He offered his dreams to her for analysis. “In this one dream I had a year ago… I was in this cellar and the windows had bars from top to bottom. There was another person in the cellar with me and I am sure this person is someone I haven’t met yet. I can’t remember the person’s sex, but he/she was a friend. While we were talking a hummingbird flew in through the window and was trying to communicate with me. I would describe the situation as adorably cute. Yet, on the other hand, strange. Every time I touched the walls with my hand the little bird would fly and touch the spot that I had touched, as if it were worshipping it. Finally my friend said, ‘It loves you and wants to have your children.’ I was captivated and charmed. Immediately the little hummingbird flew out and in and started making a nest in the cellar…. I finally woke up feeling happy.”
He rhapsodized over his love of literature. “My sweet, don’t be alarmed about my seeming lack of attention. Other than you I have another friend of equal importance that has sustained me during these times. They are my books, most written by men long ago before we were conceived. If you were not here I swear I would be engrossed in them. They have helped me become wiser. As one author said, ‘It’s as if the authors were talking with you from a distant past.’ In today’s devotions it mentions how the apostle Paul while sitting in a prison cell imposed by the Romans had asked his friend to bring him parchments (books). I thought it was neat. They help keep your mind alert and some can even be heartwarming. They are a part of my life.”
Glory was part of Lonetree’s thinking as he looked toward the future, and they began to talk about moving to Arizona together when he got out of prison, where she would continue her education while he worked for the tribe as a counselor. There was a tremendous appeal to stepping straight into a family situation with someone who knew his past and was willing to accept him under these conditions. But there was also an aura of unreality to the relationship, and when Lonetree’s legal status changed again, so did his plans with Glory.
Every convening authority who refers charges to a court-martial takes some sort of action subsequent to a trial. He can either approve the sentence of the judge, or disapprove the sentence and reduce it. The convening authority at Quantico, Gen. C. Krulac, was still considering a decision on Lonetree’s sentencing rehearing when the Aldrich Ames case broke.
A fifty-two-year-old CIA counterintelligence agent, Aldrich Hazen Ames was arrested by the FBI in February of 1994 on charges he had been a Soviet mole since 1985; and during his debriefing sessions he admitted to things that added yet another twist to the Marine Spy Scandal. Ames said that after he had passed information to the KGB that allowed them to identify intelligence sources working for the CIA in the Soviet Union, a number of those assets had been rounded up and executed. Concerned that the CIA would suspect a traitor in its midst, Ames had complained to his handler, a Russian named Vladimir, who apologized for the rash response and told him that the KGB intended to implement a variety of diversionary campaigns to lead the CIA to think the problem lay elsewhere. Among the ploys Vladimir mentioned was creating the impression that there had been a breach in the security of the communications systems in the American Embassy in Moscow and that somehow the KGB had been able to obtain access to CIA operational records maintained there. Within two months Clayton Lonetree turned himself in, and within a matter of months the Marine Spy Scandal became a national sensation, leading Ames to conclude that this crisis was in part a deception manufactured by Soviet intelligence to throw CIA mole hunters off the scent.
These admissions clarified several unresolved issues for the intelligence community. Now the way Lonetree had been handled in Vienna could be understood in a larger context. He had come to the attention of the First Chief Directorate at a fortuitous time. Lonetree was of decreasing value, indeed headed toward self-destruction, but the KGB had one final use for him; as a human shield to protect Aldrich Ames.
The KGB knew that if Lonetree was “exposed,” the CIA, in the process of conducting a damage assessment, would be forced to consider him responsible for its losses. But the KGB needed it to happen in such a way that it did not give their real intentions away. This was why they wanted him to return to the Soviet Union: not for training or to see Violetta, but because once he was under their complete control they could announce that he had defected, leading inevitably to an assessment of his prior activities, which would take investigators to the American Embassy. And if Lonetree had balked and refused to return, his new handler would have continued to push him harder and harder, driving him to suicide or surrender, which would have served their purposes equally well.
At the same time this added a new perspective on the Lonetree case for intelligence officials, it also raised questions. Had the entire Marine Spy Scandal been an elaborate KGB scheme to shield Aldrich Ames? Had Lonetree been blamed for disclosures that actually came from Ames?
Lonetree’s appellate attorneys immediately requested a meeting with the general, and their pitch was basically this. All along, the Marine Spy Scandal had been characterized as a major espionage case that caused considerable damage to national security. The agency that claimed it was impacted the most was the CIA. The CIA said its agents were compromised. It said it had to bring equipment back and redo codes, and the cost of its damage assessment ran into the millions. Now we find out that a lot of what the CIA blamed on Lonetree was caused by one of its own people. Now we really know what a major espionage case looked like. The Marine Corps took the hit back in 1987; by further reducing Lonetree’s sentence, it would put the word out that the Corps now realized it had been disproportionately blamed for problems that belonged to the CIA, and that it was setting things right.
After listening to the appellate attorneys and reviewing the records of trial, General Krulac decided the facts of the Ames case did not excuse Clayton Lonetree from the standpoint of criminality. His conduct was unacceptable and should have been tried and punished. As for whether Clayton Lonetree had been wrongfully accused of crimes actually committed by Aldrich Ames, certainly the difference in their positions made them agents of different orientation and different value, and the evidence suggested that Lonetree had not been initially recruited for this purpose but rather that this was one more use for him subsequent to his recruitment. If that was the case, if the KGB had been using Lonetree as a decoy and through his complicity with Soviet agents at that critical point in time it had allowed Aldrich Ames to carry on his spying, the role Lonetree unwittingly played might well have been the most harmful thing he’d done.
But as a matter of extenuation and mitigation these significant new developments did undercut some of the CIA’s claims, and justified in General Krulac’s mind a further reduction of Lonetree’s sentence to fifteen years. Factoring in the credit the military justice system extended for good behavior, this meant that Clayton Lonetree would be released from prison in the spring of 1996.
Now that the future was no longer beyond the horizon but within view, Clayton Lonetree began to reassess his plans and dreams. In this light his relationship with Glory began to pale, and his letters decreased until, with an apology and an awkward offer of friendship, they stopped altogether. The offer of a position working with young Navajos trying to overcome substance-abuse problems remained on the table, but he wasn’t so sure anymore that was what he wanted to do. Everyone around him had ideas about what was best, but he didn’t want others deciding for him; he wanted to keep his options open for the time being and decide for himself.