes
I was going crazy with all the back and forth. And I found myself over and over again just wanting to know more about what ultimately happened to Vitaly Archenko. After the parade following his redefection, he had barely resurfaced in American news. Had he died? And if so, when and how. And if he was alive, I wanted to find him. More on that next time. The redefector is a production of Waveland. I'm Julie Cohn and I wrote and created the series. Jason Hoak is the executive producer and he also produced and edited the series. Shane Freeman is our sound engineer. Additional production assistance provided by Leo Culp Music by Robert Ellis. If you love the series, please make sure to leave a review and to tell a friend. Follow Waveland on Instagram at wavelandmedia for more information on this series and more. Thanks for listening.
- [54:52]
Stephen Engelberg
Dreaming of a Modern Oasis at allmodern we offer the best of modern furniture and decor all in one place, hand vetted for quality and delivered for free in days. Discover outdoor dining, sets, sofas and more in every style of modern from Scandi to mid century. That's modern made simple.
- [55:06]
Sandy Grimes
Shop now@allmodern.com USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like Superheroes and Sidekicks or Otto and Home Insurance. With USAA you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a'@usaa.com bundle restrictions apply.