The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

Chapter 8 concerns Operation RYAN, the Soviet intelligence operation initiated in 1981 by KGB head Yuri Andropov. It was Andropov who concluded that the US was planning a nuclear strike, as the West had pulled ahead in the arms race and, in Andropov’s mind, was looking to decisively end the Cold War. Operation RYAN was Andropov’s directive to KGB stations everywhere to be on the lookout for evidence of this. Macintyre explains that Andropov’s view was paranoid and that RYAN would likely make it a self-fulfilling prophecy: “Andropov broke the first rule of intelligence: never ask for confirmation of something you already believe” (144). Agents eager to please the boss interpreted evidence with this slant or simply manufactured evidence.

At first, MI6 had trouble understanding how the Soviets could be so wrong in their assessment of the situation. It was hard to take seriously. By late 1982, however, Andropov had become head of the Soviet Union, and RYAN became of utmost importance. If he felt insecure about the West’s designs, he might act first. Although MI6 and the CIA often collaborated and shared information, they didn’t share everything, and MI6 kept its counterpart in the dark about Gordievsky. Now it felt compelled to share what it knew about Operation RYAN, without revealing its source. From then on, MI6 began sharing Gordievsky’s secrets little by little. Eventually, some of the intelligence made its way to the president of the US.

Even though MI6 always shielded Gordievsky, the CIA knew from the importance of the information that the British must have a mole within the KGB. One of the people privy to the information from MI6, and thus to its obvious source, was Aldrich Ames. By 1983, he was back in Virginia with Rosario, and they planned to marry. However, his divorce was expensive, he drove an old car, and he was slipping into debt. He deemed his salary too low considering all the secrets about the Soviet Union he handled every day—and he knew these secrets were valuable.

Six months after his arrival, Gordievsky had settled into life in London. His culture shock was waning, and he and his wife were enjoying their life abroad. At the same time, professionally, “Gordievsky knew he was floundering” (153). His work had not produced much in the way of results, and his reports were disappointing. His lunch breaks were ostensibly used to cultivate contacts, and some wondered why he had so little to show for it. People were gossiping, and his supervisors were unhappy with his work.

MI6 knew as well as Gordievsky did that this could be problematic, so his handlers decided to help him by feeding him information and contacts. This was known as “chicken feed” in the business—information that was harmless enough but appeared to have some value. They introduced him to Rosemary Spencer, a well-placed worker in the Conservative Party’s headquarters who was also a secret MI5 agent. Spencer knew only that Gordievsky was with the KGB and thought she was helping to recruit him, giving him tidbits of information. Gordievsky put all this into his reports and began turning heads. He seemed to have finally hit his stride. His superiors warmed to him—except Titov. As Gordievsky’s boss, he felt threatened. MI6 helped solve this problem by expelling Titov from Britain. It was part of a typical spy purge that each side did from time to time, so it didn’t seem out of place. Gordievsky replaced him as head of the PR Line.

This chapter examines an MI5 agent who offered himself as a spy to the Soviets, potentially putting Gordievsky in danger. Michael Bettaney, who called himself “Koba” (one of Stalin’s nicknames), was “a loner, unhappy and unstable” (165) who “should not have been allowed within a mile of a state secret” (167). Inexplicably, despite several warning signs, he was recruited by MI5 at Oxford. He first contacted General Guk in April 1983, brazenly slipping a note through his front-door mail slot. It contained a secret document relating to the expulsion of Titov and an offer to hand over more information. If Guk was interested, instructions were given for how to provide a signal.

General Guk thought he was being played for a fool by MI5 and ignored it. “Koba” reached out again two months later with a similar offer. Guk and the counterintelligence chief Nikitenko often met to discuss it in a secure room at the embassy, so Gordievsky knew something was up. Guk eventually told him, handing Gordievsky the second letter from Koba. It contained a list of all the Soviet personnel in London suspected by MI5 of being KGB agents. Gordievsky was shocked, scanning quickly for his name; next to it was marked “more or less identified” (162). As soon as he could, he contacted Spooner and Price. They were as shocked as he was. Bettaney apparently didn’t know that Gordievsky was working for MI6, but that might change at any time, putting Gordievsky in danger.

An internal investigation was begun in secret, led by agent Eliza Manningham-Buller. Using the information Koba had sent to Guk, they determined who had access to it and began narrowing down the list of names. Eventually, they settled on Bettaney, who was a bit of an outlier in the agency. He drank heavily, lived alone, and was constantly hitting on women coworkers in MI5. He was put under surveillance, but MI5 obtained no hard evidence of his guilt. Bettaney contacted Guk a third time, which somehow escaped notice. In a third letter left at Guk’s home, he wrote that on a certain day he’d call the Soviet embassy and ask to speak with Guk, who was instructed to respond in code to indicate his receipt of the message.

Eventually, MI5 decided it had to act, despite having no hard evidence, and summoned Bettaney to a meeting in September. It accused him of his suspected crimes and tried to get him to confess. Without a confession, he’d walk. All day and overnight he held out until finally confessing at noon the next day. No one but a handful of people knew that Gordievsky was the one who first raised the alarm about the potential traitor within MI5. Among them—and the only government official—was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The author describes Gordievsky’s work in the mid-1980s and how it influenced Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and even Cold War history. Thatcher had taken to reading with particular interest the intelligence reports that Gordievsky provided. She didn’t know his real identity and for some reason referred to him as “Mr. Collins.” She not only studied his reports but also marked them up with annotations and questions. It was fascinating to her to learn how the Kremlin viewed her and reacted to Western moves.

The year 1983 proved an important year in East-West relations. Thatcher was up for election in the UK, and the Soviets provided propaganda for her Labour Party opponent, Michael Foot, who once provided them with information. Thatcher won handily, however, relieving MI5 of a decision on what to do about Foot’s previous collusion with the Soviets. That fall, amid the paranoia of Operation RYAN, two events took place that heightened the tension between the Soviet Union and the West.

In September, a Soviet fighter jet shot down a Korean Air Lines passenger plane that had inadvertently crossed into Soviet airspace. In truth, it was the result of mistakes by the two pilots, but both sides reacted strongly. US president Ronald Reagan called the attack barbaric, and the Soviets in turn accused the West of purposely provoking them as a pretext to attack, claiming that the airliner was a spy plane.

In November, an even more serious event edged the two sides close to war. NATO held previously planned war games, code-named ABLE ARCHER 83, for more than a week. In the simulated conflict, conventional war led to nuclear confrontation, allowing NATO forces to practice preparation of nuclear weapons. It was all simulated and used dummy weapons, but the Soviets took this as a possible prelude to a real attack—just as Andropov had anticipated. KGB stations around Europe perceived signs of this everywhere. For instance, they warned that US bases had been put on alert to ready themselves for a strike on the Soviet Union. In reality, the bases were simply increasing security in the wake of the previous month’s terrorist attack in Beirut that had killed American troops.

In London, Gordievsky provided his handlers with the flurry of telegrams coming from the Kremlin, alerting the West to the deep paranoia the Soviets had about ABLE ARCHER. Planes in Poland and East Germany had been fitted with nuclear weapons in response, and British leaders saw how close things had come to spiraling out of control. Fortunately, the war games ended without incident, but the event was a wake-up call. Thatcher, in particular, thought things had gone too far. Between Soviet paranoia and Ronald Reagan’s heated anti-Soviet rhetoric, they might not be so lucky next time. She wanted to tone things down, so MI6 agreed to share more of Gordievsky’s intelligence with the US. Reagan started getting anonymous briefings like Thatcher and appreciated both the insights and the obvious risks the source was taking to provide them.

In early 1984, Andropov died, and Thatcher attended his funeral as a gesture of goodwill. Gordievsky again proved quite useful. With his help, the British choreographed Thatcher’s every move. He knew how the Kremlin would react to what she said, the clothes she wore, and how she carried herself. Their impression of her visit was very favorable. Just before this, Norwegian spy Arne Treholt was arrested based on information Gordievsky had supplied. For various reasons, Norway’s security services held off on the arrest when first informed of Treholt’s transgressions but monitored him until the time was right to move in.

In the spring, Michael Bettaney went to trial and was convicted for his attempted espionage. The trial exposed General Guk as the KGB’s head of station in London, and MI6 took the opportunity to expel him from the country. With Guk gone and Leonid Nikitenko’s time in London coming to an end, Gordievsky would be in line to head the KGB office. This would give him access to even more information for MI6: They’d be privy to the KGB’s intentions in the entire country. Nikitenko was named acting head for the time being while a final decision was made. Later that year, James Spooner took up another post, and Simon Brown, formerly head of MI6’s Soviet section, replaced Spooner as Gordievsky’s handler.

At the end of 1984, Mikhail Gorbachev, the presumptive successor to the current Soviet leader, paid a visit to London at Thatcher’s invitation. Gordievsky planned the trip from both sides: As head of the PR Line, he “would be responsible for briefing Moscow on what Gorbachev should expect; as a British agent, he would also be briefing MI6 on Russian preparations for the visit” (194). It went off without a hitch, and though Thatcher and Gorbachev defended their respective political systems, they got on well enough for Thatcher to report to Reagan that Gorbachev was “a man one could do business with” (197). The KGB home office lauded its London station as handling the trip brilliantly, and most of the success was attributable to Gordievsky.

This chapter takes place in the spring of 1985. While Gordievsky waited to hear about his promotion to rezident of the London office, the CIA in the US was uncovering his identity. Burton Gerber was the CIA head of the Soviet section, thoroughly knowledgeable about all things Soviet. It bothered him that MI6 was keeping Gordievsky’s identity secret; in part it was ego, and in part the CIA condescendingly thought it had a right to know everything its partners knew (despite holding its own secrets). He thus conducted his own secret investigation into determining the identity of MI6’s star informant. Whether Gerber specifically asked Aldrich Ames to do this is unclear, but as counterintelligence head of the Soviet section, Ames would have worked closely with anyone else appointed to the task. Based on numerous factors, the CIA narrowed down the possibilities and through a process of elimination concluded in March that Gordievsky was the mole.

In early April, Ames reached out to the Soviets to try to cash in on his knowledge. Rosario was spending money he didn’t have, and he continued to feel underappreciated (and underpaid) by the government. As Macintyre writes, he “chose to sell out America to the KGB in order to buy the American Dream he felt he deserved” (206). He contacted a man named Sergey Chuvakhin at the Soviet embassy to suggest a meeting. Ames pretended to be cultivating a contact, informing both the CIA and FBI of the meeting, which was set for April 16 at a hotel bar.

At the appointed time, Ames was there, but Chuvakhin wasn’t. Somewhat peeved, Ames decided on the direct route: He walked to the Soviet embassy nearby and dropped off a package for Chuvakhin with the receptionist. Inside was a note identifying himself and asking for $50,000 in exchange for information. In early May, Chuvakhin called Ames to invite him to the embassy for a meeting. There Ames met with another agent and was told his offer was accepted. Chuvakhin then took Ames to lunch, where he delivered a package with the requested money. The first thing every new spy is routinely asked is whether they know of any moles inside the organization. Whether or not Ames knew the identity of Gordievsky by this point, he likely would have told the Soviets of a highly placed officer working with MI6.

At the end of April, Gordievsky was officially appointed head of the KGB’s London station. The outgoing head, by convention, would leave a locked briefcase of sensitive documents for the new person. Nikitenko cryptically left Gordievsky just two pieces of paper: photocopies of the notes Michael Bettaney had sent to General Guk. Gordievsky wasn’t sure what to make of it, but it left him uneasy. In mid-May, he received a telegram from Moscow demanding that he return two days later for an important meeting about his new position. Now he was concerned and called MI6 for an immediate meeting.

They debated whether Gordievsky should go back or defect and go into hiding. The request to return to Moscow was a bit odd because he had just been there in January. However, the KGB chairman usually appointed station heads personally, and he had been away; perhaps it was just a perfunctory meeting to make it official. The team weighed the risks and ultimately left it to Gordievsky to decide—although deep down he felt that they wanted him to go back. If it were nothing and he continued his spying as rezident, MI6 stood to gain a goldmine of information. He said he’d go, and they thoroughly reviewed the details of Operation PIMLICO, Gordievsky’s escape plan, once more. They added another safety valve if Gordievsky were in trouble and needed to reach out immediately: He could call his wife back home and ask how his daughters were doing at school; this would tell MI6, which tapped his phone, that he needed their help. Additionally, Veronica Price gave him a few things that might come in handy, including pep pills containing caffeine to help him stay alert. On May 19, he flew to Moscow.