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

Yefimov was not in a position to argue, and dutifully he asked Lonetree if he agreed with Marx that objective future historical developments were on the side of Communism, and what his thoughts were about President Reagan’s position on medium-range missiles in Europe. But privately he fumed at the interference of these nonprofessionals in the operation. And when the word came down that he should ask Lonetree if he would be willing to seek political asylum, Yefimov almost rebelled. He knew what they were thinking—that Lonetree would make for a great propaganda exhibition, paraded before the cameras, and then given a consultant’s position at one of the intelligence schools. But he knew too that this was dilettantism. In any respectable intelligence operation, political asylum was a last recourse, offered only to foreign agents who found themselves on the border of catastrophe. Certainly he recognized the political benefits of defection, but he also knew that what this would be saying to the other side was that Lonetree’s propaganda value was worth more than his spying activities.

This was what Yefimov had been afraid of: that interference from bosses, who wanted more from Lonetree than he could logically produce, would create tensions that would complicate the operation. And when Lonetree was transferred to Vienna, things proceeded downhill at an accelerating rate for more bureaucratic reasons.

Just as an interservice rivalry existed between the CIA and the FBI in the United States, a similar competition thrived in the Soviet Union between the Second Chief Directorate, whose responsibilities were internal security and who conducted counterintelligence operations, and the First Chief Directorate, whose activities took place on foreign soil and were oriented toward intelligence gathering. The First thought the personnel in the Second were unsophisticated and possessed limited creativity, while the Second thought those in the First were overconfident and untrustworthy, as proved by the larger number of traitors from their ranks.

When Lonetree was still in Moscow, top officials in Intelligence had heard that Counterintelligence had successfully recruited an American Marine, and Intelligence made inquiries, believing the information he was providing might be of use to them. But the Second had been protective of their agent and refused to reply. Even after Lonetree left town and was stationed in a foreign city, they had been reluctant to pass him along to the other service because a lot of effort and money had been expended, his recruitment looked good on their reports, and they knew that once he was in the hands of Intelligence, the very top bosses would forget who had recruited him.

While this internal bickering was going on, Yefimov had been flying into and out of Vienna and continuing to handle the agent. But he could see that Lonetree was becoming increasingly discontent with his role. He was missing meetings. He was not responding to requests. He was drinking heavily, a sure sign of stress. And Yefimov felt he understood the nature of the problem: Lonetree was a fish on a hook, but the worm was gone. Letters from and pictures of Violetta weren’t enough.

In a report he filed, he suggested that Violetta be allowed to accompany him on the next trip. Give the two lovebirds a few days together, he recommended. As it was, Lonetree had nothing with which to combat his feelings of guilt for his spying activities.

But the bosses had refused to sanction a visit, because by this time they were afraid that Violetta herself was unreliable. It all went back to an insulting remark made to her by someone in the department about the fact that she was sleeping with the Marine. Operationally her sleeping with Lonetree had been a legitimate step; the comment had been more a reflection of a chauvinistic attitude among certain agents who suspected that Russian women enjoyed having affairs with Western men. Violetta had taken offense and threatened to quit. A tense situation had resulted and the operation hung in the balance before she was calmed down, but her fierce reaction made her superiors suspect that she had crossed over a line and gotten personally involved. Which angered them, because she had known the rules of the game before she got involved, she had agreed to play the game, and she should not have let herself forget that it was just a game.

It also reminded them that a person who was willing to engage in duplicity and deception with a target might be willing to do the same with an organ of the state.

In October 1986, Chairman Chebrikov put an end to the dispute when he formalized the transfer of Lonetree from Counter-intelligence to Intelligence. Yefimov was instructed to prepare Lonetree for the transition. But even as he did this, Yefimov suspected that the outcome was inevitable. Lonetree, in Yefimov’s mind, was a nechiporenko. Literally the word translated as “condemned agent,” though in this case it meant someone whose value was used up and whom sooner or later they could expect to lose.

He had no idea what plans Intelligence had for Lonetree. Had he been asked for his advice, he would have said use him as a “sleeper”—leave him alone, let him go on with his life, hope that he would be elevated to a career in a sensitive intelligence position, and if so, recontact him at a later date.

He didn’t know that KGB agents operating out of the Soviet Embassy in Vienna had detected CIA personnel lurking around his meetings with Lonetree, suggesting that American counterintelligence people were aware of the Marine’s espionage activities. Nor did he know that rather than continuing to task Lonetree for information from inside the embassy in Vienna, Intelligence had other uses in mind. Such as converting him to a chip in a double-agent operation run at the CIA, in which a Soviet intelligence agent would bona-fide himself by providing exclusive details about a leak inside an American embassy. Or exposing Lonetree in a way that would provide protective cover to a more important source of inside information.

As a rule the KGB paid very little attention to the motivation of its agents, provided it had a handle on them. Its main concern was to establish control, and it didn’t really care whether anybody liked it or not. The security services knew, for instance, that UPDK workers were generally so grateful for their jobs that fear of losing their employment status was not just an adequate driving force, it was insurance of loyalty.

For the most part they would be right. One of the things that people not closely acquainted with Soviet life tend to have difficulty understanding is on what an elemental level people in the U.S.S.R. lived, and how extraneous the considerations of motivation were to most people. In this case, however, it was a fundamental miscalculation.

After Violetta had reported that someone was waiting for her when she left the embassy, keeping his distance but following and watching her, and was told they would keep a watchful eye on the situation, she was still anxious about the whole development. Why she had been singled out? she wondered. Were there forces within the embassy that were interested in her for some special reason?

Even before Lonetree approached her, she began to investigate him, asking questions of her coworkers and taking note of his behavior. It didn’t take long for her to conclude it was highly unlikely that he was a Western intelligence agent pretending to be a security guard, though she also determined that he was not a typical Marine. She was put off by the antics and attitudes of most Marines. They reminded her of German shepherds who barked loudly and strained at their collars. This one, however, was more like the shy pup with hurt eyes who hung back. He did not appear to share his fellow Marines’ appreciation for rowdy parties in the Marine House, and seemed to have few if any friends in the detachment. By the time he worked up the nerve to actually approach her, she felt she had nothing to fear from him.