Safe House The Compelling Memoirs of the Only CIA Spy to Seek Asylum in Russia
Howard wants to come in from the cold, perhaps weary of the "relocation package" Russia bestowed on him when he defected there?a package comprising an apartment he describes as luxurious, a dacha, automobiles, trips, expense-paid visits from his family and other perks. After being fired from the CIA in 1983 for failing a routine polygraph test virtually on the eve of his departure for a Moscow assignment, Howard found a state finance job in New Mexico. Before long, though, the FBI began questioning him about espionage, so one September day in 1985, he rang the bell at the Soviet consulate in Helsinki, seeking asylum. According to Howard, the KGB, who would later become his saviors, set him up as a straw man to protect Aldrich Ames when KGB agent Vitaly Yurchenko defected to the U.S. that same year (he defected back to Russia three months later)and revealed the existence of, but did not name, a Soviet mole in the CIA. With that the hunt was on for Howard, a hunt that causes riddles aplenty in these pages. Focusing largely on his life in Russia, Howard, who is given to posturing, does not emerge as particularly trustworthy, and he further strains our credulity with his portraits of his KGB minders as nannies who indulge his every whim, especially Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former KGB head who was ousted for colluding in the failed 1991 putsch. Howard is now prepared to plea-bargain with the U.S., and here he sets out the conditions under which he would leave his safe house: He agrees to face espionage charges but wants New Mexico to waive a violation of his probation?a probation he incurred by shooting up a car in a drunken brawl. Photos not seen by PW. 20,000 first printing.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.