Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story (17 page)

Rosario had prepared a meat and vegetable dish. It was well presented but nothing fancy or memorable—and not Latin or Italian, which I would have found more interesting. They served a decent red wine to go with it. Because the spouses weren’t cleared, and we were taught that we should never discuss business at home, we didn’t that night. The discussion centered on life in Rome, Rosario’s background, and her pregnancy. Ames at the time was driving a used Jaguar, which he had smartly purchased on credit, but there wasn’t anything else conspicuously excessive about their lifestyle. Because we were still in temporary quarters without a washing machine, Pat, as a matter of course, would ask to bring our laundry along when we were invited out. And she did so this evening as well.

The atmosphere was convivial, but our relationship had changed, and I’m sure Ames understood this, despite his nonchalance. As I had learned from my three previous station chief postings, it’s lonely at the top. It is difficult to be friends with staff and at the same time exercise leadership and command authority. I was Ames’s boss, and a professional relationship had to be maintained. There would be no hanging out and socializing. Pat and I would socialize mostly with senior officers in the embassy in Rome and with foreign liaisons. These relationships were professionally and personally rewarding, but those outside the Agency culture don’t completely understand the challenges, stresses, and issues you face because of the secrecy embedded in our business. The truth is I felt closer to station chiefs whom I would see at conferences and back in Washington, even though I had much less contact with them.

Still, that evening at dinner with Ames, it was hard to get past the fact that I had risen to station chief and that Ames was still a mid-level officer. This hung over the room like a ghost, though he showed no outward signs of envy or discontent with the situation. It is conceivable that he saw it purely as a social evening and that he blocked out his other life for the night, but what he felt inside is impossible to say.

*   *   *

Compared to the other stations I had run, Rome was considerably larger, with more complexity and greater responsibility. Despite the job’s stature and prestige, there had been no formal selection process. Clair George had been looking to replace Wolfe, and someone I knew quite well in human resources suggested my name. George reportedly trusted me, given our history with Iran-Contra and Afghanistan, and liked the idea. He called me into his office one day and told me, “You’re going to Rome.” Wolfe supposedly wasn’t as enthusiastic, since he had served as a station chief and chief of the Europe Division before Rome and thought the Italians would find my relatively less senior status at the time off-putting, which did not turn out to be the case. Nonetheless, Wolfe was gracious to Pat and me during the transition.

The main mission there focused on “hard targets,” including the Russians and all their Eastern Bloc allies, who had a huge presence in Rome. Thousands of Jewish refugees were coming out of Russia then, arriving in Rome before going to their ultimate destination of Israel or the United States. Many of these refugees were engineers, scientists, and others with highly technical backgrounds who possessed valuable intelligence, and they had to be debriefed as they arrived. Rome and the other European stations were still very large, given the importance of Europe and our shared history since World War II. More power has shifted back to Washington in recent years, given rapid advances in communications technology and more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But back when I arrived in Rome, the European chiefs truly were barons—a term you don’t hear much in the CIA anymore—and the stations they ran made them the equivalent of three- or four-star generals in the military.

By this point in my career, I had learned to avoid the debilitating syndrome known in the Agency as “clientitis”—falling in love with the host country and overestimating its importance and the challenges it faces. Rome was incredibly dynamic, and the Italians certainly had their charms, so it was good that I had developed the experience to accurately determine Italy’s priority in the context of the overall U.S. national interest.

The CIA and Italy go back a long way in the covert action field. The Agency’s earliest and most important “influence operation” took place during the 1948 parliamentary elections. At that time, the Americans and Russians were just starting to face off in the Cold War international power struggle for the “hearts and minds” of free men. President Truman had already put down a marker that we would not let Russia spread its Communist system to Western Europe. There was already great concern about the Soviet Union gobbling up Eastern Europe. Truman knew that, on the heels of World War II, a military confrontation with the Russians would be disastrous for everyone. So he moved his fight below the radar and to the back alleys. He put the CIA at the forefront of this fight, and Italy was the first of the political battlegrounds. To counter the very strong Communist Party influence in Italy, Truman authorized the CIA to pour money into the elections there, through newspapers and magazines, radio broadcasts, posters, leaflets, and political organizations. According to Ambassador Hugh Montgomery, who spent three decades working in Western European postings for the Agency from 1952 to 1981, including a stint as station chief in Rome, the CIA was critical to preventing a Communist takeover in the Italian elections of 1948. “Without the CIA, the Communist Party, in which the Soviets had huge interests, would definitely have won,” he said.
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In the end, the conservative Christian Democracy Party defeated the leftist pro-Soviet Popular Alliance by a margin of 48 percent to 31 percent. This election set the standard for future fights, and the pro-West coalition prevailed in Italian parliamentary elections for the next fifty years. As time passed, the democratic parties were strong enough to stand on their own two feet and no longer needed to rely on clandestine Agency funding and support. Our effort in Italy was so successful that it endured for years as a model for effective political covert operations. In fact, much of the doctrine was still in vogue when I arrived in Allende’s Chile in 1971. We all took a few pages from the Italy playbook.

*   *   *

When I arrived in Rome, I was amazed at how thoroughly the CIA’s political influence remained ingrained in the Italian psyche, for good and bad. There was an inflated sense of the power of the CIA. I was able to take advantage of this mind-set with many of my contacts, one of whom, the chief of police, would go out of his way to be seen seemingly conspiring with me at the U.S. embassy’s annual National Day party. As a matter of routine, he would take me by the arm and walk me very slowly around the perimeter of the embassy’s garden, in plain view of hundreds of top dignitaries. Using the most secretive body language, while everybody looked on, he would whisper, “Aren’t these gardens attractive?” and go on at length about the foliage. In this way, he accomplished his objective of being seen with the CIA station chief and ensuring that everybody knew he and the Agency were very close. He wasn’t quite convinced, despite his position in the government, that we weren’t still involved in calling the shots. It was to our advantage that I be complicit in this deception, and I gladly participated in the farce on the Fourth of July.

The chief’s assiduous attention continued until I left Rome. As a farewell gesture of respect for the CIA representative, he invited Pat and me to dinner at an upscale restaurant. When we walked in, he and his wife were already seated at a table, the piano player was tapping away, and the waitstaff was lined up at the door. Everyone was exceptionally attentive. After fifteen minutes, I realized that no one else had entered the premises. When I asked him why, he said, “I closed the restaurant down for the night so we could have a special farewell.” The unmistakable message was that he had great power, which I frankly had never doubted.

Our interactions with locals were enhanced by our ability to speak their language. While many Italians in the business and technical world speak English, a surprisingly small percentage of Italians in politics, law enforcement, and intelligence do. The Agency prepares people very well for postings abroad by providing rigorous predeployment language training for both agents and spouses. The language classes were arduous—and very small, so there was no place to hide. Our class consisted of Pat, me, and my soon-to-be-deputy, Doug Hokenson. Neither Pat nor I thought much about it ahead of time, but we quickly realized that married couples studying together present unique challenges that would test just about any relationship. We eventually felt sorry for Doug, who was the better linguist yet tried not to outshine his future boss while at the same time studiously ignoring the occasional tension between Pat and me. Like most things, Doug handled this with ease.

One of my most vivid memories of discord during training occurred when Pat and I were practicing our Italian lessons in the car while driving to the Jersey Shore. I made the terrible mistake of correcting Pat about a subjunctive verb ending. I don’t know who was correct, but Pat found it so irritating that she rolled down the window and threw our textbook out of the car and onto the congested Route 95. Neither of us shone in class the following Monday, and we never practiced Italian again in a speeding vehicle. When we finished the training, we could converse in Italian across a broad spectrum of subjects. Our teacher even went so far as to spend a day on Italian hand gestures, some of which I still use.

We prided ourselves on our language skills, which made navigating the cultural divides, not to mention recruiting foreign agents, far more manageable. In Rome, speaking Italian also enabled us to enjoy and understand the country’s incredible cuisine. I grew up believing that tomato sauce needed to cook all day and that there was only one recipe—a couple of cans of Hunt’s tomatoes, a can of tomato paste, a teaspoon of sugar along with a dash of salt, pepper, and garlic. It remained my favorite sauce until I tasted authentic Italian cooking. Later on, I learned that the key to Italian cooking is using fresh, natural ingredients. When I think about my favorite sauce, I probably come back to the basic pomodoro and basil recipe, which goes well with just about anything. A very close second, particularly as a specialty, is spaghetti in the black ink of squid. It is hard to find on the menu, even in very good New York Italian restaurants, because the squid ink sac must be fresh and spoils easily. I was delighted to find a similar risotto dish at my favorite local Italian restaurant in New York, Cellini, in Midtown, run by Dino Arpaia.

Besides the great cuisine, there was wonderful opera. Pat and I had become opera lovers in Argentina, which is renowned for the Teatro Colón, one of the world’s best acoustical opera houses. One of the lovely ways to enjoy the opera in Rome during the summer is at the Caracalla Baths, an outdoor site that in ancient Roman times accommodated as many as five thousand bathers. The ruins of the baths remain, with the addition of a huge stage constructed under the stars. It is a marvelous experience to witness Verdi’s
Aïda
performed with live animals, including, on special occasions, elephants and horses. Our contacts in Italy were flattered by our interest in Italian opera and invited us one season to opening night at the famous La Scala opera house in Milan. It was an extraordinary event, not only listening to great opera, but also observing the cognoscenti decked out in capes and tiaras. The Italians take their opera seriously and are vocal in their appreciation of and displeasure with the performers. One has to be brave to sing at La Scala.

Far to the south, in Naples, I was involved in another bit of theater that required some fortitude—landing on the deck of the USS
Forrestal
. Ambassador Peter Secchia convinced the U.S. Navy that it would be a good idea to arrange for a group of us to land on the deck of the aircraft carrier when its port call was Italy. I took my seat on the airplane next to a Roman Catholic priest, who turned out to be Cardinal John Foley from Philadelphia. A close mutual friend from our hometown, Dick Doran, had been urging both of us to meet each other in Rome. At the time, Cardinal Foley was serving as the Vatican’s director of communications, and over the months ahead, we became good friends. The plane touched down on the carrier deck with a jolt that I braced myself for. The whole experience—landing an airplane on a ship bobbing in the ocean—was fascinating and memorable.

It had been my hope during my assignment in Rome to get a private audience with Pope John Paul II, who had had a great deal to do with encouraging democracy in Eastern Europe. I was reluctant to infringe on my friendship with Cardinal Foley, but once, when I mentioned that Pat’s and my wedding anniversary was approaching, he suggested that we celebrate with a private Mass with the Pope.

Shortly thereafter, we received instructions about where Pat, our son, Conor, and I should go in the Vatican, very early in the morning, to be escorted to the Pope’s private chapel. About twelve people had the same privilege that day. The dress code for men was business coat and tie, but the women were required to have their heads covered. When we walked into the small chapel, the Pope was kneeling in prayer in front of the altar. It was a solemn and special occasion for all of us. After the Mass, we were placed in a semicircle, and the Pope proceeded to walk around and address each person individually in his or her own language. When he reached me, he asked me in perfect English an unexpected question: Where do you work? My mind raced—do I lie to the Pope, or break cover and identify myself as the CIA station chief? “Your Holiness, I work for the U.S. government,” I said, with slight hesitation, having found an inspired answer that allowed me to avoid lying to the Pope or failing my next polygraph. I thought I detected a knowing smile on the Pope’s face.

Italian cuisine, the opera, a private Mass at the Vatican—all this contrasted with what I will always remember as the dark side of my time in Rome: Rick Ames. He constantly reminded me that the spy game could be a hall of mirrors (and as far as Ames went, of course, I did not yet know the half of it). I had been told at headquarters before I left that he had a drinking problem and had been brought back from Rome to Washington to dry out. A later inspector general’s report on how Ames had been able to function inside the Agency as a KGB mole for nearly a decade would conclude that he had been known to drink during lunch and sleep at his desk. But now he was back in Rome and reportedly sober. One of the first things I did when I arrived was call him in to address the issue head-on. I told him, “Rick, you’re a potentially talented officer and I know you’ve had a drinking problem, but I’m not going to tolerate it if you start drinking again. If there’s any backsliding, you’re out of here.” He apparently was staying sober because his wife was pregnant, and he was on relatively good behavior. Nevertheless, I asked my deputy, Doug Hokenson, a first-class officer and experienced operator, to keep an eye on him as well. This was hard to do, since Ames was located in a separate area. I knew that it was important to check up on him, so I would from time to time seek him out in the afternoon and stand very close to him, as I would with my teenage children, to see if I could detect any liquor on his breath. I never did. But a question I’ve asked myself many times was whether it might have been a mistake to alert him to the fact that we would be watching his drinking. He was smart enough to stay out of our presence. At the end of the day, I would do it again, because the alternative of ignoring the issue would have been worse. Of course, years later the irony wasn’t lost on me. While I was saying, “Shape up, try harder, you’ll be successful,” he was probably thinking, “You have no idea how successful a Soviet spy I am,” as he went about stealing U.S. government secrets.