Rodney Barker - Dancing with the Devil - Sex, Espionage and the U.S. Marines - The Clayton Lonetree Story

A.W., as she was called within the organization, was a blue-eyed blonde in her early thirties whose prettiness lay buried in a weight problem. She stood five eight and was as strong as a man. She’d been assaulted by a Guamian once, and not only had she repelled her attacker, she’d hurt him. But she dressed with class, wore expensive dresses and jewelry, and was cultured and literate. She was part of the new generation of agents at NIS, which at the time was top-heavy with the old guard, and by virtue of her position in Counterintelligence Investigations, she became the case officer on the Lonetree case.

A desk officer’s job in a federal law-enforcement agency was essentially administrative in nature with little operational input, but A.W.’s role in this investigation took on a larger dimension than was customary. Because so many different agencies had a stake in its outcome, it would span the globe, and every directed lead and document would be prepared and transmitted by her. Most case files can be carried in a folder, this one would require file cabinets and a forklift.

Although this was the first espionage case that the NIS had been handed that involved a military person at a foreign embassy, the unique set of difficulties the case presented were immediately apparent to all. Problem number one was endemic to espionage cases in general: they tended to be elusive crimes, tough to fact-find. Unless the suspect was caught in the act of meeting with agents of a foreign power, his crimes were extremely difficult to prove. The criminal justice system had a far easier time with crimes where the facts were hard and could be presented without reasonable doubt.

Problem number two: In the military a man could not be prosecuted on his word alone. Regardless of the apparent validity of a confession, it could not be admitted as evidence against an accused unless sufficient independent incriminating evidence was available to corroborate its essential details.

Problem number three: Coming up with the proof of Lonetree’s treasonous acts was going to be no simple task, because unlike normal investigative procedures, NIS would be compelled to work back from his confession to perfect a case for prosecution.

Problem number four: By virtue of the hostile environment in which the crimes occurred, they would be hindered from an examination of the crime scene, surveillance of the subject and observation of coconspirators, collection of evidence, timely interviews of critical witnesses, analysis of travel patterns, and other normal investigative actions.

Problem number five: The standards of proof in an espionage case were tricky to meet. If Lonetree said he stole top-secret documents, it had to be proved that such documents existed, that they were properly classified, that he had had access, and that they weren’t accounted for. If he said he had a meeting with a Soviet agent, his presence at the appointed time and place had to be established, and the only ones who would know about that for certain were Soviet intelligence officers.

Prosecuting espionage was a job that no one did particularly well. Success, when it came, was often a matter of getting the breaks.

Given the passage of time, no one at NIS deemed it necessary to launch a team of agents on a Moscow-bound plane in hopes of retrieving hot pieces of evidence lying on the floor of the American Embassy. It had been almost a year since Lonetree had left the Soviet Union. The most promising grounds for a search party was in Vienna, and NIS agents already had recovered a good deal there.

When Agent Hardgrove had gone to Lonetree’s room in the Marine House in Vienna on December 24, he’d found in Lonetree’s locker a number of rough drafts of letters he’d written to Violetta; a pocket planner in which were written meet dates and places, and, conveniently, a note that read “Meet S’; pieces of paper on which contact instructions were written, apparently from Uncle Sasha; a publication entitled The Complete Spy; the enameled jewelry box Lonetree said Sasha had given him as a present before he left for Vienna; and, under the mattress, a list of names Lonetree said he had compiled in response to Sasha’s request for the names of CIA agents stationed under cover in Vienna.

And that wasn’t all. During the interrogations in London, Lonetree had indicated there was additional evidence in another room located on the same floor of the Marine House, and Hardgrove had gone back to Vienna on December 29 to collect it. This time he found more letters and photographs; a pair of ladies’ black high-heeled shoes, apparently intended as a present for Violetta; and an excerpt from the book The Essentials of Leninism.

While there, Hardgrove had also gone through the Marine House records at the embassy and found a special liberty request from Lonetree for the period of January 5 to January 22, 1987, which coincided with the time he said he was planning on returning to the Soviet Union.

Added to that, A.W. had received confirmation from the CIA that “George” had shown up at the meeting place at the scheduled time. The actual document the CIA sent her was a lot less impressive than she would have liked. She was expecting and hoping for a detailed report containing information the CIA had about George, background on Soviet efforts to recruit American personnel in Vienna, detailed observations of the meet. What she got was a one-paragraph memo that read: Agent John Doe went to the designated place at the appointed time and visibly observed the Soviet agent identified as George. Period. It was nevertheless a critical piece of corroborative information, and its significance was enhanced after an unexpected turn of events.

When Special Agent Moyer returned to Vienna on New Year’s Day to try to reconstruct what Lonetree had admitted in his third statement, nothing checked out. When Moyer attempted to confirm that Lonetree had had access to the communications unit in the Vienna embassy, upon checking the procedure for obtaining manual keys to secured rooms, he was informed they were kept in tamper-proof containers. When Moyer looked at the embassy logs, he determined that Lonetree had not even been on duty during the evening he said he’d stolen the classified material. Furthermore, after interviewing all persons in the embassy who would have had contact with the documents Lonetree had described in detail—down to the color of the paper, the number of pages, the location of the staples, the placement of the “Top Secret” markings—no one had seen or heard of documents of this nature. Even a tracer to the Department of State in Washington, D.C., came up negative.

Following the footsteps of the investigation where they logically led next, Moyer had gone up to the roof of the Marine House, where Lonetree said he had secreted the material in a drainpipe. Lonetree had even drawn a sketch of the location where he said the documents were hidden. And there was nothing there. Nothing to indicate anything ever had been there. No sign of disturbance in the dust and debris.

The only admission in that third statement that could not be ruled out was Lonetree’s claim that he had removed secret documents from the burn bag. One of the security responsibilities of Marines at the embassy was to burn classified material in a rooftop incinerator at night, where all accountability was lost. If Lonetree had rifled through the contents, taking the most sensitive communications to his room and passing them to his handler, no one would know he hadn’t done his job unless the documents surfaced at a later time.

This startling development generated a tremendous amount of consternation at NIS headquarters. To have a statement admitting to espionage crimes, and then, in the process of fact-checking, to determine that some of the admissions did not occur, with all that was already known about Lonetree, was alarming. It threw open the door to the infinite unknown. What other portions of the statement were false? Where did truth end and fiction begin? If he didn’t do it, why did he say he did it? Was he playing some game? Was he trying to discredit everything he’d said before by making wild claims that could be proved to be untrue? Under what conditions was the statement taken? Was there agent misconduct? And what should the NIS do now? It had already committed itself by disseminating Lonetree’s statements to interested agencies, some of whom had gone to general quarters because of potential losses and damage.