THE SPY WHO GOT AWAY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500008-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 10, 2012
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: November 2, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/10: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500008-7
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ARTICUA NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
ON PAGE 2 November 1986
THE SPY
WHO GOTAWAY
Edward Lee Howard was a efforts compromised, Now
C.I.A. recruit bound for It has been learned that
Moscow. Dismissed, he anot or ex-C.I.A. agent
eluded the F.B.L, defected was aware of the bebryal.
and left U.S. intelgence
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 39-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. that on a visit to the island, Howard con-
fided to him that he had sold secrets to the KG.B.
in Europe and sought to enlist him in further espio-
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
in the New Mexico desert.
Edward Lee Howard has been charged with con-
spiring to violate the espionage laws by his visit to
South Padre Island. Bosch, who, like Howard, left
the C.I.A. under a cloud, has not been charged. But
his statements provided the key evidence that ena-
bled the Department of Justice to file a criminal
complaint against Howard. Bosch, who lives in the
Los Angeles area, has declined to comment.
Former Director of Central Intelligence Stan-
field Turner has said that United States intelli-
gence was "very badly hurt" by Howard, who had
"very critical information about operations inside
the Soviet Union."
Another intelligence official put it more bluntly:
"He wiped out Moscow station."
To understand the Howard case, one must step
through the looking glass into the murky world of
counterintelligence, where nothing is quite what it
seems and not every question has an answer.
One thing is clear, however. The Howard case
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. 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 KG.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
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
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 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
eftn"d
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Peru. the Howards returned to the United States, Why did the C.I.A. choose to send to its most
and he landed the environmental job in Chicago. sensitive post a newcomer with no previous expert.
In January 1981, the C.I.A. hired Edward Howard ence working as an intelligence officer overseas?
as a career trainee in the Directorate of Opera- William J. Casey, Director of Central Intelligence,
tions, also known as the D.D.O. (in reference to the and other CIA. officials have declined, for the
Deputy Director for Operations) and as the Clan- most part, to comment publicly on the Howard
destine Services. Mary stayed at their home in case. But Casey has defended privately the deci-
Barrington. a Chicago suburb, while Ed reported to sion to send a rookie to Moscow as a common
C.I.A. headquarters at Langley, Va. He was sent agency practice.
for several months to the Farm, a secret C.I.A. in- The chief of the S.E. division, in a rare appear-
stallation at Camp Peary, Va., near Williamsburg. ance before a secret session of the Senate Select
There, Howard learned the "tradecraft" of intelli- Committee on Intelligence, gave the agency's
gence, practicing the recruitment of agents and the standard explanation of what has emerged as a
use of "dead drops" to pass messages. He was
given five aliases. He also learned from F.B.I. major question in the Howard case. In order to
agents at the Farm how to detect and evade sur- make it more difficult for the KG.B. to identify
veillance. C.I.A. officers assigned to the Moscow station, the
In the spring, Mary came east to join him. They S.E. chief said, the agency chooses junior officers
purchased a house on Scotch Haven Drive in Coun- who are not known. Howard, he added, was the first
try Creek, a development of single-family town one who hhad gone bad.
houses in suburban Vienna, Va. Howard was given special training for his Mos-
When Robert Magee, the C.I.A.'s director of per- cow assignment. He received careful instruction in
sonnet. later reviewed the Howard case, he discov- a
the nd difficult toon contact with wih the C.I.A.'s ass see delicate
ered that there had been one blip on the security Mary Howard,
anre tee received training aets.
screen even at the start. Every candidate for the C.I.A. to work with too, her husband d in in Moscow from the
as a
C.I.A. who passes the two initial screenings is given spy. "They like to give some training to wives,
a polygraph test - "fluttered" in C.I.A. jargon. short courses," she said. Asked whether it might
Patti Volz, a C.I.A. spokesman, said Howard's ini- have included countersurveillance - such as sit-
tial polygraph indicated "some drug use." But ting in a car and acting as a lookout while her hus-
C.I.A. applicants who admit to using drugs are not band met with an agent - she replied: "It could
automatically disqualified, if they agree to end the have been something like that."
practice when hired. Patti Volz said nothing about Early in 1983, Ed Howard told neighbors he was
Howard's alcohol problem. The agency was appar- studying Russian; the State Department was send-
ently unaware of it. ing him to the Soviet Union. The Howards bought a
In Country Creek the young couple kept to them- new car and prepared to ship it to Moscow.
selves. Howard told the neighbors that he worked To build his cover, the C.I.A. gave Howard a cer-
for the State Department. He jogged regularly on tificate identifying him as a Foreign Service offi-
the path behind his house and was seen walking his cer and appointing him "a Consular Officer and a
dog, a German shepherd that he had bought as a Secretary" in the diplomatic service. It was dated
pup in Lima. Howard named the dog Whisky. March 11, 1983, and signed by Ronald Reagan and
In the fall of 1981, Mary joined the C.I.A. as a George P. Shultz.
regular, full-time employee and, like her husband, Eight days later, the Howards' son, Lee, was
was assigned to the agency's clandestine arm. "I born. Spring was on the way, and the future looked
wasn't a case officer like Ed," she said. "I was bright.
more a secretary. I worked for the D.D.O." The Then the bottom fell out of Ed Howard's life.
C.I.A. is a closed society, and it is not unusual to A second lie-detector test suggested that some of
find married couples working for the agency. Howard's answers were deceptive. The second
The agency's covert operators also tend to polygraph "picked up drugs and petty theft," the
choose their friends among colleagues in the C.I.A.'s Patti Volz said. (Howard's family insists
D.D.O. It was there that Howard met William G. that, although he drank, he did not use drugs.) An
Bosch, a 6-foot. 3-inch, blond, balding C.I.A. veteran investigation was launched.
who had served in the agency's administrative Two years later, when Howard fell under suspi-
side, then switched to the D.D.O. shortly before cion of spying for the Soviets, the C.I.A. ordered an
Howard joined the C.I.A. They shared a common internal report by its then-Deputy Inspector Gen-
background. Howard had worked in Lima; Bill eral, Carroll Hauver. Those who have read the se-
Bosch. who was three years older, had served the cret report say that Howard, when confronted
agency in Bolivia, and, like Howard, spoke Spanish after the polygraph test, admitted using drugs,
The two became good friends. stealing from vending machines and taking money
Howard's career was progress* well. He was from a woman's purse aboard an airliner.
chosen for a singular honor, servi a in the Soviet The C.I.A. decided it could not send Howard to
European division (S.E.), which covers the Soviet Moscow. In fact, it decided it did not want him in
Union and Eastern Europe. "S.E. is the holiest of the agency at all. Howard was fired. By June 1983,
holies," one veteran case officer explained. he was out of a job. He was now walking around
"They're a closed, cliquish, incestuous bunch of with detailed knowledge of the agency's most
people. Nobody looks over their shoulder. S.E. sensitive operations in Moscow in his head. He was
screens their own and thumbs their nose at any- also furious at the C.I.A.
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. COfIGAU2d
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director of the finance committe
of the New Mexico state legisla
ture, the young professional wh
showed up in his office unan
nounced to answer an advertise
ment in The Albuquerque Journa
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. Or
e
-
o
-
-
l
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
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 alco-
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.
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
y
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-- --- -..- _ , .w.
called Porter. "He said,
'Sorry, I got crazy with 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.
was later to tell the F.B.I.,
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.
1 not have comev at a chenko never saw him," Geer
worse time for James said. "He didn't know him by
H. Geer. On Aug. for
1985, his name. It was a circumstan-
first day as assistant director much more You than have one to an's
of tF.B.I. in charge of the much of the
gFnce divisrge, 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 i equally emphatic that the
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-
F.B.I. had no immediate
basi
f
s
or arresting Howard.
The F. 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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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/10: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0807500008-7
Philip M Ba
~ That ni
w
James G
id i
ht, M
H
d
a
c
was gettild b
.ng woue. In afew 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 baf-
the day before by two F.B.I. fling, either a mix-up in com-
agents, who asked for munication, or human error.
records on Howard. The 8:30 Only one F.B.I. surveillance
A.M. staff briefing of the agent was on duty, several
committee, to prepare the hundred feet from the How-
lawmakers for a 9 A.M. pub- and house. Although it was
lic hearing, was about to be- about 4:30 P.M., and broad
gin and Ed Howard was un- daylight, the Howards drove
characteristically late. He fi- away in their dark red 1979
nally arrived at the office at Oldsmobile undetected.
8:25 A.M. "He did a beautiful Ed and Mary Howard left
briefing on the 18-month eco- El Dorado and swung onto In-
nomic outlook," Baca said. terstate Highway 25, heading
"He had graphs. During the northwest for Santa Fe.
hearing, some questions Other F.B.I. agents were
came up a.n the price of oil. I spread out in cars a few miles
He answered them and was away, awaiting word by radio
toinpletely 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
called. Howard had told her An hour later, around 7
of the approach by the F.B.I. P.M., the Howards drove
It was, she said, the first she I from the restaurant where
knew he was in trouble. "It they had dined. In the dark-
was like a nightmare," she ness, somewhere in the down-
said. "It's very traumatic town area, Ed Howard
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
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
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
that afternoon, would it be all i P.M., there was a dummy in
right if the sitter walked over the passenger seat in place of
with Lee to the Carlson and her husband. It was made of
combined the job? Mrs. Carl- clothes shaped into a human
son said that would be fine. form, topped with a faceless
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-
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.
g
ary
o
ar
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.
t was
eer sa
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
i~ 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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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/10: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500008-7
psychiatric ouunsseli g after all,
flush in Santa Fe." The note also said, for his
in part: Well, I'm going and maybe was too I'll give them what they think I al- when Howard confessed to the
ready gave them," and instructed agency that he had contemplated en-
Mary to "sell the house, Jeep, etc., tering the Soviet Embassy in Wash-
and move with one of our parents and ington to sell secrets, the C.I.A. sat on
be happy." Howard also told Mary to that information for almost a year be-
tell Lee that "I think of him and you fore telling the F.B.I. Finally, after
each day until I die." Howard was fired, the C.I.A. ne-
By the time the F.B.I. realized that glected to recover both his diplom~rt
Howard had vanished, he had a 24- passport and a false-name p
hour head start. Bureau officials be- he had been issued by the Clandestine
lieve he flew from Albuquerque, to Services.
New York, to Helsinki, and then Within the intelligence community,
crossed the border into the Soviet some of the heat in the Howard case
Union. has been taken by Clair E. George,
f
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.
or
the C.I.A.'s Deputy Director
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."
"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." ^
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 said, Erik Sites, listed as a civilian 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, waswaiting 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 less of a security risk. It paid
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
Hess," and cites the F.B.I.'s success in
rounding up several other spies in the
same year that Howard escaped-
Howard's 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."
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. Ihas 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 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.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/10: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500008-7