THE SPY WHO GOT AWAY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100040034-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 27, 2011
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: November 2, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/09/27: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100040034-2
ARTICLE ED NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZD
ON PAGE _LA= ~ 2 November 1986
THE SPY
WHO GOTAWAY
Edward Lee Howard was a efforts compromised Now
C.I.A. remit bound for It has been learned that
Moscow. Dismissed, he another ex-C.I.A. agent
eluded the F.B.I., defected was aware of the bed'ayai.
WW left U.S. inteftsnce
By David Wise
N THE SILENCE JUST BEFORE TWI-
light in the desert near Santa Fe, the sky
changes colors, shading to pinks and reds,
and the sunset casts an orange glow on the
golden snakeweed, the prickly pear cactuses
and the juniper trees. The Sangre de Cristo
mountains turn purple, then swiftly black.
Suddenly, the first stars appear and the
night belongs to the coyotes, the chirping
toads and the owls.
On just such a night a little more than a
year ago, with the clouds racing past a quar-
ter-moon, Edward Lee Howard, a 33-year-
old former officer of the Central Intelligence Agen-
cy, slipped away from agents of the Federal Bu-
reau of Investigation and vanished.
On Aug. 7 of this year, he surfaced in Moscow,
granted political asylum by the Russians. Accord-
ing to intelligence officials, Howard betrayed the
methods used by the C.I.A. to contact its spies -
"assets" in intelligence jargon - in the Soviet
Union, leading directly to the arrest of one such
C.I.A. asset, Soviet defense researcher Adolf G.
Tolkachev, whose execution was announced a week
and a half ago by Tass, the Soviet news agency.
Howard's information also may have led to the ex-
pulsion from Moscow of several American intelli-
gence agents and the detention of other Soviet citi-
zens who were working for the C.I.A.
Howard is the first known C.I.A. man to have de-
fected to the Soviet Union in the 39-year history of
the agency. His defection was, perhaps, the great-
est embarrassment ever suffered by the C.I.A. But
a second former C.I.A. man, whose identity and
role have been a tightly guarded secret, is also a
key figure in the case. The second man is William
G. Bosch.
F.B.I. agents tracked Bosch down on South
Padre Island, at the southernmost tip of Texas,
near the Mexican border. For four days, they inter-
rogated him, even as other agents maintained a 24-
hour surveillance on Howard in Santa Fe, N.M. Ac-
cording to intelligence sources, Bosch finally told
the F.B.I. ,
fided to hi:
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vastly embarrassed the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. Be-
hind the scenes, there has been a good deal of fin-
ger-pointing between the two agencies - each
blaming the other.
The existence of a second man in the case is only
one of many startling aspects that surround the af-
fair. While many facets of the case remain unclear,
an in-depth investigation, including dozens of inter-
views with Howard's family, friends, associates,
neighbors and Government officials, among them
a number of persons in the intelligence agencies,
has revealed other surprising information, much
of which has not previously been disclosed:
^ Edward Howard and his wife, Mary, were both
employed by the C.I.A.'s Directorate of Operations,
the agency's clandestine arm. They were trained
by the agency to operate in Moscow as a husband-
and-wife spy team.
^ Only one F. B.I. agent was watching the Howards'
house on Sept. 21, 1985, as Mary Howard helped her
husband escape by driving home with a dummy in
the front seat, a dummy made of clothes shaped in
a human form and topped with a wig stand for its
head. In the darkness, the agent apparently mis-
took the dummy for Howard - a ruse that gave the
ex-spy a 24-hour head start.
^Mary Howard further aided her husband's escape
by playing a tape recording of his voice over their
telephone that fooled F.B.I. agents, who were wire-
tapping the phone, into believing he was still at
home.
uMary Howard was with her husband at an Aus-
trian ski resort near the Swiss border on Sept. 20,
1984, during a trip when the F.B.I. believes he met
with KG.B. agents. But she insists he was only
gone from their hotel room for a short time and
maintains she never had any knowledge of his al-
leged spying for the Russians. For a year after her
husband vanished, Mary Howard declined to talk
Coobnuea
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/09/27: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100040034-2