Free The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal by David E. Hoffman

Also, in 1977 Turner eliminated hundreds of positions in the clandestine service. The cuts were overdue—the directorate was overstaffed from the Vietnam War—but Turner was brusque and maladroit in carrying them out. Many old-timers were offended, and resentments ran deep. 10 “He was never quite convinced about human intelligence,” recalled a CIA official who worked closely with Turner. “Sometimes it was good, and sometimes it was bad. He thought we got more out of technical intelligence, it was more reliable.”
    Within weeks of his meeting with Marti Peterson in the Oval Office, Turner’s suspicions deepened that something was wrong with the Moscow station.
    On the evening of August 26, 1977, Dick Combs, a political officer, was working late in the U.S. embassy in Moscow, writing a report. His office was on the same floor—the seventh—as the CIA station. A marine guard burst into the office and asked Combs, “Do you smell smoke?” Combs had been puffing on a pipe and did not, aside from his own. But he soon realized a fire was spreading across the eighth floor, just above him. It started after hours when a transformer ignited in the economics section. The embassy had been a firetrap for years. A recent refurbishment used paneling that was highly flammable, and the marine guards were unable to stop the flames with fire extinguishers. The Moscow fire department did not arrive immediately, and the first firemen on the scene seemed poorly trained, with outdated equipment and leaky hoses. The ambassador, Malcolm Toon, rushed to the building from a diplomatic dinner, still in black tie, and was on the street below, while the deputy chief of mission, Jack Matlock, hustled to the ninth floor. Matlock loved books and tried to save his library as the fire worsened. Later, more experienced firemen arrived, some of them KGB officers, certainly aware that the CIA’s Moscow station was in the building, hoping to scoop up sensitive documents or enter classified areas. At one point when it looked as if the entire building might be consumed in fire, the ambassador gave orders to find the CIA station chief, Hathaway, and order him to leave. A staffer found Hathaway guarding the station on the seventh floor, dressed in a London Fog raincoat, his face smudged with soot, blocking the way for any KGB “firemen” who might try to break in. He refused to budge, despite the ambassador’s order. 11
    How did the fire start? At headquarters, the CIA knew that the Soviets routinely bombarded the U.S. embassy in Moscow with microwave signals. Turner brought this up constantly, saying he was worried about the “beams” at the embassy. Separately, after the fire, Turner wondered if the KGB could have deliberately caused the spark that started it, if not using the “beams,” then some other way. What was going on in Moscow? First, the loss of Ogorodnik. Now a mysterious fire and KGB “firemen.”
    Still more trouble followed. In September, the Moscow station lost another agent, Anatoly Filatov, a colonel in Soviet military intelligence who had begun working for the CIA while stationed in Algiers in earlier years. Filatov was swapping a package with a CIA case officer, a “car toss,” or quick exchange as two vehicles pulled alongside each other. The KGB was lying in wait. They arrested Filatov, and the CIA case officer and his wife were expelled. 12
    Turner was shaken. Was the KGB listening to their communications? Had they penetrated the Moscow station? Was there a mole somewhere? When a system wasn’t working, Turner felt, the correct response was to fix it. Now he wanted to do the same at the CIA. He took an extraordinary step. He ordered a freeze on CIA operations in Moscow—a total stand-down. The Moscow station was told not to run any agents, not to carry out any operational acts.
    The stand-down was unlike anything the Soviet division had experienced before. Turner insisted it would continue until the division could