THE SPY WHO GOT AWAY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100170001-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 28, 2011
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: November 2, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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MMTIgEN7pW NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
ON PAGE LJ.. 2 November 1986
the F.B.I. that on a visit to the island, Howard con-
fided to him that he had sold secrets to the K.G.B.
in Europe and sought to enlist him in further espio-
THESPY nage plans. The officials said Bosch also told the
F.B.I. that the two men discussed taking a trip to
the Soviet Embassy in Mexico.
But in a day of high drama, at the very moment
that F.B.I. agents were questioning Bosch, Howard
was planning his successful escape from his home
WHO GOTAWAY in the New Mexico desert.
Edward Lee Howard has been char
ed
g
with con-
spiring to violate the espionage laws by his visit to
Edward Lse flow-- was a effort _ Now South Padre Island. Bosch, who, like Howard, left
the C.I.A. under a cloud, has not been charged. But
C,1 ,~ said bolatd for It F~~ t111R his statements provided the key evidence that ena-
bled the Department of Justice to file a criminal
Dhntisaed, ~-C.IJL complaint against Howard. Bosch, who lives in the
Nneco w. he ex agut Los Angeles area, has declined to comment.
P.~~ 10 PW waste Former Director of Central Intelligence Stan-
field Turner has said that United States intelli-
Na! genre was "very badly hurt" by Howard, who had
and W U.&
kmaga
"ve
ri
ry c
tical information about operations inside
the Soviet Union."
By David Wise "Another intelligence official put it more bluntly:
He wiped out Moscow station."
N THE SILENCE JUST BEFORE TWI- To understand the Howard case, one must ste
light in the desert near Santa Fe, the sky through the lookin p
changes colors, shading to pinks and reds, counterintelligence, where into the murky world of
and the sunset casts an orange glow on the , wre nothing is quite what it
and the sunset ca, the prickly orange glow on the seems and not every question has an answer.
and the juniper trees. The Sangre de Cristo One thing is clear, however. The Howard case
mountains turn purple, then swiftly black. vastly embarrassed the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. Be-
Suddenly, the first stars appear and the hind the scenes, there has been a good deal of fin-
-ing belongs to the coyotes, the chirping bgt between the two agencies -each
toads and the owls. blaming the other.
On just such a night a little more than a The existence of a second man in the case is only
y On gust suh the clouds racing pore than a one of many startling aspects that surround the af-
ter-moon, Edward Lee Howard, a 33-year- fair. While many facets of the case remain unclear,
old former officer of the Central Intelligence Agen- an in- lepth investigation, including dozens of inter-
cy, slipped away from agents of the Federal Bu- views with Howard's family, friends, associates,
reau of Investigation and vanished. neighbors and Government officials, among them
On Aug. 7 of this year, he surfaced in Moscow, a number of persons in the intelligence agencies,
has granted political asylum by the Russians. Accord- of which ch has not other
previously been information ,much
ing to intelligence officials, Howard betrayed the ? n Edward Howard rd eandisclosed: Mclo Mary, were methods used by the C.I.A. to contact its spies - and d his be his wife, Mary, wboth
methoss used
jargon - in the Soviet employed by the C.I.A.'s Directorate of Operations,
Union, leading directly to the arrest of one such the agency's clandestine arm. They were trained
C.I.A. asset, Soviet defense researcher Adolf G. by the agency to operate in Moscow as a husband-
Tolkachev, whose execution was announced a week and-wife spy team.
and a half ago by Tass, the Soviet news agency. ? Only one F.B.I. agent was watching the Howards'
house
Howard's information also may have led to the ex- husband d escape o by y 1985,
driving Mary home e with with a dummy dumm hen
in
pulsion from Moscow of several American intelli- the front seat, a dummy made of clothes shaped in
gence agents and the detention of other Soviet citi- a human form and topped with a wig stand for its
zens who were working for the C.I.A. head. In the darkness, the agent apparently mis-
Howard is the first known C.I.A. man to have de- took the dummy for Howard - a ruse that gave the
fected to the Soviet Union in the V-year history of ex-spy a 24-hour head start.
the agency. His defection was, pdrhaps, the great- uMary Howard further aided her husband's escape
est embarrassment ever suffered by the C.I.A. But by playing a tape recording of his voice over their
a second former C.I.A. man, whose identity and telephone that fooled F.B.I. agents, who were wire-
role have been a tightly guarded secret, is also a tapping the phone, into believing he was still at
key figure in the case. The second man is William home.
G. Bosch. uMary Howard was with her husband at an Aus-
F.B.I. agents tracked Bosch down on South trian ski resort near the Swiss border on Sept. 20,
Padre Island, at the southernmost tip of Texas, 1984
during a trip when the F
B
I
b
li
,
.
.
.
e
eves he met
near the Mexican border. For four days, they inter- with KG.B. agents. But she insists he was only
rogated him, even as other agents maintained a 24- gone from their hotel room for a short time and
hour surveillance on Howard in Santa Fe, N.M. Ac- maintains she never had any knowledge of his al-
cording to intelligence sources, Bosch finally told leged spying for the Russians. For a year after her
husband vanished, Mary Howard declined to talk
Continued
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interviewed for the first time by this reporter.
? Both the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. were sharply criti-
cized by the President's Foreign Intelligence Advi-
sory Board for their handling of the Howard case,
and both agencies have officially reprimanded a
number of employees involved
The Howard case did more than compromise on-
going clandestine operations. To the C.I.A., it re-
mains a skein that, if unraveled, could expose flaws
in both the conduct of the agency's secret opera-
tions and its bureaucratic procedures. Inevitably,
the defection of Edward Howard has raised larger
concerns about C.I.A. security, recruitment and
personnel policies, and about the overall United
States counterintelligence effort.
This case also brings up a number of intriguing
and unanswered questions which, presumably, of-
ficials of the C.I.A. and F.B.I. are asking them-
selves. Why did Edward Howard feel secure in
going to William Bosch to tell him he was betraying
his country? Why didn't Bosch come forward and
inform the authorities when he was first ap-
proached by Howard? And does this case indicate
the existence of larger cracks in the armor of
American intelligence?
ON THE MORNING OF AUG. 1, 1985, VITALY
Yurchenko, deputy chief of the K.G.B.'s First De-
partment, which is responsible for operations in
the United States and Canada, told colleagues at
the Soviet Embassy in Rome that he was going
to take a walk and visit the Vatican Museum.
Yurchenko, then 49, had arrived in Rome a week
earlier.
When he did not return by dinner time, embassy
officials were frantic. Not until the next day did
they file a missing persons report with the Italian
police. But the K.G.B. resident in Rome must al-
ready have suspected the worst: Vitaly Yurchenko,
a trusted "general-designate" in the K.G.B. with 25
years of service in the Soviet intelligence agency,
had defected.
Yurchenko, a big catch for the C.I.A., was
whisked to a safe house near Fredericksburg, Va.,
for questioning. Before he escaped his C.I.A. han-
dlers and redefected to Moscow three months
later, leaving a trail of recrimination and confusion
within the intelligence community, he provided
vital information. The first order of business when
a defector is interrogated is to learn whether he
knows of any penetrations of United States intelli-
gence. Yurchenko said he knew of two. He provided
details that led the F.B.I. to Ronald W. Pelton, a for-
mer employee of the National Security Agency,
who was convicted of espionage in June 1986.
Yurchenko said the other mole had worked for
the C.I.A. and was known to him only by the code
name "Robert." Yurchenko had never met Robert
and could provide no physical description. But he
had two crucial clues to his identity:, Robert had
met with senior K.G.B. agents in Austria in the fall
of 1984 and sold them C.I.A. secrets. Moreover,
Robert had been prepared for posting to Moscow
and was familiar with the complex techniques used
by the C.I.A. for contacting its agents there, per-
haps even their code names or identities.
The news horrified Yurchenko's C.I.A. interroga-
tors. If true, it meant there had been a mole in their
inner sanctum, the most sensitive part of the agen-
cy, the Soviet European division. There had al-
ready been disturbing intimations that something
was wrong in Moscow; at least one major operation
,,au J u uwwu, auu L11C % .1./1.5 JVVIeE contact,
Adolf Tolkachev, arrested. If Robert had talked to
the K.G.B., the C.I.A.'s entire Soviet network might
be in danger.
It did not take C.I.A. officials long to zero in on the
man who fit Yurchenko's profile. In the spring of
1983, he had been getting ready for assignment to
the C.I.A.'s Moscow station, his first overseas post,
when at the last moment some troubling polygraph
results and a security investigation disclosed drug
use and petty theft, C.I.A. officials have said. In-
stead of sending the officer to Moscow, the agency
took the unusual step of firing him.
His name was Edward Lee Howard.
E HAD APPLIED TO THE C.I.A.
in 1980. At the time, he was 28,
married and working as manager
Hof the Chicago regional office of a
firm called Ecology and Environ-
ment Inc. It occurred to Ed How-
ard that there might be something
more challenging in life than look-
ing for toxic waste dumps. "He just
mentioned one day that he had ap-
plied for a job in the agency," Mary
Howard said. "I think that's what
he wanted to do for a long time."
Mary Cedarleaf Howard, a quiet, intelligent
woman of 36, with brown hair and blue eyes, now
lives in seclusion with her young son and her par-
ents near St. Paul, Minn. In a series of conversa-
tions, Mary Howard said nothing critical about Ed-
ward Howard, except to confirm that he had a
drinking problem that was the cause of arguments
between them. At the same time, she appeared to
be loyal to her former employer, the C.I.A. She said
she was still fond of her husband, although she has
refused his request that she and their son join him
in Moscow.
To the C.I.A., Howard had apparently looked like
an ideal recruit. He had a graduate degree, work
experience, and both he and his wife were accus-
tomed to living overseas. Howard was fluent in
Spanish and German, a smooth, well-spoken man
who collected guns and knew how to use them. Al-
though born in New Mexico, he had grown up in Eu-
rope; his father, Kenneth Howard, had been an Air
Force electronics specialist who worked on guided
missiles and had been stationed at bases in Germa-
ny, Texas and England.
"He played Little League and everything," Ken-
neth Howard said of his son. "He was in the Boy
Scouts, up to Explorer." Ed Howard graduated
from high school in Branden, England, then en-
rolled at the University of Texas, where he be-
longed to the karate club and graduated cum laude
in 1972, the same year his father retired from the
Air Force.
Ed Howard and Mary Cedarleaf met in the
Peace Corps in 1973, both in their early 20's and
fresh out of college. Mary had grown up in St. Paul,
the daughter of an insurance executive and a phy-
sician. In the Peace Corps, "we started out in the
same town in Colombia, called Bucaramanga," she
said. They were married three years later, at a Lu-
theran church in St. Paul.
That same year, Ed Howard earned a master's
degree in business administration from the Amer-
ican University in Washington, and joined the
Agency for International Development. In Febru-
ary 1977, the Howards left for two years in Lima,
Peru, where he worked on loan projects for A.I.D.
Although the C.I.A. sometimes uses A.I.D. as diplo-
matic cover, there is no evidence to suggest that
Howard was anything but a loan officer. After
Continued
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Peru, the Howards returned to the United States,
and he landed the environmental job in Chicago.
In January 1981, the C.I.A. hired Edward Howard
as a career trainee in the Directorate of Opera-
tions, also known as the D.D.O. (in reference to the
Deputy Director for Operations) and as the Clan-
destine Services. Mary stayed at their home in
Barrington, a Chicago suburb, while Ed reported to
C.I.A. headquarters at Langley, Va. He was sent
for several months to the Farm, a secret C.I.A. in-
stallation at Camp Peary, Va., near Williamsburg.
There, Howard learned the "tradecraft" of intelli-
gence, practicing the recruitment of agents and the
use of "dead drops" to pass messages. He was
given five aliases. He also learned from F.B.I.
agents at the Farm how to detect and evade sur-
veillance.
In the spring, Mary came east to join him. They
purchased a house on Scotch Haven Drive in Coun-
try Creek, a development of single-family town
houses in suburban Vienna, Va.
When Robert Magee, the C.I.A.'s director of per-
sonnel. later reviewed the Howard case, he discov-
ered that there had been one blip on the security
-creen even at the start. Every candidate for the
.I.A. who passes the two initial screenings is given
polygraph test - "fluttered" in C.I.A. jargon.
atti Volz, a C.I.A. spokesman, said Howard's fini-
al polygraph indicated "some drug use." But
.I.A. applicants who admit to using drugs are not
utomatically disqualified, if they agree to end th
e
practice when hired. Patti Volz said nothing about
Howard's alcohol problem. The agency was appar-
ently unaware of it.
In Country Creek, the young couple kept to them-
selves. Howard told the neighbors that he worked
for the State Department He jogged regularly on
the path behind his house and was seen walking his
dog, a German shepherd that he had bought as a
pup in Lima. Howard named the dog Whisky.
In the fall of 1981, Mary joined the C.I.A. as a
regular, full-time employee and, like her husband,
was assigned to the agency's clandestine arm. "I
wasn't a case officer like Ed," she said. "I was
more a secretary. I worked for the D.D.O." The
C.I.A. is a closed society, and it is not unusual to
find married couples working for the agency.
The agency's covert operators also tend to
choose their friends among colleagues in the
D.D.O. It was there that Howard met William G.
Bosch, a 6-foot, 3-inch, blond, balding C.I.A. veteran
who had served in the agency's administrative
side, then switched to the D.D.O. shortly before
Howard joined the C.I.A. They shared a common
background. Howard had worked in Lima; Bill
Bosch, who was three years older, had served the
agency in Bolivia, and, like Howard, spoke Spanish.
The two became good friends.
Howard's career was progressing well. He was
chosen for a singular honor, service in the Soviet
European division (S.E.), which covers the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe. "S.E. is the holiest of
holies," one, veteran case officer explained.
"They're a closed, cliquish, incestuous bunch of
people. Nobody looks over their shoulder. S.E.
screens their own and thumbs their nose at any-
body else."
By late 1982, Howard had been selected for the
most prestigious duty in the D.D.O., assignment to
the Moscow station for a two-year term. His cover.
diplomat in the American Embassy.
Why did the C.I.A. choose to send to its most
sensitive post a newcomer with no previous experi-
ence working as an intelligence officer overseas?
William J. Casey, Director of Central Intelligence,
and other C.I.A. officials have declined, for the
most part, to comment publicly on the Howard
case. But Casey has defended privately the deci-
sion to send a rookie to Moscow as a common
agency practice.
The chief of the S.E. division, in a rare appear-
ance before a secret session of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, gave the agency's
standard explanation of what has emerged as a
major question in the Howard case. In order to
make it more difficult for the K.G.B. to identify
C.I.A. officers assigned to the Moscow station, the
S.E. chief said, the agency chooses junior officers
who are not known. Howard, he added, was the first
one who had gone bad.
Howard was given special training for his Mos-
cow assignment. He received careful instruction in
the arcane techniques of maintaining the delicate
and difficult contact with the C.I.A.'s assets.
Mary Howard, too, received training from the
C.I.A. to work with her husband in Moscow as a
spy. "They like to give some training to wives,
short courses," she said. Asked whether it might
have included countersurveillance - such as sit-
ting in a car and acting as a lookout while her hus-
band met with an agent - she replied: "It could
have been something like that."
Early in 1983, Ed Howard told neighbors he was
studying Russian; the State Department was send-
ing him to the Soviet Union. The Howards bought a
new car and prepared to ship it to Moscow.
To build his cover, the C.I.A. gave Howard a cer-
tificate identifying him as a Foreign Service offi-
cer and appointing him "a Consular Officer and a
Secretary" in the diplomatic service. It was dated
March 11, 1983, and signed by Ronald Reagan and
George P. Shultz.
Eight days later, the Howards' son, Lee, was
born. Spring was on the way, and the future looked
bright.
Then the bottom fell out of Ed Howard's life.
A second lie-detector test suggested that some of
Howard's answers were deceptive. The second
polygraph "picked up drugs and petty theft," the
C.I.A.'s Patti Volz said. (Howard's family insists
that, although he drank, he did not use drugs.) An
investigation was launched.
Two years later, when Howard fell under suspi-
cion of spying for the Soviets, the C.I.A. ordered an
internal report by its then-Deputy Inspector Gen-
eral, Carroll Hauver. Those who have read the se-
cret report say that Howard, when confronted
after the polygraph test, admitted using drugs,
stealing from vending machines and taking money
from a woman's purse aboard an airliner.
The C.I.A. decided it could not send Howard to
Moscow. In fact, it decided it did not want him in
the agency at all. Howard was fired. By June 1983,
he was out of a job. He was now walking around
with detailed knowledge of the agency's most
sensitive operations in Moscow in his head. He was
also furious at the C.I.A.
Continued
3
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O CURTIS R. PORTER, STAFF
director of the finance committee
of the New Mexico state legisla-
ture, the young professional who
showed up in his office unan-
nounced to answer an advertise-
ment in The Albuquerque Journal
seemed an ideal prospect. The
Legislative Finance Committee
was looking for an economic ana-
lyst, and Edward Howard had the
right credentials. Moreover, he
was a native of New Mexico. On
his resume, he had put down "U.S. Department of
State January 1981-June 1983." He was hired.
By August, the Howards had sold their house in
Virginia and bought a home in El Dorado, a devel-
opment 12 miles out in the desert southeast of
Santa Fe. With their new baby, they settled down to
life in the Sun Belt.
Howard's job was to estimate state revenues.
Late in October, he flew to Washington for an eco-
nomics conference. Apparently still seething at the
agency, he spent several hours near the Soviet Em-
bassy, trying to decide whether to go inside and re-
veal classified information.
Meanwhile, Howard's drinking was getting
worse. On Feb. 26, 1984, a Sunday night, he was in-
volved in a shooting incident
with three young men. Ac-
cording to the police report,
Howard said he had met the
men "at a bar and had fol-
lowed them home as they had
promised him a girlfriend for
the night and a good time."
But Peter Hughes, then 24,
said that he, a friend and
their two female companions
were never inside the bar, but
were in their Jeep, backing
out of a motel parking lot,
when Howard stared at one of
the women, then followed in
his own Jeep.
Hughes and his friend,
joined by a third man, were
waiting as Howard walked
into the courtyard of
Hughes's apartment building.
"Suddenly from his back, he
pulls out this cannon,"
Hughes said. "I mean a silver
chrome.44 Magnum. An awe-
some gun. He says to me, `Get
back in the Jeep.-
To To Hughes, Howard
seemed to have been drink-
ing; his speech was slurred.
"I'm inside the Jeep and he's
pointing the gun at me. His
eyes get this blazing look and
he starts walking toward me
with the gun, pointing it at my
head. I think, He's about to
pull the trigger. He's going to
shoot. The barrel of the gun is
coming in the window. So I
duck. I grabbed for the gun
and it fired, putting a hole in
the roof."
With Howard disarmed, the
youths beat him up; one
threw a rock, hitting him on
the head. They forced him
back to his own Jeep, kicking
the door several times for
good measure. Then they
called the police, who found
Howard, bloodied, a block
away. He was placed under
arrest for aggravated assault
with a deadly weapon.
For Santa Fe District At-
torney Eloy F. Martinez, the
case was a problem. On the
one side was Peter Hughes,
whose family was well known
in the city - his father, who
had been a prisoner of war in
Vietnam, had run, albeit un-
successfully, for the Republi-
can nomination for Governor
a decade earlier. On the other
side was Howard, who
produced letters of support
from powerful state legisla-
tors and officials in Washing-
ton. Martinez said that he
briefly considered prosecut-
ing Howard for attempted
murder. But Howard hired
Santa Fe attorney Morton S.
Simon, who, by working out a
plea bargain, managed to
keep the case almost entirely
out of the papers. On April 25,
Howard pleaded guilty to
charges of aggravated as-
sault before Judge Bruce E.
Kaufman, who sentenced him
to five years probation and
ordered that he pay $7,500 to
Hughes. Both Martinez and
Kaufman denied published
reports that the C.I.A. con-
tacted them or tried to influ-
ence the case on Howard's
behalf.
Howard had voluntarily en-
tered a counseling program
for state employees, where
Neil Berman, a clinical social
worker, treated him for also-
holism for the next year and a
half. Psychologist Elliot J.
Rapoport conducted a court-
ordered psychological evalu-
ation; his report found that
Howard had been through a
period of unusual stress and
"problem drinking," but was
"not otherwise criminally ori-
ented." He recommended
that Howard remain in the
state counseling program.
On Sept. 18, the Howards
left for a one-week trip to Eu-
rope. According to Vitaly
Yurchenko, it was in the fall
of 1984 that "Robert" met the
K.G.B. in Austria and sold
C.I.A. secrets. The F.B.I. es-
tablished that the Howards
were in St. Anton, Austria, on
Sept. 20, 1984, although the
bureau has not said whether
it believes that was the date
Howard met with the K.G.B.
y
Mary Howard said they
first visited friends in Switz-
erland. "We visited Zurich
and Lucerne and then de-
cided to go to Austria and
then Milan." But she insisted
that they chose St. Anton at
random. "We were just driv-
ing around, and it was getting
toward dusk and it looked like
a pretty little town," she said.
"I'm not aware of any goings-
on in St. Anton."
"We had a disagreement,"
she said. "Our fights were
usually over his drinking. He
took off in the car. I could see
him drive away from the win-
dow. He drove around in the
car." Could Howard have met
the Russians then? "He was
only gone a short time," she
replied, "perhaps 10 or 15
minutes." She added that
they did not stay overnight
anywhere else in Austria.
The Howards were back in
the United States on Sept. 24,
for on that date, Howard met
with two current C.I.A. em-
ployees - perhaps at C.I.A.
headquarters - and told
them how he had lingered
outside the Soviet Embassy
almost a year earlier, in Oc-
tober 1983, but did not enter.
Now Howard, a former
C.I.A. officer with knowledge
of top-secret data, had admit-
ted that he had contemplated
betraying his country. The
C.I.A. insists that the two em-
ployees reported Howard's
story to the proper agency of-
ficials. But for almost a year,
those officials sat on that ex-
plosive information and
failed to pass it on to the
F.B.I. The C.I.A. will not say
whether disciplinary action
was taken against the offi-
cials.
Howard may have con-
fessed the embassy incident
as part of a plea to the C.I.A.
to pay for psychiatric treat-
ment. Howard did see a pri-
vate psychiatrist in Santa Fe
for a period of time and the
C.I.A. paid for his visits.
Howard was still acting like
a man under a great deal of
stress. On a business trip to
Boston the next month, Curtis
Porter of the finance commit-
tee found Howard in his hotel
room with a bandaged head;
he claimed he had walked
into a glass door and been
given pain killers at the hos-
pital. Later, Howard abruptly
left a banquet and Porter
found him packing and on the
phone trying to make plane I Continued
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rCSeNL.-_..., AL was vu LEI= vuu, aoscn HE CASE COULD YO1- was not enough. "Yur-
called Porter. "He said, I as later to tell the F.B.I., T not have come at a chenko never saw him," Geer
'Sor
I
ot
i
h
"
ry,
g
crazy w
t
the
pain killers and booze. Don't
worry, Mary knows every
time I get drunk I try to go to
Vienna.' " But Howard did not
go; he realized he had no
passport with him.
Kate and Bob Gallegos
worked in Howard's office
and lived in El Dorado; the
two couples were friends.
Bob Gallegos said that How-
ard once showed him a stack
of Krugerrands worth per-
haps $2,400. Gallegos also
claimed that Howard "was
having several affairs" with
women in the office. Other
friends say they were un-
aware of Howard's alleged
womanizing, although one
said he knew of a single "spo-
radic" affair.
In the spring of 1985,
friends say, the Howards vis-
ited Europe again. Dennis
Hazlett, a co-worker, said
Howard came back with a
Rolex watch and intimated
he had been to Vienna.
O N JUNE 14, 1985,
Tass, the Soviet news
agency, announced
that Paul M. Stombaugh, a
"second secretary" at the
United States Embassy in
Moscow, was being expelled
as a spy. Three months later
the Russians disclosed that
they had also arrested Tolka-
chev, the Soviet researcher,
as he attempted to pass se-
cret documents to Stom-
baugh.
American intelligence offi-
cials later confirmed that
Tolkachev was an expert on
"stealth" technology to con-
ceal aircraft and missiles
from radar, and had been one
of the C.I.A.'s most valuable
assets in Moscow. They also
claimed that Tolkachev had
been betrayed by Edward
Lee Howard.
In July, Howard went to
South Padre Island, to visit
Bill Bosch. Bosch, too, had
gotten into trouble with the
C.I.A. after questions had
been raised about alleged
currency transactions in
South America, according to
intelligence officials. "He was
dismissed by the C.I.A., or
left before they could fire
him," a senior intelligence
source said.
that Howard confessed his
spying for the Russians and
discussed plans for future
contacts with Soviet officials.
According to intelligence offi-
cials, the two ex-C.I.A. offi-
cers discussed taking a trip
to the Soviet Embassy in
Mexico City, a trip that Bosch
said did not take place.
Bosch now lives in Laguna
Beach, Calif., a resort about
one-and-a-half hours south of
Los Angeles. Although an old
and established town, Laguna
Beach is also known as a
home to young singles and
transients - a place where
people can come and go with
relative ease and not attract
attention.
Bosch rents a small, inex-
pensive room on the first
floor of an old, two-story
brown-shingle house that has
been converted into apart-
ments and is set back from
the street, surrounded by
trees, two blocks from the
Pacific Ocean.
According to a neighbor,
Bosch is "a nice guy, a quiet
guy," who drives a Porsche
and is "here at night some-
times, but not here often."
Other neighbors in his build-
ing and adjacent houses said
they did not know him. At-
tempts to contact Bosch in
person proved unavailing;
reached by telephone, he de-
clined to be interviewed. "I
have no comment," he said,
"either on or off the record."
O N JULY 27, 1985,
the Gallegoses went to
the Howards' home
for dinner. Howard and his
son Lee modeled two fur hats,
Bob Gallegos said. "They
were in a box with Russian
writing. He said he had asked
a friend in the State Depart-
ment to send them to him."
Gallegos said he has an indel-
ible memory of Howard
standing inbide the house
"wearing gym shorts and a
fur hat, smoking a cigar and
drinking a St. Pauli Girl."
Five days later, Vitaly Yur-
chenko vanished in Rome.
The C.I.A. called in the F.B.I.
He didn't know him by
worse time for James said
H. Geer. On Aug. 5, 1985, his name. It was a circumstan-
first day as assistant director tial case. You have to have
of the F.B.I. in charge of the much more than one man's
intelligence division, the word. Yurchenko did not even
Howard case landed on his have a physical description."
desk at bureau headquarters Parker, now retired, was
in Washington. It was Geer's
job to catch foreign agents.
Geer, then 45 and a 21-year
veteran of the F.B.I., was con-
fronted with a major and
potentially explosive counter-
intelligence case.
Geer called in Phillip A.
Parker, the division's deputy
director for operations. Park-
er, 49, had worked on foreign
counterintelligence cases for
most of his 20 years in the
F.B.I., and he had been the
No. 2 man in the division for
three years.
Parker notified William D.
Branon, who had just taken
over the F.B.I.'s Albuquerque
office. F.B.I. agents from sev-
eral other cities were brought
in to assist him. Within a few
days, a small army of F.B.I.
agents was deployed in Albu-
querque and in Santa Fe, 60
miles to the north.
The F.B.I. began watching
Howard, but there were prob-
lems. The Howards lived at
108 Verano Loop, a circular
road of widely spaced, mock-
adobe houses, where strang-
ers are quickly spotted. Ironi-
cally, Thomas (Bill) Gilles-
pie, one of the four resident
F.B.I. agents in Santa Fe,
lived two houses away from
the Howards, at 112 Verano
Loop. It was a perfect loca-
tion for surveillance. But Gil-
lespie had just sold his house,
and the new owners had
moved in on Aug. 4, the day
before the F.B.I. got the case.
So the house was not avail-
able. The F.B.I. did not, in
fact, use any house as an ob-
servation post. Whether it
employed "special coverage"
- agents posing as a street
repair crew, telephone line-
men or the like - is not
known. What is known is that
the Howard residence was
placed under surveillance.
The legal problem was
even more formidable. "We
had no probable cause to ar-
rest Howard," Geer ex-
plained. Yurchenko's evi-
equally emphatic that the
F.B.I. had no immediate
basis for arresting Howard.
The F.B.I. needed more evi-
dence. The bureau applied for
and got a wiretap warrant
from a special seven-mem-
ber court established in 1978
by the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act.
By the beginning of Sep-
tember, wiretaps were in
place on the Howards' home
telephone. The results were
disappointing. Howard said
nothing incriminating.
By Thursday, Sept. 19, the
F.B.I. had made the decision
to confront Howard directly.
Still lacking probable cause
to arrest the ex-C.I.A. man,
the bureau hoped that How-
ard himself might provide
the necessary evidence. The
decision to approach Howard
was made by Parker. There
was a risk, he knew, that
Howard might run, although
it seemed minimal, given the
round-the-clock surveillance
then in place. The interview
technique had worked in the
past, and was used to convict
Ronald Pelton, the other man
named by Yurchenko.
That morning, an F.B.I.
agent telephoned Howard at
his office and asked to inter-
view him. Within the hour,
Howard met with the agent at
the Hilton Inn, but he refused
to say anything of substance.
The F.B.I. now switched to
what it calls a "nondiscreet"
surveillance. The agents fol-
lowing Howard no longer
tried to blend in with the
crowd. On Friday, Sept. 20,
Howard walked up to one of
the now-obvious agents on the
street and asked to see the
agent who had tried to inter-
view him the day before. An-
other brief meeting took
place, and Howard sounded
more cooperative. He told the
agent that he wanted time to
get a lawyer and would meet
with the F.B.I. the following
week. Word was sent back to
F.B.I. headquarters that
Howard might be getting
ready to talk.
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Philip M. Baca was getting would be. Ina few moments,
nervous. Baca, the new direc- the sitter heard the car pull
tor of the Legislative Finance out of the garage.
Committee, had been visited What happened next is bat-
the day before by two F.B.I. fling, either a mix-up in com-
agents, who asked for munication, or human error.
record
H
s on
oward. The 8:30
A.M. staff briefing of the
committee, to prepare the
lawmakers for a 9 A.M. pub-
lic hearing, was about to be-
gin and Ed Howard was un-
characteristically late. He fi-
nally arrived at the office at
8:25 A.M. "He did a beautiful
briefing on the 18-month eco-
nomic outlook," Baca said.
"He had graphs. During the
hearing, some questions
came up o.-,l the price of oil. I
He answered them and was
::oinpletely calm."
On the morning of Satur-
day, Sept. 21, Howard went
into his office at the capitol.
F.B.I. agents followed him.
What they did not yet know
was that he would write two
letters in his office that day.
"We did a lot of talking that
weekend," Mary Howard re-
called Howard had told her
of the approach by the F.B.I.
It was, she said, the first she
knew he was in trouble. "It
was like a nightmare," she
said. "It's very traumatic
still." But, she added, "I don't
have any knowledge he
spied."
At 3 P.M., Rosa Carlson got
a telephone call from her
neighbor, Mary Howard. As
they had the same baby sitter
that afternoon, would it be all
right if the sitter walked over
with Lee to the Carlson and
combined the job? Mrs. Carl-
son said that would be fine.
At 4 P.M., 16-year-old Gina
Jackson arrived at the How-
ards'. Mary Howard did not
stop to chat with her in her
usual friendly manner. In-
stead, she led Gina and Lee
directly out back to the patio.
"As I went through the
house," Gina Jackson said, "I
thought I heard two people
talking. Out of the corner of
my eye I saw a completely
bald-headed person standing
in the entranceway between
the den and living room."
Later, Gina said, "the F.B.I.
told me it wasn't two men
talking, it was Ed Howard
with a tape recorder and a
dummy."
On the patio, Mary Howard
seemed distracted. She did
not provide the sitter with a
phone number but told her
the name of a Spanish restau-
Only one F.B.I. surveillance
agent was on duty, several
hundred feet from the How-
ard house. Although it was
about 4:30 P.M., and broad
daylight, the Howards drove
away in their dark red 1979
Oldsmobile undetected.
Ed and Mary Howard left
El Dorado and swung onto in-
terstate Highway 25, heading
northwest for Santa Fe.
Other F.B.I. agents were
spread out in cars a few miles
away, awaiting word by radio
to move out and follow the
Howards. The signal never
came.
Around 6 P.M., Gina Jack-
son walked a block to the
Carlsons with Lee. She
watched while Lee and the
two young Carlson boys, Zac
and Jonathan, played with
water in the bathtub.
An hour later, around 7
P.M., the Howards drove
from the restaurant where
they had dined. In the dark-
ness, somewhere in the down-
town area, Ed Howard
jumped from the slowly mov-
ing car into a "blind spot," as
he had been trained to do at
the Farm. It was the last time
Mary saw him.
When Mary Howard ar-
rived back home around 7:20
P.M., there was a dummy in
the passenger seat in place of
her husband. It was made of
clothes shaped into a human
form, topped with a faceless
wig stand. Atop the wig stand
was some sort of headgear.
(Mary Howard said pub-
lished reports that she had
used an inflatable dummy
were "not true.")
The surveillance agent on
duty was surprised to see the
Howards returning, since he
had not seen them leave -
surprised but relieved, since
they were together. Ed How-
ard seemed to be wearing a
hat, but in the dark, the F.B.I.
man could not be sure.
The automatic garage door
opened, and Mary Howard
drove inside. She drove out a
few minutes later, alone. She
arrived at the Carlsons'
house at 7:30 P.M. to pick up
Lee, then drove back to their
house and into the garage.
The surveillance agent duti-
fully logged them in.
carried out another ruse that
her husband had planned
with her. The ex-C.I.A. man
had recorded his voice on the
tape recorder. Following his
instructions, Mary dialed a
business office where the
Howards knew she would
reach an answering machine.
At the beep, Mary held the
tape recorder next to the tele-
phone and pressed the "play"
button. F.B.I. agents listening
in "live" heard Howard con-
firm an upcoming appoint-
ment and were reassured;
their target was still at home
and staying in town.
BACK IN WASHINGTON
that Saturday evening, F.B.I.
agents in the intelligence
division were excited; it ap-
peared they might finally be
getting the evidence they
needed to seek a warrant for
Howard's arrest.
The F.B.I. had tracked
down William Bosch on South
Padre Island. The bureau had
discovered that Howard had
been in touch with Bosch, lo-
cated him with the help of
long-distance toll-call
records, and learned of his
background from the C.I.A.
F.B.I. agents had moved in
and begun qu-:stioning him
intensively in midweek.
Gradually, Bosch's story was
unfolding.
According to intelligence
officials, Bosch said that
Howard had made more than
one trip to South Padre Is-
land to see him; in July, How-
ard had come to the island
and told Bosch he had sold
C.I.A. data to the Russians,
and the two men had had the
discussion of Howard's plan
to, visit the Soviet Embassy in
Mexico City.
There was no secure phone
line on South Padre Island, so
the electrifying reports of
Bosch's interrogation had to
be driven 300 miles to the
F.B.I. office in San Antonio,
then teletyped to the intelli-
gence division on the fourth
floor of F.B.I. headquarters.
James Geer said it was
midnight in Washington, two
hours later than in Santa Fe,
before the F.B.I. decided it
now had probable cause to
seek a warrant for the arrest
of Edward Howard. It could
not be obtained at that hour,
on a weekend, but there was
no reason to worry. The lights
had gone out at 108 Verano
Loop. The surveillance was
still in place in the desert, and
the Howards were safely
tucked away for the night.
L ATE ON SUNDAY AF-
ternoon, Phil Baca
went into the office
unexpectedly. On his desk, he
found an envelope, and, inside
it, a letter of resignation from
Ed Howard, along with the
keys to the office and a
smaller envelope addressed
to Mary, which Baca did not
open. He called the F.B.I. "I
told them Ed Howard had re-
signed," Baca said. The F.B.I.
was stunned.
Agents rang the doorbell at
Howard's house and learned
from Mary that Howard was
gone. Mary Howard turned
her husband's letter over to
the F.B.I. One cryptic line in
the letter, not previously
known, said. "National se-
curity is like holding a royal
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flush in Santa Fe." The note also said,
in part: "Well, I'm going and maybe
I'll give them what they think I al-
ready gave them," and instructed
Mary to "sell the house, Jeep, etc.,
and move with one of our parents and
be happy." Howard also told Mary to
tell Lee that "I think of him and you
each day until I die."
By the time the F.B.I. realized that
Howard had vanished, he had a 24-
hour head start. Bureau officials be-
lieve he new from Albuquerque, to
New York, to Helsinki, and then
crossed the border into the Soviet
Union.
On Monday, Sept. 23, the F.B.I. fi-
nally got its arrest warrant from a
United States magistrate in Albu-
querque.
Howard called Mary once, the fol-
lowing month, but did not say where
he was. In the spring, he sent her a
letter, postmarked Vienna. On Aug. 7,
1986, Howard surfaced in Moscow.
E DWARD HOWARD HAS
been charged with espionage.
Intelligence officials say the
damage he did to the C.I.A.'s Soviet
operations was enormous. Some
sources have suggested that the dam-
age continued beyond Tolkachev, the
C.I.A. agent executed by Moscow. On
March 14 of this year, Tass an-
nounced that Michael Sellers, Second
Secretary of the United States Em-
bassy in Moscow, was being expelled
for espionage. On May 7, the Russians i
said, Erik Sites, listed as a civilian
employee of the embassy's military
attache office, strolled along Malaya
Priogovskaya street to contact a
Soviet C.I.A. asset when the K.G.B.
closed in. Sites's wife, Ursula, was
waiting nearby as a lookout, the Rus-
sians said. Sites, too, was expelled.
Certainly, the Howard case ex-
posed major flaws inside the C.I.A.
The agency hired a man who drank
heavily and, according to the agency
at least, used drugs. It ignored early
warnings on his first polygraph test.
It selected him for its most sensitive
post, despite his lack of experience.
Then, when it discovered he had seri-
ous character defects and problems,
it fired him instead of easing him into
another job where he might have
posed less of a security risk. It paid
for his psychiatric counseling after it
was too late. Most astonishing of all,
when Howard confessed to the
agency that he had contemplated en-
tering the Soviet Embassy in Wash-
ington to sell secrets, the C.I.A. sat on
that information for almost a year be-
fore telling the F.B.I. Finally, after
Howard was fired, the C.I.A. ne-
glected to recover both his diplomatic
passport and a false-name passport
he had been issued by the Clandestine
Services.
Within the intelligence community,
some of the heat in the Howard case
has been taken by Clair E. George,
the C.I.A.'s Deputy Director for
Operations, and certainly the affair
suggests that the agency's clandes-
tine arm performed sloppily. But the
case also appears to illustrate loop-
holes in the agency's personnel and
hiring policies and a lack of coordina.
tion between its medical and security
offices. It suggests that, in order to
avoid embarrassment, the agency at-
tempted to suppress at any cost what
eventually turned into a major spy
scandal.
For its part, the F.B.I. was vastly
embarrassed that Howard got away,
a fact that F.B.I. director William H.
Webster calls an "aberration."
James Geer, the head of the F.B.I.'s
intelligence division, while conceding
a mistake "at our on-the-scene opera-
tions," sees "no institutional weak-
ness," and cites the F.B.I.'s success in
rounding up several other spies in the
same year that Howard escaped.
Howard's motive remains unclear.
He was angry at the C.I.A., but had no
apparent ideological sympathy for
the Soviet Union. Dennis Hazlett, his
friend, said Howard seemed, if any-
thing, conservative, patriotic, "a little
Reaganite in his views.9'
., I love my country," Howard said
on Soviet television on Sept. 14 of this
year. "I have never done anything
that might harm my country."
If Howard was paid large amounts
of money for his information, the
F.B.I. has been unable to trace it. "We
just don't know where the money is, if
he got it," one senior F.B.I. man said.
Mary Howard said: "I never saw un-
usual amounts of money," nor any
Krugerrands. They lived on her hus-
band's $33,012-a-year salary, she
said.
David Wise is the author of several nonfiction
books about intelligence and of "The Samarkand
Dimension," a novel of espionage to be published
by Doubleday & Company in April.
"If he did anything," Kenneth How-
ard said, "it was through revenge or
anger at what the agency did to him."
Edward Howard's father has even
wondered whether the C.I.A. "might
be playing some strange games,"
whether perhaps his son was still
working for the agency. Others have
also wondered if Howard was allowed
to escape and is a double agent. But
F.B.I. officials scoff at that idea.
Edward Howard is a man caught
between the superpowers. He faces a
bleak future in an alien land, joining
the dubious roll call of defectors who
have taken refuge behind the Iron
Curtain: Kim Philby, Guy Burgess,
Donald Maclean, George Blake. None
are ever fully trusted by the K.G.B.
Or Howard can come home one day,
if the Russians will let him, to face a
possible sentence of life imprison-
ment.
The bottom line, however, is that he
has escaped. The F.B.I. is bitter about
that, although it takes a certain per-
verse pride in Howard's skill at coun-
tersurveillance, which he had learned
at the Farm from the bureau's in-
structors. "After all," one F.B.I. agent
said, "we trained him." ^
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