DOUBLE AGENT TRAIL LEADS INTO SHADOWS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000606140001-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 30, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: February 6, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
4~t PAC~ia.- '' 6 FEBRUARY 1980
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ARTICLE 11-!?a~~" ~'U A`I'YaAYTA COidSTITUTIOY
't'he Army says ~f alph Sigler committed
suicide, carrying the truth about his
s~yin ; to the grave; his wife and father
think the Army murdered him
by Sigler's realization that he
had been caught trying to de-
ceive his government. As a.
double agent, he was sup-
posed to sell false or worth-
less information to the ~aviet
Union while at the same time
keeping the Russians con-
vinced he was actually their
spy.
He had performed meri-
torious service, rooting out 14
Soviet espionage agents, and
was on his way to a 15th
score, his supervisors say.
But a few months before
his death, the Army's poly-
graph tests had shown "major
areas of deception" in his an-
swers and, under intensive
questioning, Sigler either
wouldn't or couldn't say why
he registered guilty r~
spouses.
Maryland State Police,
whose troopers also investi-
gated, agreed it was a sui-
cide. Cpl. Roger Cassell, who
directed the police investiga-
tion, says no fingerprints
were taken at the scene, how-
ever, because the Army's
explanation of suicide was ac-
cepted as fact.
The clincher appeared to
be a note that the intelligence
agent who discovered Sigler's
body said he found in the
room. The agent, Louis i'dar-
tel, said he found it and
stuffed it in his pocket after
the desk clerk had returned to
the motel lobby to call an
ambulance, but later turned it
over to the state police.
The writing was in Sigler's
I've given up all hope. I i
wish I knew, I wish I knew. I ~
tried too hard. I'm dead."
But Sigler's family remains
unconvinced by the Army's
explanation. "T~iy son was
murdered;' says his father, s
i Alex Sigler, his speech still
thick with the accent of east-
'~ ern Europe. Ile talcs of how
proud he is of his son, who de-
cided to "do the 30 years" in
the Army, and of how he
changed the spelling of the
family name from "Cigiar"
when he brought Ralph and
his daughter Anna to the
United States after World
War I.
Sigler's widow is naturally
reluctant to believe her hus-
band could have bekrayed the
country he served so long and
~ honorably. On top of that
there are the telephone
calls ...and the letter.
On the afternoon of the day
Sigler died, he called their
daughter, Karin, at their
home in Et Paso. Karin
remembers thinking how
.unusual it was for her father
to sound so upset and to begin
asking about her "plans for
the future." As he did, the
line went dead.
She called her mother, then ~
a sales clerk at an El Paso ~
furniture store, and told her
she was concerned about her
father.
Not long afterward, Sigler
called his wife at work. She
said it was hard to hear him
over the noise in the back- ,
ground, "a scratching, elec-
$y Larry Jolidoa ~ _ -
':. ~ SDOCiN to T1? Comlifulion - - ~-
EL.PASO, Tex. - Ralph Sigler of El Paso was a secret..
agent for U.S. Army intelligence, but the Army says he took. his
biggest secrets to the grave.
They say they may never know what he told the Russians
that he wasn't supposed to or how he was compromised.
But Sigler's widow, Ilse; thinks the Army is the one with
all the secrets, and she has hired investigators and attorneys to
help her find out exactly how Chief. Warrant Officer Sigler, sol-
dier, husband, father and spy with 14 Russian scalps on his
cloak, came to die by electrocution.
Ralph Sigler lived in a world of shadows and shades of
meaning, but the shadow, of his death nearly four years ago
may be the longest of alt.
It was April 13, 1976, when Sigler, a career Army man
who for 10 years had been as undercover agent, was found
dead in a motel room near Fort Meade, Md.
The bespectacled, serious-looking soo of a Czechoslovakian
immigrant -was found face down on .the floor at the foot of a
crudely fashioned executioner's perch: astraight-backed desk
chair stacked on top of a fake leather arm chair. Sigler's belt
was draped over the back of the top chair.
Electric cords removed from two table lamps, spliced and ~
free of insulation where they were wrapped around his upper
arms, were still plugged into a wall socket that could be turned ~,
off and on at the shoulder-high wall light switch. ; !: II
He had a bruised, bloody face, chipped teeth, burns oo his
arms and fingers, and a gut full of booze, three times the '~
amount medical authorities estimate it would take to-make a 5-
foot-6-inch-tall, 150-pound man like Sigler staggering drunk.:
On his left forearm was ajungle-cat tattoo, a mute link to
the 20 years of barracks life he led before becoming a spy in
1966. Crushed in his right hand was a plastic drinYing cup that
presumably had contained the water that. when. poured on the
contact points, brought the juice sizzling into his body when the
switch was tripped.
The door to his third-floor room had been Iocked~ witD a
deadbolt from inside, and the only window in the room also was
locked from the inside.
The Army ruled it a clear-cut case of suicide, brought oa l
scrawl. l~ reaa: tronic kind of noise, very '
'1. I dun t know what I'm loud."
guilty of. Sigler told his wife: "Just ,
2. Then why the positive j listen to me. Get arespect- '
responses? ; able lawyer. Sue the Army.
3. Acting? ~ I'm dying. I never lied." Then
4. Lying?
5. Don't know the differ-
. ence?
6. Too bad! .
silence.
Ilse .Sigler didn't lmow~
where her husband was call- i
ing from, but she assumed he
-was being hurt and probably
being held against his will .
She managed to arouse offi-
cial concern by calling her
husband's superiors at the
missile complex associated
with Fort Bliss, Sigler's
permanent-duty station and
the location of his "rnver"
.job, as an electronics techni-;
clan... .' ...
i/ ~iY T x?'tD'E~
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Eventually, Carlos Zapata, I The letter Sigler had
a fellow military intelligence .~ mailed three days before his ~.
cificer at Fort Bliss, called ~ death didn't arrive arrtil a few '
Ilse Sigler and gave her the da afterward, but to Ilse Si- ;
telephone number at the Hoag glen the message was lode!- ;
day Inn near Fort Mea ..
where her husband was stay-
ing.
, ,
,
,
pp
The phone in his room did ~~ or accident, sue the LLS.
not answer, and the desk Army for being the cause, i
clerk refused to heed her plea naming specifically the fol-
to go see if the room was va- lowing as defendants:' CWO I
cant.
Sialer's list included two ~
But Army intelligence a .
agents at Fort bfeade who major generals in charge of
had been interrogating Sigler intelligence at Fort Meade,
for more than a week in an his principal contacts there;
attempt to fall in the areas ~Pata and John Schaffstahl,
of deception" that had shown another military agent Sigler
up on his lie detector results ~ had worked for at Fort Bliss;
say they were closing in on and Francis Pracek, his FBI
"Landward Ho;' their breezy I }iaison in El Paso.
code name for secret agent ' ~ The letter also instructed
g her to demand the return of
Si Agents Martel and Donnell i the notes and papers the
Drake were dispatched to the Army, had talked him into
motel. They checked the bar ~ reteasmg during Iris question-
and then talked the desk clerk ~ mg in Maryland.
into letting them into the Although 'Army officials
~? admit they took Sigler out for
roam to check on a friend
they described as having a i a day of drinking earlier in
drinking problem, a bad heart i his stay in !ropes of loosening
and a worried wife. i his tongue about his "decep-
The desk clerk, using a spe- lion," they deny that they pro-
eial key to slide back the vided him any drinks or even
deadboli lock, let himself and I had contact with ltim after
1~fartzl into the ,room. The i the final lie-detector session.
agent kicked the electric cord i The polygraph operator
t with his foot said Sigler arced him to "bu
o
k
f th
t
c
e
e s
o
ou
and sent the desk clerk down-
stairs to call an ambulance.
Llsing the room phone, he
called his superiors at Fort
Meade. "Landward Ho" had
been found.
Ilse Sigler and Karin, who
.knew nothing of her faWer's
undercover activities until the
day of his death, were visited
the next morning by Army..
officers and a chaplain from
Fort Bliss, informing them of
his apparent suicide and what
his survivors' benefits would
amount to.
Ilse Sigler says that when
they started referring to her
"Dear Ilse: Should anything
death
suicide
en to me
ha
him axis-pack" of beer as he
left, but that he told Sigler he
didn't have time.
i he bartender and wai-
tres.~es at the motel har say
they didn't see Sigler anytime
that afternoon or evening.
Bartenders at saloons near
the hotel say he wasn't one of
their customers that night ei-
ther, and the Army says he
did not rent a car during his
entire nine-day stay, even
though he routinely did so
when sent out of town. The
room where his body was
found contained no evidence
that alcohol had been coo-
husband's having "mental j suWhen did he last have con--
' problems and a dru'~g ~, tact with the military?
problem,' she kicked them ~ The Arm 's official investi-
out. Sigler's military medical i ti re rt claims
o
n
floor mat of his car a few
weeks later by his daughter,
indicated no previous prob-
lems related to drinking or
mental health.
p
ga o
polygraph operator Odell
King was the last to see him
alive, at 2:30 p.m., as he left.
Sigler's motel room. ,
Yet the same report goes
on to say that some unnamed
persons "discussed" the bad
test results with Sigler some-
time afterward and that he
could still not explain why his
answers were evasive. Only
then did the intelligence
agen-s at Fore Meade decide
he should be taken there the
next day.
In another apparent contra-
diction, the state police report
says Ncel Jones, the intelli-
gence specialist in charge of
Sigler's visit, told the state
troopers that"the victim had
last been seen alive at Fort
P3eade o~ 4/13/76' at 1500
hours (3 p.m.) when he had
completed a routine poly-
graph ezaminaton conducted
by the Army."
Who, if anybody, was with
him from that afternoon on?
According to the state-
ments of the two intelligence
agents sent to the motel to
look for Sigler in response to
his wife's panicky calls, the
one who hadn't seen him in
several years and thus was
the least tilcely to recognize
him was sent to the bar to
look for him. When be re-
turned to the car without Si-
glen, the other agent, who had
.been with Sigler almost daily
since his arrival, went to the
desk clerk to ask to check the
room.
Harry Thompson, a Mary-
land private investigator
hired by ilse Sigler, said that
someone rigged him up."
He also noted, as Thomp-
son and others have, that Si- ;
glen's body was found facing ~
away from the doorway. But '
the stacked chairs in which be
supposedly sat while he flip- ;
ped the light switch on with i
his elbow were still faring the ;
door.
Hertzog said that if he had
been dealing with "ordinary
circumstances," he would
have added :ris opinion that
Sigler's death was a suicide.
"But I knew that we were
involved here with intelli-
gence people, we were deal-
ing- with people who know i
about locks, about getting in
and out of locked rooms."
When investigator Thomp? ;
son recalls the photos of Si-
gler's -motel room and the
gaps in the police and mili-
tary investigations, he can
conjure up a very ug}y set of
possibilities.
What if; says Thompson, 1
the electric wires and the !
stacked chairs were actually
the setting for an interroga- ;
lion session, where the light
switch was flipped on and off,
sending jolts of current into
Sigler to make him talk about
things even a wildly drunken
man couldn't or wouldn't talk
about?
And what if the questions ~
continued, but the answers ~
still didn't come, and "they
gave him a little too much
while Sigler's room was ~, juice" ~ind he died right there
apparently locked from the '~ at the feet of his questioners?
inside in such a way that a And when you think you i
key the desk clerk controlled have all of that figured out,
was needed to admit a visitor, says Thompson, you can begin
there would have been ample trying to figure out whether
opportunity for someone hid- the questioners were LT.S.
ing in the bathroom or else- Amy inkelligence agents or
where to come out of hiding .KGB operatives or third
after the desk clerk Left hiar- ~ parties from Mezico City, San
tel in the room to go down- i Francisco or somewhere else j
stairs and phone for an ambu- in the world of spies and
lance. ? counterspies, of double agents
Even the Army's official
autopsy, which was done as
part of the official investiga-
tion of Sigier's death, stops
short of drawing a conclusion
on whether Sigler's death was,
indeed. a suicide.
Dr. Robert W. Hertzog, the
Army pathologist at Walter
Reed Hospital who performed
': the autopsy, explained why he
concluded that the "cause" of
death was electrocution but
and doubled double agents,
the world of sold secrets and
worthless secrets.
and when you get that far,
you're beginning to live in the
world where Ralph Sigler, a
`patriot until the end or at
least very nearly the end,
lived -and died.
left open the question of "the
manner of death." `~ -- -, .~.
"The man was quite intoxi-
rated;' said ? Dr. Hertzog. ;'I j
cannot exclude the possibility
? that he Was set up .. -. that
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