Spy stories

Honeypots, surprise birthday cakes and searching for assets were some of the stories told as former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative Pat Stuart spoke at the Saratoga Library Thursday evening.

The affable Stuart began the presentation by stressing the importance of human intelligence gathering saying that only about five to 10 percent of the CIA's capabilities were based on human intelligence gathering.

Stuart started by giving a brief personal history of growing up at the Heart Mountain near Powell internment camp after WWII. Stuart didn't like the place much and retreated to the library there to read about far off people, places and situations. Delving into books Stuart learned of the foreign service and decided that was what she wanted to do.

Unfortunately for Stuart, the foreign service did not hire women for the job in the early 1960s.

Stuart did get a break when Senator Francis Case from South Dakota got her an interview at the CIA.

Shortly thereafter Stuart was handling top secret documents-but still couldn't get into the field.

Stuart said she, and the other few women in the CIA, finally got into the field by taking interim operational assignments when they came open.

She then went into stories from her 31-year career as a case officer.

Burned in the Jungle

Stuart set the stage for her first story saying that in the 1960s America and the Soviet Union were engaged in proxy wars in third world countries around the globe. The Congo was one of these areas where both the United States and the USSR kept and supplied private armies. After the preamble, Stuart launched into a story about an agent who went into the Congo in the early 1964 to find field operatives after Russian backed insurgents had captured a small CIA station and had held the officers assigned there captive for eight months. After the officers had been returned, they realized their field agents had not been heard from in some time.

Dick Holm was the agent sent to find the missing field agents. Holm went looking for the field operatives in a CIA plane headed for the asset's last known base of operations. On the way there, the plane crashed and Holm received extensive burns. While traveling through the jungle, Holm came upon a local tribe who applied a native salve and leaves to his burns. Eventually a radio was obtained and a helicopter called in. That helicopter picked Holm up and then crashed as well.

Eight days later Holm made it to a larger town in the Congo where the only American doctor there declined to treat the patient deciding Holm was too far gone.

Fortunately for Holm a Belgian doctor thought otherwise and treated him. The CIA finally got Holm to America's premier burn center in San Antonio. The doctors there observed that the treatment Holm had received from the natives had prevented infection and Holm eventually recovered and remained with the CIA for a long and distinguished career.

After the situation in the Congo had abated enough, doctors were sent to find the tribe and collect samples of the salve and leaves. The active ingredients in these curatives are still in use for burn patients today.

Surprise

Stuart then told of recruiting the "Billion Dollar Spy."

At the time, America had vastly overestimated the military capabilities of the Soviet Union and were prepared to spend billions of dollars to counter these illusory capabilities.

America did not end up spending around two billion because of human intelligence.

Adolf Tolkachev, a Soviet radar expert, was labeled the Billion Dollar Spy for these savings. Tolkachev, whose parents had been sent to gulags, was disaffected with the Soviet system and was determined to undermine the government.

Stuart told of a method once used to meet Tolkachev in the highly observed environment.

Soviet agents constantly watched the embassy and Stuart said that anyone leaving the compound was followed and surveilled.

The officer that was to meet Tolkachev let it be known he and his wife were to attend a birthday party-an event made up as an excuse to carry a cake out of the embassy. The night of the "party" the officer came out to his car dressed in a hat and overcoat with a large birthday cake. The officer got into the chauffeured vehicle with the cake and his wife and began their journey.

Immediately, the car was tailed but after several turns the Americans had put enough space between themselves and those following that the diplomat could leap from the car. As he did this, he threw off his coat and hat to reveal common Russian worker clothing. Simultaneously the chauffeur hit the cake and a dummy wearing the same style hat and coat popped out. Thus did the agent make the meet-with the Russian followers none the wiser.

Honeypots

Stuart listed, in a general way, some of the different methods used to recruit assets. She specifically mentioned the "honeypot," or the use of sexual seduction, as one of the means to recruit support.

Stuart told of a young American lady who was seduced into sneaking classified documents to a foreign government in Africa. Stuart said the lady and her lover were eventually caught and jailed.

Stuart went on to say that she had men try to recruit her in this way also.

Telling the truth

Stuart wrapped up the discussion and took questions from the audience. The audience got a chuckle when a pre-teen girl in attendance asked what a "honeypot" was. Stuart's reply was, "it is a name that is given to a kind of operation."

When asked if she had felt at a disadvantage being a woman in a male-dominated field Stuart replied that, short of certain Arabic countries where women are not treated well, that it was never really an advantage or disadvantage and that a person should project how they want to be treated.

The speaker then closed with a saying from a former CIA director that the CIA's true purpose is to "speak truth to power."