After John Barron’s testimony, Lonetree no longer seemed to believe that his love affair with Violetta had been driven by real feelings on her part, and there were times during the debrief when he would start calling her names—“You bitch!”—as if she were present in the room. He seemed to realize now that the evolution of their friendship had been progressive steps in a sophisticated recruitment operation designed to emotionally involve him at the same time he more thoroughly compromised himself, so that by the time she introduced him to Uncle Sasha he would feel that he was caught in a chain of events he could not break.
When they began to talk about Uncle Sasha, it became immediately clear to Skinner why Lonetree had failed questions on the polygraph in London. He’d failed because he was minimizing his involvement with the Soviets and withholding information. What he actually divulged was more extensive and more specific than he had acknowledged either to the CIA or to NIS.
Painstakingly, Skinner helped Lonetree reconstruct each meeting with Uncle Sasha, of which there were seven in Moscow and eight in Vienna, almost twice as many as he had previously admitted to. They went over everything from where and when each meeting took place, to what was asked and what was said.
As expected, Yefimov had primarily been interested in identifying CIA agents and determining the location and features of CIA spaces within the embassy. “How did you know who the CIA agents were?” Skinner asked, since all of them operated under diplomatic cover. Lonetree replied that the Marines were briefed by someone from the Agency on how to handle defectors who came in, so that was one way. He could also tell them by the hours they kept and the access certain people had to floors and spaces that were off-limits to others. And they were generally recognizable by the fact that in all weather they wore trench-coats.
As improbable as that description may have sounded, it so happened that at this point in the debriefing there were two CIA agents in attendance, and sure enough, both were wearing trenchcoats. The next day it rained like a monsoon in Washington, and the only two people who showed up not wearing trenchcoats were the CIA guys.
It was easier to identify CIA agents in Vienna than in Moscow, Lonetree said, where he admitted to turning over to Yefimov photos of CIA personnel and writing their local addresses, obtained from a restricted address book, on the back. He estimated that he identified eighty percent of the CIA staff in Vienna, and said he had seen this as part of a larger effort to neutralize the threat the CIA posed to world peace.
As the debrief went on, Lonetree admitted to providing Yefimov with other sensitive material. After he was tasked to acquire floor plans of different floors in the embassies in both Moscow and Vienna, he sat down and annotated them with amplifying information that made them valuable intelligence documents. He provided information on the location and control of security cameras, alarms, and MSG responses to intruder-alarm activations, as well as assessment data on different Marines he believed might be homosexuals, alcoholics, or drug users. He identified a walk-in—a Soviet who on his own had visited the embassy in Vienna and offered his services to American intelligence.
And yet as cooperative as Lonetree had been, he had had his own standard of what he refused to do, and there were certain requests he had denied. When Yefimov encouraged him to consider applying for a Marine counterintelligence program, Lonetree balked. On several occasions he had had second thoughts at the last minute and refused to pass material he had been tasked to collect. And when Yefimov tried to talk him into defecting—promising him the opportunity of living with Violetta with a car, in a nice flat, possibly a dacha—although tempted, he turned them down.
What a political coup that would have been, Skinner reflected. An American Indian Marine in full uniform standing up in front of the cameras and going public about the brutal treatment of Indian people in America and the sinister activities of the CIA would have had tremendous propaganda value, particularly when combined with another incident in a similar time frame—the redefection of the KGB agent Col. Vitaly Yurchenko, who claimed he had been abducted by the CIA and then escaped.
As professionally as this operation seemed to have been run, there were puzzling aspects to it for Skinner. It might have been a ploy, but the KGB did not seem to have a good understanding of the kind of information a Marine security guard would possess. On several occasions Sasha asked Lonetree philosophical questions about U.S. strategic plans. Why ask him? No Marine would have the slightest knowledge about those issues. The ambassador might not even be privy to that information.
Furthermore, the KGB seemed to have miscalculated catastrophically in their handling of Lonetree in Vienna. Their first mistake was they misjudged Lonetree’s primary motives for working with them. He was in love with Violetta and he wanted friendship with Uncle Sasha. Money was not what interested him, and by not giving him continued access to Violetta, and putting things on a business footing, they were dooming the relationship.
Their biggest error, however, was when they attempted to pass him to Yuri Lysov, a.k.a. George, the senior KGB officer stationed in Vienna. At their one meeting, Lysov had set a more demanding, operational tone. He let Lonetree know that from here on out he would be expected to behave in a more efficient, productive manner. This scared Lonetree. Even as he agreed to make plans to return surreptitiously to the Soviet Union, he was fearful about his future. If the Soviets had played their cards right and delayed his turnover to another case officer, chances were Lonetree would never have turned himself in.
Of course, all of this was based on Clayton Lonetree’s memory of what he was asked, what he said, and what he did, which was not totally reliable, because some of his meetings with Uncle Sasha were occasions for heavy drinking. At one of their sessions, he reported, a strange thing had happened—after only one or two drinks, Lonetree felt ill and spent several hours in a daze. Vaguely he remembered a third party entering the apartment. His description of the incident sounded to Skinner as if he’d been drugged, which highlighted the fact that Lonetree was only able to testify to what he remembered.
In this instance hypnosis was tried as a method of enhancing his memory, but Lonetree was unable to fully enter a hypnotic state.
The question of reliability as it pertained to Lonetree’s statements was given further uncertainty by his idiosyncratic behavior during the course of the debriefing. “It was like he was operating in a different ether,” one of the intelligence officers observing him would comment. “Skinner would ask him a question about where he met Uncle Sasha, and it seemed to send Lonetree into some kind of trance. We were getting a profile of him on the camera and for what seemed like eons all he did was stare at the wall. Now remember, this is an acoustic room and there’s not a lot to look at on the walls. But he kept on staring until those of us watching are thinking, What the hell is with this guy? Some thought he was just being evasive. Others said No, that’s the way Indians are, he’s just roaming with the buffalo…. Then, when he finally answered, it was weird stuff. A total non sequitur: ‘You know, there are some very fine restaurants in Vienna.’ ”
Having had the benefit of the CIA psychologist’s report, Skinner brought a more encompassing understanding to Lonetree’s tics. But even he was getting anxious to put Lonetree on the polygraph so the truth could be determined.
Prior to the first polygraph examination, Skinner led Lonetree through a series of questions that focused on the key concerns: Before Cpl. Arnold Bracy recanted, he told investigators Lonetree had said he was letting Soviets into the embassy after working hours. Bracy said he’d seen Lonetree escorting a Soviet through the embassy. Bracy alleged Lonetree had solicited his assistance in resetting alarms after penetration had occurred in secure spaces. How much of that was true? Did Lonetree provide the Soviets with unauthorized access to the embassy? Did he allow a Soviet entry team to come in and install listening devices? Did he turn over classified documents? Did he plant bugs? To his knowledge, were any other Marines involved in these activities?