FOR SALE: A MANSION WITH A GRAND VIEW AND A SPOOKY PAST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000606040030-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2010
• Sequence Number: 30
• Publication Date: August 25, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT'
I
,
3y A'rv HucHWT
:
s t iJJ Reporter .J Tax WALL S?RSCT TO VRNAL .?
ROYAL OAX, Md.-ft-walls could talk-
and local rumor has It. that thanks to the
magic of electronic bugging, these walls
once could-what tales Ashford Farm could
telL The sprawling old mansdoa tucked away
on the edge of Maryland's Eastern Shore,
out of sight of neighboring estates - and
reachable only by a winding, one-lane ac-
cess.road about a third of a mile- long: was
cnce one cf the *Jsafe liouses"'used by the
Central Intelligence Agency to house Impor-
tant defectors from Communist countries. in its time- it has shielded .from prying,
eyes such guests as East- German atomic
scientist Heinz Barwicht -KGB defector Pe-
ter Deriabin and Reino Hayhanen, another
KGB defector who was-the chief witness
against Soviet master, spy Cot- Rudolph
Abel. Others have incfuded lesserknown
Rans, Poles. East Germans, Chinese and
Bulgarians who were on.the lam from their
native lands- -, e a'-
Francis.-Gary Pow.rs also stayer! .here
briefly after the Soviets trade&thecapture4
U-2 spy-plane pOa back to-the. U.S. in return
for Col. AbeL In fact; -It-v-as~ Mri Power s's
presence here,. w;d* the?nation's press was
Today, Ashford Fariii;-with its park-Arse'
setting of 62. acres. overfooZcing_. the; tidal.
Choptank River neat-' ft point" 'here----it:
spills into Chesapeake -Bay R is-up. for sale:
It's likely that the government would be
willing to give the place away. if It could find
a suitable nonprofit oaganiration.to take.it.
Unloading-an Elephant- ,
For the. truth is that-Ashford, Farm:is
something.of a white elephant: It has been
vacant, except for a caretaker- couple, since
1976, when the CIA appereatiy-decided. the
house, was too far from-Washington or had ?
become.too well mown and turned it over to~
the General Services lldmic-isi~atilyn. the of.
5dal agency for disposini- ot?'government-
owned property. The= GSA bay been - trying.
unsuccessfully to ~laad fCewer since..:, j ',
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
25 August 1981
? A room-by-room inspection reveals some
of the reasons. The red-brick main building
is certainly.big enough-8,688 square feet of
floor area on two floors, with eight bed-
rooms and seven baths, plus a four-car ga-
rage. But.its architectural style can.best be
described as. "bad bogus Tudor." The once
impressive circular driveway irr front of the
mansion now is almost completely grassed
over. The roof of the house leaks, the green-
painted wood trim is peeling, and the inte-
rior~ walls seem to have been finished by
spreading a stucco-like substance over wall-
board- so thinly that in places the seams are
visible. Just to keep the. place from deterio-
rating further. . costs the government about
$18,000 a year. Nevertheless,.the four auctions of the.
farm conducted so far by the GSA have at-
tracted more than 60 bidders. Some of the
bids, such as those of John R, Porter of Sev-
erna Park. Md., ($210) and Eugene Batis of
San Francisco ($10), apparently were based
on;a mistaken-beL'ef that the. government
was so.desperate.to dispose=of the property
that it would sell at any price.. Most of the
other bids were at more realistic levels, al-
though not quite up to the GSA's own undis-
closed -estimate of the farm's true value. A
-local -real-estate t:ian believes Ashford
should self for $475,000 to $550,000.
A ' Problem on the River
There was one successful bid-of $550,000
-in 1979 by A.G. Proctor Inc., a Georg a
real-estate firm. "We'bought it for'.specula
lion.'.'. says A.G. Proctor, the firm's head.
Them, he says, Hurricane David "came and.
took -about 800 feet of the shoreline"-lead-
ing to the discovery that an estimated
$800,000 was needed to protect Ashford's 3,-
600-foot frontage on the Choptank River.
Mr. Proctor backed out, and the GSA
says it then spent about $100,000 on riprap
(stone revetment) to protect the house. Un-
riprapped shoreline continues to fall into the
hoptank; gi?ingpause to prospective buy-
:ers. .
For much ,of its. existence, -Ashford has
stood-'vacant. It was built in- the late 1920s
by -a family that came from. Pittsburgh.
'The-man who built it had a mortgage, and
he couldn't keep up the payments. For about
1 20 years nobody lived in it. Then my parents
bought it from the bank for about $35,000 or
$40,0004" says: John Todd, a local resident.
He says his mother 'Just bought it to kind of
fix It up" and kept it only a year or two.
The CIA entered the local scene in 1951
when Peter Sivess, who. now is retired from
his former job as head of the CIA's alien
branch. bought Ashford for the agency from
the Todds for $65,000.
Most of the time Ashland Farm was run'
by a succession of CIA resident managers.
l hir. Sivess would come o out rob em orhin ton
im-
when there was a special p
portant defector, and his wife and son one
lived at the mansion for a year and a half'
when his own home in Cheverly, Md., was
being occupied by a diplomatic defector.
Mr. Sivess, a big, g uft man whose long
t government career. first with the Navy and
then the CIA, was preceded by two and a
half years as a pitcher for the Philadelphia
Phillies. has vivid memories of many of f the
government's guests from,
were put up at Ashford Farm. Some were
"phonies," he says, anQ"omeow gwhat
us
learned was garbage.. staff he had read in a book."
Furthermore, Mr. Sivess says, "there's
got to be something wrong with them some-
' place" or they wouldn't have defected.
I "Anybody who sells his country down the
river is a snake." he adds.
There were behavioral problems, too.
Sr. Sivess remembers one KGB defector
who put away 30 ounces of vodka a day and
had a wife who was hooked on peach
brandy. "A couple lost their marbles," he
says, and some redefected.- They learned.
that America "is not a paradise," he ob-
serves.
Mr. Sivess's wife, 'Eleanor;. was some-
times pressed into- service to deal with diffi-:
cult wives. She recalls an East -German
woman who had married a Soviet officer
she had met as a maid in the officers' bar-
racks. The woman was difficult to deal with
at Ashford, refusing to obey her doctor's or-
ders after a' complicated childbirth. "That
woman could very, well have been a lady of
the street," says .Mrs. Sivess matter o
factly.
Mr. Sivess says that he ran ' Ashford "on
:?` a shoestring," furnishing it with secondhand
furniture and'getting its transient residents
to help out by painting, gardening and rais-
ing chickens and'pigs.-"They had good food'.
and clean beds,''. says Mrs.' Sivess. Mr:' Siv-
ess indicates that the Spartan way cf.life.
was by design since his job was to get-his
charges."off on their.. own as quickly as Dos
-
slvlc... a.-J ....... ----
-
often coached for job-hunting efforts
Some became friends, particularly Nicho-
las Shadrin, a Soviet naval officer who de-
fected in Poland with his wife-to-be in 1958.
Ivlr Shadrin eventually went to work for the
a
"He was practIC211y a. member of" my fam-
ily. HA-wa,' u3 bt outdoon?'an. ewe
t
sumabty kidnapped by the KGB. Although
Mr. Sives& concedes that- Mr.I Shadrin may
ve been a Soviet agent all along. he says.
h
U.S. Defense intelligence; Agency and' then
is said to have become'a double agent for
h FBI before he disappeared In 1975. pre-
hunte~Vl fe Bshed:~'r~^+=
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-06552R000606040030-4
For Sale: AWanion
With a Grand 'View
And a Spooky Past
CIA's Hideaway in Maryland
Once Harbored.Defectors
From Iron Curtti n Lands
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606040030-4