Free Circle of Treason by Sandra V. Grimes

in preparation for this tour of duty he would travel to Hanoi in the fall as a member of the delegation of Air Marshal Batitskiy.
    CIA headquarters greeted this news with a sigh of relief, shouts of joy, and the realization that we faced a daunting task. Polyakov was alive and well. We not only would have a source in the enemy camp, but he would also have high-level and direct access to the critical collection requirement of the decade—North Vietnam’s military program, plans, and operations targeted against the U.S. soldier. However, there was the stark reality that we had to find a way to communicate with him in Hanoi. Direct contact appeared to be a nonstarter since the United States did not have diplomatic relations with North Vietnam. The CIA had no miniature long-range,two-way, short-burst communications device that would encode and decode transmitted messages. Some said our situation was bleak, given our lack of viable options. Others opined that it was far worse, as we awaited confirmation of Polyakov’s travel with the Batitskiy delegation.
    About six months later, Batitskiy and his group arrived in North Vietnam. Polyakov was not among them. The obvious questions were asked over and over again with no satisfactory answers. What happened? Was his upcoming assignment canceled or changed? If so, why? Did something occur at the cocktail reception that caught the attention of the known KGB watchdogs who were present? Had he been compromised for this, or some other reason? Would he appear elsewhere abroad? If so, when and where? Now what? Thankfully for all intimately involved in the case at CIA headquarters, no serious consideration was given to another attempt to establish personal contact with Polyakov in Moscow. It possibly had worked once, but a second try would be irresponsible. The only viable option was to wait and trust Polyakov to make the decision as to when, where, and how to re-establish contact.
    After an extended period, word came from Moscow Station that Polyakov had marked one of his signal sites. This indicated he was ready to put down a dead drop. A station officer unloaded the drop, which contained a short message that he was being processed for assignment to New Delhi as Soviet military attaché. In a roundabout way, and with thanks to the Soviet bureaucracy as Polyakov later told us, the analytical “witchcraft” paper presented earlier to Blee was correct. The June 1972 meeting in Moscow had been a waste of time and money and had unnecessarily risked the life of an important and productive agent. As Polyakov so bluntly told us at our first meeting in New Delhi, “Don’t ever do that again.”
    Polyakov’s two-year assignment in New Delhi was the pinnacle of our long and productive association. He achieved one of his personal GRU goals when he was promoted to one-star general shortly after his arrival. 1 The CIA at last erased the remnants of the Angleton era, and officially accepted Polyakov for what he had been throughout our thirteen years of contact—a legitimate penetration of the GRU. Our relationship had come full circle, evolving from adversarial to a collaborative partnership with a bond of mutual respect and admiration between professional intelligence officers from opposite sides of the Cold War. The CIA had finally gotten it right.
    Polyakov’s new case officer was Paul D, one of our finest. He was not selected for the assignment just because of the quality of his Russian language; of more import were his operational skills and human qualities. Paul greeted every task with enthusiasm, integrity, and balance whether it was a minor question with a simple answer or an impending disaster with no apparent solution. He was a devout Catholic and when he was out of earshot his subordinates respectfully and affectionately called him Father Paul. He never demanded the respect and loyalty of those he led; he unknowingly commanded it with his wit, charm,