THE 4TH MAN- THE HUNT FOR A KGB SPY AT THE TOP OF THE CIA

0:04 Welcome to Spycraft, a podcast that tells gripping life and death spy stories and the amazing devices and operations that made them possible. Now let's get started.

0:27 Hey, welcome back everybody. Today, we have a great guest, Robert Bear B A. E. R. We're gonna find out who he is? Well, who is he? He's the author of two New York Times bestsellers, Sleeping with the Devil, about the Saudi royal family and his relationship with the United States, and See No Evil, which recounts Bear's years as top CI operatives. You know, Evil is the basis for the acclaimed film Syriana's Great Movie. Actually, but You're in George cluinyon Oscar for his portrayal of Bear. Bear writes regularly for Time dot Com and has contributed to Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and he's considered one of the world's foremost authority. He's in the Middle East. So what are we talking to him about today? Well,

1:03 his brand new book, The Fourth Man, The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the Cia and the Rise of Putin's Russia. This is a fascinating read, folks. I highly recommend it if you're into spy novels. Great stuff. Actually not a novel, it's a spy book if you're great if you're into those books, I highly recommend it.

1:20 The Fourth Man, The Hunt for a KGB spy at the top of the CIA, and the rise of Putin's Russia. Before a get start, you know what to do, Share a subscribe, hit that I like button. You know we like it, and that's not wasting any more time. Welcome to the show, mister Robert Bear.

1:32 Welcome sir, Thanks joy being here.

1:36 This is great, Thank you so much for the opportunity. It's a fascinating read. As we talked before the show, and we'll get to that later. There's a lot of mystery around this one. Well let me ask you this first things First, we're motivated you to write this book.

1:51 Well, it's the people who investigated The Fourth Man came to me and said, here's the story. When I was in the CIA, I had never heard of anything about this. I knew that there was paranoi about Russian intelligence having sources, but other than that, I knew zero about it. So I approaching this as a reporter. You know when when your former boss comes to you. To the investigators, A bunch of ex FBI guys come to me and say, yeah, there was a fourth man, no doubt about it. And he did more damage, probably, we guessed, than any spy in American history. So with that kind of introduction to the story, how could I not be obsessed by it?

2:34 And I am obsessed by it until today. And I started writing this down, and I went to everybody I could get to ask them their opinion. I went to James Clapper, former DNI, I went to the former CIA director Hayden and write down the line. Even Gena Haspell, and they all had a piece of the story. Most were could not would used to give me the whole story, but they confirmed what the investigators had told me. And so I build this narrative. And as a journalist kind of approaching this story, I mean I have a knowledge about the CIA, betas a journalist approaching it, I had to put down all of the objections, every single bit I could. And then on top of that, I had to make it a thriller. So what I give you

3:26 at the beginning of the book is basically, here are the suspects, and by the end of the book, I leave it up to the reader to judge the evidence and who the fourth man is.

3:40 That's crazy because you start over in nineteen and ninety two. I think of believing in your book it's start a mask on Moscow. But before we get to that real quickly, you know what, I didn't get your background? How long were you in the CIA and were you an operative or what was your role?

3:53 Yeah? I was, I was in twenty one years. I was in operations the whole time, and I resigned in December ninety seven. I was assigned mostly overseas. Hated Washington, hated being aside to headquarters. Anytime I could, I would just go overseas. And then in ninety five I was involved in an aborted kupd atag against Saddam Hussein. I was brought back to the United States investigated by the FBI for attempted murder and murder. And so you know, when your employers starts thinking about trying to put you in jail, isn't it time to move on? Although I wish I had assassinated Saddam Hussein, it would have saved us a lot of a lot of lives, both Iraqi and American and a lot of money.

4:44 Oh man, it's a heck of a mess you're in there.

4:48 Well, yeah, it's you know, I sort of knew that the FBI wasn't. They were very reluctant to investigate this as it was ordered from the top from the White House. And you know, it's like the FBI agents were great. We just said this is really stupid. You know, when you went to a rack when you were chief of station there, you had a lethal finding, which basically you can kill anybody you want to. So I said, yeah, the lethal finding. I told Washington what I was doing the whole thing. So they thought it was nonsense too.

5:22 Well, I guess what leads into this book. Now, in Moscow in nineteen ninety two, you start off with the problem was how to find a KGB operative in Moscow who didn't want to be found in something Most of them don't want to be found. But you made it very problematic, or she whoever it is, made it extremely problematic.

5:38 What did you think about it you started getting information? Did you think this is like a ghost, this is made up? Or did it really start feeling like it was there?

5:48 Well, what happened was there's this, there's this Russian counterintelligence officer who was a little bit lippy. He would sit down with CIA people and give him hints about this goes back to nineteen eighty eight. We give him hints about Russian moles in the CIA and the FBI. He came up with names for these guys. He says, Yeah, we're running this great source and the FBI and an even better one in the CIA. And he knew about these because he was he was a connector and knew about these. And so once the FBI decided that there was a spy inside the CIA, I was convinced of it.

6:28 They went to the CIA was to get a hold of this Russian and get the full story. We didn't know how to get a hold of them. He had been reassigned back to Moscow, had no idea where to find him, nothing. And then one day we're having the liaison meeting between the CIA and Russian intelligence in Moscow, and who shows up as a translator the same guy.

6:54 So the trick is how to get him away from his colleagues. What do you mean there's a mole inside the CIA? Who is this guy? What do you know about him? So eventually in ninety three, we just take all of our liaison contacts between the Russians and the Americans that bring them to Washington and then to Greenbrier in West Virginia, which is a hoteler. And one day the Russian goes fishing with one of our guys, he's a great officer, and said, hey, your mole is flying to Crocus to meet his Russian handler. So with that piece of information, the FBI scrambled and figured out that it was Rick Aynes, the notorious mole who without informing anybody, flies to Caracas. It coincides with the information about his

7:50 handler Uri correctkin, the FBI gets a full FISA, they could break in authority, all the rest of it. They proved the case. So in other words, this rush who is known as Max, broke the biggest counterintelligence case in American history. I mean he broke it. It was a guy, and you know, one specific guy. So his credibility goes way up. And that's fine, you know, and he talks about the FBI guy, but he can't really help to figure out who this guy is. And it turned out it would turn out to be Bob Hanson. In two thousand and one, the FBI agent but what intrigued the CIA was, guess what, there's another Russian mole inside the CIA, only much higher ranking and better placed. So this kicks off a huge investigation which has never been reported about

8:46 ever inside the CIA. And that's sort of the the beginning of this story, which goes on until today. As of a couple of weeks ago, the FBI was knocking on the doors of my sources, not in a hostile way, but they've been going around saying, hey, is there anything we missed in our investigation of the Fourth Man? And everybody's very helpful. This is all very congenial, which I should add at this point that this book, the material I write about, was submitted to both the CIA and the FBI. The CIA asked for a couple deletions, which I said, fine, it doesn't affect the narrative. Specifics like the names of the handlers of the Fourth Man. I have those, and they said, please don't put that in the book. We don't want the Russians to know we

9:44 have them. I wouldn't say the FBI or the CIA are happy about this book, but they played ball with me in that sense, and I know we don't talk anymore. Just it's out there. But anyhow, that's the that's the heart of the story. And my big question is the FBI conducts espionage investigations all the time. And what happens is they suspect to spy, they open an investigations called the OAN open and approved ninety days. They got to go back and tell her supervisor why this investigation needs to remain open, and they have to provide what new evidence they have. My question is, and the great mystery is why has this investigation gone on for more than twenty five years?

10:40 Twenty five years that's a long time.

10:45 And come on, you know, CIA people say, oh, the FBI hates the CIA, you know this and that, and they, you know, for whatever reason, it's a rivalry. But come on, the FBI does not investigate something like this for twenty five years unless they truly believe that they've got something.

11:07 Who knows how old that guy is by a narrow down it's almost like retirement age.

11:13 Yeah, he's still alive. If it're just dead, they just let this thing die. He's way past retirement. But here's the interesting part of the story is, and I've pieced this together, there were a couple Russian defectors who come out of Russia and describe the Fourth Man. One of them was famous. His name was Jerkushion and he was head of counterintelligence and was the first guy to run Aimes and Hanson.

11:48 Wow.

11:49 So he comes out and talks about the Fourth Man. Multiple other defectors have come out and said he's the best agent that the KGB has ever had. And this was has been described and anyhow, I mean, you know, let's go back to the beginning. Why am I fascinated by this story. I think about Russian operations, but this is definitely le car but on viagra, and it's all real.

12:18 It's really an amazing story. You've did a great job of writing about it and taking a step by a step on the interactions with the individuals and what they said. But listening to you now as well talking about kind of the behind the scenes. Look, this is always a tough part about having authors on to the shows. You don't want to give up too much so people can read the book and get it. But your's just a tip of the Iceberger. I don't think you could give too much.

12:40 Yeah, and all my sources agreed, by the way, because they're in effect whistleblowers. They conducted the investigation. It doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong, but they conducted the investigation. I state their conclusions. I state the evidence they could give me. They couldn't give me all the evidence.

12:58 Did you ever feel like you got really close, like man, I'm gonna getting close to the sky, or not really, or.

13:05 Well, I'm close to it, you know when the FBI. I live in the middle of nowhere of Colorado. When the FBI shows up one spring morning and asks if I know anything that they don't, I don't think I did. It's serious. So I think the FBI is close, but they simply don't have the hard evidence to bring to a court. The rule of the FBI is, you do not take an espionage case unless one hundred percent certainty of conviction. And you know what that means. You got to photograph the spy with this Russian handler. You've got, you know, dead drop or anything. You just got to see that happen, or put him in the same city, or you have to show Russian money showing up in this account. Now, the FBI believes that this guy was

13:56 out for revenge. His career took a bad turn to see. I A. He wanted to show the CIA that he could outplay them and outplay the FBI, and that was really his his intent. And as far as I can see, he's going to get away with it. When when the FBI is up against somebody who doesn't take money and doesn't pass documents that can be traced, they this is there's not much they can do about. This is a story about the skill of the fourth man, not the skills of the FBI or the CIA.

14:34 Do you think technology has helped him a lot more? Is it made it easier harder? You would know more than I would have in regards to being able to maintain clandestine kind of operations.

14:43 Going, Well, he would you hide it in the open, so the FBI can trent men track travel. But if you're going to meet your handlers in Europe on CIA orders, what can they prove nothing? Because so what he would do was a range of trip, like to go to Paris or London, meet his handlers, say whatever he is, and then come back and all the FBI has says, yeah, he was on official trip. And if you don't take money from the Russians or cash or there's no calls to Moscow course, and there's no cell phone records, there's nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

15:25 And the guy, the fourth man, knew what he was doing.

15:28 And you do we have any idea of what has been given up or anything that the fourth man possibly has already real.

15:38 Well, one guy that that agrees that he exists ran Russian operations to the CIA. He's very leery about talking to me. By the way, this book's not made me popular with my ex colleagues.

15:52 You don't imagine that.

15:56 He said, for instance, he gave up transcripts of conversation between Yeltson and Clinton. And what happened then was the FSB, that's Russian Internal Intelligence, which was headed by Putin at the time, goes into Yelton with these transcripts and says Boris, comrade, Boris, my friend. We know exactly what you're talking to Clinton about, and we're just here to protect you, so be careful.

16:22 So this scares the Jesus out of Yeltsin. He stops talking to Clinton at this point. There was a year before Putin comes to power. So the suspicion is that Putin and the fourth Man contributed to Putin's appointment as Prime Minister and then president. That's the kind of things. And the Fourth Man had all sorts of access to military secrets. So if you're like anti aircraft missiles, so if the Russians knew what we had, then they could redesign their weaponry. What people are looking at here is the access the guy had, excuse me, and what he could possibly give up, as opposed to knowing for certain because as I understand, as people have told me, there was no file on the Fourth Man in Moscow. This

17:21 is how important he was. There was no file for the Russian for somebody able to go look at. He was simply run off what the FSB Russian internal intelligence calls a postcard, and it just had his code name on the postcard and the names of his handlers. So you know, the Russians, if they have a very good agent, they know how to run him. They know how that you avoid a place, a meeting place like in Washington, you never go there because the FBI could follow you to a meeting the same way London. Vienna is safer because the Austrians don't much care and they're so penetrated by the Russians anyhow, Oh really, yeah, the Austrians don't.

18:10 If you can a spy for the Russians don't. Don't you know do it in Vienna? There's so many they've always been ambivalent about, you know, being part of Nate, you know, part of the Western Alliance.

18:25 Interesting, So let me ask you this. Now you've written other books, of course, is this if you ever dabbled before in trying to look at spies and how they operate? And I guess what I'm trying to look for, is there? How does this fourth man compare to anybody else that you've seen in the past? Aldridge, Ames, Robert Hansen. Obviously they all got caught and this guy seems to be a But if it's a guy, I don't assume that either.

18:55 Who knows what it is?

18:56 But is it?

18:57 Mickey? Have you seen anything that really stood out besides obviously his anonymity?

19:02 Well, the thing that stood out to me and I had to ask this question of people who really know what they're talking about FBI agents, CIA people. He was run by what's called the Second Chief Directorate, and the second Chief Directorate was counterintelligence in the old KGB, so they just operated internally the very starting. Okay, good, that was the dogs warning me the FBI's outside getting ready to close this.

19:38 Down, right, I'm sure right now.

19:42 So he was run by this internal service which was paranoid, and the people never defected. So if if you're if you know what you're doing, the last thing you want to do is walk into a Russian embassy and ask for the Foreign Intelligence Service, because it's completely penetrated. They have a lot of defectors. They're unreliable, they've been living the high life in Europe or Washington. And you don't go to them, You go to the Second Chief Directorate.

20:12 You make contact with them. And so Russia is divided into these two services, and one is much more reliable than the others. And that's the best guess of what happened. And that's what the defectors said that come out, is that he was run by the Second Chief Directorate. And that's why the FBI has never been able to get a smoking gun on them. No defectors come out and say, oh yeah, I know about this guy in Washington. He did this and did that.

20:45 Now, considering we're talking the fourth man, have any of the other individuals one two three provided any clues to this fourth man?

20:55 Well, the first the stories based on Edward Lee Howard, who fled to the USSR back in the early eighties. And the Aims is presumably the second man because he gets arrested in ninety four and Bob Hanson, the FBI agent, is arrested in two thousand and one. They knew nothing about the fourth man. It wasn't like they matter. And the Russians are very compartmented and they simply I mean, by the way, the Russians are just have flipped out about this book.

21:34 Really they're not happy about it.

21:37 Well, what they're really unhappy about it is Russian intelligence guys who have defected here tell me is that the possibility that the Russians gave up Aims and another agent in order to protect the fourth man. They hate the idea that anybody would put it out there that they would sacrifice an agent to protect another one. So you see that, you see you know these reviews, I'm sure you don't read them like an RT which is which is a Russian intelligence outlet run by the Russian government.

22:08 They're just apoplectic. I mean, I'd like to tell the Russians the best way to deal with the book. You don't like is just ignore it? But it was, it was it was too much for the Russians.

22:19 You haven't made a whole lot of friends anywhere.

22:21 No, I don't make it anywhere. No. If you ever walk with me in the in the we start taking incoming rounds. It could be from anybody.

22:30 You have a rare talent.

22:32 Yes, I work at it.

22:37 You've managed to off all for ESPN. I'm assuming nobody else is involved here. It's just Russians here. So we don't have anything coming up with China or any other countries doing anything.

22:48 You know, China, I did. I ran China cases in the CIA, but there just don't. I'm so out of it that I would have nothing to contribute. Plus, no one's ever come to me and say, hey, why don't you deal with the Chinese what they're doing in this country. I'm sure it's a fascinating story. But the Middle East and Russia is about, you know, as far as I can go.

23:10 Speaking to other CIA officers, usually I hear that Russia is probably the best of all of them in regards to spies. What do you think about that?

23:19 Well, they have a different approach. They Yeah, they recruit a lot of people and they use you know, honeytrap operations with men or boys or whatever. That's that's sort of tried and true for them. The Chinese use family, so it's it's called the long tail. So if if somebody has Chinese relatives in the United States and back in China, they can put pressure on the Chinese family in China and enforce these recruitments. And I think that I think the Chinese are very good at that. So it's very and is the Russians. The Russian mob for instance, in the United States, which is everywhere Miami, Los Angeles, New York. I've never heard of them going out and recruiting people. And the problem is that the Russians is there.

24:18 They run hot and cold. Remember the ten Russians that were arrested and traded. I mean that was just sort of all silly. It was it was called director had asked. They didn't do anything important. But that doesn't mean that there aren't islands of excellence in Russian intelligence that know what they're doing. Now, clearly the Russians intelligence guys who convinced Putin to be fine to you know, take Kiev in seventy two hours didn't do all that well, but you know, at the same time, a lot of the Russian weaponry that we keep on picking up in Ukraine, it's got American technology in it. They're good at that.

24:58 They steal it and they put in their own weapons, and their hypersonic missiles and the rest of it are based on American technology. So yeah, they are good, sometimes very good.

25:12 In regards to the changing of the guards there, as we saw Yeltsin to Putin, did that change the dynamic at all when you were investigating this, did it change? Did it make it more difficult, to make it easier? Anything at all?

25:25 The change it made it much more difficult. Because what you have to understand is Russia is run by a deep state. There is no deep state in this country, but there is in Russia. And Putin was the front man for a bunch of KGB officers that call themselves statists. We call him hardline. They oversaw his work in Saint Petersburg when he comes back, and then he gets promoted into the Kremlin, and then they promote him into the Prime ministership and then the presidency, and as we saw, once he gets in, every important job in Russia is a KGP guy every single important one, all the oil industry and the rest of it.

26:14 They're all KGB guys.

26:16 All KGB arms, industry, everything, totally yah. And they all go back to Saint Petersburg or even to Dresden when Putin was there a lot of the key guys with him in Dresden, you know, the guys. One of the guys doing the gas pipeline out of Russia into Germany was with him in Dresden. And so you know what we got with Russia is in nineteen ninety nine. And I based this on very good journalists and my former colleagues, and there's a census that Putin came to power thanks to a quiet Coupdeta. So people ask, well, why do we care about the fourth Man is because he assured we missed this Coupdeta. I'm not saying we could have done anything about it, but we just simply missed it.

27:12 It was in a sense of Pearl Harbor.

27:17 So Putin's record, that sounds like you're saying Putin's not really the one running the whole thing. It's there's a there's a deep state going on.

27:24 Ye I think he's running it now, but he's running with a consensus of the status. I think they put him in power that he was along with the program, but as he became more powerful, I don't think anybody's going to take putin on today. So I mean he just he just grew into the job from his point of view.

27:43 Now speaking on that, now we switch to our side. We have a lot of transitions in the head of CIA, head of FBI. We've seen that over the last probably twelve years. We've seen a lot of changes there. Does that alter the investigation process too? You know the inside outs better than I do. Does that start putting little roadblocks or some people are not as interested in investigating other people's more interested, and anything like that.

28:06 Well, with older James, the chief of the division, who should have investigated it, simply didn't. This went on for years and years where they with aims, we lost all of our Russian assets, all the important ones, most of them. And then I mean nobody really took it seriously. And the guy that was in command of the division, in charge of the Soviet Union, he was promoted, so there was no big deal. You know, who cares. And then by nineteen ninety one, when Gorbachev during the coup we decided to stop spying in Russia, not just a fact.

28:47 I know the people that I mean, I was in the field, got messages saying, hey, you can turn off your tail taps on the Russians, you can stop getting a followed. We're not going to pay for it. You don't have any Russian Russian contacts we don't care about. And it was felt that Russia was in such bad shape that we didn't want to undermine the government by having a spy scandal or whatever.

29:12 Wow, so we've.

29:15 Got all these years. I mean, people don't like to admit it. And it was a political decision, not just the CIA.

29:24 That's a that's not gonna make a lot of friends either.

29:29 If I sent on invitations for a party, I don't think he'd come.

29:35 I guess in our last few minutes together. It's really fascinating. And again I'm not trying to give everything away, folks, Untelia, We're only touching the tip of the iceberg. It's called The Fourth Man, The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the top of the CIA in the Rise of Putin's Russia Robert bhar B a Ei. You can get it on Amazon. It's really a fascinating read. Let me ask you this, did you what stood out for you the most in this investigation. Let's say when you're looking through this, you're going, oh crap, what is that? Did you ever have one of those moments?

30:07 I had it because when I was in the CIA, every time I had a case overseas or contacts, I had to put on a piece of paper, so if I met somebody in a bar, it was of operational interest. First thing I did is I went back and I went into the station, wrote a cable guy's full name, everything I knew about him, and we'd come back a trace, what calls. We don't know anything about this guy? We know this about him. And it was all a matter of federal records. Everything was recorded when I was in Iraq, everything I did I recorded and sent in in messages.

30:46 I don't think people read them, but I recorded it. What I found out from this counterintelligence investigation is that it was truly a wilderness of mirrors because nothing was written in cable traffic or formal files or put on computers. Nothing. It was all done on easels. It was done on three by five cards, the whole thing. So it was fascinating that it's it's like a film, you know, it is like Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy, but rather than George Smiley being the SpyCatcher, he's the mole and from a from a thick. You know, if you turn this into a drama, it would just be utterly fantastic.

31:35 Yes, yes, now do you think I guess this is a hard question to answer. You have to be No, Sir donis with us. But do you think they'll actually catch them?

31:44 Do you know why I'm on this program. I want to get out as far and wide to Russians that there's millions of dollars involved. If somebody comes out with the evidence. I don't work for the government, but I would like to see him caught. And the only way to do that is have a Russian witness to the crime to come out. And that's where I stand. Man.

32:10 Intense stuff again, The book is called The Fourth Man, The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the top of the CAA in the Rise of Putin's Russia. You're going to say something that You're going to say something else.

32:20 No, that's it?

32:21 Yeah, I guess what now, there's not really much else to say about that, right, this right now. But you've already spoken to you. You even spoken to me before the show. You've spoken to the current CI NFBI heads right as well.

32:39 I spoke to to Gina Haspell, huh, And all she would say is that she'd been briefed on a hunt for another mole. She didn't give me a name, she didn't do anything like that. She just said, yeah, I've been briefed on this. But so that was all piece of this. That was a piece of the mosaic that I put together.

33:00 Yeah, you can probably read between the lines if you have to.

33:03 Well, you can read between the lines too much and you go right off a cliff and your conclusions. But any of what I do in the book is just put all those doubts in the book. In what people say, they could possibly change the narrative, even if it's just a partial answer.

33:24 It's a fascinating book. I can't thank you enough for taking the opportunity to be with us and sharing the story with us.

33:29 Yeah. No, I'm still obsessed, and if someone's got an answer for me, get in touch.

33:35 I'm sure some people out there in the CIA are listening, and I do know from demographic checks. So we do have listeners in Russia and China, so I get the funny feeling they're listening as well. It's amazing how the find podcasts. But again, folks, one more time. The book is called The Fourth Man, The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin's Russia. Robert Bair B A E. R. Robert.

33:57 Guess my last question is do you have any other books coming up?

34:00 Or is going to be Oh no, I'm thinking of doing one of the thirty four California elections with with Upton Sinclair and how it sort of changed politics, you know, fake news and the rest of it. But oh yeah, it's just a just an idea.

34:14 I'll be looking forward to that one as well. Thank you so much again for being with us, and thank you everyone for listening. Hey, make sure to share, subscribe, hit that like button. Go check out The Fourth Man, The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Russia.