The Main Enemy Milton Bearden (read full novel .txt) 📖

he was told to leave the CIA, electronic entry and exit records would later show that he had gone in and out of the building several times in quick succession before turning in his CIA badge for the last time. Howard left the CIA with nothing to show for his time except bitterness, a knowledge of Russian, and a head full of some of the agency’s most closely guarded secrets.

Suddenly out on the street, with a wife and a new baby to support, Howard was stunned and humiliated. It didn’t take long for him to start drinking again. He moved back to New Mexico, where he had been born, and took a job with the state legislature as an economic analyst. But he never stopped seething about the treatment he had received from the CIA.

The first signs of trouble came quickly after his firing. Howard began to make bizarre late-night telephone calls from his home to the special Washington tie-line to the U.S. embassy in Moscow, in one instance leaving a message with the Marine guard for Moscow station chief Carl Gephardt, telling him that he wouldn’t be showing up for his physical.

His telephone calls to Moscow were reported back to CIA headquarters, and they began to trouble Forden. He went to the Office of Security to see if the agency could monitor Howard’s telephone. In the spring of 1984, after he was told that the CIA didn’t have the legal power to tap Howard’s phone, Forden went to David Blee, then the CIA’s counterintelligence chief, to tell him about the phone calls to Moscow and to warn him that Howard might be a security risk. Forden later recalled bitterly that Blee had simply smiled and done nothing.

Back in Santa Fe, Howard’s mood was darkening. His drinking was getting steadily worse. In February 1984, he was arrested for assault after he fired a gun during a street fight with some local kids he followed from a bar in Santa Fe. Only his white-collar background and his job at the state legislature saved him from jail.

In May 1984, Howard showed up one night on the Washington doorstep of Tom Mills, one of his former supervisors in the SE Division. Howard had been drinking heavily, and he complained to Mills that he had been “fucked” by the agency. Troubled by the episode, Burton Gerber, who was just taking over SE Division from Forden, sent a psychologist with Mills to New Mexico to talk with Howard and gauge his mental condition.

Howard admitted to them that on his trip back to Washington, he had loitered outside the Soviet consulate, debating whether to walk in to the KGB. He had gone to the consulate, rather than the embassy, because he knew from his CIA training that the FBI didn’t monitor the consular affairs section as carefully, he told them. He insisted that he hadn’t actually gone inside; he said he had resisted the temptation once he thought about what becoming a spy for the Soviet Union would do to his son, Lee.

The psychologist brought another bit of news that Gerber found equally unsettling—Howard no longer seemed such a mess. He seemed in control of himself and in much better shape. It was as if he had made an important decision to change his life.

Gerber passed along the news to the CIA’s security office and arranged for the agency to pay for psychological treatment for Howard. But the CIA had still not warned the FBI that Edward Howard now might be a threat to national security. Later, FBI officials would tell Gerber that they wouldn’t have been able to take action against Howard at that time, since there was no proof that he had committed espionage. But Gerber and other CIA officials still paid dearly later for their failure to notify the FBI.

Even though there still wasn’t enough evidence yet to prove conclusively that Howard had become a spy, it was long past time to break the news to the FBI. With Yurchenko’s warning, everyone who had been involved with the Howard case began to realize just what a mistake it had been to throw him out onto the street.

Gerber looked out his window just as two FBI sedans pulled in beside him. “Here they are,” he said flatly.

Afterward, the FBI would omit any mention of this Saturday meeting when it gave its account of the Howard case. Instead, FBI officials would insist that the CIA waited much longer to inform them that they knew Howard was the spy Yurchenko had described.

But in fact, Gerber also warned the FBI about one of Howard’s hidden skills. The fired CIA officer had taken the CIA’s most advanced training—Jack Platt’s Internal Operations course—so Gerber wanted the bureau to be aware of Howard’s ability to evade surveillance.

Oakton, Virginia, 1030 Hours, August 3, 1985

The air in the Oakton town house was blue from cigarette smoke when Chuck Medanich arrived the morning after Yurchenko’s arrival on U.S. soil. Up the short staircase from the foyer, Yurchenko was sitting at the dining room table peering over a list of names with FBI agents Michael Rochford and Reid Broce.

Yurchenko stood up when Medanich walked in. He’s restless, Medanich thought. Nervous energy.

“Good morning, Alex.” Medanich used the operational alias Yurchenko had chosen until his new identity was developed.

“I have no need of sleep,” Yurchenko said excitedly. “Too much work to do. Each time I close my eyes I stand again up in bed and think of one more thing to tell the boys. I now must sleep always with a pen and paper. Sometimes things I have not remembered for years just pop into my head and I have to write them down before they leave again.”

Medanich turned to the FBI agents. “You guys want to take a break? I’d like a couple of minutes alone with Alex.”

Medanich led Yurchenko into the small kitchen off the dining room. “Can I get you anything to drink, Alex? How about a Coke?”

The tall KGB colonel took