Cultivated Los Alamos Associate : Spy Suspect: Likable Guy or an Angry, Violent Man?

People here look back on spy suspect Edward Lee Howard as two different persons.

One was a “devoted family man,” an outdoorsman--a “nice, friendly, likable guy” who worked long and hard and well at his job as an economic analyst with the state Legislature.

The other was a darkly private man, a man who became angry, even violent, when drinking--a man who cultivated the friendship of an associate with ties to the nearby federal laboratories at Los Alamos, where the government does research work on secret weapons systems.

People who knew the first Ed Howard say they were amazed and shocked to learn earlier this week that he is a fugitive, a former CIA employee now being sought as a Soviet agent.

People who knew the second Ed Howard seem to harbor little surprise.

“He was a close friend of David Abbey, and he knew Abbey had had access to classified information at Los Alamos,” said one government source, who spoke under an agreement of anonymity.

“David is concerned about that,” the source said. “And he wonders why the FBI hasn’t been around to talk to him.”

Abbey, now an analyst with the New Mexico Department of Finance--a couple of floors up from the Legislative Finance Committee offices where Howard, 33, was employed--would not discuss the matter, other than to confirm that he had worked with people at Los Alamos at one time and to deny that Howard had ever sought classified information from him.

Curtis Porter, who hired Howard for the state government job before moving to a new position with the New Mexico State College in Las Cruces earlier this year, confirmed Howard’s friendship with Abbey and said that “indirectly, Howard could have had other contacts with people at Los Alamos” through his job with the finance committee.

State government sources said that one of the mysteries about Howard was the frequency with which he left town on state-paid business trips--”unusual for a state known for its penury.”

‘He Did Good Work’

Porter admitted that “Ed used to get ragged a lot about the out-of-state travel he did for us, but he did good work . . . and no one ever suggested he was up to anything else.”

Porter added, however, that “on a trip I took with Ed to Boston, he disappeared for a few hours . . . .”

“When he showed up, he had a cut on his head,” Porter said. “He told us he had walked into a door, cut himself and had to go to a hospital to have it stitched up. I did think that was odd . . . .

“Later that night, we all had a couple of cocktails,” Porter said. “Ed’s words started getting slurry, and all of a sudden he got mad at something Abbey had said and got up and left. It was strange.”

And records here show that that was not the only time drinking apparently turned Howard angry.

On the evening of Feb. 26, 1984, according to Santa Fe Police Department reports, officers responding to an assault call about a block from the Capitol, where Howard worked, found him sitting in his jeep, his face and clothing covered with blood.

Said He Was Assaulted

When they asked what had happened, the officer said, Howard responded that he had been assaulted at a nearby bar by some men “who’d promised him a girlfriend for the night and a good time.”

But the men told a different story.

They said that Howard had forced their car off the road with his jeep. They said that, when they got out of their car, Howard approached, pointing a .44-caliber magnum pistol at them.

When they fled back to their car, they said, Howard stuck the revolver through the driver’s window and, during a struggle that turned into a fistfight, the gun discharged, putting a bullet hole in the roof of the car.

Police recovered the pistol and placed Howard under arrest. Later, admitting that he had been drinking prior to the incident, Howard pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated battery.

Capitol sources said that, thanks largely to letters of support from legislators attesting to his good work, Howard got off with a sentence of five years’ probation.

“I wasn’t that enthused about the arrest,” said Porter, who was Howard’s supervisor at the time, “but he told me that they’d worked something out--that the whole thing, basically, had been dropped. I really didn’t know what had happened.”

Impressive Resume

Porter said he had hired Howard for the state job in 1983 “because he seemed to be the best qualified applicant.” Howard’s resume was impressive: Born in Alamagordo, in 1951, the son of an Air Force master sergeant, Ed Howard attended various primary and secondary schools during his father’s duty tours in the United States and overseas.

After graduation from the University of Texas with a business degree in 1972, he joined the Peace Corps, serving in Colombia and the Dominican Republic until 1974, when he became a Peace Corps recruiter.

Two years later, he married the former Mary Cedarleaf, an attractive, outgoing Minnesota girl whom he had met in the Peace Corps.

From 1976 to 1979, Howard said, he worked as an assistant project development officer for the Agency for International Development in Peru.

The next four years become a bit murky. During part of that time, according to the FBI, Howard worked for the CIA. But, in his resume, he simply mentioned work with the State Department, a contention the State Department disputes.

“He said he had flunked several of their Foreign Service tests but had finally made it, only to find out they wanted him to go to Moscow,” Porter said. “He said that, with the new baby (son Lee, now 2), he didn’t want to go because he didn’t want to raise a child there.”

So Howard went to work for Porter, moving with his wife and son into a modest imitation-adobe home on an acre of land in a subdivision about 15 miles southeast of downtown Santa Fe.

When it came to Mary Howard, all the neighbors sang praises.

“She’s just a dear, sweet thing,” said Betty Dunstan. “She’s very open and friendly,” said Bobbe Dyer. “I liked her a lot,” said Gary Carlson. When it came to Ed Howard, the reviews were mixed.

Betty Dunstan found him “extremely pleasant, and good looking, too.” But Bobbe Dyer said that Howard “had a wall around him--he was a very hard man to know.”

Described as Unfriendly

Other neighbors, who asked not to be named, described him as “unfriendly”--”a man who’d rather go off by himself and hunt than join in the community volleyball and things like that, the way Mary did.”

But, when it came to his work for the state, everyone seems to agree that Howard did a good job.

“He was very professional, very knowledgeable, very bright and very conscientious,” said Carlson, a fellow state employee.

“He was very good--a hard worker,” said Phil Baca, the current Finance Committee chief, who succeeded Porter as Howard’s boss. “I was pleased to have him.”

But Baca, asked if he was concerned when FBI agents came to talk to him about Howard on Sept. 19, replied with a grim chuckle, “You’re damned right.”

Baca won’t disclose what agents said to him that day.

The next day, Sept. 20, “Ed put in a normal work day,” Baca said. “He had a hearing and, afterward, he talked about a meeting in Austin (Texas) that he was leaving for on the 22nd . . . .

“The 22nd was a Sunday, but I had some work to catch up on, so I came in,” Baca said. “I found a letter from him that said he was quitting ‘for personal reasons.’ He said, ‘I hope some day to be able to explain this to you.’ ”

Letter Called Puzzling

The letter puzzles Porter.

“Why would a spy on the run leave his resignation on Phil’s desk?” Porter asked. “Why would he bother?”

That same day, according to local law enforcement officials, Howard flew to Dallas and then to Austin.

And, as far as anyone here knows--or is telling--that was the last time anyone saw or heard from Ed Howard.

On Monday, the 23rd, Baca talked on the phone with Mary Howard. “She said she didn’t know where he was--she didn’t even know he’d quit,” Baca recalled.

That afternoon, federal officials issued a warrant for Howard’s arrest.

On Tuesday, the 24th, Mary Howard and her son flew to Minnesota to stay with her parents.

Two days later, on the 26th, local law enforcement officers issued an arrest warrant for Howard, arguing that, by leaving the state and quitting his job without first consulting with his probation officer, Howard had violated the conditions of his probation on the battery counts.

FBI Searched Home

The next day, on the 27th, acting on a search warrant issued in Albuquerque, FBI agents moved in and searched the Howard home here. What, if anything, was found has yet to be disclosed.

Last Tuesday, Mary Howard and her 2-year-old son returned to the little home in the suburb called El Dorado and, the next morning, she reportedly showed up for work at her job at a local orthodontist’s office.

She has thus far avoided reporters, and neighbors say she hasn’t talked with them, either.

And, now that most of the excitement is over, people around here have been left to speculate about Ed Howard.

Curtis Porter said what bothers him is why Howard would be a spy. “Did he do it for money?” Porter asked. “I don’t think so.

“I just can’t figure it out.”