Angry Planet - Growing up CIA

Episode Date: July 26, 2017

Despite some close calls, the United States and Russia never fought in a full-scale conflict during the Cold War. The fear of nuclear Armageddon loomed for decades but never occurred. The world avoided the devastation thanks to the efforts of politicians, spies and soldiers. If not for some special and unexpected relationships across the Iron Curtain, the world may look very different today. This week on War College, author Eva Dillon talks us through her new book, 'Spies in the Family,' and one of the relationships that kept the world safe. Dillon’s father was a CIA operative whose most trusted asset was a high-level Soviet general and a close family friend. By Matthew Gault Produced by Bethel HabteSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' News. He hit himself, but he heard my father at the bottom of the stairs in an animated phone conversation speaking in fluent Russian. And the next morning, he told all of this, you know, gosh, I heard your father on the phone speaking Russian. And we never knew he spoke Russian.

We knew he spoke German and Spanish and some Italian. You know, and so some of these things started pointing in that direction. You're listening to Reuters War College, a discussion of the world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Hello, and welcome to War College. I'm your host, Matthew Gull. Relations between Russia and America. have long been contentious, but it's never quite come down right blows. The two superpowers helped defeat fascism in World War II,

and, though the Cold War was often tense, terrible, and tragic, it never ballooned into a nuclear conflict. The reasons why are many and varied, but one reason is because of the close personal relationships that developed between high-level politicians, and spies on the ground. Today on War College, we're talking with author Eva Dillon, the author of Spies and the Family.

Dylan's story is incredible, and I want her to tell it, that let me just say up top that it's about family, the CIA, and how an unlikely friendship helped in the Cold War. Eva, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. So, Eva, who was your father? My father was a CIA officer during the Cold War, which we did not know growing up. And the fact that I discovered 17 years after his death that he handled the highest-ranking,

longest-serving Soviet double agent our country had during the country had during the war. the Cold War. And he developed a very close and personal relationship with General Dmitri Poyakov, which resulted in a very unique and very effective relationship for the United States. Are you said you learned 17 years after his death? Is that correct? That's correct. And how did you learn that? In the summer of 1975, when I was 17, a newspaper article identified my father as a CIA officer in effect. We were living in New Delhi, India at the time. And my six brothers and sisters and I had always been told that my father worked for the State Department. And the article, which was in the English-speaking

Times of India, was reporting on the recently published tell-all book by a disgruntled former CIA officer, which had revealed the CIA operations around the world and the identities of 250 covert officers, including my father. And the book was of sorts, the CIA's WikiLeaks scandal of the 1970s. And I'm kind of curious, growing up, you heard that he was in the State Department, and that was kind of the story. Was there any inkling that something else more was going on? Not when we were younger, but when we were old enough and, for instance, living in India, and I was a teenager at that point, you know, we noticed things like watchers on the street,

you know, Indian men who were sort of standing around with no purpose and, you know, we sort of started figuring, you know, this feels kind of funny. Like we can tell we're under surveillance. And then at one point, also in India, at one evening, my sister's boyfriend, they were in college at the time, and she had come to stay for six months during one of our college semesters. And he was coming down the stairs in the middle of the night to get a glass of water. And he came upon, he hit himself, but he heard my father at the bottom of the stairs in an animated phone conversation speaking in fluent Russian. And the next morning, he told all of this, you know, gosh, I heard your father on the phone speaking Russian. And we never knew he spoke Russian.

We knew he spoke German and Spanish and some Italian. You know, and so some of these things started pointing in that direction. But we really did not know for sure until this newspaper article came out. And who was Top Hat? Top Hat was General Dmitri Poyakov, who was sent to the United States in 1961 as a member of the Soviet mission to the UN Security Council Military Staff Committee. But in reality, he was an officer for the GRU, which of course is Russia's military intelligence. And he worked undercover at the UN. and his first job in the United States was to oversee the network of Soviet illegals that were operating in the United States at the time.

And at some point he became disillusioned with the Soviet government and all of its hypocrisies. And he volunteered to American intelligence to work with American intelligence for a myriad of reasons. Do we have any idea why he became disillusioned? Yes. You know, usually those who worked, you know, decided to either were recruited or decided to volunteer on their own, they did it for money or asylum or to get their kids into good American colleges. But Poyakov was different. He didn't ask for any of that. He did it for ideological reasons.

You know, he considered himself to be a Russian patriot, not a Soviet, at least not in heart. He had a lot of animosity towards the Soviet leadership, but a Russian patriot who wanted to help the Russian people. And he was a hero in the great patriotic war, a decorated World War II veteran. And sometime after the war, it is believed that he began to view the Soviet leaders as corrupt thugs, you know, mocking the sacrifices the Russian people had made during the war. And he disliked Khrushchev with a passion, considering him an uncouth bore prone to emotional outbursts, you know, such as the infamous, we are turning out missiles like sausages, remark. And, you know, Poyukov reminded the Americans of what Khrushchev had said

that the Soviet Union was going to bury American imperialism. And Khrushchev believed that the United States was weak, military, and politically. And America hadn't been able to win the Korean War, and it did nothing to aid the Hungarians in their revolt. And Poyukov was putting himself at risk so that the Americans would see Khrushchev and the Politburo for, you know, who they were, so that the United States would stand up to the Soviet policies and counteract them. And he was deeply concerned about the potential for war between the superpowers.

And he wanted to do what he could to lessen the inevitability of a disastrous clash. And then, to add insult to injury, he was in the UN General Assembly in 1960 when Khrusha famously hit his desk with his shoe, which deeply embarrassed him. You know, Poliakov believed Khrushchev threatened the uneasy peace between the superpowers, and he wanted to help the Americans better interpret Soviet leadership's thinking and intentions in a quest to avoid nuclear war. And how did he meet your father? He met my father, first off, when Poyakov was posted to Burma. And actually, he probably met him.

I don't have full corroboration, so I speculated on this based on a very senior CIA officer telling me that my father had had contact. with Poliakov from the beginning. And the beginning, of course, was when he was working at the United Nations. And at one point, it was time for him. His tour was finished and he was going back to Moscow. And in Moscow, he would need to work with the CIA as opposed to the FBI in the United States. And it was very likely that my father was sent to New York at the time to help train him. At least that is what a CIA person told me. But I know for certain that he was sent to Burma in 19, my father was sent to Burma in 1966 when Poyakov was posted to Burma in 1966.

And the reason my father was sent there was to introduce him to Poyukov's new handler, a man named Jim Flint. And he wouldn't have been sent there to introduce him if he hadn't met him in an earlier situation. But then his most important interaction with Pauyokov's. was when Paul Yukov was sent to India in 1973, and we followed. My father was assigned to become his handler in 1973, and that is when the two of them met. What did they think of each other, and how long was their relationship?

You know, what they thought of each other was very interesting, because prior to my father being assigned as his handler, Pauliukov's earlier handlers had all been black hats, and the black hats were the result of the infamously paranoid yet supremely influential CIA director of counterintelligence for 20 years from 1954 to 1974 James Jesus Angleton. I think many of your listeners will be familiar with Angleton. And Angleton believed in a huge Soviet master plot that was infiltrating the United States and that all Soviet asylum seekers or volunteers were not to be trusted. And his followers were called blackhats.

And Angleton had enough influence to ensure that Pauyukau's first handlers, first two handlers, were blackhats, which was an awkward situation because they didn't trust him. You know, probably one of the most important things between an asset and the handler is trust. You know, you have your security to think of. And Pauyakov sensed that, although I don't think he ever knew. for sure. So that when my father came out in 1973 to handle them, and that was at the very end of Angleton's reign as head of counterintelligence and his power was waning, you know, they developed a very close relationship because my father was not a black cat. He believed that, you know,

Paul Yukov was a true asset who was working for the United States and for the benefit of the United States. And I think they had very similar personality types. You know, my father was a a devout Catholic, you know, with high moral and ethical standards. And so was Paul Youkov. He didn't work for the United States, as I mentioned early, for money or asylum or any sort of thing. He worked for ideological reasons, and they really bonded. They had a close relationship. They went out hunting and fishing on the Yamuna River and hunting in the Himalian foothills. And as a result of that, and because at that time, in 1970, Paul Yacov was promoted to general.

He had been a colonel before that. And so the information that passed between them was huge in its value and its nuance and its importance. And the level of information to the United States at that time was crucial. Well, what was some of that information? What were the kinds of things that he was passing over? In his earlier years, Pauliakov revealed the network, this is before my father's time, but he revealed the network of Soviet illegals operating in the U.S. in the 50s and 60s and the identities of four American servicemen who were working for the Soviets.

But as Poliukov progressed up the latter, his information became that much more valuable and nuanced. He disclosed intelligence on Soviet military planning, nuclear missile systems, chemical and biological weapons research. He photographed thousands of pages of top secret documents from the GRU and KJ, Some, for example, detailing the American military technology that their agents were directed to steal. And these orders issued annually by the Soviet Military Industrial Commission startled American analysts at the time with their detailed knowledge of classified American systems, which spurred the U.S. to severely tightened controls on Western military technology. But Poyakov was also key to informing the CIA on the Sino-Soviet political rift,

which eventually led to President Nixon's historic visit to China and 72. But most important, in my and many others' opinion, Poyakov disclosed to the Americans, the Soviet government's belief that it could not prevail in a nuclear confrontation with the U.S., which significantly degraded the Kremlin's ability to threaten America and our allies and really diffuse tensions. This insights, you know, said the former CIA director of Robert Gates, under George H.W. Bush may have prevented the U.S. miscalculations that would have touched off a shooting war.

And James Woolsey, also a former director of CIA, this time under Clinton, said of Poliakov, among all the secret agents recruited by the United States during the Cold War, Pauliakov was the jewel in the crown. What General Poliakov did for the West didn't just help us win the Cold War. It helped the Cold War from becoming hot. All right, Eva, we're going to pause for a break real quick. you are listening to War College on Reuters. Eva is the author of Spies and the Family, which tells the incredible story of her father as a CIA agent

handling some of the most important Russian assets during the Cold War. Thank you for listening to War College. Welcome back. I am your host, Matthew Galt. We are here talking with Eva, Dylan, about her father and the incredible book she wrote about him Spies in the Family. So I want to circle back around to that night in 1975. How did life change for you?

You know, it's interesting. You know, for us kids, it was actually more of a curious, and you're talking about when we discovered that he was a CIA agent, right? Right. Is that what you're referring to? Yes, yes, yes. For us kids, it was more a curiosity than a shock. My father had always been, you know, a quote-unquote foreign service officer moving around the world, dealing with foreigners. What was unusual, I suppose, was that we didn't question him about it. We just knew he wasn't all of a sudden going to start. telling us all his secrets about what he was really doing at work all day. And we loved and respected him too much to put him in an awkward position. So we just went about our lives as usual. Nobody wanted to upset the apple cart. But for my father, it pretty much put an end to his career as a foreign service officer. We returned to the United States after that, and as it did for so many of the agents that Philip Agey, who wrote that infamous book, which revealed all of the agents.

So we returned to the United States, and my father, you know, instead was assigned to handle Victor Belenco, the Soviet pilot who had defected from Siberia with the super secret mig 25 foxbat jet under Raider across the Sea of Japan, which he landed on a northern Japanese islands. So, you know, this was the sort of job that my father could do, you know, while he was in the United States and still be very valuable to, to the Americans. And the story of Victor Belenko, if you'd like me to talk a little bit about it, is fascinating. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah, okay. So the Soviet Meg 25 Foxbat was considered, you know, that he, that he defected with, was considered to be the most advanced fighter jet in the world. No westerner had ever.

seen the legendary technology and mechanics of this super secret jet, which flew faster than any American planes could. It had been clocked at Mach 3.2 during the Yom Kippur War. But when he landed it, Western analysis of the plane showed, though, that the MiG-25 was actually only a short-range high-speed interceptor with limited maneuverability, and it was incapable of air-to-air combat. Basically, it could fly high and fast, and that was it. So as a result, America's Air Force reoriented allocation of major segments of military funding that they thought they were going to have to spend to keep up with what they thought was a very advanced new plane.

And like so many beliefs of Soviet power, you know, power, you know, they were a lot of were to Potampton villages, they kind of crumbled upon inspection. And, you know, and so dad became his handler overseeing his months-long debriefing, but he was also tasked with helping him to assimilate into American culture. And so he hung around our Washington, D.C., suburban house a lot and was funny about what he didn't know, like, you know, believing that the toilet brush, you know, he was supposed to use it to wash his back. You know, there were just so many, so many cultures. things that that he didn't, you know, understand. And my father was there to really help him along. And, you know, all defectors eventually face the inevitable face of what happens with defectors when the

debriefings are done and his services are no longer needed. And it's a breaking point for many and can result in extreme homesickness as they, you know, they haven't found a place in their new country yet. And after, you know, his debriefings were done, he went to school in Florida to learn English. better and met a young South American woman and fell in love with her. But eventually she needed to go back to her country. And he just went through this crisis of homesickness and just, you know, said, I need to go back to my motherland. That's really where I belong. And he drove like a madman back to, you know, from Florida up to Washington, D.C. But he made one stop before he turned himself over at the Soviet embassy. And that was back at my father's house in the middle of the night. And

And my father took him in and listened to a story and said, you are not going to the Soviet embassy. You know, this will not be a good idea. And when I interviewed Victor Bolenko years later, he said, your father saved my life. He really saved my life. So it was an interesting story, you know, with such a prominent and well-known defector at the time. What became of the general? The general worked for the United States for 18 years. In India was his most prolific time working with my father.

But unfortunately, there were a number of breaches to his security. The first major breach to his security was when Robert Hansen, the infamous FBI mole, walked into the offices of Amtorg in New York on Broadway, which he knew was serving as a cover for the GRU as a Soviet trading organization, and offered up to the GRU for which Paul Yucov worked that Paul Yucov was spying for the U.S. But interestingly, the GRU chose to sweep it under the rug. They weren't sure that Robert Hansen was telling the truth. They thought maybe he was a provocation trying to make trouble.

And probably more true to the story was that they didn't want to reveal that this general, that they had promoted and supported and had been such an important part of, their organization could possibly be a traitor. So they recalled him and retired him. Five years later in his retirement as he was out in his Dasha enjoying his quiet life with his granddaughters and his family, the other very even more famous mole, this time the CIA Moll Aldrich Ames in 1985 went to the KGB and revealed that Pollyakov had spied for the United States. And he did that as Hansen did for money. He was. was desperate for money because he had married a Colombian wife and wanted to impress her in the

United States with, you know, a wonderful lifestyle and had ran himself into debt. So, you know, he told the KGB and the cold KGB, unlike the GRU, had no interest in sweeping it under the rug and started investigating, you know, him and they arrested him and, you know, interrogated him for two years to find out what he knew and eventually shot him in the basement of the L'Bionka prison. And so very, very sad ending to somebody who was really trying to do good for the world. And you've met his family, correct, for this book? Yes, yes. In fact, I realized that I actually had a book when I was informed by one of the, I had interviewed about 23 CIA, former CIA officers who either knew my father or had somehow been connected to the Pauyakov case.

and one of them told me that Paul Yucos two sons had come to the United States and with the help of the CIA. The CIA really felt that they owed it to the two sons because Poliukov himself had never accepted any payment of any sort. And they helped the two sons to get out of Moscow. When their father was arrested, their life went to pot. They had been the sons of a general. One of them worked at the GRU himself. The other was in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. had this, you know, very sort of elite life in Moscow.

And when their father was arrested, they lost their jobs. They lost their income. You know, they were, you know, rejected by Moscow society. And the CIA helped them out. And when I was informed that they were here, I approached them. And one of them especially was very enthusiastic in helping me tell the story of their father. And it was then that I realized that I really had a story because they were able to fill in the history of their father and their own lives growing up, you know, on the opposite side of

the iron curtain as compared to our family on the American side. And so that's why the book, in addition to, you know, a spy thriller telling the stories of these two prominent spies during the Cold War is also a double memoir of the two families, you know, growing up on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain. And especially how, you know, the Cold War, which really is supposed to about a war with non-conflict. But in fact, much of the interaction in the Cold War does affect the players themselves and certainly affects the families. And I wanted to really show the human aspect side of a Cold War story.

And I think that's really what makes this book so fascinating and so good is that it has that family aspect that really grounds it. But also, I feel like you have this unprecedented level of access. Do you think that because you were your father's daughter, you were able to talk to more people and get more stories than, say, someone like me, if I had tried to write something about like this? I do, because I talked to a number of journalists who had themselves written books about numerous other Cold War spies and to find out, you know, why, you know, why was there no book out there about Plyakov? And there were a couple of reasons. One of them was because they couldn't get access to a number of these CIA agents who, you know, had some of the closest information. They just simply wouldn't see them.

And I think that because I was the daughter of someone that they cherished and were so close to, they gave me access. I will clarify that they didn't give me classified information. You know, nobody would do that. But they gave me lots and lots of color around the stories that I had collected about what was going on during the cold. war and stories that touched the lives of my father and general Poliakov, but also most books like this one about Cold Wars, Cold War spies, for instance, are written by journalists and historians, and they write books when they gain access to new troves of information, you know, preferably newly declassified.

Pauliakov's case remains classified and probably will for years. I came at it quite differently. My most cherished sources were my interviews that I mentioned with more than 18 of my father's former colleagues and friends and this FBI, and most critically and extensively, of course, with a general son and his family. But I didn't want to write the book that a journalist or historian would and should write someday, you know, when his files do become declassified. I wanted to write the book by a daughter with the help of a son, you know, Alexander Poyukov, exposing the human interest part of this story, how geopolitical events between governments

affect real people in profound ways. Did the act of writing this book change? Did the act of writing this book changed the way you think about your father? Yes, it did because, you know, my father was really an extraordinary person, and I know that sounds biased coming from a daughter, but, you know, I kind of corroborated that with so many of the people I talked to. It made me so proud of him because it made me realize how important the role of intelligence, all of the intelligence agencies are, especially in difficult times like the Cold War of then and what they call the Cold War 2.0 now, you know, and I think that these roles are critical. And I think that my, you know, I think the most important thing between

an asset and a handler is trust. And my father engendered trust in everyone he knew because he saw the dignity in all people and people felt that from him, including us children. And he attended a Jesuit high school and the Jesuit Boston College and was influenced, I believe by the Jesuit's vow of poverty, which can be interpreted as a poverty of self, that you are not better than any other person. So he trusted you and you trusted him and his assets trusted him. And we felt that in him. And when I started reading all of this about my father, I just realized, you know, that the things about him that were so unique, you know, that seeing those traits that I cherished in my father as a child, his preternatural sense,

of trustworthiness, his natural charm, were applied to developing an asset, a friend with whom he changed the course of history. As wonderful a place as that would be to end, I do have one more question for you. Yes. What do you think of the current state of Russian and American relations? And how can we apply the lessons of your father's life to bettering them? You know, it's interesting. There are so many parallels between the Cold War.

events described in my narrative and today's tensions with Putin's Russia, you know, I mean, history repeats itself. And, you know, beyond the well-covered comparisons of the current tensions with Russia to the earlier Cold War, there are so many more, you know, parallels, intimate similarities to its predecessor, you know, the atmosphere of suspicion, leaks and betrayals surrounding today's congressional intelligence investigations into whether Russia colluded with the Trump administration to alter the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. For instance, echoes the effects of an internal CIA investigation in the 60s, codenamed Honital.

And it was directed by James Jesus Angleton, who I mentioned earlier, the notoriously paranoid chief of CIA counterintelligence, which sought to unmask American government employees suspected of colluding with Russia to confuse and derail American intelligence operations. And many of my father's friends and colleagues were caught up in that witch hunt, which staunts promotions and ended careers. And I think that, you know, all of these, you know, suspicions and leaks and betrayals just don't do us any good, you know, that trust among each other and being able to develop that, you know, with our adversaries as best as we can,

is really the answer to lasting peace and better relations. And that's what I wish that the current administrations and all of the intelligence agencies and anyone else involved would learn from the earlier Cold War to apply to today. Eva, Dylan, thank you so much for coming on to War College. The book is Spies and the Family, and it is wonderful. Thank you so much, Matthew. Thank you for listening to This Week's show. War College was created by Jason Fields and Craig Kedek.

Matthew Galt hosts the show and Wrangles the Guests. It's produced by me, Bethel-Hopte. You can tweet us suggestions for future shows. We are at War underscore College. Thanks for listening.