Circle of Treason by Sandra V. Grimes

before the KGB reacted to knowledge of his fifteen years of spying for the United States. That he was a Hero of the Soviet Union recipient, the Russian equivalent of a Medal of Honor, and was a legendary figure within the corridors of the First Chief Directorate were believed to have also played a role in delaying the arrest.
    In March 1962 Kulak, later encrypted FEDORA by the FBI for internal use, and JADE for correspondence to and from the CIA, walked into the FBI field office in New York City and volunteered his services to American intelligence in exchange for cash. An odd duck in the world of espionage, he was more scientist than KGB case officer, and later asked the FBI for assistance in the form of double agents. (On occasion the FBI and CIA provided double or “controlled” agents to their recruited KGB and GRU sources to enhance the source’s operational record with his parent service. The double agent ostensibly agreed to cooperate with and provide information to the source and his organization, but in actuality was under the direction and control of the CIA or FBI. Such operations were always handled with the source’s input, and the double agent was never aware of the source’s clandestine relationship with American intelligence.)
    For thirteen years Kulak, whose CIA code name was CKKAYO, served in the United States on two separate tours. Between these tours he was assigned to Moscow, but we had no contact with him there. During the entire period of his U.S. assignments, the CIA’s knowledge of his cooperation with the FBI was limited to general-interest counterintelligence reporting and some positive intelligence. With the presumed exception of Angleton, the CIA was unaware of any operational details of the case such as meeting arrangements, debriefing language, and documentary production if any.
    What caused this bureaucratically polite but distant relationship between the two organizations on the Kulak case? It could be summed up in two words: bona fides. As with Polyakov, Kulak was a target of Angleton’s and his cadre of Monster Plot theorists, initially simply because he was a KGB officer who volunteered within months of Polyakov’s approach. As they viewed it, this could not be a coincidence; this was the hidden hand of the KGB directing the operation. Conversely, Hoover and his special agents believed that Kulak (as Polyakov) was the genuine article, and resented Angleton’s, ergo the CIA’s, intrusion in an FBI operation about which they knew little. The rift only widened following the defection of KGB officer Nosenko in 1964 and subsequent reporting by Kulak that supported Nosenko’s legitimacy, a position Angleton never accepted.
    Following the removal of Angleton as Chief of the Counterintelligence Staff in December 1974 and his subsequent retirement in 1975, the official CIA position on Kulak’s bona fides began to take a 180-degree turn. Angleton was replaced by George Kalaris, who brought in career SE Division reports officer Leonard McCoy as his deputy. Earlier in his career McCoy, a renowned authority on Soviet military and political matters, had incurred the wrath of the Angletonians for his support of the bona fides of Nosenko, Polyakov, and others. He also believed that Kulak’s bona fides were supported by the information the FBI had supplied to the CIA, even though it was limited in volume and scope.
    At the time the CIA began to rethink its official position on Kulak, so too did the FBI. In a bizarre twist senior FBI Special Agent and counterintelligence expert James Nolan conducted a review of the Kulak case and concluded that it had been a KGB-controlled operation from inception. The FBI now believed that Hoover’s premier source was a phoney.At CIA headquarters news of the Bureau’s about-face was greeted with disbelief and bewilderment. McCoy decided to challenge their findings and requested CIA access to the FBI files on the