OPINION:
THE MOSCOW RULES: THE SECRET CIA TACTICS THAT HELPED AMERICA WIN THE COLD WAR
By Antonio and Jonna Mendez
Public Affairs, $28, 238 pages
Veteran CIA officer Burton Gerber was unhappy when he returned to headquarters to run the Soviet and East Europe Division. The problem was a policy which he felt stifled operations against the Soviets.
The agency’s powerful counterintelligence chief, James J. Angleton, was convinced that the Soviet KGB “was running a massive penetration operation” to plant moles inside the CIA. Rather than cross Angleton, officers stopped recruiting Russian spies.
Mr. Gerber saw the policy “as a self-defeating position.” He asked a logical question: “What was the point of having an intelligence agency if they couldn’t recruit agents?” The CIA had to penetrate the USSR “to understand the plans and capabilities of our chief adversary.”
Mr. Gerber began by reviewing cases where the CIA had turned away Soviets who had approached the agency the past 15 years. The height of folly, he felt. Most of these persons were legitimate would-be defectors, not attempts at penetration.
Mr. Gerber’s response was to develop a format governing operations in the Soviet Union. And, as CIA veterans Antonio and Jonna Mendez write in a true “insider’s book,” officers thereafter dealt with the Soviets with what became known as the “Gerber Rules.” (In time, the designation became “Moscow Rules,” picked up from the years-later novels of writer John le Carre.)
A major problem with operations in Moscow is that the city is perhaps the most heavily-policed place in the world. Former KGB Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who now lives in the United States, once estimated that there are more than 50,000 KGB officers in Moscow alone. Tight surveillance of Americans, officials or not, is routine.
Thus the first challenge was developing tactics that would enable case officers to “go black” and evade ever-present KGB surveillance. Enter the Mendez couple, who for years were CIA’s experts on disguises and physical deception. (Tony Mendez died on Jan. 19 at age 79.)
The immediate goals were to find ways for Moscow officers to shake off surveillance so that they could meet with prospective defectors. One simple measure was to outfit officers with clothes worn by the average Russian — to be disguised under normal clothing until they found an opportunity to make a switch.
Officers learned that a sudden turn while driving could provide a few precious seconds of privacy to make a “dead drop” containing a message.
Situations could demand that an officer exit a car from the passenger seat during seconds of privacy to meet a contact. So the Mendez team came up with the so-called “Jack in the Box,” a pop-up figure that would fool Soviet into thinking a person remained in the seat.
For “brush contacts,” officers learned such tricks as fumbling with an overcoat with one arm — a highly visible movement — while slipping a piece of paper to the contact with the other hand.
In preparation for assignment to Moscow, officers were put through a grueling Internal Operations Course (IOC).
The curriculum covered a broad range of spy craft, ranging from taking photos from a moving car to servicing dead drops. Teaching was carried out on Washington streets, with trainees trying to “outsmart the FBI’s famed counterintelligence unit.”
The Moscow Rules that emerged over the years proved invaluable. The cardinal goal was to convince the KGB that an officer was simply going through his daily routine, when in fact he was planning to “go black” for a swift meeting with a contact.
Over time, several dozen “rules” went into the books:
“Never go against your gut. Always listen to your gut; it is your operational antenna. Don’t look back; you are never completely alone. Go with the flow; use the terrain. Vary your pattern, and stay within your profile. Hide small operative motions in larger nonthreatening motions. Any operation can be aborted; if it feels wrong, then it is wrong.”
Did the Moscow Rules work? Only a handful of successful CIA operations are ever made public. But the authors do touch on an operations in which an officer in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was recruited. Aleksandr Ogorodnik was doubled. His job gave him access to “secret cables for all Soviet embassies worldwide,” both incoming and outgoing.
Perhaps most importantly, Ogorodnik “handed over top-secret Soviet diplomatic document that gave the United States unprecedented insights into Moscow’s negotiating positions during SALT, the strafegic-arms limitations talks of the 1970s.”
Alas, the final rule listed by Mr. and Mrs. Mendez states, “Betrayal may come from within.” Despite the operational gains given for years by the Moscow Rules, betrayal by Aldrich Ames of the CIA and Robert Hanssen of the FBI dealt body-blows to Moscow Station in the 1980s.
Recovery perhaps will warrant another book in the future.
• Joseph C. Goulden writes frequently on intelligence and military matters.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.