66. The Great Betrayal: An American Traitor (Ep 1)

Summary

The Rest Is Classified - Episode 66: The Great Betrayal: An American Traitor (Ep 1)

Release Date: July 20, 2025
Hosts: David McCloskey & Gordon Corera
Description: This episode delves into the life of Edward Lee Howard, the only CIA officer to defect to Russia. Through detailed discussions, the hosts explore Howard's background, his rise within the CIA, and the events that led to his ultimate betrayal.

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Introduction

In this gripping first part of a multi-episode series, hosts David McCloskey and Gordon Corera unravel the complex story of Edward Lee Howard—a man whose personal struggles and questionable decisions paved the way for one of the most significant betrayals in intelligence history.

Edward Lee Howard: The Only CIA Defector

[02:23] Edward Lee Howard: "He is the only CIA officer ever to defect to Russia."

Gordon Corera introduces Edward Lee Howard, highlighting his unique position as the sole CIA officer to defect, setting the stage for an in-depth analysis of his motivations and actions.

Early Life and Family Background

[08:46] David McCloskey: "He's born in New Mexico on October 27th of 1951. And I think there are four, Gordon, four important things about the young Eddie Lee Howard."

Howard's childhood was marked by constant relocations due to his father's career as an Air Force sergeant. This rootlessness contributed to a turbulent family environment, with hints of abuse that may have influenced his later behavior.

[09:53] David McCloskey: "But those kind of daddy issues are common, aren't they, among people who decide to commit treason?"

While not all individuals with unstable childhoods become traitors, Howard's early experiences laid a foundation for his complex personality and future decisions.

Education and Activism

[10:23] David McCloskey: "He attends the University of Texas, graduating in the top 10% of his class in May of 1972."

During his time at the University of Texas, Howard became involved in the counterculture movement, expressing a healthy distrust of the military-industrial complex and participating in Vietnam War protests. This period of activism showcases his rebellious nature and growing disillusionment with established institutions.

Peace Corps Experience and Substance Abuse

[12:22] David McCloskey: "He joins the Peace Corps and is stationed in Colombia for two years."

Howard's stint with the Peace Corps in Colombia introduced him to a lifestyle rife with substance abuse. His time was characterized by heavy cocaine use and a lifestyle that starkly contrasts with the disciplined image of a CIA operative.

[14:05] Edward Lee Howard: "And Alfonso, who's a Colombian lawyer in his late 60s, a Marxist who basically supplies him with cocaine."

This environment not only exposed Howard to drugs but also fostered relationships that would later influence his actions and decisions.

Joining the CIA: Unconventional Recruitment

[12:46] David McCloskey: "In the summer of 1980, he applies to the CIA."

Despite his unconventional background—marked by activism and substance abuse—Howard's rather plain appearance and fresh perspective made him an interesting candidate for the CIA, especially during a period when the agency was seeking younger, less established operatives amid a talent crisis.

[17:04] Edward Lee Howard: "Now, let's start with Edward Lee Howard."

The recruitment process, however, seemed unorthodox, raising questions about the CIA's vetting procedures during that era.

Training and Assignment to Moscow

[29:07] David McCloskey: "Howard is picked initially for a desk job working on East Germany, but then he is slotted to go to Moscow."

Howard underwent intensive training at "The Farm," the CIA's clandestine training facility. Here, he received comprehensive instruction in tradecraft, including agent handling, surveillance detection, and paramilitary skills—all crucial for his upcoming role in Moscow.

[33:25] David McCloskey: "They want to send some newer, fresher people to Moscow. The idea here being the Russians are much less likely to know or to suspect that they are CIA officers."

His assignment to Moscow was part of a strategic move by the CIA to embed less seasoned officers in sensitive positions, banking on their clean backgrounds to avoid detection by the KGB.

Polygraphs and Dismissal from CIA

[20:33] David McCloskey: "He goes and he's basically sitting with agency psychologists."

Before his deployment, Howard underwent a stringent polygraph examination. Contrary to standard practice, Howard was subjected to four polygraph sessions within a short period due to inconsistencies and revelations about his drug and alcohol use.

[27:04] Edward Lee Howard: "He admits to stealing $40 from a woman's purse on an airplane."

These admissions during the polygraphs exposed Howard's questionable judgment and led to a complete loss of trust from the CIA. His candidness about petty thefts and cheating during training exercises signaled deeper personal issues, ultimately resulting in his immediate dismissal.

[43:00] David McCloskey: "Howard is fired. He's dismissed immediately."

The abrupt termination not only ended his CIA career but also ignited a growing resentment towards the agency—a sentiment that would later fuel his defection to Russia.

Conclusion and Teaser for Next Episode

The episode concludes with Howard's termination from the CIA, highlighting the fragility of trust within intelligence agencies and setting the stage for his subsequent actions.

[47:01] David McCloskey: "We'll see how that hatred of the CIA, which has come from this experience, compels him to take the fateful step, really of contacting who else? The Russians."

Listeners are left anticipating the next installment, where the transformation from disgruntled ex-officer to traitor will be explored in detail.

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Notable Quotes

• [02:23] Edward Lee Howard: "He is the only CIA officer ever to defect to Russia."
• [09:53] David McCloskey: "But those kind of daddy issues are common, aren't they, among people who decide to commit treason?"
• [17:04] Edward Lee Howard: "Now, let's start with Edward Lee Howard."
• [27:04] Edward Lee Howard: "He admits to stealing $40 from a woman's purse on an airplane."
• [43:00] David McCloskey: "Howard is fired. He's dismissed immediately."
• [47:01] David McCloskey: "We'll see how that hatred of the CIA, which has come from this experience, compels him to take the fateful step, really of contacting who else? The Russians."

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a compelling look into the life of Edward Lee Howard, painting a portrait of a man whose personal demons and professional setbacks culminated in a betrayal that shook the intelligence community. By examining his early life, education, and tumultuous career, David McCloskey and Gordon Corera provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of what drives an individual to commit treason.

Stay tuned for the next episode, where the full extent of Howard's defection and its ramifications will be unveiled.

Transcript

[David McCloskey]

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[Edward Lee Howard]

In the military command voice he told me, sit down, face front, don't look at me, don't look to the side. He sounded and acted like a drill instructor and he tried to intimidate me. When he asked me if I'd taken drugs that day, I answered yes and told him about the prescribed tranquilizer. He hit the roof because he knew, although I didn't at the time, that taking a mild tranquiliser can usually enable a person who lies to beat the polygraph. The Hammer questioned me again and again about drug use and drinking, and on Friday he Gave me yet another polygraph test, my fourth. Apparently he was pleased with this last one, and he thanked me for coming, smiled and shook my hand as I left. Well, welcome to the Rest Is Classified. I'm the non drug taking, non tranquilizer taking. Gordon Carrera.

[David McCloskey]

A likely story. Gordon, I'm David McCloskey.

[Edward Lee Howard]

That was. I was reading, rather than telling you about my day, I was reading from.

[David McCloskey]

The journal, your journal entry from this morning.

[Edward Lee Howard]

A former CIA officer, Edward Lee Howard, that was his memoir, where he's talking about being given a polygraph test by someone he calls the Hammer. And this time on the Rest Is Classified. We're telling his story and it is a really interesting one because he is the only CIA officer ever to defect to Russia. And what makes it, I think, such an interesting story, David, is it's how one person, for quite kind of mundane, ordinary reasons, can end up becoming a traitor and doing some really significant damage. So he's a really interesting, but not necessarily a very famous figure, isn't he?

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, I think he's certainly in the B list, I would say, of. Of espionage characters. And yet I would say that doesn't make him any less interesting. His story itself is fascinating and it is a story that is at once extremely human. Right. So we're going to get a bit of a case study here in why people spy. There are a lot of different reasons why people make the decisions that they do in espionage. And Edward Lee Howard is going to make, as you said, these decisions for very, very personal, kind of mundane reasons. Right. But it's a very human story about him, his choices, his family, his life, his time at the CIA. And it's also a story that is really about, I guess, kind of the apogee of Cold War espionage and tradecraft. Right. This is the mid-80s. This is kind of the height of. Of the spy war between the CIA and the kgb. And in the middle of this is going to be this fairly unassuming guy named Edward Lee Howard. And I guess I was also thinking, Gordon, I don't know why he needs the middle name, but in everything, every book about him, we always give him the middle name. He's not Ed Howard, he's Edward Lee Howard. Sort of like a serial killer, I guess. Gets three names, right? Edward Lee Howard gets three as well.

[Edward Lee Howard]

It's really interesting as well, because it's also about how to kind of screw up sacking someone and human resources, isn't it? It's about something which actually lots of workplaces could probably sympathize with which is how do you deal with someone who, who's a bit of a screw up and doesn't fit in?

[David McCloskey]

This is, this is how not to do that. HR professionals listening should take caution.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah, there have been a lot of firings at the CIA recently and people have talked about Edward Lee Howard actually as a kind of reference point and as a kind of warning indicator of what can happen if you get that wrong. And I think that's also one of the interesting things about this, that even though it's a historic story about the kind of hype the Cold War, it has got some interesting kind of parallels to today, hasn't it?

[David McCloskey]

It's one of those great spy stories. I think that to your point, it takes place in the mid-80s. Right. But it really does have resonance today and I think also shows the evergreen nature of this truth in the business, which is that if you turn a human in another country spy service to your ends, you can completely turn that service inside out. And what's really fascinating about and really tragic about the Howard story is that, I mean this is, I guess you'd say, Gordon, it's kind of the other side of the Tolkachev story that we told. I think it was episode 14 when we did a four part series called Crossing the Iron Curtain. If listeners want to go back and hear that story. Adolf Tolkachev was the CIA's billion dollar spy in Moscow. His intelligence had been valued at a billion dollars and he's betrayed by Edward Lee Howard. Edward Lee Howard's treason completely upends CIA operations in Russia. Moscow station in the mid-80s. We have one guy who for revenge totally turns the CIA's Russia operations inside out and ends up getting an asset killed in the process.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Shall we get to the story? It is a story of drink and drugs, isn't it? And I notice here you say it's a perfect drinking game that this listeners can.

[David McCloskey]

I love how Gordon refuses to take responsibility for that in the script and I guess writes yourself because I did, I did put that in. Yes.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Well, you might want to have a drinking game during this. But a perfect drinking game, listeners could have a drink every time a Lee Howard does to see if you can keep up.

[David McCloskey]

I will tell listeners that they probably won't be able to. So yes, let's start with Edward Lee Howard. Now, like all good rest is classified podcast series. Gordon always fights me over how much I can talk about on the background side of things. Right. And Gordon will remember from the Biden series, Gordon didn't want to hear about Osama's wives. He didn't want to hear about the polygamy. Right. And so I have, very helpfully. Gordon boiled it down to basically a bullet point list of important things to know about Edward Lee Howard's childhood and early life. So he's born in New Mexico on October 27th of 1951. And I think there are four, Gordon, four important things about the young Eddie Lee Howard. So his father is sergeant in the Air Force. So Howard is an Air Force brat. And it means that he's moving around constantly as a kid. Constantly. The family's probably done, like, seven moves by the time Howard is 18 years old. So number one, his life, his kind of social life, his family life is very rootless as a kid. Howard will say that as a kid, he just kind of wants to be outdoors, be a cowboy on a ranch. He's an altar boy at the churches on the various bases they go to. He's a Little Leaguer. He's a Boy Scout. Right. Do you have Boy Scouts, Gordon?

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah, Boy. Cub Scouts.

[David McCloskey]

Cub Scouts, but not Boy Scouts.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah, well, yeah, it's the same thing.

[David McCloskey]

It's the same thing.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Cubs and Scouts.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, Cubs and Scouts. Okay.

[Edward Lee Howard]

I was a Cub.

[David McCloskey]

You were a Cub. Okay. Never. Never made it to boy, but just. Yeah, so that's one, the family is rootless. Two is it seems that there is an abusive undercurrent in the home. And there's this really nasty story about how when Edward Lee Howard is young, his father holds him up by the legs until he pees his pants. I think in his memoir, he's really circumspect. Edward Lee Howard is really circumspect about this, but it seems that there's some kind of undercurrent there. And I'll point out that of course, not everybody who's rootless and not everyone who deals with some form of abuse ends up becoming a traitor.

[Edward Lee Howard]

A traitor.

[David McCloskey]

But those kind of daddy issues are common, aren't they, among people who decide to commit treason?

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah. Kim Philby, the famous British traitor, certainly had a very complicated relationship with his father. I'm not sure I'd describe it as abusive. But you. You do wonder if there is a slight element of the desire to betray things or to turn against things comes from that experience. Who knows? But I think it does seem to be one of the factors in Edward Lee Howard's early life.

[David McCloskey]

Definitely Edward Lee Howard will end up attending the University Texas. And this is the third point, Gordon, which is by the time he's at UT in the sort of the late 60s, early 70s. He's kind of coming of age, and he says that he has turned against the military establishment in the U.S. it's.

[Edward Lee Howard]

The area of Vietnam protests, isn't it? Counterculture, hippie culture. And he seems to be part of that, doesn't he? He seems to be taking that leftward turn. I think he boycotts classes after students are shot by the National Guard at Kent State. He seems to be part of that counterculture protest movement motivated by Vietnam and things like that.

[David McCloskey]

Yes, exactly. And none of it particularly abnormal for the time. I mean, maybe even actually the norm right. In. In the 60s and 70s. But he's. He's part of that, which is interesting when you think about where he'll end up working later on. So that's the third point, is he becomes a bit of a, you know, a member of this counterculture. So In May of 72, he graduates from the University of Texas. He graduates in the top 10% of his class. So he's a pretty smart guy. You know, he has what he calls a healthy distrust for the military industrial complex. Starts to think, yeah, the Cold War is kind of pointless. He joins the Peace Corps. Is there an analog for that, Gordon, in the uk?

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah, maybe. To explain what it is, it's a kind of volunteer overseas working on international development. Do Gooders.

[David McCloskey]

Do Gooders.

[Edward Lee Howard]

There's a Kennedy thing.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, it's a Kennedy program where basically, I mean, I guess right out of college, kids would go to country in Africa, Asia, and essentially be doing some kind of service. And so it's kind of the opposite of the Central Intelligence Agency. And in fact, I think it's still the case today. The desire to keep that program separate from the intelligence community means that the CIA actually can't recruit out of the Peace Corps.

[Edward Lee Howard]

But for Edward Lee Howard, his kind of peacenik gap year, he's gonna go to Colombia in Latin America.

[David McCloskey]

He loves Colombia.

[Edward Lee Howard]

It doesn't sound like he does a lot of development work there other than of the slightly more. I don't know.

[David McCloskey]

He says he goes dancing every night in Colombia. Now, this comes from his autobiography, which I'd have to say I don't recommend listeners read, you know.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Agreed.

[David McCloskey]

Gordon and I will be giving you some of the Cliff notes on Edward Lee Howard's autobiography, which is called Safe House. He says that he has a reputation in Columbia as a, quote, fast operator with the women. I find it hard to believe, looking at pictures of the guy, he kind of looks like an accountant to me, even from.

[Edward Lee Howard]

That's a bit harsh on accountants. Accountants can be. That's dynamic.

[David McCloskey]

Why did I say that? Yeah, that was mean. That was mean. I guess my point is he does not look like a fast operator. He does not look like any Hollywood conception you would have of a spy or intelligence officer. He, he looks like he's middle management somewhere.

[Edward Lee Howard]

And this is where the drugs come in, though.

[David McCloskey]

And prepare yourself if you're playing along with the Edward Lee Howard journey into substance abuse on the podcast. Because this is the fourth point, and it, it is in Columbia that he gets a taste for drugs, for cocaine. And he says in his autobiography, you know, it was easy to get, it's plentiful, it's everywhere. He's got this, this great section where he's describing some of these sort of wild, wild nights. And Edward Lee Howard writes that on Friday and Saturday nights, we'd sometimes buy a gram or two of cocaine and share it around. I lived in a house on a hill with two housemates. One of them was named Freaky Freddy. Apparently this is how he's referred to in the book.

[Edward Lee Howard]

And he's another Peace Corps volunteer. We should say Freaky Freddy.

[David McCloskey]

Freaky Freddy. If Freaky Freddy is listening to this podcast, we would love to interview you about Edward Lee Howard. I don't think Freaky Freddy is around anymore, Gordon.

[Edward Lee Howard]

I guess, I guess it's taken its toll on him. A bearded, long haired young man from Brooklyn who'd worked on tugboats.

[David McCloskey]

Tugboats.

[Edward Lee Howard]

And he was a health food nut.

[David McCloskey]

That's right. That's right. I can picture him shopping at Whole Foods right now.

[Edward Lee Howard]

And he spent most of his two year tour with the Peace Corps in Columbia in his bedroom and in the kitchen. He rarely went to work. Maybe once every two weeks. And that's ready. And then there's also Alfonso, who's a Colombian lawyer in his late 60s, a Marxist who basically supplies him with cocaine. So these are, these are his friends out there, Freaky Freddy and Alfonso.

[David McCloskey]

Edward Lee Howard kind of. He's very careful about how he describes his drug use in his book because he says, you know, look, I never categorize it as abuse of drugs. Right. He claims it never affected his behavior at work. I find, I don't know, the frequent use of cocaine to be, you know, sort of incongruent with the idea that you're a model employee. But there you go. And a couple things happen, Gordon, in Colombia that are important. It is that he gets married to a woman named Mary, who's another Peace Corps volunteer in 1976. And he's going to go on to get a job with usaid, which is.

[Edward Lee Howard]

The International Development Department. Which no longer exists.

[David McCloskey]

Which no longer exists.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Just been abolished.

[David McCloskey]

Gutted. That's right. But he gets a job with USAID shortly after getting married in 1976, and then he and Mary go to Peru until 1979. Now it does seem that there's more drug use in Peru. Again, we're bringing this up not because it's maybe particularly abnormal of the times. Right. But it's abnormal for someone who's going to end up working for the Central Intelligence Agency. And I think Peru is interesting because it's probably the case in Peru that he even gets the idea to apply to CIA. Right. Because he's working with usaid, he's working at the embassy, and he probably has some contact with the station in. In Lima. It's still a bit murky to me of why he chooses to do this. Because in the summer of 1980, he applies to the CIA.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

You know, you'd think with the whole, you know, I'm against the military establishment, I'm a recreational drug user, you'd kind of. What are you doing? I think he's just really restless, don't you think, Gordon? I mean, there's something about this guy that's just not settled ever.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's looking for travel, he's looking for adventure. I mean, there's two odd questions. One, why is he applying for the CIA given his background? And secondly, why does the CIA take him, given his background? And both are kind of slightly odd to me, I think. But he's working at, I think, a Chicago consulting firm after he's been in Peru.

[David McCloskey]

So.

[Edward Lee Howard]

So I just wonder if he's back in Chicago by that summer and he's just bored.

[David McCloskey]

He applies. I think the restless spirit is probably most of the answer there. And he gets a letter on plain paper with a phone number asking him to call.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Now, does that sound familiar?

[David McCloskey]

It's not how it works. No, it's not. It's absolutely not how it works anymore. This sounds like it sounds much more interesting if it's actually true. And a lot of Howard's autobiography, where some of this stuff comes from, is sort of categorized, I think, as big, if true. Right. Because he's not a particularly reliable source. But I think it is worth. I mean, to your point, Gordon, of why would the CIA be interested in this guy, it's probably worth setting up the CIA of the kind of post Vietnam era when Edward Lee Howard is joining. Because the CIA is founded in 47. Right. And I think it'd be safe to say that the CIA of the kind of late 40s, 50s, 60s is dominated by these kind of old school establishment Easterners. You know, you call them like Yale Skull and Bones types, which I'm not sure if that does that resonate in the uk.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Skull and Bones is like an elite society within Yale. Very old school, isn't it? For British listeners? I think it's the equivalent of the Bullingdon Club. You heard of the Bullingdon Club?

[David McCloskey]

I've not heard of the Bullingdon Club.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Well, I was not a member of the Bullingdon Club. It's fair to say I was not sufficiently establishment. But two of our recent prime ministers, David Cameron and Boris Johnson were and I think it's fair to say involves a lot of. A lot of drinking and strange rituals.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, that's Skull and Bones. There you go. That is what very wealthy establishment people do on both sides of the Atlantic is they join these strange clubs and they sit in very nicely appointed rooms and drink too much and do weird things. So we have the same thing going on in the Central Intelligence Agency of the early Cold War, but Vietnam and what we call kind of the Church pike committees. Right. These congressional committees that have been stood up in the mid-70s to investigate and bring to light a whole raft of kind of CIA abuses and behaviors. I mean, we covered one of them on this pod in our episodes on MK Ultra. The search for this mind control power right, inside the CIA. So this stuff has come to light and it has made the CIA much less popular. So the CIA, I think by the time you get to the 70s, early 80s, is dealing with a talent problem because those old school Easterner Skull and Bones types are kind of aging out. You're having to fill your ranks with people coming out of college, bright young people who want to see the world, know languages, are able to be analysts and case officers. And Howard, in the midst of this sort of talent problem the Agency is having, is a really interesting candidate.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah, I guess you can kind of see it that if you're trying to break the mold of the past and you've got Howard, who has lived abroad because he's lived abroad in Colombia and Peru, he's got some languages, foreign experience, he's been in the private sector, you kind of can see that maybe there's a reason, reason for that. But still the next stage of the process really doesn't make sense to me because he's got to go through this vetting process, hasn't he, in which your background is going to be checked, you're going to be screened, you're going to have your medical records checked. And we've already established that he's not exactly clean when it comes to this.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah. No. So he's going to have to go through a polygraph, a background investigation, medical investigation, and a psych exam, in addition to all of the other normal things you do when you interview. Like, you go and sit and have a conversation with recruiters and things like that.

[Edward Lee Howard]

And we should explain the polygraph, you know, often known as the lie detector. We read from that at the opening. With the hammer.

[David McCloskey]

The hammer.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Polygraphing him like he was still around.

[David McCloskey]

When I went through Gordon, I think we still had the hammer.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Well, I was going to ask, did you get polygraphed on entry?

[David McCloskey]

Sure. Yeah. So.

[Edward Lee Howard]

So go on, tell us about it. I've always wondered what it's like to be polygraphed.

[David McCloskey]

It is interesting, isn't it? Because sis, they don't polygraph.

[Edward Lee Howard]

No, MI6 don't really. They don't rely on it. I think they've done it occasionally, but they don't rely on it. I think that's the difference. It's not part of normal procedure that you would rely on in the same way as the Americans, American faith in technology, including the polygraph. But surely you can just beat it. In my imagination, you can beat it by clenching your buttocks or something once you do the test, or just thinking about very calm thoughts when you're being asked the control question. Because then you get asked control questions where you're telling the truth, and then they'll ask you something more sensitive. And it's trying to see if there's a change in your, I don't know, your body's behavior to do with it. Surely you could just. You can game it, can't you? Isn't that what you did to get through?

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, exactly. How else would I have gotten.

[Edward Lee Howard]

How else would you have got through?

[David McCloskey]

I think it's best to see it as a tool for intimidation, not for truth discovery or. Or said differently or more maybe a bit more precisely. It's a way to kind of shake things loose and see what comes out. I mean, the way it worked for me is I took my first polygraph when I was. I think I was 19, Gordon, because I was an intern. They bring you to the D.C. area, typically. I mean, as an analyst, you'd come in and, you know, you do interviews at Langley or Whatever. And then you go into a room and it's very, you know, it's, it's very sterile. You do have the stupid two way mirror, which is hilarious, right? I mean, that's there. There's like a desk which clearly no one actually sits at regularly, but still has weird stuff on it. Like, I remember there was like a bowl of candy that looked kind of dusty and there was a map of Ohio up on the wall, you know, county level map. And I remember asking the polygrapher at one point, because my dad's whole side of the family comes from Ohio and my wife's family is from Ohio. You know, if he's from Ohio and he kind of looks me like he didn't even know that the map was there. Like, what kind of question is this? Right? He had no clue. So you're in this really sterile environment and they set you down and they, they kind of just start with a conversation which begins kind of friendly. Like, this was my experience. It can all be, I think, a little bit different. And I would also say that the kind of people who are wanting to do polygraphy work, I would actually love if anyone would reach out to us because I cannot imagine wanting to do this kind of work. But you're basically sitting there in this kind of pretty small room, eye level with each other, and they'll start to just kind of ask basic questions. They'll do that little control thing you mentioned where they'll hook you up and you've got blood pressure cuff, you've got like a band around your chest to measure your rate of breathing. And then you've got a few things they'll slip over your fingers to measure basically your galvanic response, right? So sweating and things like that that are coming off of your fingertips. And essentially the idea is you're monitoring stress levels, right? And the idea would be that if I'm, if I'm lying, those stress levels are higher or sort of abnormal relative to whatever baseline they set early in the interview. And the actual polygraph itself is only like six or eight questions. It's all yes or no. But a lot of the intimidation is the conversation with the polygrapher about whether you're going to say yes or no. So in my case there's, I believe, a question about crime, right? Because the questions are pretty standard, right? I mean, it's like, are you working for a foreign intelligence service? Right? Things like that. The thing about crime, he's like, well, okay, if I ask you this question, what are you thinking about? And I start you know, I'm listing off all the kind of pranks he pulled in college and things that had, like, led to what I would describe as sort of light crime, but weren't actually serious.

[Edward Lee Howard]

You know, be careful. We are on a podcast, by the way, so if you confess to something, we'll have.

[David McCloskey]

Maybe Callum can bleep that out. Can he? Yeah, yeah, bleep out my. Into my youthful indiscretions. You know, and they're kind of saying, like the polygrapher saying, well, no, no, no, you know, that doesn't count. Or, I don't care about that because there is obviously a bar. If I'm like, hey, you know, I burned down some houses when I was 16, like, that would be up there. But if it's like, oh, you know, you broke some windows on accident and you threw a shopping cart off of a roof and you raised a pirate flag up over the college campus, like, that kind of stuff is not going to. They don't care right about.

[Edward Lee Howard]

But you did all of those things. Just to confirm.

[David McCloskey]

Well, now I feel like I shouldn't respond. Yeah, I did all. I did all those things. Yeah. Yeah.

[Edward Lee Howard]

I want to hear more about that.

[David McCloskey]

That's like a later episode, you know, youthful fun. Gordon, you know, they don't care about that, but then they hook you up to the machine, and he's like, okay, great, you can answer no. When I ask you this question, hook you up to the machine, I answer no. And then he says, you're lying, you're hiding something. And then you start to think, well, did I forget something? Am I? So they push that way, and it goes on like that for hours. So it's not a pleasant. It's not a pleasant experience. And to bring it back to Eddie Lee Howard, he's going to go through this and obviously they're going to ask about the drugs. Now, when I was going through it, there's sort of a five year statute of limitations on. So if you had. If you had smoked pot when you were 21, and then you're applying at 28 or 29, you're fine. But in the 70s and 80s, Gordon, the agency's having to deal with the fact that basically everybody. Everybody who's applying has had some experience with drugs that are technically federally illegal. So Howard basically says, look, you know, I use drugs, but I don't have any problem. It's all useful indiscretion, much like my property crime, and it's not a big deal.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

And it seems to have worked because Edward Lee Howard is going to get an offer to join the Central Intelligence Agency.

[Edward Lee Howard]

So there with this kind of druggie hippie lefty now inside Langley itself. Let's take a break and then when we come back, we'll look and see how it all comes crashing down for Edward Lee Howard and ultimately for the CIA as well.

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[Edward Lee Howard]

Okay, welcome back. We are looking at the story of Edward Lee Howard, this drug fueled lefty who has joined. Well, maybe he wasn't a lefty, but a drug.

[David McCloskey]

No, I like it. Let's, let's stick with that.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Let's keep with that. Bizarrely, by January 1981, he has been been taken on as an officer for the CIA.

[David McCloskey]

They'll take anybody slim pickens for recruiting now. So Howard. Howard joins in early 81. And Mary, his wife, is also hired later that year. She's a secretary initially, but then she becomes a support assistant for some operational work. So they can actually like work together as a team, which is quite common, isn't it?

[Edward Lee Howard]

Or not common, but it happens occasionally because you can deploy them to places and they can work together.

[David McCloskey]

Real advantages to it. Yeah, for sure. So he's. Howard is picked initially for a desk job working on East Germany, but then in another, what seems, I guess, in retrospect to be a wild lapse in judgment on the part of the CIA's human resources mavens, he is slotted to.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Go to Moscow, which is the pinnacle of spyworld. That's the biggest deal you can get, isn't it?

[David McCloskey]

That is the big leagues in the 80s. And we'll see in a moment why it actually makes some sense that he is chosen for the Moscow slot. But he also, in his first year, will go to the Farm to complete what's now known as ftc, the field tradecraft course.

[Edward Lee Howard]

And we should explain the Farm. For those who don't know, the Farm is spy school. It's. It's where the CIA officers get trained. It's a remote location somewhere in Virginia, isn't it? Which I guess you, you've been there, you must have done.

[David McCloskey]

I can't say.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Are you allowed to talk about it?

[David McCloskey]

No, they don't let the analysts in. Bang. We're just banging on the gates, you know, with our pots and pans. It's a military base in the Virginia Tidewater. I think the best way to think about it is that it's basically a summer camp. That's the mental model I would have. It's a big facility, right. So yeah, there's homes on the base and there's a lot of buildings. Right. No one locks cars, no one locks their houses. There are bikes everywhere. There's classrooms, there's a bar which is called the srb. I think it stands for like the Student Recreation Building. Instructors actually live on homes on the river. They'll own boats. There's lots of deer everywhere. In the 80s, there would have been a remarkable amount of sex and drinking in this environment. And one of my good friends who went through the Farm not so long after Edward Lee Howard said the farm smells like freshman year. Gordon. And Howard, in this environment, which probably would have played to a lot of his appetites, would have done courses in agent handling and recruitment, surveillance detection routes. How do you actually communicate clandestinely or covertly with assets? He said that breaking and entering was one of his favorite courses. I think he does have, I think, a criminal undercurrent to him throughout much of his, much of his life, disguises. How do you handle an interrogation? They were done paramilitary stuff back then, so jumping from planes, basic hand to hand combat, weapons trading, wilderness survival. Seems like Howard maybe didn't take some of that stuff. So. Point being is that even though this guy is kind of a dope, I think Gordon, it's fair to say he's going through a training course that is going to give him a very unique set of, of skills which will all be very important later in the story to come. So he graduates from ftc, he is slotted from Moscow and he's Going to take over what was then called a clean slot, which will be an obscure job in the embassy that has never before been used as cover by a CIA officer. And we'll again harken back to that Crossing the Iron Curtain series we did on Adolf Tolkachev, where we go into a lot of the detail on the tradecraft and kind of the logic for these positions because basically the idea here is the CIA wants someone like Howard who doesn't have three or four agency tours under their belt. They want to send those kind of newer, fresher people to Moscow. The idea here being the Russians are much less likely to know or to suspect that they are CIA officers.

[Edward Lee Howard]

You've got a much better chance of being able to do something like meeting an agent or clearing a drop because you're not known in any way to them. And it is one of the fascinating things, isn't it, that actually young new recruits actually get given some of the most sensitive missions in MI6 or CIA because, because they are the ones least likely to be known to the other side. So often someone in their 20s can be doing something which you'd expect to be given to someone who's got loads of experience. But actually for reasons of COVID it's more useful to use these kind of clean skinned officers.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, exactly. And in that series on Tolkachev we talk about how the officers, the CIA officers handling Tolkachev, initially they had started with, you know, very seasoned kind of Russia focused officers. And over time I think as the, the KGB is kind of figuring this out and the tradecraft is getting tighter and tighter on both sides. The CIA is transitioning in this period to these kind of more rookie untested officers with very clean cover. Now he and Mary will train as a team. So when you go to Moscow or if you're slotted for Moscow, you're going to get an additional kind of battery of training courses that'll go beyond that, just standard ftc, the field tradecraft course. Right. So at the time I think I have the acronym right, but it was something called the Denied Areas Operations course. Right. So basically additional tradecraft training given to officers who are going to places inside kind of the Soviet empire.

[Edward Lee Howard]

That phrase denied area indicates somewhere where, where you can't operate in a normal way, you know, because the, the enemies or your adversaries, counter surveillance and surveillance capabilities will be so good that you, you have to have kind of special training. And that's what he's, he's going to get.

[David McCloskey]

That's right. So he and Mary will train as a team in that denied areas operations course. They'll be running surveillance detection and counter surveillance drills against the FBI in Northern Virginia. And also important little marker here for what's to come. He's going to be training against some of the best trained FBI surveillance and counter surveillance teams, period. Right. So he actually is going to get really, really good at detecting and potentially evading surveillance. He's going to receive the best possible training the US Government can provide in those skills before he goes to Moscow.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Which might come in useful later. Which.

[David McCloskey]

Which might be useful later on in this story. We don't know. We're just speculating, Just speculating. Now before he goes to Moscow, they run another round of evaluation to see if he can handle the psychological pressure. Right. Because Moscow in this time period, it's like you're basically going to expect that the KGB will have your apartment wired up for sound, that you will have a surveillance team, a KGB surveillance team that is basically dedicated to you and is following you constantly. There's no privacy. There's tons of pressure, and obviously a lot of people might not do well in that kind of environment.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

So he goes and he's basically sitting with agency psychologists. Right. And again, the drinking and the drug use from his past or maybe from his present come up. So Howard, it seems, in this period has actually visited one of the agency's alcohol counselors to talk about his behaviors. And I think it is worth a little bit, Gordon, stepping back just to talk about the intersection of booze and the Central Intelligence Agency, because in this period, I think the agency is a pretty boozy place.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah. This has been a running theme through our podcast from the very earliest episodes, I think, is the extent to which.

[David McCloskey]

Well, right, yeah. Because in the Iran 53 ones.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah, it was pretty boozy.

[David McCloskey]

Kermit Roosevelt was Kermit wasted while he was.

[Edward Lee Howard]

And things have not changed by the early 80s. It sounds, by Edward Lee Howard's day.

[David McCloskey]

No, it's great because the alcohol counselor basically says, look, you don't have much of an issue and, you know, you don't. You don't have a problem. And I think, you know, this, it is worth maybe some debate, like, does, does he actually have a problem or is it just sort of embedded in his life? And is there a distinction between those things? But the alcohol counselor. And there's this great quote where he tells Howard, look, you don't have a problem. I've got people who sit in the parking lot at headquarters drinking. I've got one lady who Filled her windshield wiper dispenser with vodka and rigged the line so the hose comes in the car. When she's caught in traffic, she can turn on the wipers and squirt herself. Right. I mean, so, I mean, this is, so this is the, this is the bar. He's like, you don't have a problem because you haven't rigged up your car so you can drink through your windshield wipers when you're in traffic. That's right. And it, you know, it. Booze is everywhere. Right. There's booze on the desks. There's a division chief at the time who keeps a bottle of cognac in a safe. I mean, that's not uncommon at all. It's literally everywhere. And of course it's wonderful because it's mixed with the agency, of course, you know, keeping really important secrets. So these two things are sort of, they're, they're blended together in this time period. Now, Howard has to be prepared to handle agents in Moscow. That means he's getting read in, probably not on names, but he's certainly getting a lot of information on these cases. He's getting information on technical operations in Moscow which need to be serviced regularly. Yep. Bugging, wiretapping. There's a big case that he reads up on the cryptonym GT sphere, which is Tolkachev. Again, I don't think Howard knows Tolkachev's name, but he knows a lot about him. Right. Probably knows like his address, probably knows the sort of person he is, what kind of job he has. Right. So enough where be very damaging if Howard were to give that to the Russians and the couple, he and Mary. And he goes through all of this. They get scheduled to go to Moscow in June of 83. Now, they've just had a son who's been born in the spring of 83. I know, Gordon, you don't like me talking about family life and personal life, but I just worked that in there and all is looking good for the Howard family. But, but then, but then he's told that he needs to take a pre departure polygraph. The situation for this is he gets sat in front of the hammer. You read this to start this episode. Now, Howard, it seems, isn't expecting this and isn't prepared for it. I do, I do wonder where it comes from because it seems like there must have been some sense that Howard was, he was showing poor judgment, there's.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Something wrong because he makes it sound like it comes out the blue, doesn't it? And that there's no reason for it. But actually, I mean, what's amazing is there's the hammer, but it's full. Four sessions he gets in about a month or so.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah. Which is a lot. That's not normal. That means you're failing. You're failing them over and over again. In one of these, Gordon, he admits to stealing $40 from a woman's purse on an airplane. So he's coming clean about weird behavior like that.

[Edward Lee Howard]

But it's a weird story as well, because it's. The reason was he says her baby. The woman's baby on the airplane was noisy and stopped him sleeping. So when she goes to the bathroom, he gets back at her by stealing $40 from her purse. Now that, I mean, is. That is weird. I mean, we've all got annoyed at babies on airplanes, but we don't kind of then go and steal from the person.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, you've never stolen from someone on an airplane who's bothered you, Gordon?

[Edward Lee Howard]

No, I have not.

[David McCloskey]

Okay.

[Edward Lee Howard]

This is clearly a professional episode for.

[David McCloskey]

David McCloskey here, but that is a very weird behavior. It's a very weird behavior. And I think it does hint at something that the. The CIA, you know, leadership, who sort of put him back under the. Under the light here for these polygraphs must have wondered about, because obviously there's some petty thievery in the story, but it shows a startling, startling lack of judgment on his part, doesn't it?

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

And a kind of unconstrained criminality that the agency frowns upon. He also admits to cheating during a training exercise, also frowned upon. So one of Edward Lee Howard's tasks in Moscow is going to be to service a tap that the CIA maintains on senior Soviet leadership communications. Very sensitive program and very technically complicated. And one of the kind of human elements of it, though, is, is that somebody, a Moscow station officer, has to go into a manhole wearing a heavy backpack that has essentially the tapes that they can change out on this tap. And in order to do that, you've got to be able to go down in. Into a manhole with the required weight, service it, and come back out. And Howard apparently, during the test run, had filled his backpack with cardboard instead of the weight. So you get, again, you get this indication of, like, he's just kind of cheating. It's definitely wrong. It's not, like, crazy wrong. He's kind of just a cheater.

[Edward Lee Howard]

I love this fact. CIA officials have also claimed that Howard admitted to breaking into vending machines at CIA headquarters. I mean, look, again, you've Got to be pretty kind of weird to think I'm going to steal from a vending machine.

[David McCloskey]

Broke into the hot dog. Vending machine.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Yeah. I mean, is it really worth it for the sake of a free hot dog to risk your career? I mean, going back to your point, the polygraph is a kind of intimidation device. He's clearly, it seems like suddenly admitting all kinds of stuff.

[David McCloskey]

Loose. Yeah, it's just.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Oh, you know, in these four polygraphs, all of it suddenly coming out because he's realizing he's under that kind of pressure from it, from the continuous polygraphing. So, you know, there's all the drugs and alcohols as well. So it's clearly something is flagging up as a problem at this point.

[David McCloskey]

Well, and the polygraphs pick up the drug and alcohol use, and the. The polygrapher seems to think that Howard is probably right, that Howard's been using drugs while employed by the CIA, which is a major no. No. And that would mean that he's no longer suitable for Moscow or, frankly, to even continue to work at the CIA. So Howard says that he is called in. He's fired. He's dismissed immediately. Now, I find this part of his memory bizarre, but he says he had to turn in the keys to his car and he's escorted to the exit, and then he had to take the bus home. So his, like, car is confiscated. That's a weird. It's a weird story.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Company car.

[David McCloskey]

There's no. Yeah, there's no company. He doesn't get a car. Driving a company car in the early 80s. But it would make sense that he's dismissed immediately and that his badge is taken, and they basically just, you know, you get your box of stuff and leave the building, and security takes you out. Right. So you're not taking anything else with you. It is extremely uncommon to fire people from the Central Intelligence Agency. We could debate whether Howard should have just been, you know, pulled from Moscow and put on a desk job somewhere versus actually letting him go. But it does show the gravity of the situation and I think how the agency had completely lost trust in him, which, once that is done, you're done. Yeah.

[Edward Lee Howard]

Because normally, I guess if you screw up what you're. You're relegated somewhere. Because I go back to thinking about Mitrockin, who we. You know, obviously in a previous episode, when he kind of screws up or things don't go well from abroad, he's relegated to the archives. You know, he's put into being an archivist. So there are jobs which people can be Put into if you're not going to go to Moscow, but instead, in this case, I guess maybe the extent of the personality issues and something, but they, the deception, maybe in the fact that he'd lied, you know, in the previous polygraphs and misled them, all of that makes them just go, nope, we're not even going to give you a side job. You're out.

[David McCloskey]

There is something, I mean, it's not formally called this, but everybody calls it this. It's the penalty box. And the idea is if you screw up, typically you get sent to some kind of unimportant, might not be the archives, but you get sent to some unimportant desk job, typically at Langley, and you get kind of supervised for a couple years to see do you play by the rules? Do you not do anything insane? Can you handle it? Do you do your time? Okay? And then after that you get another opportunity. If you've sort of done your penance, you get another opportunity to go out and do something in the field. Right? It's the penalty box. But because of the deception, they can't trust him. And so he is, he's out. And I think what's, what's really interesting here though, Gordon, is he's not committed espionage yet. Right? I mean, up to this point, this is like a sad story of a guy who just couldn't quite hold it together inside the CIA and gets run out on the cusp of what could have been this life changing tour in Moscow. It's a tragic story to some degree, but he's not a criminal. Well, I guess despite the maybe stealing from the woman on the plane and the vending machine crimes, it's not, he's not a serious criminal and he's not a traitor yet.

[Edward Lee Howard]

But what he is is angry. I mean, what he is is angry, frustrated, feels like he's been denied, he's been screwed over. He's kind of fuming, consumed by this kind of bitterness. So I think there with Edward Lee Howard, fired dramatically from the CIA. Even his car keys taken away from him, he claims. Let's stop. And when we come back for the next and final episode of this story, we'll see how that hatred of the CIA, which has come from this experience, compels him to take the fateful step, really of contacting who else? The Russians.

[David McCloskey]

And of course, Gordon. If listeners do not want to wait to find out how Edward Lee Howard takes that fateful step, they don't have to. You can go and join the declassified club at the restisclassified.com Get Early Access to episodes, bonus episodes, Gordon Carrera's home address, everything you could possibly want. But if not, we won't hold it against you. And the episode will be out as usual later this week. So we'll see you next time.

[Edward Lee Howard]

See you next time.

[David McCloskey]

Mama. Papa. Mi cuerpo crece a unrimo alarmante. Il arro PA que comprento de la vuelta clases de Amazon. Amazon Gas Domenos son riemas.

[Gordon Carrera]

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