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Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories and the Hunt for Putin’s Agents
Gordon Corera
Copyright
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
WilliamCollinsBooks.com
This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019
Copyright © Gordon Corera 2020
Cover image © Arcangel / Paul Gooney
Gordon Corera asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780008318932
Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008318956
Version: 2020-01-27
Dedication
For Jane
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Introduction
1: Three Days in August
2: The Birth of an Illegal
3: Strangers in a Strange Land
4: “Karla”
5: Undercover
6: The Source
7: The Investigation
8: Breaking and Entering
9: Putin’s Spy Fever
10: Targeting
11: Enter Anna
12: The Spectre
13: Moscow Rules
14: The Controller
15: Murphy Steps Up
16: Anna Takes Manhattan
17: Closing In
18: Decision Time
19: Escape
20: The Day It Ends
21: The Squeeze
22: Vienna
23: Anger
24: Still Among Us
25: A New Conflict
26: The New Illegals
27: The New Ways
28: Revenge
Picture Section
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Gordon Corera
About the Publisher
Prologue
IT WAS HUMID enough for haze to rise off the tarmac as fourteen people crossed paths for a few brief moments at Vienna airport on July 9, 2010. The fourteen—all accused of being spies—were changing planes but also exchanging lives.
Ten were going one way. They had been living secretly undercover in America’s suburbs, and they were now on their way to Russia.
AMONG THEM WERE a KGB-trained husband and wife from Boston who had stolen the identities of dead Canadian babies and whose own children were now sitting bewildered in Moscow. A New Jersey couple whose grumpy husband had made way for his wife to take the lead in their joint spy venture. Her success in getting close to power had set off alarm bells in Washington. Another pair had moved from Seattle to America’s capital to further their spying career. But as with the others, almost every moment of their life in America had been owned by the FBI. The last of the four couples was the oddest: a retired Russian spy and his Peruvian wife. She claimed she had not even known her husband’s real name despite decades of marriage.
Then there was a young man who had not stolen anyone’s identity but had fallen into an FBI trap while he was working his way into Washington’s circles of power—the trajectory of a new breed of spy. And last, but not least, there was the twenty-something redhead who would gather tabloid attention thanks to a party lifestyle in Manhattan and London and nude pictures splashed over the papers (pictures she had spent the plane ride complaining to the FBI about).
All ten had been betrayed by a man they had known and trusted and who days earlier had made a dramatic escape from Moscow to the West.
Arriving on a plane from Moscow and heading in the other direction were four Russian men. Two of them—bound for America—were still feeling the effects of the beatings they had been subjected to in the previous days. One had helped catch a traitor in the CIA and the agency had been desperate to get him out for years. The other had played a role in catching a traitor in the FBI but his subsequent fate was the cause of regret in the CIA. Two other Russians were heading for Britain. One was a sullen figure, angry at being forced to confess to being a spy when he said he had never been one. He was the source of guilt for Britain’s MI6. The last man, a tough former paratrooper, really had been a spy for MI6. Eight years after the Vienna swap, his former colleagues in Russian military intelligence would smear a deadly nerve agent on his front-door handle, spiraling relations between Russia and the West into an even darker place than anyone would have imagined that sunny July day.
WATCHING THE TWO groups closely was a small group of intelligence officers from the West and Russia. Many had spent their entire professional careers battling each other in the shadows. Now they were just yards apart. For years, even within their own intelligence bureaucracies they had been regarded as dinosaurs—ageing prizefighters still throwing punches at each other in the ring even though the crowd had long departed. One of the Russians in particular had devoted much of the past quarter of a century to entangling his adversaries in a web of deceit. His American adversaries thought that at long last they had the better of him. In Vienna, one side seemed to have won, the other to have lost. But that only made sense if you thought this was the end. It was not.
That evening Vice President Joe Biden appeared on The Tonight Show on American TV. The spy swap was the talk of the town. “Do we have any spies that hot?” Jay Leno asked Biden, referring, inevitably, to the redheaded woman sent back to Moscow. “Let me be clear—it wasn’t my idea to send her back,” Biden said to laughter. That was true. He was one of those who had opposed the plan to arrest the Russians and engineer a swap but had been overruled after a heated debate in the White House Situation Room. His comments fit in with a deliberate strategy from Washington to play down the significance of what had just taken place in Vienna—to treat it as an inconsequential event. And for the world watching it all seemed like some kind of bizarre retro-throwback, a hangover from the past, a last hurrah of people who could not quite let go of the Cold War. That was a mistake.
Introduction
THIS IS A book about ghosts. The ghosts of spies past have haunted relations between Russia and the West even as the Cold War ended. The Cold War was fought through espionage and defined by it in the public mind. But when that conflict suddenly ended, the spying did not stop. Repeated cycles of treachery and the hunt for those responsible were an obsession for a small band of spies and spy-catchers on both sides. Neither could let go. And this obsession mattered, since the spy wars have continued to shape relations between the two sides over the decades, playing their role in the rise of Vladimir Putin and his drive for revenge.
Ghost Stories was also the code name of the decade-long FBI investigation into Russians living under deep cover as sleepers in America. It was a fitting title, since these were people who had been resurrected from the dead in graveyards as part of Russia’s “illegals” program. The story of these spies and those who pursued them is told here for the first time in detail but set against the broader story of espionage between Russia and the West. A confession: I was one of those reporting on the events surrounding the Vienna swap who thought it was all a bit peculiar. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and this book sets out to explain why those events were not just the last echoes of the past but also foreshadowed a darker future. The scene at the Vienna airport offered a snapshot of a normally hidden Russian intelligence program, and the blinding flash of publicity illuminated both the tail end of a program running from deep in the Cold War and the beginnings of a new Russian strategy that would replace it.
One veteran of the CIA shakes his head in awe as he ponders how his old adversary has the mind-set to send people to live as “sleepers” in another country for decades, patiently burrowing into the heart of their target, waiting for years to act. This was evidence of the Russians’ persistence and patience in targeting its adversary—qualities that have not always been appreciated. Meanwhile, on the Western side, the focus on Russia from the end of the Cold War onward has been hazy and erratic.
As a result, the illegals arrested in 2010 were portrayed as something of an oddity and certainly not dangerous. “They successfully infiltrated neighborhoods, cocktail parties and the PTA,” one of their lawyers said, mocking the charges his client faced. This was a narrative deliberately reinforced at the time by the US administration, which was in the middle of an effort to reset relations with Russia. Seeing Russian spies either as figures of fun or as all-powerful is a mistake. The reality was that the illegals were involved in building networks and putting down roots that could have resulted in long-term damage. A previous generation of Russian illegals in the 1930s and 1940s had played a key role in helping steal American atomic secrets and eating away at the heart of British intelligence from the inside. There was real risk from their work and their mission reveals much about how Moscow sees—and sometimes misunderstands—the West.
But they were also people. There are complex personal stories at the heart of this tale. Imagine being a child brought up in suburban America, pledging allegiance at school and running lemonade stalls for your neighbors, but then coming home one day from a pool party to find the FBI all over your house. And then being informed that your parents were not Americans but Russians. And then two weeks later being on a plane to Moscow. It is no wonder that the work of the illegals became the inspiration for The Americans, a TV drama set in the eighties. And the real-life spies are sometimes more extraordinary than those of fiction.
The ghost-stories roundup of 2010 illustrates the pivot in Russian espionage that was taking place and changes that were not appreciated at the time. “The Western world can’t bring itself to believe to what extent it is transparent and vulnerable to Russian illegal intelligence,” a person who worked inside Russia’s top secret illegals directorate argues. Moscow has long sought to exploit that openness but the way it does so has changed. The end of the Cold War did not end the illegals program, but the new interconnectedness of the 1990s and then the post-9/11 era have changed the way it goes about it. That led to a new breed of spy, Anna Chapman being one example. This is not our parents’ Cold War.
Vladimir Putin is a practitioner of the martial art of judo. It allows a weaker opponent to defeat a stronger adversary. Rather than confront that opponent head-on, the trick is to leverage their strength to throw them off balance. That is what Russia has done with the West. Using the West’s openness was at the heart of the illegals program, but the Kremlin’s judo has evolved since 2010 as the internet and social media have offered new opportunities. The internet’s fundamental features make it a perfect place for those who want to obscure or hide their identity—opening the way for what I call the new “cyber illegals.”
One reason the 2010 illegals story was downplayed was that the Russian spies did not get hold of classified information. But this was another mistake. What if spies are not after secrets but influence? The Kremlin’s agents have learned to marshal espionage, influence operations, and use technology in a novel way as they engage in a conflict with the West that for many years went unrecognized.
These changes were slow to be appreciated in the West, partly a result of the deliberate playing down of the events in 2010 and partly because of the continued hold of a Cold War mind-set. This is a story that matters not just because of what it tells us about Russian and Western espionage but also because of its consequences and repercussions. The pain and humiliation of the defeat in 2010 would not be forgotten in Moscow. It left scars on Putin personally. Russia’s leader, who worked with the illegals program as a young KGB officer, has risen to power and cemented his hold on it thanks to a story he told his people about spies and treachery. Revenge for that humiliation would come served in a bottle of perfume eight years later and in a new campaign unleashed against the West by the Kremlin. Russia is now barely out of the news. But that also has risks.
THE CIA’S APPRENTICE spies who have been chosen to operate in Moscow are given an extra level of training on how to spot the surveillance teams that will be following them. Identifying the tiny telltale signs that suggest the woman in the shop or jogger on the street is not just a member of the public but actually a Russian surveillance operative takes an extra degree of preparation required from anywhere else. After a training mission out on the streets, the students report back to their instructors on which of the people they thought were really watchers. But some trainees become so hyperaware they get it wrong, believing that ordinary people are in fact operatives trailing them. These false positives are known as “ghosts.” A form of paranoia is always a risk for those who work in intelligence. It can also apply to nations as well. Russia and the West have sometimes seen “ghosts”—the hidden hand of the other side when it is not there, especially now. Trying to distinguish between the apparition and the real is difficult but a clearheaded appreciation is vital to avoid the dangers of miscalculation.
The aim of this book is not to demonize Russian spies, let alone all Russians. It is a mistake to not try to understand how the world looks from inside the Kremlin. A mind-set that Russia is a besieged fortress under subversive attack from the West—and particularly the CIA and MI6—has played an important role in justifying Moscow’s actions. Spying is supposed to illuminate the other side’s intentions, but it can also increase tension and drive conflict. This book is based on interviews with dozens of intelligence officers in London, Moscow, Washington, and elsewhere, including some who have served as illegals. Many have worked at the front lines and in most cases they spoke anonymously, but their accounts help explain how we got to where we are today.
It is tempting to talk about a “new Cold War.” That conflict is long gone. There is a new one that is being fought today with both old techniques, like illegals, and new ones. And the best place to start this story is at the moment that the last conflict ended.
1
Three Days in August
August 18, 1991
THE SMALL BAND of Western spies operating in Moscow had learned to trust their instincts. And that Sunday afternoon some of them could sense something strange in the air. For CIA and MI6 officers working undercover in the capital of the Soviet Union, the shadow of the all-powerful KGB was everywhere. It was on the streets and in their bedrooms, black cars trailing them, eyes watching them, microphones listening in. They had received the most intense training that their agencies offered in order to survive in the belly of the beast—the bleak and unforgiving capital of their adversary. CIA officers would walk the streets continually so they knew every crossroads and alley better than those in their hometowns. That was so that when the moment came to “go black” and lose a tail they might have a shot. The phrase “Moscow Rules” referred to this highest level of tradecraft—or spy skills—required to contact Russian agents who were providing secrets to you. There was no room for error, since one mistake might mean leading your KGB tail to them. You would be expelled. They could end up dead.
The MI6 station was smaller than its American counterpart—only a handful of officers. The head of the station had been a special forces officer and he liked to run. One benefit was that it let him stretch his surveillance team. Perhaps you might be able to lose them for a second or two in order to drop a package off or pick it up. In order to keep pace, the KGB assigned an Olympic runner to stay on his heels. That worked until the MI6 man, running on the outskirts of town, decided to jump into the Moscow River and swim across just to annoy his surveillance team. But late that Sunday afternoon there was a mystery. When the youngest member of the MI6 station went for his regular run in a nearby park, he could see the usual surveillance was there as he began. But then, as he became increasingly breathless in the summer heat, he realized the surveillance had vanished. No watchers. No parked car. That had never happened before. Catching foreign spies was the KGB’s priority. What could have been so important that they were called away?
The mystery was solved the next morning when the spies turned on the radio. Hard-liners were seizing power in a coup. The country’s leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who had been progressively opening the country up, had been detained in the Crimea. Some of the KGB’s best surveillance teams—normally reserved to follow foreign spies—must have been pulled back to deal with events. The KGB was the sword and the shield of the Soviet state. The bulk of its half-million personnel were devoted to internal security; its mind-set was the constant search for enemies who threatened the grip of the Communist Party. The chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, feared Gorbachev’s reforms were undermining the pillars on which the Soviet Union had been built, leaving it at risk of collapse, and he was one of the plotters. That Monday morning, columns of tanks made their way across the capital, scattered amid the usual morning traffic as people returned from the weekend. But there was something tentative about the move; the soldiers seemed unsure how to act. The CIA’s chief of station, David Rolph, had only arrived three months earlier from Berlin (“at least I’m going somewhere stable,” he told colleagues) and now found himself in the middle of a crisis no one had predicted. He told his officers to fan out across the city and find out what was going on.
In the place known as “the Woods” or, more formally, as “Moscow Center,” elite KGB officers watched with surprise from the window as the endless column of tanks trundled toward the city center. Yasenevo is set among trees half a mile from Moscow’s outer ring road. From 1972 it has been home to spies whose job it is to steal secrets around the world—then known as the KGB’s First Chief Directorate. Past the barbed wire and guard dogs sits a gray 22-story building set in a park by a lake. Most of the staff was shuttled in every morning in anonymous buses but the most senior generals were housed on-site in a compound of dachas.
At the moment the coup began, the man in charge of the First Chief Directorate had been playing tennis at Yasenevo. That was because Leonid Shebarshin was not one of the plotters. A few weeks earlier, Shebarshin had stood next to KGB chairman Kryuchkov as they addressed the new political leaders—men like Boris Yeltsin, who had just been elected president of Russia by popular vote. Russia was still part of the Soviet Union. But the control that the center exerted over its empire was crumbling as republics—including Russia itself—were flexing against the Communist Party that ruled over them. Shebarshin sensed that day that the politicians were more interested in their own power struggles than the warning he was there to deliver about the “main enemy”—the United States. “What was not changed was the ambition of the US to weaken the Soviet Union and deprive it of the status of a great power,” he told his restless audience. Washington’s “new world order” meant American dominance. The Cold War had not really been an ideological struggle, he believed. It was really about Western resistance to the idea of Russia as a great power. Shebarshin’s worldview had surprisingly little to do with communism. As that faded, what remained was a resilient core of nationalism. The Soviet Union covered nearly a sixth of the world’s surface. But size was also weakness. Western spies had been supporting separatist forces trying to fray the bonds of the USSR, Shebarshin explained. He was frustrated that no one seemed to be listening. But he had not realized how far the man next to him would go. A few weeks later, the KGB chairman and other hard-liners feared a treaty that was about to be signed would break up the USSR and so launched their coup. Now, from his spacious office in Yasenevo, Shebarshin watched on Monday morning as the tanks rolled into the city. But they stopped at red traffic lights. That hardly looked ruthless. The spymaster was hanging back—not committing either way. Ironically, the man in charge of the KGB’s international espionage operations then turned on CNN to find out what was happening in his own country.
Thousands of miles away on that same Monday in August, there was proof that Shebarshin’s First Chief Directorate was still in the game. An American intelligence officer went for a walk to a park only a few miles from the headquarters of the CIA in Virginia. He liked Mondays as he knew there were fewer FBI surveillance teams operating. Underneath a footbridge he left a package containing highly classified information about intelligence operations the United States was mounting against the Soviet Union. He retrieved another package containing twenty thousand dollars in cash and a message. He was one of two spies the KGB had deep inside its opponent’s intelligence services. This spy had been active for more than a decade but not even the KGB knew his real name. And the pair were not the only spies the KGB had in America—they also had their own officers, living as sleepers.
HIGH IN YASENEVO’S tower, those who controlled the KGB’s most prized spies had also been watching the tanks. Floors fourteen to twenty on the main tower were home to Directorate S. Its work was kept secret even from other colleagues in the building because this was where the KGB ran deep-cover agents who lived abroad under false identities—illegals. Traditional spies work under diplomatic cover in a foreign country—posing as something like a second counselor for trade. If such a spy is caught, they have diplomatic immunity and can only be expelled. Other spies work under nondiplomatic cover, as, say, a businessman. They have no diplomatic immunity. In the Russian terminology, they are “illegal.” Many countries undertake this kind of spying but Directorate S takes things a step further. A deep-cover Russian illegal can be not just operating under cover of a different occupation but can take on an entirely different nationality. The Russian will not—to all appearances—be Russian but instead be German or Canadian or even American. They can spend decades undercover in a different country, burrowing deep into their target society—sleepers. Some will live and die in a foreign land, buried in a graveyard under a name that was never truly their own. Illegals are the pride of Soviet and then Russian intelligence—having assets deep inside enemy territory provided a sense of power and reassurance and an edge over their adversaries. Were they worth the vast investment? “My experience tells me that this practise quite justified itself,” Leonid Shebarshin said.