Welcome to Spycraft, a podcast that tells gripping life and death spy stories and
the amazing devices and operations that made them possible. Now let's get started.
Hey, welcome back everybody. Today, we have a great guest, Robert
Bear ba R. We're gonna find out who he is. Well, who
is he? He's the author of two New York Times bestsellers, Sleeping with
the Devil, about the Saudi royal family and his relationship with the United States,
and See No Evil, which recounts Bear's years as top CI operatives.
You know, Evil is the basis for the acclaimed film Syriana. It's a
great movie, actually, but you're in George Clinte and Oscar for his portrayal
of Bear. Bear writes regularly for Time dot Com and has contributed to Vanity
Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and he's considered one of
the world's foremost authority in the Middle East. So what are we talking to
him about today? Well, his brand new book, The Fourth Man,
The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the Cia and the Rise
of Putin's Russia. This is a fascinating read, folks. I highly recommend
it if you're into spy novels, great stuff. Actually not a novel,
it's a spy book if you're great, if you'll into those books, I
highly recommend it. The Fourth Man, the Hunt for a KGB spy at
the top of the CIA, and the rise of Putin's Russia. Before a
good start, you don't what to do? Share, subscribe, hit that
like button. You know we like it. Let's not waste any more time
and welcome to the show, mister Robert Bare Welcome sir, Thanks joy being
here. This is great, Thank you so much for the opportunity. It's
a fascinating read. As we talked before the show, and we'll get to
that later. There's a lot of mystery around this one. Well let me
ask you this first things first, what motivated you to write this book?
Well, it's the people who investigated The Fourth Man came to me and said,
here's the story. When I was in the CIA, I'd never heard
anything about this. I knew that there was paranoia about Russian intelligence having sources,
but other than that, I knew zero about it. So I approaching
this as a reporter. You know when your former boss comes to you,
to the investigators, a bunch of x FBI guys come to me and say,
yeah, there was a fourth man, no doubt about it. And
he did more damage, probably we guess, than any spy in American history.
So with that kind of introduction to the story, how could I not
be obsessed by it? And I am obsessed by it until today. And
I started writing this down, and I went to everybody I could get to
to ask him their opinion. I went to James Clapper, former DNI,
I went to the former CIA director Hayden and write down the line. Even
Gina Haspell, and they all had a piece of the story. Most were
could not would used to give me the whole story, but they confirmed what
the investigators had told me. And so I build this narrative. And as
a journalist kind of approaching this story, I mean I have a knowledge about
the CIA, betas a journalist approaching it, I had to put down all
of the objections, every single bit I could. And then on top of
that, I had to make it a thriller. So what I give you
at the beginning of the book is basically, here are the suspects, and
by the end of the book, I leave it up to the reader to
judge the evidence and who the fourth man is. That's crazy because you start
over in nineteen and ninety two. I think I believe in your book to
start a mascow on Moscow. But before we get to that real quickly,
you know what, I didn't get your background. How long were you in
the CIA and were you were in operative or what was your rule? Yeah?
I was in twenty one years. I was in operations the whole time,
and I resigned in December ninety seven. I was assigned mostly overseas.
I hated Washington, hated being asside to headquarters. Anytime I could, I
would just go overseas. And then in ninety five I was involved in an
aborted Kuda talk against Saddam Hussein. I was brought back to the United States
investigated by the FBI for attempted murder and murder. And so you know,
when your employers starts thinking about trying to put you in jail, isn't it
time to move on? Although I wish I had assassinated Saddam Hussein, it
would have saved It was a lot of a lot of lives, both Iraqi
and American, and a lot of money. Oh Man that's a heck of
a mess you're in there. Well, yeah, it's you know, I
sort of knew that the FBI wasn't. They were very reluctant to investigate this
as it was ordered from the top, from the White House. And you
know, it's like the FBI agents were great. We just said, this
is really stupid. You know, when you went to a rack when you
were chief a station there, you had a lethal finding, which basically as
you can kill anybody you want to. So I said, yeah, the
lethal finding. I told Washington what I was doing, the whole thing.
So they thought it was nonsense too. Well, I guess what leads into
this book. Now, in Moscow in nineteen ninety two, you start off
with the problem was how to find a KGB operative in Moscow who didn't want
to be found in it something Musdom don't want to be found. But he
made it very problematic, or she whoever it is, made it extremely problematic.
What did you think about it and you started getting information? Did you
think this is like a ghost, this is made up? Or did it
only start feeling like it was there? Well, what happened was there's this
there's this Russian counter intelligence officer who was a little bit lippy. He would
sit down with CIA people and give him hints about This goes back to nineteen
eighty eight. We give him hints about Russian moles in the CIA and the
FBI. He came up with names for these guys. He says, Yeah,
we're running this great source, and the FBI in an even better one
in the CIA. And he knew about these because he was he was a
connector and knew about these. And so once the FBI decided that there was
a spy inside the CIA, I was convinced of it. They went to
the CIA was to get a hold of this Russian and get the full story.
We didn't know how to get a hold of him. He was he
had been reassigned back to Moscow, had no idea where to find him,
nothing. And then one day we're having a liaison meeting between the CIA and
Russian intelligence in Moscow and who shows up as a translator the same guy.
So the trick is how to get him away from his colleagues and what do
you mean there's a mole inside the CIA? Who is this guy? What
do you know about him? So eventually in ninety three we just take all
of our liaison contexts between the Russians and the Americans that bring them to Washington
and then to Greenbrier and West Virginia, which is a hoteler. And one
day the Russian goes fishing with one of our guys, is a great officer,
and said, hey, your mole is flying to Caracas to meet his
Russian handler. So with that piece of information, the FBI scrambled and figured
out that it was Rick Aines, the notorious mole who without informing anybody,
flies to Caracas. It coincides with the information about his handler, Uri Kretkin.
The FBI gets a full FISA, they get break in authority, all
the rest of it, and they proved the case. So, in other
words, this russ who was known as Max, broke the biggest counter intelligence
case in American history. I mean he broke it. It was a guy,
you know, one specific guy. So his credibility goes way up,
and that's fine, you know, and he talks about the FBI guy,
but he can't really help to figure out who this guy is. And it
turned out it would turn out to be Bob Hanson. In two thousand and
one, the FBI agent but what intrigued the CIA was, guess what,
there's another Russian mole inside the CIA, only much higher ranking and better placed.
So this kicks off a huge investigation which has never been reported about ever
inside the CIA. And that's sort of the beginning of this story, which
goes on until today. As of a couple of weeks ago, the FBI
was knocking on the doors of my sources, not in a hostile way,
but they've been going around and saying, hey, is there anything we missed
in our investigation of the Fourth Man? And everybody's very helpful. This is
all very congenial, which I should add at this point that this book,
the material I write about, was submitted to both the CIA and the FBI.
The CIA asked for a couple of deletions, which I said, fine,
it doesn't affect the narrative. Specifics like the names of the handlers of
the Fourth Man. I have those, and they said, please don't put
that in the book. We don't want the Russians to know we have them.
I wouldn't say the FBI or the CIA are happy about this book,
but they played ball with me in that sense, and I, you know,
we don't talk anymore. And it's just it's out there. But anyhow,
that's that's the that's the heart of the story. And my big question
is the FBI conducts espionage investigations all the time. And what happens is they
suspect uspy, they open an investigations called O N open and approved ninety days.
They've got to go back and tell her supervisor why this investigation needs to
remain open, and they have to provide what new evidence they have. My
question is, and the great mystery is why has this investigation gone on for
more than twenty five years? Twenty five years that's a long time. And
come on, you know, CIA people say, oh, the FBI hates
the CIA, you know this and that, and they, you know,
for whatever reason, it's it's a rivalry. But come on, the FBI
does not investigate something like this for twenty five years unless they truly believe that
they've got something. Who knows how old that guy is mine hour Dowie.
Yeah, he's still alive. If it were just dead, they just let
this thing die. He's way past retirement. But and here's the interesting part
of the story is, and I've pieced this together, there were a couple
Russian defectors who come out of Russia and describe the Fourth Man. One of
them was famous. His name was Chercussion and he was head of counterintelligence and
was the first guy to run Aims and Hansen. Wow. So he comes
out and talks about the fourth Man. Multiple other defectors have come out and
said he's the best agent that the KGB has ever had. This waste been
described and wa anyhow, I mean, you know, let's go back to
the beginning. Why am I fascinated by this story by Russian operations? But
this is definitely Lakare but on viagra and it's all real. Yeah, it's
really an amazing story. Did a great job of writing about it and taking
a step by a step on the interactions with the individuals and what they said.
But listening to you now as well, talking about kind of the behind
the scenes. Look, this is always a tough part about having author's onto
the shows. You don't want to give up too much so people can read
the book and get it. But your's just the tip of the iceberg.
I think you could give too much. Yeah, and all my sources agreed,
by the way, because they're in effect whistleblowers. They conducted the investigation.
It doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong, but they conducted the investigation.
I state their conclusions. I state the evidence they could give me.
They couldn't give me all the evidence. Did you ever feel like he got
really close? Like, man, I'm getting close to this skyre not not
really? Or well, I'm close to it. You know when the FBI.
I live in the middle of nowhere in the of Colorado. When the
FBI shows up in one spring morning and asks if I know anything that they
don't, I don't think I did. It's serious. So I think the
FBI is close, but they simply don't have the hard evidence to bring to
a court. The rule of the FBI is, you do not take an
espionage case unless one hundred percent certainty of conviction. And you know what that
means. You've got to photograph the spy with this Russian handle, you've got
this dead drop or anything. You just got to see that happen, or
put him in the same city, or you have to show Russian money showing
up in this account. Now, the FBI believes that this guy was out
for revenge. His career took a bad turn to see Ia. He wanted
to show the CIA that he could outplay them and outplay the FBI, and
that was really his intent. And as far as I can see, he's
going to get away with it. When when the FBI is up against somebody
who doesn't take money, it doesn't pass documents that can be traced. They
this is there's not much they can do about. This is a story about
the skill of the fourth man, not the skills of the FBI or the
CIA. Do you think technologies helped him a lot more? Is it made
it easier or harder? You would know more than I would have in regards
to being able to maintain clandestine kind of operations going, Well, he would
you hide it in the open so the FBI can track travel. But if
you're going to meet your handlers on Europe on CIA orders, what can they
prove nothing? Because so what he would do is a range of trip,
like to go to Paris or London, meet his handlers, say what areas
and then come back And all the FBI has says, yeah, he was
an official trip. And if you don't take money from the Russians or cash
or there's no calls to Moscow course, and there's no cell phone records,
there's nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And the guy, the fourth
man, knew what he was doing. And do you do we have any
idea of what has been given up or anything that the fourth man possibly has
already feel well, one guy that that agrees that he exists ran Russian operations
to the CIA. He's very leery about talking to me. By the way,
this book's not made me popular with my ex colleagues. You imagine that
he said, for instance, he gave up transcripts of conversation between yelts and
Clinton. And what happened then was the FSB that's Russian Internal Intelligence, which
was headed by Putin at the time, goes into Yelton with these transcripts and
says Boris, comrade, Boris, my friend. We know exactly what you're
talking to Clinton about, and we're just here to protect you, so be
careful. So this scares the Bejesus out of Yeltson he stops talking to Clinton.
At this point. There's a year before Putin comes to power. So
the suspicion is that Putin and the fourth Man contributed to Putin's appointment as Prime
minister, and then president, that's the kind of things. And the Fourth
Man had all sorts of access to military secrets. So if you're like anti
aircraft missiles, so if the Russians knew what we had, then they could
redesign their weaponry. What people are looking at here is the access the guy
had, excuse me, and what he could possibly give up, as opposed
to knowing for certain because as I understand, as people have told me,
there was no file on the Fourth Man in Moscow. This is how important
he was. There was no file for the Russian for somebody able to go
look at. He was simply run off what the FSB Russian internal intelligence calls
a postcard, and it just had his code name on the postcard and the
names of his handlers. So you know, the Russians, if they have
a very good agent, they know how to run him. They know how
that you avoid a place, a meeting place like in Washington. You never
go there because the FBI could follow you to a meeting the same way London.
Vienna is safer because the Austrians don't much care and they're so penetrated by
the Russians anyhow. Oh, really, you know the Austrians don't if you
can aspy for the Russians, don't. Don't you know do it in Vienna?
There's so many they've always been ambivalent about, you know, being part
of Nate, you know, part of the Western Alliance. Interesting, So
let me ask you this. Now you've written other books, of course,
is this have you ever dabbled before and trying to look at spies and how
they operate? And I guess what I'm trying to look for, is there,
how does this fourth man compare to anybody else that you've seen in the
past? Aldrich, Ames, Robert Hansen. Obviously they all got caught and
this guy seems to be a But if it's a guy, I don't assume
that either. Who knows what it is? But is it making? Have
you seen anything that really stood out beside obviously his anonymity? Well, the
thing that stood out to me and I had to ask this question of people
who really know what they're talking about? FBI agents, CIA people. He
was run by what's called the Second Chief Directorate, and the second Chief Directorate
was counterintelligence, the old KGB, So they just operated internally the very they're
starting. Okay, good, that was the dog's warning me. The FBI's
outside getting ready to close us down, right, I'm sure they tap in
this right now. Yeah. So he was run by this internal service which
was paranoid, and the people never defected. So if you're if you know
what you're doing, the last thing you want to do is walk into a
Russian embassy and ask for the Foreign Intelligence Service, because it's completely penetrated.
They have a lot of defectors. They're unreliable, they've been living the high
life in Europe or Washington. And you don't go to them, You go
to the Second Chief Director. You make contact with them. And so Russia
is divided into these two services, and one is much more reliable than the
others. And that's the best guess of what happened. And that's what the
defectors said to come out, is that he was run by the Second Chief
Directorate. And that's why the FBI has never been able to get a smoking
gun on them. No defectors come out and say, oh, yeah,
I know about this guy in Washington. He did this and did that.
Now, consider we're talking the fourth man. Have any of the other individuals
one two three provided any clues to this fourth man? Well, the first,
the stories based on the Edward Lee Howard who fled to the USSR back
in the early eighties. And then Aims is presumably the second man because he
gets arrested in ninety four and Bob Hansen, the FBI agent, is arrested
in two thousand and one. They knew nothing about the fourth man. It
wasn't like they met or the Russians are very compartmented, and they simply,
I mean by the way that Russians are just have flipped out about this book.
Really they're not happy about it. Well, what they're really unhappy about
it is Russian intelligence guys who have defected here tell me is that the possibility
that the Russians gave up Aims and another and another agent in order to protect
the fourth man. They hate the idea that anybody would put it out there
that they would sacrifice an agent to protect another one. And so you see
that, you see it. You know these reviews, I'm sure you don't
read them like an RT which is which is a Russian intelligence outlet run by
the Russian government. They're just apoplectic. I mean, I'd like to tell
the Russians the best way to deal with the book you don't like is just
ignore it. But it was, it was it was too much for the
Russians. Yeah, haven't made a whole lot of friends anywhere. No,
I don't make itwhere. No. If you ever walk with me in the
in the we start taking incoming rounds. It could be from anybody. You
have a rare talent. Yes, I work at it. You've managed to
piss off all for espnages. I'm assuming nobody else is involved here. It's
just Russians here. So we don't have anything coming up with China or any
other countries doing any you know, China. I ran China cases and in
the CIA, but they're just don't. I'm so out of it that I
would have nothing to contribute. Plus, no one's ever come to me and
said, hey, why don't you deal with the Chinese what they're doing in
this country. I'm sure it's a fascinating story. But the Middle East and
Russia is about, you know, as far as I can go. Now.
Speaking to other CIA officers usually hear that Russia's probably the best of all
of them in regards to spies. What do you think about that? Well,
they have a different approach. They yeah, they recruited a lot of
people, and they use you know, honey trap operations with men or boys
or whatever. That's that's sort of tried and true for them. The Chinese
use family, so it's it's called the long tail. So if if somebody
has Chinese relatives in the United States and back in China, they can put
pressure on the Chinese family in China and enforce these recruitments. And I think
I think the Chinese are very good at that. So it's it's very And
is the Russians. The Russian mob for instance, in the United States,
which is everywhere Miami, Los Angeles, New York, I don't I've never
heard of them going out and recruiting people. And the problem is that the
Russians is there. They run hot and cold. Remember the ten Russians that
were arrested and traded. I mean that was just sort of all silly.
It was it was called director, it asked. They didn't do anything important.
But that doesn't mean that there aren't islands of excellence and Russian intelligence that
know what they're doing. Now, Clearly the Russians intelligence guys who convinced Putin
and be fined to and you know, take Kiev in seventy two hours didn't
do all that well. But you know, at the same time, a
lot of this Russian weaponry that we keep on picking up in Ukraine, it's
got an American technology and they're good at that. They steal it and they
put in their own weapons and they're hypersonic missiles and the rest of it are
based on American technology. So yeah, they are good, sometimes very good.
In regards to the changing of the guards there, as we saw yelled
sense of Putin. Did that change the dynamic at all when you were investigating
this, did it change did it make it more difficult, to make it
easier? Anything? At all? The change it made it much more difficult.
Because what you have to understand is Russia is run by a deep state.
There is no deep state in this country, but there is in Russia.
And Putin was the frontman for a bunch of KGB officers that call themselves
statusts. We call them hardline. They oversaw his work in Saint Petersburg when
he comes back, and then he gets promoted into the Kremlin, and then
they promote him into the Prime ministership and then the presidency. And as we
saw once he gets in. Every important job in Russia is a KGP guy,
every single important one. All the oil industry and the rest of it.
They're all KGB guys, all KGB arms, industry, everything, and
they all go back to Saint Petersburg or even to Dresden when Putin was there.
A lot of the key guys were with him in Dresden, you know,
the guys. One of the guys doing the gas pipeline out of Russia
into Germany was with him in Dresden. And so you know what we got
with Russia is in nineteen ninety nine, I can and I based this on
very good journalists and my former colleagues, and there's a census that Putin came
to power thanks to a quiet kudata. So people ask, well, why
do we care about the fourth man? Is because he assured we missed this
coupe tap. I'm not saying we could have done anything about it, but
we just simply missed it. It was in a sense of pearl harbor.
So Putin accordion sounds like you're saying Putin's not really the one running the whole
thing. There's a deep stick going on. I think he's running it now,
but he's running with consensus of the status. I think they put him
in power that he was along with the program, but as he became more
powerful, I don't think anybody's going to take putin on today. So I
mean he just he just grew into the job from his point of view.
Now speaking on now we switched to our side. We have a lot of
transitions in the head of CIA, head of FBI. We've seen that over
the last well probably twelve years, We've seen a lot of changes there.
Does that alter the investigation process too? You know the inside outs better than
I do. Does that start putting little roadblocks or some people are not as
interested in investigating other people's more interested in anything like that. Well with Alder
James, the chief of the division, who should have investigated it, simply
didn't. This went on for years and years where they with aims. We
lost all of our Russian assets, all the important ones, most of them.
And then I mean nobody, nobody really took it seriously. And the
guy that was in command of the division, in charge of the Soviet Union,
he was promoted, so it was there was no big deal. You
know, who cares? And then by nineteen ninety one when Gorbachev during the
coup, we decided to stop spying in Russia. Not just a fact.
I know the people. I mean, I was in the field, got
messages saying, hey, you can turn off your tail taps on the Russians,
you can stop getting a follow We're not going to pay for it.
Don't have any Russian Russian contacts we don't care about. And it was felt
that Russia was in such bad shape that we didn't want to undermine the government
by having a spy scandal or whatever. Wow, so quickly we've got all
these years. I mean, people don't like to admit it. And it
was a political decision, not just the CIA. That's a that's not gonna
make you a lot of friends either. If I sent on invitations for a
party, I don't think they would come. I guess in our last few
of minutes together, it's really fascinating. And again I'm not trying to give
everything away, folks telling you we're only touching the tip of the iceberg.
It's called the Fourth Man, the hunt for a KGB spy at the top
of the CIA. In the Rise of Putin's Russia, Robert baar Baer you
can get on Amazon. It's really a fascinating read. Let me ask you
this. Did you what stood out for you the most in this investigation.
Let's say when you're looking through this, you're going on crap, what is
that? Did you ever have one of those moments? I had it because
when I was in the CIA, every time I had a case overseas or
contacts, I had to put on a piece of paper, so if I
met somebody in a bar it was of operational interest. First thing I did
is I went back and I went into the station, wrote a cable guy's
full name, everything I knew about him. It would come back a trace,
what calls we don't know anything about this guy, or we'd know this
about him. And it was all a matter of federal records. Everything was
recorded when I was in a rack, everything I did I recorded and sent
in in messages. I don't think people read them, but I recorded it.
And what I found out from this counterintelligence investigation is that it was truly
a wilderness of mirrors because nothing was written cable traffic or formal files or put
on computers. Nothing. It was all done on easels. It was done
on three by five cards, the whole thing. So it was fascinating that
it's it's like a film, you know, it is like Tinker Taylor,
Soldier Spy, but rather than George Smiley being the SpyCatcher, he's the mole
and from a from a thick. You know, if you turn this into
a drama, it would just be utterly fantastic. Yes, yes, Now
do you think I guess this is a hard question to answer. You have
to be Mistra Donna's for this, But do you think they'll actually catch them?
Do you know why I'm on this program. I want to get it
out as far and wide to Russians that there's millions and dollars involved. If
somebody comes out with the evidence. I don't work for the government, but
I would like to see him caught. And the only way to do that
is have a Russian witness to the crime to come out. And that's where
I stand. Man and tense stuff. Again. The book is called The
Fourth Man, The Hunt for a KGB Spot at the top of the CIA
and the Rise of Putin's Russia. You're gonna say something that, You're gonna
say something else. No, that's it. Yeah, I guess what now.
There's not really much else to say about that, right right this,
right now. But you've already spoken to you. You're you've been spoken to
me before the show. You've spoken to the current CIA n FBI heads right
as well. I spoke to Gina Haspelly, and all she would say is
that she'd been briefed on a hunt for another mole. She didn't give me
a name, she didn't do anything like that. You just said, yeah,
I've been briefed on this. But so that was all piece of this.
That was a piece of the mosaic that I put together. You can
probably read between the lines if you had to. Well, you can read
between the lines too much and you go right off a cliff and your conclusions.
But any of what I do in the book is just put all those
doubts in the book, and what people say possibly change the narrative, even
if it's just a partial answer. It's a fascinating book. I can't thank
you enough for taking the opportunity to be with us and sharing the story with
us. Yeah. No, I'm still obsessed, and if someone's got an
answer for me, get in touch. I'm sure some people out there in
the CIA are listening, and I do know from demographic checks, so we
do have listeners in Russia and China, so I get the funny feeling they're
listening as well. It's amazing how they find podcasts. But again, folks,
one more time. The book is called The Fourth Man, The Hunt
for a KGB Spot at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin's
Russia or Robert bear ba Er Robert, I guess my last question is do
you have any other books coming up or is this going to be Oh no,
I'm thinking of doing one in the thirty fourth California elections with Upton Sinclair
and how it sort of changed politics, you know, fake news and the
rest of it. But oh yeah, it's just just an idea. I'll
be looking forward to that one as well. Thank you so much again for
being with us, and thank you everyone for listening. Hey, make sure
to share, subscribe to hit that like button. Go check out The Fourth
Man, A Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and
the Rise of this Russia.