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

Although technically this was a “sexual recruitment” and in internal KGB reports it would be referred to in this way, it was not a contrived sexual entrapment in the traditional sense. Gone were the days when the KGB relied on blackmail to recruit a foreign agent. In fact, in KGB school the anecdote was told about the Soviet “swallow” who lured a diplomatic official into bed so photographs could be taken of him in a compromising position; and when he was presented with the pictures and told they would be shown to his wife unless he agreed to collaborate with the KGB, the fellow had held the photos up to the light for a better look, complimented their high quality, and said he didn’t mind at all their being shown to his wife because they would prove how virile he was.

Experience had shown that blackmail subjected a person to great psychological pressures that backfired more often than not. The recruit would become resentful and angry toward those who were blackmailing him and would begin to look for a way out of his predicament. The modus operandi these days called for cultivation through emotional attachment. Gradually and subtly drawing the subject in through friendship, and then intimacy, so that when he agreed to become an agent he would be motivated by positive feelings.

Violetta was instructed not to rush things but to let each step evolve naturally. She could agree to meet with the Marine, but she should act with the discretion and caution he would expect of a Russian citizen who was breaking the law by seeing him. She should take steps to avoid the attention of authorities so he would become convinced that she was engaging in authentically clandestine contacts, and she should encourage him to behave circumspectly within the embassy so as not to draw attention to their relationship.

She was also told to write down the details of every conversation she had with Lonetree the day she had them or immediately the next morning, so she wouldn’t forget anything. Included was to be all he said that related to his background, his family, his friends, and his vulnerabilities as he verbalized them. This information would be entered into his dossier for the purpose of analysis and checked against the information that had come in from America.

For a nonprofessional Violetta played her part superbly, bringing the relationship along systematically, and over the next few months the development of Sergeant Lonetree proceeded by the book. The only people in the KGB who had reason to complain were the outdoor surveillance people who were assigned to follow Lonetree whenever he left the embassy, including the night details when they stood outside Violetta’s apartment in the freezing cold, cursing their jobs and “the American who lost himself in a Russian cunt.”

According to the KGB textbooks, the time for a professionally trained handler to enter the picture is that moment when the person realizes that if he tries to take a step backward it will hurt him more than if he continues to go forward. When he is caught and knows no amount of thrashing will throw the hook, in other words. Usually it took months and even years to reach this point, but in Lonetree’s case there was a scheduling consideration. He had already extended his Moscow tour of duty once and was supposed to be transferred to Vienna in March 1986. For this reason, sanction for the consolidation of his recruitment was given in December of 1985, and it was signed by Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov, chairman of the KGB since 1982, who had taken a personal interest in the case.

The selection of Aleksei Yefimov to act as Lonetree’s handler reveals a lot of what was happening internally to the KGB at this time. In his mid-thirties, Yefimov was one of the new generation of KGB officers. He had joined the KGB through his own initiative, enlisting as a border guard; and when he proved to be smart and dedicated, his superiors recommended him for the Higher KGB school. Upon completion of his studies he was assigned to the department that oversaw Russians who had frequent contacts with foreign tourists and press people, and after attaining the rank of captain he had been promoted to the position of deputy chief of the branch that supervised UPDK workers at the American Embassy.

Although it was a step up, new pressures came with the job. The department was run with an iron hand by an old Stalinist wolf, Col. Aleksei Barovikov, a gruff, narrow-minded man who thought the new generation of KGB officers had it too easy. It was the department’s responsibility to collect information about the internal order of the American Embassy and American personnel, and the UPDK workers reported to his staff what they saw, whom they talked to, what they talked about, who paid attention to them—things like that. But nothing was absolute, and not everyone was reporting what they should. Some gave partial reports and kept things to themselves, such as favors Americans had done them and the extent of personal friendships. There had been a time when Russians would not have dared think of withholding information, but fear of the KGB was on the wane and these days you could never be sure who was telling the truth or who was playing tricks.

When Violetta had been escorted into his office and told him of her strange situation, Yefimov’s first thought had been, Why is she telling me this? She could have simply discouraged the Marine, and that would have been the end of it. That she didn’t, made him think she was personally drawn to intrigues and that maybe she was one of those pretty, nervy girls who wanted to work at a foreign embassy for the fun of “fucking around” with a Westerner, and who entertained the outside hope that she might possibly marry a foreigner and leave the country. Yefimov had become a cynic by this time. Russians who worked at the American Embassy knew the score, and he’d come to the conclusion that most of them accepted the conditions because they had some kind of personal goal in mind. Rather than their being exploited by the security services, which was the popular myth, he thought it was often the other way around.

Over the course of the next few months, as Violetta developed a deepening relationship with Lonetree, Yefimov was kept informed of its progress but was not involved in a direct way. Instead he was occupied with his own American Embassy contacts. In his position he had been authorized to meet regularly with specific State Department officials for informal exchanges of ideas and information, and since 1983 he had actively maintained a relationship with several diplomats, answering their questions about new members of the Politburo while making his own inquiries into American attitudes toward the Strategic Defense Initiative.

This made it all the more startling to him when Colonel Barovikov called him in and told him that the decision had been made “to use this situation for our purposes,” and that he, Yefimov, had been chosen to consummate the recruitment of the Marine guard.

Yefimov reminded the colonel that he had very little experience in intelligence gathering and operative work, and suggested that surely there were more seasoned counterintelligence agents who were trained for spywork. His superior said there was no one qualified who was available, and besides, to bring in an agent from elsewhere would only complicate things.

Yefimov made no further protest because he understood the situation. This operation already included several employees of the First Department, dozens from the Surveillance Department, and a number from the Twelfth, which handled secret technical observations, such as wiretaps and videotapes. To ask for a counterintelligence expert would mean more people, more bosses, another layer of bureaucracy. Barovikov’s desire to keep control of the operation rather than seek assistance was typical of a system that was based on rewards. If this operation was a success, credit for recruiting a foreign agent would have to be shared, and the colonel wanted to keep as much for himself as he could.