Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

“By a stroke of good fortune, somebody found my memorandums and showed them to the President’s old college roommate, an academician who’d written several books on the Soviet Union and the cold war. He was made an Assistant Secretary of State, and as things later turned out, the White House turned over all the former Soviet states to him.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Are we talking Milton Martin?”

“Yeah, Milt. He brought me in and interviewed me. I made a good impression and he offered me a position.”

“And what position was that?”

“His special assistant.”

“You were Martin’s special assistant?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Right. That’s what you said.” I very curiously asked, “And what did that involve?”

“Well, Milt’s problem was he hadn’t spent any time in government. He was vulnerable. Since I had considerable Washington experience, the idea was that I’d represent him and his views in Washington, which freed him up to travel as much as he needed.”

I kept nodding my head and tried to take this in. The title of Assistant Secretary of Anything is ordinarily a fairly banal position in Washington. Secretaries of Something are walking gods. Deputy and Undersecretaries of Whatever are mystical creatures with lethal wands. But there are so many Assistant Secretaries that they’re like bunnies in the forest, living in the shadow of the redwoods, groping silently around the roots and hoping not to get stepped on.

Milt Martin was an exception to the rule. Actually, the exception. He’d been one of the President’s best chums since they’d roomed together in college, and even the Secretaries of Something trembled when he walked into a room. In Washington, image trumps all, and whether he did or didn’t, everybody believed Martin had the power to pick up the phone and call his old roomie and say, “Yo, boss, you know that jerk you hired to head the Treasury Department? Well, he pisses me off. Fire him.”

Nor did I have to wonder how those critical memorandums worked their way into Martin’s office. Morrison had few equals as a bureaucratic panderer-I’d seen him in action and knew this firsthand. He’d likely found a slick way to have somebody bring them to Martin’s attention.

I said, “And how long were you Martin’s assistant?”

“Four years.”

“Did you travel with him?”

“Not in the beginning. After a year, though, he said I was too indispensable. I handled everything: his correspondence, his speeches, his position papers.”

“Were you still reporting your contacts with Russians?”

“Shit, how could I? On a trip I’d meet hundreds of Russians. I’d be in conference rooms where they were coming in and out. Afterward there’d be a big reception or a dinner with dozens of guests.”

“That’s not good. The prosecution can say you had constant contacts that afforded you ample chances to betray secrets.”

“I was rarely alone. I was almost always with Milt.”

“And he was preoccupied. And he trusted you. He wasn’t watching to see if you were passing microfilms or documents.”

“And what do you expect me to do about that, Drummond?”

“Nothing.” I rubbed my temples as I contemplated the ease with which Eddie could show Morrison’s opportunities for treason. “It’s a vulnerability we have to be aware of. What happened next?”

“After the President was reelected, I told Milt I needed to move on. I explained how the Army worked, that I needed new, increasingly more important positions in order to get promoted.”

“And how did he take that?”

“You know, he said he’d been thinking the same thing. He suggested a position on the National Security Council staff.”

“And you said?”

“Are you kidding? It was perfect. He and I shared a very close personal relationship, were in sync on the issues, and we both knew we’d be watching each other’s backsides.”

“And what did your new duties entail?”

“I headed up the former Soviet Affairs part of the staff. I was the guy who prepared all the interagency policy papers, who briefed the President before trips, who coordinated our positions toward all the former Soviet states.”

I felt a headache start to pulse. Ordinarily an impressive resume is just that: impressive. In his case, it was an anchor tied to his feet. In trying to ascertain what he’d been privy to, I’d learned that for ten years he’d seen everything. I mean, think of what damage Ames and Hanssen had done-both low-level spooks-and all the excitement they’d caused.

I asked, “And what was Mary doing during all those years?”

“Several jobs. She was in Analysis, doing the same kind of work I’d been doing. But when the Ames affair broke, a number of Soviet specialists were caught in the backlash. People who had nothing to do with Ames were beartrapped by other improprieties-cheating on taxes, drinking too much, all kinds of things. Everybody got scrutinized, and the result was a bloodbath. Those who survived became even more valuable because the ranks of trained Sovietologists had been thinned so much.”

“And Mary was one of those survivors?”

“Oh, better than that. Mary helped handle the investigation.”

“Tell me about that.”

“She was the one who discovered that some of the betrayals attributed to Ames couldn’t have been done by him.”

“How’d she uncover that?”

“By correlating the events and assumed disclosures against where Ames was at the time, what he had access to. She realized he couldn’t possibly have done all the damage being blamed on him.”

“And that meant… what? Another mole?”

He nodded. “So the Agency put her in charge of a small, very sensitive compartment to find the other mole. It had to be handled quietly, because people on the Hill were so angry about Ames that they were actually talking about disbanding the CIA. The Agency was scared.”

“The CIA’s general counsel intimated you had knowledge of her activities. Did you?”

“Of course. She was my wife, and I was cleared to know everything she was doing.”

“So you knew about her efforts to find the mole?”

“Actually, I was part of those efforts.”

My headache lurched toward a ten on the Richter scale. I drew a deep breath and said, “Please describe that.”

“It started with filters to see how many employees had access to the knowledge that had been betrayed. That turned up a large group, hundreds of people. So Mary came up with the idea to try a few entrapments: We laid bait for the mole. We designed a few operations and distributed some classified assessments to see if any were leaked to the other side. And I was the guy pushing the bait through the system.”

“And then what happened?”

“Causes and effects were built into each entrapment. We watched for the effects, but we never saw any.”

“And what came next?”

“After several years, they decided to move Mary. She’d had her chance and come up short, so they moved someone else in.”

I shook my head while he waited for the next question. Frankly, I already had enough to think about. He and his wife had lain in bed at night talking about how to catch the mole the government now believed was him. His increasingly important positions gave him access to the most sensitive secrets imaginable, and because he was an Army officer, he hadn’t been subjected to the lie-detector tests CIA people take on a regular basis.

As much as CIA people hate them, the truth is that years of passing those tests bends the benefit of doubt in their direction. To the best I could see, my client had no counterweights to sway the benefit of doubt even remotely in his direction.

I got up and began packing my papers in my briefcase. I said, “One last question.”