Circle of Treason by Sandra V. Grimes Page B

recontact in July 1977 he signaled that he was ready to load one of his dead drops. The package was retrieved and its contents were startling, not so much in the material passed but in what his note promised. Among the items was a list of Soviet officials in the United States working against the American scientific and technical target. The list was neatly hand printed and its detail would have taken Kulak hours to amass and prepare. Further, he stated that in the next exchange in the fall he would include the following: the identities and targets of all Soviet officials and scientists worldwide involved in the collection of U.S. scientific and technical information and the five- and ten-year operational plans of the KGB Scientific and Technical Directorate. The eccentric old scientist was prepared to provide the United States with the KGB blueprint ten years inadvance on the top priority intelligence collection requirement of the day—technology transfer. All we had to do was wait for his signal, retrieve his package, and reap the intelligence bonanza, or so we believed.
    On 15 July 1977, about a week after the recovery of Kulak’s package, the KGB ambushed Moscow Station officer Martha Peterson while she was trying to communicate with CIA source Aleksandr Dmitriyevich Ogorodnik, a Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs officer recruited in Bogota. Two weeks later without incident the station picked up a package from Polyakov filled with hundreds of pages of documents. August was calm, but the first of September brought a second compromise. Station officer Vincent Crockett was arrested servicing a dead drop for CIA source Anatoliy Nikolayevich Filatov, a GRU officer recruited and handled in-place in Algiers. Shortly thereafter CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner ordered a stand-down of all Moscow Station operational activity. There would be no additional embarrassments to the administration. Moscow was closed for business until further notice.
    Turner’s edict was met with an uproar from SE Division and others in the Directorate of Operations. He could not be serious. No one, including the director, could or would shut down the collection of high-level intelligence from the Soviet Union. But Turner stood firm, only adding to the pandemonium when he set the parameters for reconsideration of his decision. Unless or until the directorate could guarantee that there would be no further compromises, the ban would remain in effect. Did we really have a director who did not understand basic tenets of espionage activity? It always involved calculated risk and always violated the laws of the target country. The director’s demands could not be met.
    Kulak became the central figure in the firestorm between the director and SE Division. In another month or so, we would know the KGB’s shortcomings, their strengths, their specific targets, and the identities of all who were targeted against us in the scientific and technical field. At a minimum it would save untold millions in expenditures that would otherwise be necessary to uncover and counter Soviet efforts. These arguments did not impress or dissuade Turner. We had no recourse and only one option—wait to hear from Kulak and then do nothing.
    Kulak signaled his intention to fill his dead drop right on schedule. Bound by Turner’s directive, Moscow Station did not respond with a sign that it was prepared to retrieve the material. Again on schedule Kulakmarked his signal site for a second time. Once more the station took no action. The CIA phase of the Kulak operation that had begun with such promise appeared to have ended in silence. The director had been obeyed, and the files were closed.
    In 1983, while writing The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA , author John Ranelagh interviewed Turner, who is quoted as stating: “My feeling with the DDO was to tell them I wanted to know when they were planning to take a risk above a certain threshold. And