Book Review | CIA SpyMaster

CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence

Studies in Intelligence, 2005

CIA SpyMaster

Clarence Ashley. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 2004. 350 pages, endnotes, photos, index.

Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake, curator of the CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection

When Clarence Ashley analyzed strategic missile capabilities for the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960s, he knew nothing of George Kisevalter, a case officer who had handled the first Soviet GRU agent run by the CIA. It was only in 1973, after both had left the Agency, that they met and became business associates in Virginia. A close friendship developed and, as he learned more about Kisevalter's adventures, Ashley realized there was a life story here that needed to be told. It took considerable persuasion, but, in 1991, with the Cold War over and classification no longer a major barrier, Kisevalter finally agreed to be interviewed and recorded, and the foundation for CIA SpyMaster was laid.

George Kisevalter's career in intelligence was anything but typical by today's standards. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, he moved to the United States in 1916 when his father, a reserve officer in the Russian Army, was appointed by the Czar to purchase weapons. After the Bolshevik revolution, the Kisevalters were stranded and eventually became US citizens. Young George went to Stuyvesant High School in New York, where he studied mathematics and chemistry and won the New York State Chess Championship in his spare time. In 1926, he entered Dartmouth College—a classmate of Nelson Rockefeller, to whom he sometimes lent money. During the 1930s, Kisevalter married, joined the army reserve, and worked at various engineering jobs in New York. He spent most of World War II in Alaska where he was involved with the lend-lease program supporting the Russian war effort. David Chavchavadze—later to serve with Kisevalter in the CIA—was his top sergeant.

In 1944, Kisevalter was transferred to military intelligence at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, where he worked on Soviet intelligence projects. Because he was also fluent in German, he was sent to Fort Hunt, Virginia, in 1946 to interview Reinhard Gehlen, who would later head the German BND, about his knowledge of Soviet intelligence. After being discharged, Kisevalter worked for a few years in an enterprise that harvested alfalfa, until a childhood friend suggested that he go to work for the CIA. In 1951, he became a GS-14 branch chief in the Soviet Division, assigned to operations in the Far East. It was on his return from a trip to Hong Kong in 1953 that he became involved in one of the most famous CIA cases.

The story of Pyotr Popov has been told elsewhere,[5] but the version that Kisevalter told Ashley adds details. Popov, a GRU major, was a walk-in at the CIA station in Vienna. His successful handling required someone with the ability to speak peasant Russian and develop his confidence—Kisevalter was just the man. The case lasted nearly six years before ending in Moscow where Popov was imprisoned, tried, and executed. Ashley draws on the firsthand accounts of other CIA officers involved to show the value of Popov's contributions and tell how the case reached its end.

The next major case in Kisevalter's career involved another GRU walk-in, this time a colonel named Oleg Penkovskiy, who was handled jointly with the British Special Intelligence Service. Considered one of the most important Soviet agents ever recruited, Penkovskiy provided information that was critical to the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis.[6] The pressures of the case created problems for Kisevalter, but he played his part through the last meeting with Penkovskiy in Paris. Kisevalter followed the final days of the case from CIA headquarters. Ashley's comments on Penkovskiy's arrest, trial, and execution are based on interviews with other participants.

Kisevalter had one more, albeit oblique, contact with the Penkovskiy case. Only one participant, British businessman Greville Wynne, tried to enhance his personal status in the affair when he wrote a book, claiming, among other exaggerations, that Penkovskiy had been flown overnight to the United States to meet President Kennedy.[7] British author Nigel West called Wynne a liar and was sued for his trouble.[8] West asked Kisevalter to testify on his behalf. Testimony in open court was not possible, but Kisevalter knew that West was right and gave a deposition to that effect. The case ended with Wynne's death before it came to trial.

The years between the Penkovskiy case and Kisevalter's retirement in 1970 saw him involved in a number of agent recruitments in various parts of the world, which Ashley describes. The most important, and by far the most controversial, concerned two KGB walk-ins. The first, Anatoli Golitsyn, precipitated a CIA hunt for a KGB mole and claimed that the second walk-in, Yuri Nosenko, was a fake defector. Ashley reviews the cases in detail based on his conversations with Kisevalter and Nosenko. He concludes that Kisevalter “never accepted the case for a mole in the CIA or the argument that Nosenko was planted by the KGB” (283), although he acknowledges that he did not volunteer his opinion even after he learned of Nosenko's incarceration under harsh conditions. After the case was officially resolved, Kisevalter and Nosenko became friends.

Kisevalter's final assignment was to the CIA training facility for new officers. Few there will forget his formal lectures or his informal conversations. Promoted to super grade (GS-16), the first case officer to achieve that rank without serving as a manager, he also received the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the Agency's highest award. There was one more honor to come his way: In 1997, when the CIA celebrated its 50th anniversary, Kisevalter was designated one of 50 Trailblazers for his many contributions to the profession, the only case officer so recognized. Less than two months later, he was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery.

CIA SpyMaster is a sympathetic biography of a unique CIA intelligence officer who served his adopted country with honor and dedication.

[5] See, for example, William Hood, MOLE (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981) and John L. Hart, “Pyotr Semyonovich Popov: The Tribulations of Faith,” Intelligence and National Security, 12/4, October 1997: 44–74.

[6] Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, The Spy Who Saved The World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1995).

[7] Greville Wynne, Contact on Gorky Street (New York: Atheneum, 1966).

[8] Nigel West, The Friends (London: Weidenfeld, 1998). West noted that at the time not even America had a plane that would accomplish the feat, but Wynne remained adamant.