THE SPY WHO GOT AWAY

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP91-00587R000100040041-4
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
September 27, 2011
Sequence Number: 
41
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
November 2, 1986
Content Type: 
OPEN SOURCE
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I& Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/09/27: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100040041-4 ARTICLEAPPiED NEW YORK TIMES M4GA: I ON PAGE fem. Z November 1986 THESPY WHO GOTAWAY Edward Lae Howard Wee a efforts corrprnnsed. Now C.I.A. recrtit board for it has been learned that Moscow. Dlsnrissed, he anotlar ex-C.1.A. agent eluded the F.W., defected was aware of the betrayal Old left U.S. irtsltgence 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 49-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 in Euro nage plat F.B.I. th the Soviet But in that F.B.I was plan in the Ne Edward spiring to South Pad the C.I.A. his statem bled the D complaint Los Angel Former field Turn( Bence was "very critic the Soviet Another i "He wiped To underi through the counterintell seems and nc One thing .,M ALW"aiu ka,r 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. 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. ^Mary 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 K.G.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 Continuea Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/09/27: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100040041-4