Date: 12/02/2020
Author: Kent Moors, Ph.D.
As I have noted on several occasions, my life at the intersection of academe, the energy sector, and global risk analysis provided the benefit of wide latitude in where I could go and what I could do. That proved a distinct benefit for the fourth component of what I was doing.
Intelligence.
The academic base allowed a legitimate reason for my being virtually anywhere, augmented even more by the energy and risk work. All three gave plausible cover for the fourth. Down through the years these also allowed the development of a wide group of contacts I would use as circumstances warranted.
Yet the intel side would upon occasion collide with the others. That would sometimes put me in a compromising situation and provide danger to those collaterally involved.
Take August 1982 for example. I was delivering a paper at the XII World Congress of the International Political Science Association in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In those days, the World Congress was held every three years. Beginning in 2009, the IPSA moved it up to every two.
In 1979, it had been held in Moscow, in 1985 it would be back in Paris for the first time since 1961. I had attended the Congress in Moscow (as, for that matter, the Tenth in 1976, at Edinburgh, Scotland). But the period between 1979 and 1982 had resulted in an academic-based operation Langley had put on the fast track.
And it was mine alone. Unfortunately, “stove piping” intervened and put my cover at risk. It probably also resulted in the death of an innocent.
It started when I was put on a panel with a rising star in the DDR (East German) political science scholarly elite at the 11th World Congress in Moscow. The fellow was also a high-ranking officer in the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärun (HVA, the “Main Directorate for Reconnaissance”), the East German foreign intelligence agency. I then spent the intervening three years developing a scholarly and professional relationship.
For reasons disclosed at the end of this story, I will call him Fritz (not his real name).
But first, I need to provide some history.
The HVA was the premier division of the infamous Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS,). As a DDR domestic intel agency, Stasi was rumored to have kept files on more than half of its own population. It also had files on foreigners who came in contact with, or were objects of interest to, HVA and Stasi. Much of the archives were destroyed in several fires just before and after German unification. But I got a look at what remained of my file in 1995. It was distressingly accurate.
At the time, HVA was led by the legendary Colonel General Markus Wolf. For decades, Wolf was probably the most highly regarded intel chief (by all sides) in the world, known with some admiration as “the man without a face.” HVA was also widely considered the most efficient foreign intelligence agency throughout the Cold War.
Wolf would remain as HVA head for almost 35 years and as the number two at Stasi for almost that long, leaving in 1986. With the unification of Germany, it would later be determined that Wolf’s HVA officers and assets had successfully penetrated all levels of the West German government, including individuals on the personal staff of the Chancellor.
Wolf is the basis for the character Karla made famous in the George Smiley novel trilogy of David J. M. Cornwell (much better known by his nom de plume as John Le Carré). David, by the way, was a former MI6 (UK foreign) and MI5 (UK domestic) intel officer. Our paths also crossed, but that is an altogether separate story.
The real Wolf first attempted to seek asylum in Moscow and Vienna but was rejected in both. After returning home, he was arrested and then successfully fought three court indictments after unification. He died in 2006.
I have been to his gravesite at Gudrunstraße Friedrichsfelde in the Lichtenberg section of what had been East Berlin. The “central cemetery” had also been the burial location for the most famous East German politicians and socialists. Rosa Luxembourg, for example, is interred there. Markus Wolf is buried alongside his brother Konrad.
Some still believe he escaped punishment because of the many individuals in German politics whose careers would have been destroyed if their complicity had come out.
I certainly know of at least one such person, the initial target in Rio – Fritz.
Anyway, more on that in a moment.
The HVA was divided into some twenty departments (Abteilungen), several task forces (Arbeitsgruppen), a headquarters division, and a science & technology sector (SWT) whose specialists went across various HVA divisions.
SWT authority cut the wrong way among several of the Stasi leadership and provided ongoing friction. This led one of the five HVA deputy directors (Major General Heinrich Tauchert) to indicate he might be willing to defect.
Unfortunately, the good general was also a heavy drinker, known to spout off while intoxicated saying things he would later disavow when sober. Frtiz was close to Tauchert, an intel patron. I was grooming Fritz to determine whether: (1) the general was serious; and (2) had information sufficient to justify what was going to be a very difficult exfiltration.
Contrary to what Hollywood wants you to believe, getting somebody out from behind Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” was exceptionally difficult. Normally, you try to entice them someplace else and then grab them there. But Tauchert rarely traveled to the West.
Fritz could have been the solution. We were considering a package deal (a two-for-one if you will) with Fritz having a reason to bring the general to a better location elsewhere in Europe where the dual extraction would take place.
There were indications that Fritz might want to move. He was highly intelligent, impatient, and indicated he would like to pursue an academic/scholarly life in a more open environment. Over the several years between our meetings in Moscow and Rio, we also had the opportunity to meet under international conference cover at several locations.
It became clear to me that Fritz may be a better target than his patron. He had been spending years traveling outside East Germany and had the responsibility of identifying and turning assets in the West. That might be more useful than a drunken general.
Well, my responsibility was to assess all this and make a recommendation back to Langley. It was not to orchestrate a defection of anybody in Rio.
Events intervened to change that and put Fritz and I in some difficulties.
The World Congress was always quite careful about balancing panel participants among East, West, and what was then called the Third World. Each panel had a chair, two paper presenters, and two discussants. These last were usually more junior faculty charged with commenting on the papers given. Fritz was the chair and a Romanian and I provided the formal papers. The two discussants were from Brazil and Poland.
There were also security folks from the communist delegations watching their academics and the rest of us. They would “platoon” the work with officers watching other nationals as well. On several occasions I would observe HVA guys watching other Eastern Europeans, while KGB watched the Russians and all the other Eastern bloc intel at the congress. These guys were obvious. They may be listed as delegates to the congress, had official name badges (although probably not listing their real names), and stayed at the same hotels as we did. But they stuck out as obviously having no subject knowledge. I had a list of most HVA there. By 1982, their personnel dressed like everybody else in the West. The former stubby ties straight out of 50s noir movies had been moved down the food chain to the Bulgarians.
Nonetheless, it required Fritz and I contact only during conference events, meals, receptions, and the cultural programs.
The young Pole threw a major monkey wrench into everything. He started spending a lot of time with me, beginning at the congress’ gala opening at a luxury hotel in the mountains southwest of Rio. By the third day of the seven-day congress he finally revealed that he wanted to defect. I had no idea who he was or what he had (if anything). But it certainly complicated my life. It was apparent he was not an intelligence officer and that he considered me only a senior political scientist from the West.
Now there was a standard protocol for this. But strange as it might seem, I had no intel support base at the congress. It required a plan be fashioned on short notice. I needed to contact the relevant office at the American consulate and coordinate. This was not as easy as it sounds. Brazil’s capital, the location of the US embassy and the CIA Chief of Station (COS), is Brasilia, over a thousand miles into the jungle northwest of Rio. The second largest office was in Sao Paolo. Rio had a decent consulate contingent but was not equipped to make such a decision on its own.
It took 16 hours to get a reading from Langley, set up a debriefing on the fly, and determine how to move the Pole to the meeting without arousing any suspicion. I decided to invite him on one of the several tours of the city arranged for the delegates. This one had a long stop at the city’s famous old cathedral which included time to look around.
Located in downtown Rio, this Carmelite church was completed in the mid-1700s and is known by the locals as Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Monte do Carmo da antiga Se (“Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel of the Ancient See”). It remains one of the most historically important buildings in the city with some astounding internal architecture and art.
I took him in the front, out a side door, and across an adjoining park to a safe house. Once the meeting was over, I collected a now frazzled Pole, and we rejoined the tour.
That night over dinner, Fritz was noticeably agitated. The next day the Pole did not show up for our panel. I never saw him again.
The initial plan with Fritz and his boss had to be shelved. Ultimately, Fritz absent the general moved to a small liberal arts college in the West, assisted by the agency. Yet that was not the end of the story.
At the next IPSA World Congress in 1985 (Paris), Fritz and I met up again. Our last meeting (to date) occurred in 2008 in London (once again on the fringes of a scholarly conference). I had known by that point he had defected earlier and by the early 1990s had been able to get his family out. On the other hand, by 1992, Tauchert had fallen into the dusty pages of history.
What I learned from acrimonious conversations with “my” people that started upon the return from Rio confirmed my suspicions. The Pole had been whisked off home and was not heard from again (hardly a good sign). He had been compromised. Fritz assured me he had nothing to do with it, but I found out who did.
Back to the earlier mentioned stovepipe problem.
One of the recurring problems in the intelligence business is how information is moved up the chain. It usually travels vertically, not horizontally. “Need to know” insulates who sees it. It ends up with channels looking like stovepipes running parallel but never intersecting. There can often be little way to deflect an idea or conclusion by introducing contrary views.
Somebody higher in US command had decided that the fiction of what a drunken Tauchert could provide trumped anything or anybody else. The Pole was expendable. His overseers were alerted and my folks simply looked the other way. Fritz and I were pawns in a stupid game of Risk that never went anywhere. We both survived but somebody else did not.
Yet, I hardly could take the moral highroad in the episode. I had (and would) do similar calculations of expediency with other people’s lives during my career.
However, I did insist on one requirement in all my operations from the Rio affair forward. I either set up my own support system in country or went in solo. I had no intention of trusting some paper pushing desk jockey back at Langley with my life.
Dr. Kent Moors
This is an installment of Classified Intelligence Brief, your guide to what’s really happening behind the headlines… and how to profit from it.
Dr. Kent Moors served the United States for 30 years as one of the most highly decorated intelligence operatives alive today (including THREE Presidential commendations). After moving through the inner circles of royalty, oligarchs, billionaires, and the uber-rich, he discovered some of the most important secrets regarding finance, geo-politics, and business. As a result, he built one of the most impressive rolodexes in the world. His insights and network of contacts took him from a Vietnam veteran to becoming one of the globe’s most sought after consultants, with clients including six of the largest energy companies and the United States government.
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