Ex CIA Spy Recalls Her Time in Russia | Hacker News Reader

Ex CIA Spy Recalls Her Time in Russia

wect.com

101 pointskafkaesq26 comments

> I worked my job in the embassy, but nights and weekends, I was out picking up and putting out dead drops and looking for new dead drop sites and putting markings on bus stops and telephone poles.

That seems pretty routine for running a spy ring. Aside from being apprehended due to a relatively high profile source, and then that source killing themselves, it doesn't seem terribly exciting. Perhaps they are not marketing the book enough.

For tales from the "other" side I would recommend "Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer" by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Cherkashin. That was has all kinds of interesting details of general life and spycraft from the Cold War period, all coming from the handler of both Ames and Hanssen -- probably two of the highest level traitors from the US side.

Along the same lines, I thought this was good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquarium_%28Suvorov%29

Yep, a very good book. Also, it shows that being a spy is mostly drudge work. For example, he would observe a place for days/weeks before he was convinced it would be a safe pick up point.

This a good read, but keep in my a lot of things are pure propaganda. Soviets wanted someone to write how scary they are. After all he didn't end up like Litvinenko.

> That seems pretty routine for running a spy ring. Aside from being apprehended due to a relatively high profile source, and then that source killing themselves, it doesn't seem terribly exciting.

I could tell you about routine days in an IT organization, but I have no idea what is routine when running a spy ring. Also, if that's not exciting enough, I can only wonder what you do and how you find time to post in HN!

> I can only wonder what you do

Well wonder no more! I'll tell you if you are so curious: I like to play with my kids, spend time with my family, read books, watch documentaries (includes Cold War stories and such sometimes), and garden.

There is a whole world outside of IT, you know ;-)

>> There is a whole world outside of IT, you know ;-)

:gasp:

:faints:

Always nice to hear stories about old-school spycraft. As an aside, for a less romantic view of the agency and its history Legacy of Ashes is a good read.

Legacy of Ashes was indeed a good read...I've made it a point in my life to read the works of all National Book Award winners, and have not been disappointed...

World War II essentially brought the CIA into being...I'm sure the thinking at the time was "we've got to prevent catastrophes like this from ever happening again"...

Light embassy work, Mrs. Peterson's cover, was typical of that era...easy to see why the Soviets were on to the game...a nice looking young woman, embassy employee, out and about just a little more often than chance seemed to call for...

The denouement--her contact's suicide in the interrogation chair--made me wonder how often such scenes played out over the years, on both sides, without the public knowing ...a lonely profession that could end at any moment...

For a nice relaxing look into somewhat-dated spy-craft I usually turn to John LeCarre...his pace is magnificent, evidence of a writer who nailed the seminal advice given to all aspiring writers--"find your voice"...informed and superb characterization separate his works from those in the craft who likely know much more, but lack his narrative skills...

Thanks for posting...

> made me wonder how often such scenes played out over the years

I would guess not many. Mainly because the KGB learned their lession. Here is there video of them apprehending Dmitri Polyakov, a high ranking general working for the CIA for 25-something years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0-1ogBb6kg [warning: man being held and his shirt is taken off]

Notice how they are holding him and what they are doing to him. It is presumably so he doesn't have a chance to swallow a poision pill or inject himself. .

>> World War II essentially brought the CIA into being...I'm sure the thinking at the time was "we've got to prevent catastrophes like this from ever happening again"...

I kind of thought the idea with the CIA was to have a secret agency serving USA interests abroad?

I read it, but honestly that book was very boringly written and could have been much improved if it had been half as long. It also felt like the author had a political agenda so I don't know how much I can trust it.

But it did finally make me accept one thing: it really is possible for the entire US defence system to overlook all the evidence for 9/11 - they really are that incompetent.

If you enjoyed this story, you'll probably like the book "The Billion Dollar Spy" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23463183-the-billion-dol... that goes deep into the story of Adolf Tolkachev (among others) https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...

Trigon was in fact already dead well before she was picked up. Peterson was not a subject of the KGB and had the misfortune of servicing the dead drop of an exposed asset.

There is a good recounting of this entire event in Spycraft by Wallace and Melton (a very intersting book with lots of tech material).

For those interested there is Soviet movie about that agent - "ТАСС уполномочен заявить" - popular TV series of 1984. And I just realised that it was in fact 1984!

Books by RJ Hillhouse (Riftzone), Claire Berlinsky (Loose Lips), and Ishmael Jones (The Human Factor) are as good if not much, much better.

Thanks for the list, I've added them to my Wish List. But just to be clear, those three books (Rift Zone, Loose Lips, and The Human Factor) are fictional novels. The Widow Spy, written by the subject of this news article, is a non-fiction autobiography by a former CIA officer.

Nope. Human Factor is non fiction. Hillhouse at times seems to strongly suggest she worked for the agency. Same with Berlinsky.

I'm surprised the Soviets let her go. Wonder why they did that ?

The article title is a misnomer: she wasn't a spy, she was an intelligence officer under diplomatic cover, handling the people who were doing the actual spying.

That isn't a differentiation that usually matters when applying the term 'spy' in general.

But it matters in this case, and it explains the confusion of the poster asking the question. A spy would not have been let go.

The diplomatic immunity is what mattered in this case. If it was someone with American citizenship but no other special status it probably would have gone differently.

Actually, its a differentiation that most journalist and editors fail to make primarily because their publications sell better using the term "spy" instead of "(case) officer" for the intelligence agency employee and "agent" or "asset" for the actual spy that is being run.

Unfortunately, that disservice has existed for decades and is probably difficult if not impossible to break.

At a high level, because it would have been directly counterproductive; at a low level, because her cover as an attaché of the US embassy came with diplomatic immunity. This doesn't leave the host country totally unable to respond in the case where a foreign intelligence officer is detected, but it does strictly limit the scope of such response; in practice, the most they can do, and from the sound of it what they did in this case, is declare the offender persona non grata, and put her on the next jet out of Sheremetyevo.

Of course, there's nothing that says the host country can't put a captured foreign intelligence officer in prison, or even execute such a person outright, beyond a simple reciprocal convention that such things aren't done. The reason why that generally doesn't happen is the same reason why civilized nations rarely visit atrocities on prisoners of war: a country which unilaterally abrogates such a convention risks having its own personnel treated just as badly.

In the case of espionage, there's the further, and major, consideration that any abrogation of diplomatic immunity risks a general breakdown of diplomatic relations, a state of affairs which between civilized nations generally presages the outbreak of warfare. Aside perhaps from a few madmen who never approached real power, no one on either side of the Cold War ever wanted it to turn hot, and the entire edifice of Cold War-era espionage existed precisely to help prevent that misfortune from ever coming to pass. Imprisoning foreign intelligence officers would, therefore, have been actively detrimental to the purposes of the nations which might have done so.

> there's nothing that says the host country can't put a captured foreign intelligence officer in prison

There is something that literally says that, which is article 29 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Diplomati...

So, the way we as citizens are subject to the law of our respective governments, is the monopoly of violence. Obviously, a similar mechanism doesn't exist for international law[1], but violating a diplomat is technically casus belli.

Anyway, you're right in that the main sanction is the breakdown of diplomatic relations, but that doesn't mean that the ground rules are vague gentlemen's agreements and handshakes.

1: at least formally -- only a few countries would be able to get away with executing US diplomats without being treated to something resembling a monopoly on violence, yet the Vienna Convention is also respected among countries that could not do that

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