Read Online Inside the CIA by Ronald Kessler - Free Book Online

American society. Others swear these qualities bear no relation to whether a Soviet will agree to be recruited. As a rule, the squad targets only one Soviet at a time. If the recruitment effort fails, they assign the Soviet to the appropriate FBI squad and target another individual.
    The squad never uses outright blackmail or other forms of coercion. It is an article of faith within the U.S. intelligence community that blackmail never works. The CIA once spent months trying, to no avail, to recruit a KGB officer in Southeast Asia who was believed to be a homosexual. However, a vulnerability such as cheating on an expense account or becoming involved in repeated car accidents with an embassy vehicle may be used to coax a prospective agent into cooperating.
    Money is one way to recruit an agent. It also contributes to compromising agents in case they later have second thoughts about cooperating. But even large sums do not work if a prospective agent does not already have misgivings or complaints about his situation.
    Just before he was to be sent home in 1982 after a lengthy tour in the United States, the FBI sought to recruit Dmitri I. Yakushkin, the KGB resident or station chief in Washington. For the purpose, the FBI had been authorized to offer $20 million—a reasonable figure when one considers that Yakushkin could have revealed almost every detail of the KGB’s operations against the U.S.
    Shortly before Yakushkin was to leave for Moscow, two FBI agents approached him when he and his wife, Irina, were shopping at the Safeway on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington’s Georgetown section. As Irina went off in another direction and Yakushkin was fondling the oranges, an FBI agent approached him.
    “I am a special agent of the FBI, and I wondered if I could have an opportunity to talk to you,” the FBI man said. He asked Yakushkin if he would agree to meet with the special agent in charge of the Washington field office.
    “What is your name?” the KGB man asked.
    The agent gave a false name.
    “May I see your ID to prove you are an FBI agent?”
    Sheepishly, the agent showed it to Yakushkin. The KGB officer saw that the FBI agent had given a phony name.
    “I’m sorry; I kind of made that up,” the agent said.
    “Yeah, I know how it is.”
    “Would there be a way to arrange an appointment for our SAC [special agent in charge] to speak to you?” the agent persisted.
    “Sure, have him come by the embassy anytime,” Yakushkin said, smiling.
    “Well, actually, I was hoping for a less formal environment, if that would be okay.”
    “I don’t really think I’d be interested in that.”
    It was clear the conversation was going nowhere, so the agent decided to take a chance and make the offer on thespot. He offered Yakushkin $20 million to work for the U.S.
    “Young man, I appreciate the offer,” Yakushkin said. “If I were twenty years younger, I’d give it serious consideration.
    “It was nice meeting you,” the KGB officer said, then adjusted his beret and walked off toward the meat section to find his wife.
    It was a CIA officer assigned to the Foreign Resources Branch who first spotted the KGB officer later recruited by COURTSHIP in late 1982. The man was attending a professional conference in Washington. To the CIA officer, he seemed susceptible to recruitment. The CIA officer had a hunch that the man was more interested in American life than other KGB officers. For one thing, he spoke English better than others. He was also more eager to please the Americans he met than other Soviets. All reports of contacts by FR officers are seen by COURTSHIP, which decided to single him out for recruitment.
    Pretending to be a private consultant, a member of the COURTSHIP squad befriended the KGB officer, taking him to dinner and letting him know that he had access to military secrets. Once satisfied that the man would likely agree to work for the American side, the COURTSHIP officer revealed his true affiliation. For a