How KGB Kept Ames’ Role Secret

His slate-gray eyes and granite face give Viktor Cherkashin the drained, slightly menacing look of a long Russian winter. When he speaks, it is in controlled bursts that never seem to betray him. He projects the intimidating aura of a man who would feel at home in a Las Vegas casino, running the cards.

In fact, Viktor Cherkashin spent his life playing a game with infinitely higher stakes. He was a spy--an exceptionally good one.

During the last years of the Cold War, Cherkashin was a key player in one of the Soviet Union’s most important espionage cases. He was the KGB’s man in Washington handling CIA mole Aldrich H. Ames.

By nature a secret keeper, Cherkashin proudly protected Ames’ identity long after being ostracized and isolated by his boss, KGB intelligence chief Vladimir Kryuchkov. He kept his own counsel even after he quit the spy service in disgust in 1991 in the wake of the failed coup by Kryuchkov and other Communist hard-liners.

But now Cherkashin, eager to dispel the myths that he believes have been generated in the West about Ames and other high-profile spy cases, has offered rare insight into the way the Soviets handled their most explosive spy case, and the ugly internal KGB politics that ultimately doomed the man who was one of Moscow’s most successful spymasters.

In a series of interviews, the 66-year-old Cherkashin revealed the extraordinary measures he took to protect Ames from detection as the American passed on some of the CIA’s most precious secrets. How such a monumental betrayal could have remained secret for so long has perplexed U.S. investigators ever since they began to suspect treachery in the ranks.

Now, Cherkashin argues that he handled Ames so carefully that only Kryuchkov’s overweening ambition and reckless management--perhaps combined with a KGB mole or defector that the CIA has still not acknowledged--led the FBI to Ames.

The best indication of the significance of what Cherkashin has to say comes from the FBI, where an official said in an interview that Cherkashin remains of great interest to U.S. intelligence--even though Ames is safely behind bars and Cherkashin has left the KGB. It is clear that the FBI would still love to sit down with Cherkashin for a long chat, and perhaps try to convince him to defect.

“There are still holes that we would like to fill in,” said an FBI counterintelligence expert. “There are still open cases.”

Cherkashin Moved to Washington Post in ’85

Cherkashin’s story begins in 1985, which is still known in the West as “the year of the spy.” After tours earlier in his career in India and Lebanon, Cherkashin had risen to deputy rezident (station chief) and chief of counterintelligence in the KGB’s Washington station. Under the overall direction of Washington rezident Stanislav Androsov, Cherkashin was the KGB’s No. 2 man in America, and effectively the day-to-day manager of Soviet espionage operations on the day in April, 1985, when Aldrich Ames walked into the Soviet Embassy and volunteered to go on the KGB payroll.

Ames was in charge of counterintelligence in the CIA’s Soviet division, and he had access to virtually all of the agency’s most closely guarded secrets about its espionage operations against Moscow, including the inventory of names of agents working for the CIA in the Soviet Union.

It didn’t take long for Cherkashin to recognize what a remarkable catch Ames represented, and how important it was to keep a tight lid within the KGB on information about Ames. Fearful of leaks from within the mole-riddled KGB, Cherkashin decided not to send any cables or messages from the Soviet Embassy in Washington to KGB headquarters about Ames.

Instead, he flew back to Moscow to deliver his message personally to Kryuchkov, then the chief of the KGB’s First Directorate, which handled foreign intelligence.

Cherkashin thus circumvented his entire chain of command, including Dimitri Yakushkin, then the chief of the American section of the KGB’s First Directorate. Spy agencies traditionally have allowed counterintelligence officers to go directly to the top whenever they learn the identities of traitors--and Ames had just handed Cherkashin the names of all of the KGB moles working for the CIA and the FBI.

Cherkashin’s decision to bypass Yakushkin may also have been based on the fact that the FBI had just tried to recruit Yakushkin, threatening to expose an affair he had had while stationed in Washington. Although Yakushkin had loudly rebuffed the FBI, suspicions about him lingered in the KGB’s upper ranks.

“Yakushkin was nothing to me,” Cherkashin said dismissively.

Back in Washington, meanwhile, the FBI, which closely monitored Cherkashin’s movements, took note of his sudden disappearance from the United States, U.S. intelligence officials now recall. But at the time U.S. experts say they were unable to figure out where he had gone or what he was up to.

Kryuchkov immediately seized upon the Ames case to solidify his own shaky position within the KGB’s hierarchy. In the months before Cherkashin brought him news of Ames, Kryuchkov had seemed to other senior KGB officials to be in danger of losing his job. The death of his longtime mentor, former KGB chief and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, coupled with a series of embarrassing defections, had eroded Kryuchkov’s political standing.

But with the information Ames provided about CIA moles in his organization, Kryuchkov was able to show the new Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, that he was on top of things at the KGB.

Cherkashin recalled bitterly that it was Kryuchkov who decided to quickly round up and execute the double agents exposed by Ames as working for the CIA inside the KGB, a rash move that eventually tipped off the CIA that something had gone badly wrong.

Both former CIA and former KGB officers now believe that if the KGB had moved more gradually and subtly against the moles--taking several years to feed them disinformation or turn them into “triple” agents against the United States--the CIA might never have figured out that it had suffered a sudden betrayal.

Until now, Western analysts have believed that it was pressure from the Soviet Politburo that forced the KGB leadership to move too rapidly to arrest the moles, executing as many as 10, and thus putting Ames in danger.

“People have always blamed the Political Bureau, but it was Kryuchkov all along,” Cherkashin says. “He had been in trouble, but now he could show the Political Bureau that he was acting decisively, that he was cleaning house. He didn’t care about Ames, or me, or anything except Kryuchkov.”

‘Defecting’ Yurchenko Didn’t Know of Mole

Still, Cherkashin’s caution in going directly to Kryuchkov with Ames’ treason paid off just three months after his secret trip back to Moscow when Vitaly Yurchenko, the deputy chief of counterintelligence in the American section of the KGB’s First Directorate, walked into the U.S. Embassy in Rome on Aug. 1, 1985, and became the highest-ranking KGB officer ever to defect.

Yurchenko quickly told the CIA all he knew, including the fact that fired CIA officer Edward Lee Howard was spying for Moscow. Howard had been fired by the CIA just before he was to report to the CIA’s Moscow station, and out of bitterness had turned to the Soviets and spilled his considerable knowledge about CIA operations in Moscow. But thanks to Cherkashin, Yurchenko did not know that Ames was a KGB agent.

Soon Cherkashin was able to allay Moscow’s fears about the damage Yurchenko might wreak on the KGB as well; much to Cherkashin’s delight, Ames had been assigned by the CIA to debrief Yurchenko. Ames dutifully sent copies of all of his CIA reports about Yurchenko’s debriefings to the KGB.

The Yurchenko story took a bizarre and highly public turn in November 1985, when he bolted from his CIA handlers at a Washington restaurant, rushed back to the Soviet Embassy and redefected to the Soviet Union. Yurchenko insisted that he had escaped from the Americans after being drugged and kidnapped by the CIA and forced to tell the KGB’s secrets.

Images from that long night when Yurchenko redefected are seared in Cherkashin’s memory. Summoned to the embassy, Cherkashin was met by KGB rezident Androsov. As they stood alone in the embassy parking lot, where no one could eavesdrop on their conversation, Androsov broke the news that Yurchenko was back.

Cherkashin barked out a few choice words, then quickly composed himself and marched up to the apartment where Yurchenko was being watched by a KGB security guard. He grandly hugged Yurchenko as if he were a long-lost brother.

But in the recent interviews, Cherkashin publicly acknowledged for the first time that he never believed Yurchenko’s story of being drugged and kidnapped--even though the Russian government to this day stubbornly defends Yurchenko. “Of course Yurchenko was a genuine defector,” Cherkashin said bitterly.

But at the time, Cherkashin hid his true feelings from Yurchenko to exploit his redefection. Instead of challenging Yurchenko’s wild claims, he decided to embrace them.

Not only did Yurchenko’s charges give the CIA a black eye in the Third World and the Eastern Bloc, where many would believe that the American spy agency was in the kidnapping business, but his redefection also sowed confusion in the United States, raising fresh doubts about Yurchenko and his secrets.

But before Yurchenko could be sent home, the State Department demanded to see him to make sure he really wanted to go back, and Cherkashin had to find a way to make certain that the volatile Yurchenko would stick to his story.

So Cherkashin quietly rounded up some of the tame Soviet press corps based in Washington and arranged a Soviets-only press conference for Yurchenko in the embassy. He did so well that Cherkashin held a second press conference, this time for Americans and other Western reporters. Again Yurchenko sailed through, repeating his story about being drugged and kidnapped. Cherkashin was delighted. “Then I knew I didn’t have to worry about him going to the State Department. I knew he would go home.”

Way Needed to Sneak Mole Back to Moscow

In addition to exploiting Yurchenko’s propaganda value, Cherkashin had a secret reason for getting him back to Moscow: He needed a way to arrest Valery Martynov, a mole in the KGB Washington station who had just been betrayed by Ames. Cherkashin had been trying for months to figure out a ruse through which to lure Martynov back to Moscow without alarming either Martynov or the FBI, but nothing had worked.

It was an elaborate charade engineered by Cherkashin to get Martynov onto the airplane, and it worked, to the horror of U.S. intelligence. CIA Soviet expert Paul Redmond grew chilled as he and other senior CIA officials watched Yurchenko’s departure on television, Martynov climbing aboard the plane with him. “I don’t like the looks of this,” Redmond told his colleagues.

Redmond’s worst fears were realized. Martynov was arrested as soon as he arrived in Moscow, and was later executed.

Yurchenko, by contrast, was ushered into Kryuchkov’s office and given an award and a new job. Yurchenko was never punished, and, Cherkashin added sourly, no one in the KGB ever had the nerve to call him a liar to his face. In fact, Rem Krassilnikov, former chief of the American section of the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate, which handled counterintelligence matters inside the Soviet Union, added in a separate interview that his branch was never asked to question Yurchenko after his return.

Yurchenko left the KGB soon after his return to Moscow and is now working as a security official for a Moscow bank. He refused a request for an interview.

Although Cherkashin handled one of Moscow’s premier spies, he complains that he was never given the credit or the promotions within the KGB that were due him. He blames Kryuchkov, arguing that the intelligence chief was at heart an insecure Communist Party hack who harbored deep resentments and jealousies of officers who threatened to steal the limelight from him.

Several other KGB officers agreed with Cherkashin that Kryuchkov, who could not be reached for comment, suffered from an inferiority complex that led him to quash promising KGB officers who he feared might become his rivals.

And so even honors from Kryuchkov contained hidden slights, Cherkashin believes. In 1986--undoubtedly for handling Ames, although the reason was never given--Cherkashin received the Order of Lenin, one of the highest awards that a KGB officer could receive. But Cherkashin noted bitterly that Kryuchkov obscured the prize by giving awards to 47 other officers at the same time.

When Cherkashin returned to Moscow from his tour in Washington in 1987, Kryuchkov first ignored him, then shunted him to the sidelines of the KGB’s foreign intelligence operation.

A longtime KGB colonel, Cherkashin was not promoted to general, and he blames Kryuchkov for stunting his career. Cherkashin said Kryuchkov suspected that he was in league with former KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin, a classmate of Cherkashin’s at the KGB training institute whose own career had been stymied because Kryuchkov had become wrongly convinced that he was a CIA spy.

Later, Kalugin--who had been the youngest general in KGB history and had risen to become the chief of counterintelligence in the First Directorate--broke with the KGB and joined Moscow’s reformers at the end of the Cold War. He ultimately moved to Washington to go into private business.

“I was never in Kryuchkov’s inner circle,” Cherkashin said. “I had been friends with Kalugin. Kryuchkov saw that, and so he didn’t trust me.”

Despite his role as Ames’ handler, Cherkashin wants it known that he believes Ames has been credited with exposing more CIA spies in Russia than he actually betrayed.

Adolph Tolkachev, an engineer who gave the United States priceless information about Soviet fighter aircraft designs until he was arrested and executed in 1985, has always led the list of CIA agents killed as a result of Ames’ betrayal.

Cherkashin, however, said Ames did not tell the KGB about Tolkachev. Other former KGB officials, including Krassilnikov, confirmed that the KGB had already identified Tolkachev as a spy without any help from Ames.

“I think Ames’ damage has been exaggerated a bit in the West,” Cherkashin said. “Maybe because of Ames himself. I think he may have exaggerated in his confessions to the FBI, maybe he told them he did everything, even things he never did.”

Cherkashin was retired and living quietly in Moscow when he heard that Ames had finally been arrested by the FBI in February 1994. American officials insisted that FBI and CIA counterintelligence teams doggedly tracked down Ames on their own, nine years after he began spying for Moscow. Today, CIA officials say point blank that there was no mole inside the KGB who gave up Ames.

Cherkashin doesn’t believe a word of it. He is convinced that Ames was found only with the help of a defector or another highly placed mole within his old intelligence service, someone working for the Americans deep inside the tattered remnants of the KGB--someone whose identity remains a mystery to Cherkashin to this day.

CIA officials emphatically deny that theory. “On my honor, there wasn’t a mole,” said one senior CIA official.

But Cherkashin believes that, since Ames was arrested so long after Kryuchkov had killed off the CIA’s moles inside the KGB, there must have been a tip from Moscow to revive U.S. interest in Ames.

“I think there is no doubt that the CIA had somebody who told them about Ames,” Cherkashin said. “If they had found him in 1987 or even 1988, I could believe that the FBI and CIA had done it on their own. But not in 1993 or 1994, when nobody was dying anymore.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

About This Series

Once it was the world’s most mysterious and feared espionage organization, the “sword and shield” of the Soviet Union. But ultimately the KGB fell victim to the same forces of history that destroyed the empire it had served.

For the most part, the last KGB officers slipped away, retaining the cloak of secrecy. But now a group of former officers have stepped forward to provide an insider’s guide. Their tales, with some details verifiable and others not, are of friendship and betrayal, of bravery and cowardice, of stunning triumphs and humiliating defeats.

They agreed to a series of interviews with the Los Angeles Times, in part to put on the record what they see as their sacrifices and professionalism in a cause now widely denigrated.

After the failed 1991 coup by a group of Communist hard-liners that included the KGB’s own chief, the Kremlin’s new leaders tore the KGB’s massive security apparatus apart. Hundreds, if not thousands, of KGB agents were laid off. In the process, many became pariahs, their dedication scorned, their work of covert operations stripped of respectability. By telling their stories now, they hope history will record a different view, one in which the KGB will be known for its successes as well as its stumbles.

* Today: The spy who directed Aldrich H. Ames.

* Tuesday: Two enemies, two friends.

* Wednesday: The Gavrilov channel, the KGB-CIA hotline.