Michael Ledeen passed away this week, a sadder event than most might realize. Anyone can claim to be a red-blooded American—and he certainly was one—but it is what he did behind the scenes that you are reading about here, and only now. It breaks my heart that he is gone.
I met Michael in 1981, a third of the way through my three-decade FBI career, when I was working foreign counterintelligence in the Washington Field Office. He showed up on a phone call with a senior Soviet Embassy official, Boris Ivanov, always described as a boisterous pain-in-the-butt by those who met him. But it was important for Michael to have a grasp of what the other side was doing. Of course, FBI street agents could never simply call senior Department of State officials, flat out, but needed authority from FBI HQ—often refused. But that didn’t work for me.
I called up H. Eugene “Gene” Douglas, then on the new Reagan Administration’s Policy Planning staff at State. He was an old friend and godfather to two of my children. I told him I was interested in meeting Mr. Ledeen, but could not make the overture. However, if he called me, then headquarters would both be satisfied and none the wiser.
In a very few minutes, the phone on my desk rang. A smooth and easy-going voice said, “This is Michael.” I didn’t know it then, but that is how everyone knew him. If you said, “Go see Michael” or “Ask Michael,” it was our Michael they were referring to.
He arranged for me to come to his office. When I arrived, I was surprised that one door in his office opened up to the office of Secretary of State Alexander Haig. In fact, it was right behind his desk. So, when someone would come into Secretary Haig’s office and begin to rant about something somewhere in the world, which was likely a catastrophe in the making, General Haig would raise a hand to pause the speaker and then swivel in his chair. He opened the door behind his desk and would say, “Michael, tell me about this place.”
Some of us referred to these conversations as “Michael on everything,” whether the event was in a country you were familiar with or one so off the beaten track that many had never heard of it. The issue at hand would be right on the tip of Michael’s tongue, ready to provide America’s senior diplomat with whatever details he needed.
Many administration officials had some sort of contact with the official Soviet establishment. Michael’s contact was Counselor/KGB Colonel Boris Ivanov. After Michael would see the man for lunch, he and I would parley about what had taken place, he with the details and me assessing the intelligence ramifications. I knew what Boris was saying to his other contacts and how they matched up with what he had just said to Michael. We both got a higher-altitude picture of the KGB’s efforts against U.S. officials. We were a good team until the day when, over lunch, Ivanov made an anti-Semitic comment.
Michael raised a hand, stopped him in his tracks, and said this would be their last meeting. In fact, those would be the last sentences they would exchange. Michael got up and walked out of the restaurant, leaving behind a stunned Russian, his mouth agape. No number of calls to the State Department could ever right the wrong the Russians had committed. He just didn’t get it. He had underestimated Michael’s principles and the precepts he lived by. That didn’t help me, either, as I had lost contact with a senior Soviet official, but I understood the gravity of the situation.
However, Michael could still do many other things to benefit the FBI, which had been unforeseen.
One day in the early 1980s, as Michael sat patiently in the office of K Street attorney James Woolsey, he realized the lawyer was on the phone with a Russian. When the call ended, he confirmed with his friend, Jim, the position of the man he had been speaking with. He followed up by asking if he was also speaking with the FBI or CIA about him. Woolsey seemed surprised and said he was not. Michael told him, “You need to see Wayne.”
The next day, I was sitting in the same chair where Michael had been the day before, and Woolsey was very open to the conversation. He had no idea that the Russian he knew might be affiliated with Soviet Intelligence or that he could be a target of theirs.
I had given dozens of lectures to defense contractors in auditorium settings, which we called DECA lectures, the Development of Espionage and Counterintelligence Awareness. So, right there in Woolsey’s office, I gave him his own personal DECA lecture over the next 45 minutes. From then on, almost as though he and Michael had been some sort of tag team, I would see him after his meeting with his Russian. Just as I had with Michael, it enabled him to see more of the high-altitude picture of the KGB’s activities in Washington. Little did any of us know that ten years later, Bill Clinton would name James Woolsey to head the CIA. Michael had been no small part of that, especially inadvertently arranging for the future CIA Director to receive his first intelligence briefing.
From 1979 on, the FBI had an elite squad, COURTSHIP, consisting of three FBI agents and three CIA case officers, under an FBI supervisor in an off-site location. The squad’s sole goal was to recruit Soviet intelligence officers. In meeting such individuals, undercover agents posed as normal, non-intelligence Americans. But we had to have information of interest to the KGB to hold the targets’ attention and keep the meetings flowing to gain valuable personality assessments. Of course, we could not “give up” FBI secrets, and FBI HQ was simply not in a position to provide any information.
As one of the FBI agents on COURTSHIP, I took it upon myself to gather these tidbits of information through my friends, actually good friends, and sources for the FBI. So, after Michael had cast off his lone senior KGB officer contact, what else could he do for us? This was the answer.
One day I got a call from FBI Special Agent Mike Morton, who had recruited Sergey Motorin, one of our two KGB officers recruited in the Soviet Embassy and working in place for the FBI. He had put out his emergency contact sign and needed to meet with Mike. To pull this off, we had to come up with some decent intel to provide to him so he could justify having met his American contact.
I called Michael and wanted to see him right away. He was in his office, up under the eaves in his home on Western Avenue. He invited me to come over as quickly as I could get there. The reason for the meeting was not something to mention on the phone, so it was not until I arrived that I could explain what I needed. Michael knew we always had to have feed information to keep our UC meetings going. But what he did not know was that, this time, it was for a Russian we had recruited—and to keep that relationship going, too!
Michael held up his hand and made a call. Then he said into the phone, “Tell him it’s Michael.” In another moment, a voice came on the other end of the line. Michael broke into fluent Italian, and so, apparently, did the man he was speaking to. At first, it was friendly chit-chat, but then it got more serious. Michael sat in his big desk chair, listening patiently and nodding.
He thanked the man and hung up. Then he turned to me. He said that Richard Burt, the chief of protocol at the Department of State, was going to be named as the next ambassador to West Germany. At the time, that was a very big deal, a coveted position and one not handed out lightly. Michael said the information would not become public for three or four weeks, when the Washington Post would report it, so this would be juicy intel.
I had to ask Michael who he had spoken to, wondering who he knew who had access to such information and was willing to share it with him. He said it was General Walters. That was—U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Vernon Walters!
I could only imagine the looks on the faces of any of our FBI Headquarters people in the Intelligence Division if they ever learned that our operations were not being held together by the seats of our pants, as they often assumed, but were actually backstopped by people who HQ would never have given street agents permission to speak with in the first place—like the Personal Advisor to the Secretary of State and the American Ambassador to the U.N. How did they think we did all that we did, and within the bureaucratic parameters? Well, we didn’t, but we wouldn’t tell them that.
One last point. It was always my experience that, within the U.S. government, the higher you went, the nicer the people were. Michael didn’t do meetings, and I only saw him in his navy-blue suit on two occasions. One such instance was when he was to attend a meeting with Henry Kissinger, and the other was on some occasion with Al Haig. When I was driving him to the meeting with Haig, just before he got out of my Bureau car, he asked if there was anything else he could do for me. I pondered for a moment and said that in our UC operations, we often have an office set up for a single visit from our Soviet targets so they can see where we work. It is a requirement, a block the Russians have to check as part of having continued authority by their KGB overlords to meet with their American contacts. In such offices, various accoutrements are needed to appear authentic. I told Michael that if he could have Secretary Haig give me one of his 8 x 10 photos, signed to me—I was “John” for the operation—I could display it in my undercover office for the Russian to see. Something like, “Dear John, thanks for your help in the election!” He laughed and said he would see what he could do.
When I next saw Michael, he had an 8 x 10 manila envelope for me and started to hand it over. When I reached for it, he pulled it back, to my surprise. He said that was exactly what General Haig had done to him, to his equal surprise. Then, he said, the Secretary of State said to him, “This is for your friend’s undercover operation. When it is over, have him come to see me so I can give him one for his own name.”
I could say more, but this is part of Michael’s life that he did, waaay behind the curtain, to keep America safe and strong. He would never have written about it, but I think now is a good time for me to do so. His family and friends deserve to hear it.
I honor my old friend and picture him jogging down a wooded trail, years and years ago, with his wire-haired Airedale Terrier, Barney, always enjoying life to the fullest.
Wayne A. Barnes is a retired FBI Special Agent who served from 1971 to 2000. He can be reached at Wayne.Barnes.Investigations@gmail.com.