Synopsis "The Penetration"
For years, among members of the U.S. Intelligence community, there was an undeserved smugness that highly placed Soviet Intelligence operatives such the British spies Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Harold "Kim" Philby could never happen here in the United States. Despite the Hiss and Rosenberg cases, Americans were thought superior to "that sort of thing." Besides, our security procedures and regulations were thought to be airtight. The British, on the other hand, were thought somewhat lacking in matters of security. Or, at least, that was the prevailing mentality until the arrival, on our shores, of one Anatoliy Golitsyn in the early 1960s. Golitsyn, a self-confessed major in the SovietIntelligence Service (known by the Cyrillic acronym "KGB" or"Committee for State Security"), astounded his CIA interlocutors with the assertion that there was one or, perhaps, even several, long-term KGB"moles" ("hostile penetration assets") situated within the highest echelons of the CIA and other United States government offices. (Perhaps even within the Oval Office of the White House itself? [See this author's book: For Good of Country: The Plot to Kill An American President."]) Unfortunately, Golitsyn had had little, if any, additional identifying or qualifying information on the subject. Needless to say, Golitsyn's revelations created immediate and widespread alarm throughout the U.S. Intelligence community and other U.S.government offices. While some U.S. officials, including the late James Jesus Angleton (the long-time Counter-Intelligence Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency), believed Golitsyn, an equal number of intelligence officials did not. These latter CIA officials rejected Golitsyn's bona-fides and were convinced that Golitsyn was a Soviet "plant" whose mission was to give false information ("Dezinformatsiya") to the Americans about highly-placed Soviet "moles" in the U.S. government hierarchy. Nonetheless, Angleton, on his own initiative, proceeded to embark on a relentless witch hunt, within the CIA and elsewhere, to unearth possible Soviet moles. As a result, operations within the CIA's Covert Operations Directorate, for some time, were seriously affected; if not stopped altogether. Angleton and his operatives were relentless in their efforts not only to interfere beyond their purview, but also to dictate when, where, and if individual clandestine operations could be initiated. Moreover, Angleton, personally, was responsible for the forced termination of the careers of individual, excellent Clandestine Ops officers solely because, although American-born, they had the misfortune of having Slavic surnames. While Angleton's search for moles proved unsuccessful, unfortunately, as we now are acutely aware, in subsequent years, there has been a rash of espionage cases involving American citizens of varying background, racial profiles, and social status. With that regard, these cases involved U.S. military personnel, Intelligence operatives, academics, businessmen, and others, who succumbed to hostile recruitment overtures. In the majority of cases, the inducement for recruitment involved cash payment for services rendered. Moreover, foreign countries caught spying on the United States include not only our "enemies," but our "friends" as well. Consequently, Americans are no different, and possibly equally susceptible as foreigners, to intelligence recruitment efforts. Therefore, it is both conceivable and possible that Communist China, Russia, and other foreign powers were and are successful in recruiting Americans; including those individuals who, indeed, may have attained lofty positions of power and influence in the American society. The following fictional account is an attempt to relate one such recruitment of an American citizen, and that agent's rise to a lofty position of power and influence in the American society.
