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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Through the Looking Glass

“There’s definitely a deep state. Trust me, I’ve been there”

—Edward Snowden in Moscow

While waiting to hear back from Kucherena’s office, I arranged to meet with Victor Ivanovich Cherkashin, who gad been one of the most successful KGB spy handlers in the Cold War. Cherkashin, born in 1932, had served in the KGB’s espionage branch from 1952 until 1991. He now operated a private security firm in Moscow. I was particularly interested in his recruitment of three top American intelligence officers; Aldrich Ames in the CIA, Robert Hanssen in the FBI and Ronald Pelton in the NSA. I hoped that seeing these intelligence coups through the eyes, and mind-set, of their KGB handler might provide some historical context for the Snowden defection. So I invited Cherkashin to lunch at Gusto, a quiet Italian restaurant, located near the Chekov Theater in central Moscow,

Cherkashin, a tall thin man with silver hair, showed up promptly at 1 pm. Wearing an elegant grey suit and dark tie, he walked with a spry step. Since he had served in counterintelligence in the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C. for nearly a decade, he spoke flawless English,

I began the interview with one of the more celebrated cases he handled: the KGB recruitment of Aldrich Ames. Ames, a CIA counterintelligence officer, had worked as a Russian mole between April 1985 and January 1994. In those nine years, he rose, or was maneuvered by the KGB, into a top position in the CIA's highly-sensitive Counterintelligence Center Analysis Group, which allowed him to deliver hundreds of top secrets to the KGB. In return, according to Cherkashin, Ames received in cash between $20,000 and $50,000 for each delivery, which amounted to $4.6 million over the nine years.

I asked Cherkashin about the weakness the KGB looked for in an American intelligence worker that might lead him to copy and steal top secret documents. How did he spot a potential Ames? Was it a financial problem? Was it a sexual vulnerability? Was it an ideological leaning?

“Nothing so dramatic,” he answered. What he looked for when assessing Ames’s potential was an intelligence officer who is both dissatisfied and antagonistic to the service for which he works.”

“The classic disgruntle employee,” I interjected.

“Any intelligence officer who strongly feels that his superiors are not listening to him, and that they are doing stupid things, is a candidate,” he continued. He said he had found that the flaw in a prospect that could be most dependably exploited was not his greed, lust, or deviant behavior but his resentment over the way he was being treated.

“Is that how you spotted Ames?”

“Actually he approached us, not vice versa.” It was his job in the CIA to approach opposition KGB officers. “But yes we saw the potential,” he said.

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