Joseph Finder
Extraordinary Powers
© 1994
To Michele
and to Emma
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful for the kind assistance of Richard Davies and Samuel Etris of the Gold Institute; Gerald H. Kiel and Bill Sapone of McAulay Fisher Nissen Goldberg & Kiel; Ed Gates of Wolf Greenfield & Sacks; Dr. Leonard Atkins and Dr. Jonathan Finder; and, in Paris, Jean Rosenthal and my friends at the Paris Métro system.
Also, Peter Dowd and Jay Gemma of Peter G. Dowd Firearms, Elisabeth Sinnott, Paul Joyal, Jack Stein, Pat Cooper, Martha Shenton, and my great friends Bruce Donald and Joe Teig. The brilliant Jack McGeorge of the Public Safety Group was, as usual, both an invaluable source and enormously generous with his time.
My thanks, too, to Peter Gethers, Clare Ferraro, and Linda Grey at Ballantine, and the terrific Danny Baror of Henry Morrison, Inc. Thanks, as well, to my friends and sources in the intelligence community, who’ve come to learn the meaning of that ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
Henry Morrison was, as ever, not just a marvelous agent and reader but a valued editor and brainstormer as well. I continue to be awed by, and indebted to, my brother Henry Finder, brilliant editor and indispensable counsel. And to my wife, Michele Souda-editor, adviser, and literary critic, who was there from the start-my thanks and love always.
The weapons of secrecy have no place in an ideal world. But we live in a world of undeclared hostilities in which such weapons are constantly used against us and could, unless countered, leave us unprepared again, this time for an onslaught of magnitude that staggers the imagination. And while it may seem unnecessary to stress so obvious a point, the weapons of secrecy are rendered ineffective if we remove the secrecy.
– Sir William Stephenson, in
A Man Called Intrepid
Former KGB agent seeks employment in similar field. Teclass="underline" Paris 1-42.50.66.76.
– classified advertisement in
the International Herald Tribune,
January 1992
EXTRAORDINARY POWERS:
Espionage tradecraft jargon utilized in certain former Warsaw Pact intelligence services. Refers to the permission granted a highly trusted clandestine officer, in extremely rare circumstances, to violate his employer’s standing orders if need be in order to accomplish a mission of vital importance.
A NOTE TO THE READER
The events of last September and October that so shook the world will, of course, never be forgotten. But few if any details of what happened during those extraordinary weeks have been revealed to the public.
Until now.
Several months ago, on November 8, I received at my home in Manhattan a package delivered via Federal Express. The package, weighing 9.3 pounds, contained a manuscript, part typewritten and part handwritten. Subsequent investigation failed to determine who had sent it. The Federal Express company was able to ascertain only that the sender’s name on the bill was false (the point of origin was Boulder, Colorado) and that it had been paid in cash.
Three independent handwriting analysts, however, were able to confirm something I already knew-the handwriting was that of Benjamin Ellison, a former operative for the Central Intelligence Agency and later an attorney with a prominent law firm in Boston, Massachusetts. Ellison had presumably made arrangements for this manuscript to be sent in the event of his death.
Although I was hardly a close friend of Ben Ellison’s, we were roommates for one semester as Harvard undergraduates. He was a good-looking fellow, of medium height and trim build, with thick dark brown hair and brown eyes. I remember him as being easygoing, quite likable, and possessed of an infectious laugh. I had met his wife, Molly, a few times and liked her quite a bit. When Molly’s father, the late Harrison Sinclair, was Director of Central Intelligence, I interviewed him on several instances; but that is the extent of my acquaintance with Sinclair.
As a very good series of investigative articles in The New York Times documented recently, there is little doubt that Ben and Molly’s disappearance in the waters off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a week after the events recorded in this manuscript, was suspicious at best. A number of reliable intelligence sources have confirmed for me in off-the-record interviews what the Times articles speculate-that Ben and Molly were probably murdered, likely by agents connected with the Central Intelligence Agency, because of the knowledge they possessed. Until their bodies are located, however, we cannot know the truth.
But why me? Why would Ben Ellison have chosen to send his manuscript to me? Perhaps it was because of my reputation as a reasonably fair-minded (or at least I like to think so) writer about foreign affairs and intelligence. Perhaps it was the success of my most recent book, The Demise of the CIA, which originated as an exposé I did for The New Yorker.
But most likely, I think, it was because Ben knew me and trusted me: he knew I would never turn his manuscript over to the CIA or any other government agency. (I doubt Ben ever anticipated the numerous death threats I have received over the phone and in the mail in recent months, the subtle and not-so-subtle campaign of intimidation by my contacts in the intelligence community, and the massive legal effort by the CIA to squelch publication of this book.)
To say the least, Ben’s account at first struck me as shocking, bizarre, even incredible. But when the publishers of this book asked me to verify the authenticity of Ellison’s account, I undertook lengthy interviews with those who knew Ellison in the legal and intelligence communities as well as extensive investigation in several European capitals.
And so I am confident in stating that Ben’s version of these alarming events, astonishing though it may be, is an accurate one. The manuscript I received was obviously written in haste, so I have taken the liberty of editing it for publication and correcting a few largely inconsequential errors. Where necessary, I have interposed newspaper accounts to augment his narrative.
Controversial though this document will no doubt be, it is the first complete story we have of what really happened during that fearsome time, and I am pleased to have had a part in bringing it to the light of day.
– JAMES JAY MORRIS
The New York Times
CIA Director Is Killed in Automobile Mishap
Harrison Sinclair, 67, Helped Agency Cope with a Post-Cold-War World
Successor Not Yet Named
BY SHELDON ROSS
SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON, March 2-The Director of Central Intelligence, Harrison H. Sinclair, was killed yesterday when the automobile he was driving plunged into a ravine in rural Virginia, 26 miles from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He was killed instantly, agency spokesmen say. There were no other victims.
Mr. Sinclair, who had been head of the CIA for less than a year, was one of the agency’s founders in the years after World War II. He leaves a daughter, Martha Hale Sinclair…
PROLOGUE
The story begins, appropriately enough, at a funeral. The coffin of an old man is being lowered into the ground. The mourners surrounding the grave site are as somber as any funeral-goers, but they are conspicuously well dressed, radiating power and wealth. It is an odd sight: on this gray, drizzling, cold March morning, in a small rural cemetery in Columbia County in upstate New York, you can see United States senators, Supreme Court justices, the various scions of the New York and Washington power establishments, picking up wet clods of soil and flinging them atop the coffin. They are surrounded by black limousines, BMWs, Mercedes, Jaguars, and the assorted other vehicles of the rich, powerful, and elect. Most of them have come a long distance to pay their respects; the graveyard is miles from anywhere.