Cassidy's Run (9 page)

Through their night-vision scope, the photographers could make out the license plate: 1E-17128. From the condo, O’Flaherty called Joseph F. Santoiana, Jr., the FBI’s special agent in charge (SAC) in Tampa, at his home. The SAC called in the license number and asked Tampa to run the plate. By the time O’Flaherty and his team reached the office, they had their answer. The Volkswagen belonged to a rental agency in Miami. Around midnight, teletypes were sent out to Miami and to FBI headquarters in Washington reporting all that had happened.

SHOCKER
had surfaced an unknown spy and created a new case. The FBI gave it a separate code name:
PALMETTO
.

Now the FBI’s task was to identify the man. Before dawn, a teletype arrived from headquarters instructing Tampa and Miami to follow up but emphasizing that the surveillance be discreet.

The FBI was moving with an excess of caution. “Sure, we could have staked out the rental agency,” O’Flaherty said, “but they [headquarters] were very concerned about blowing the case.”

At 7
A.M.
, Special Agent Sam Jones, of the FBI’s Miami office, checked with the rental agency in Miami, an establishment known as Lester-U-Drive-It. Donald W. MacArthur, the manager, identified the man who had rented the car and returned it an hour earlier. He was apparently Mexican but had produced a Canadian driver’s license. The name on the license was Gilberto Lopez y Rivas.

MacArthur remembered that when Lopez rented the car, he had said that he had arrived in Miami on a Greyhound bus. Jones reasoned that he might have left the same way. The FBI man went to the Greyhound terminal and spoke to the ticket clerk. Jones brought with him the photographs taken through the night scope. But the clerk shook his head; he could not remember selling the man a ticket.

“You know how many people we get going through here?” the clerk asked. He paused, then recalled something. “Wait a second—bad breath! The guy had bad breath! I remember him now.” The clerk had given the man directions to San Antonio. He suggested the most direct route, but Lopez bought a ticket on an earlier bus with stops in New Orleans and Houston.

“Now we alerted all the divisions along the way,” O’Flaherty said. “FBI agents were watching the Greyhound terminals in all three cities, New Orleans, Houston, and San Antonio.

“Several agents were getting on buses to try to spot him. The Greyhound with Lopez aboard arrived in New Orleans the next day. The FBI saw him on the bus. Agents boarded the bus in New Orleans and watched him leave the bus in Houston. He took a cab to Houston Intercontinental Airport.” The agents did not want to get in too close and did not trail the taxi, though they later interviewed the driver. He said his passenger had entered the terminal. Checking further, the FBI established that he had boarded a Braniff flight to Mexico City. Jean Hadid, a Braniff ticket agent at the airport, identified Lopez.

Lopez was gone, at least for the moment, south of the border. The FBI knew nothing about him yet, except his name, if it was his real one. But O’Flaherty knew one thing, as he looked back on the kaleidoscopic events of the last forty-eight hours: Something unprecedented in the history of espionage had occurred. The man who called himself Gilberto Lopez y Rivas was the first illegal ever surfaced by a double-agent operation of the FBI.

C H A P T E R: 12

PALMETTO

Having traced the
man in the white slacks to Mexico City, the FBI made an astonishing discovery. Gilberto Lopez y Rivas, on an espionage mission to Florida for Soviet intelligence, had rented the Volkswagen in his true name.

The bureau now had enjoyed two lucky breaks. Had Lopez not initially forgotten to leave the Publix bag at the drop site, or had he used false credentials to rent the car in Miami, the FBI might never have identified the skinny young man who picked up
WALLFLOWER’s
three rocks on Snell Isle.

Gradually, the details about Lopez emerged. The son of Gilberto Esparza Lopez, an accountant, and Rosa Morgado Rivas Lopez, he was born in Mexico City on March 6, 1943, which meant that he was celebrating his twenty-eighth birthday on the day that the FBI agents had watched and photographed him from Jerry Koontz’s condo.

Lopez attended the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where he earned a master’s degree in 1969. For two years, from 1967 to 1969, while a student at the university, he was a research assistant in anthropology for the International Olympic Committee in Mexico City.¹

In 1968 Lopez had married another anthropology student, Alicia Castellanos. The couple had a boy, Nayar, and later another child, Ali.

Lopez was a leftist and an intellectual, and it was clear that his central concern—and possibly the driving force behind his decision to engage in clandestine work for the GRU—was his outrage over the treatment of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the United States.

Fury over the plight of Chicanos in America appeared in almost all of his published writings. In 1971, the same year that the FBI identified him, Lopez published
Los Chicanos: Una minoría nacional explotada.
² The book’s title reflected his view of the United States as a nation of ruthless gringos exploiting poor Mexicans.

Many Mexicans and Americans have sympathized with the problems faced by Mexican Americans, especially migrant workers who often toil in terrible, unsanitary conditions, performing backbreaking labor for low wages. Millions of Americans supported the efforts of Cesar Chavez to organize the grape and lettuce workers in California. Most of those who champion the attempts of Mexican Americans to achieve a better life, however—even those who are harsh critics of American society—do not act on their views by becoming spies against the United States. Lopez did. Somewhere along the line, probably while he was a student at Mexico’s national university, Gilberto Lopez was recruited and trained by the GRU.

Five months after he had flown back to Mexico, Lopez reentered the United States at Brownsville in August 1971, with his family. Through records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the FBI learned his destination: Salt Lake City. Lopez, as it developed, was returning to school. He was working toward his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Utah.

He was placed under surveillance in Salt Lake City, and his apartment was wiretapped and bugged. George M. Owen, an FBI wireman, was sent out from headquarters to install the electronic surveillance on the
PALMETTOS
.³

Even though the
drops in Florida were now activated, Cassidy traveled to Washington again on July 3, 1971, to get new instructions and meet personally with Mikhail Danilin.

The GRU officer said he had received the documents that Cassidy had left on Snell Isle, which meant, of course, that Lopez had gotten them safely to the Soviets in Mexico City.

Danilin then told Cassidy what kinds of documents he wanted from STRICOM. He instructed Cassidy to look in particular for documents dealing with future U.S. military exercises. They discussed the dates and locations of the next several drops in St. Petersburg.

Inside the hollow rock that Cassidy picked up before the meeting was a package containing ten thousand dollars and new instructions on a microdot concealed inside a postcard. The package also contained a blank sheet of paper with secret writing that duplicated and backed up the instructions on the microdot.

Cassidy was told he would be sent to Mexico again the following July. This time, Danilin provided detailed instructions for the contact. Cassidy was to stay at the San Marcos Hotel. On July 22, before noon, he was to confirm his arrival by placing a red chalk mark on a white fence pole on Calle Río Lerma, near his hotel. Also described were a dead drop where he would leave his film, a meeting site, and various signal sites. Cassidy was not thrilled at the news; aside from the risk of meeting the Soviets abroad on dark streets, there were the gastronomic dangers lurking in Mexico City.

The next domestic drop was set for the night of September 10, 1971, at the same palm tree on Snell Isle. O’Flaherty again prepared to station agents in Jerry Koontz’s condo and in the engineering company. Learning from the previous drop, O’Flaherty arranged this time for a third observation post.

“The third spot was a private school on Snell Isle Boulevard. I approached the dean, Gordon Tucker. He had to check with the board. Charles Randolph Wedding, who later became the mayor of Saint Petersburg, was on the board, and he approved.”

Promptly at 9
P.M.
, Cassidy made the drop at the base of the palm tree, as O’Flaherty and the agents with him watched. This time, Cassidy left films of a document stamped
TOP SECRET
, another marked
SECRET
, and a third marked
CONFIDENTIAL
, as well as other material.

The document marked
TOP SECRET
was entitled “USSTRICOM . . . Programming Plan 2-71,” dated June 22, 1971. It described the establishment of the U.S. Readiness Command under instructions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The document stamped
SECRET
dealt with the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. It was called “Letter of Instruction for the Eighth Incremental Redeployment of U.S. Army Forces from RVN (U) - AGDAA(M) (6 JULY 71) OPS OD TR July 14, 1971.”

As the FBI agents waited, tension built inside the darkened condo. Then, around nine-thirty, the telephone rang, and O’Flaherty grabbed it. “An agent at the school site called me on an open phone line, a land line as we refer to it. ‘Jack, looks like we’ve got him here. Female driving, child in the car, and another unidentified male.’ ” Gilberto Lopez was back, this time with his wife, Alicia, their young son, and a second man. The FBI cameras were whirring away.

O’Flaherty continued his narrative: “The subject gets out of the car, a gray Renault, license number LP9414, about a block from the drop site, and starts walking east on Snell Isle Boulevard. He cuts into a yard and again comes out from the bushes. This time he comes right around in front of the tree and picks up the rock. He left a paper bag at the tree. It was a Publix bag both times.

“His wife stops right below our LO, the lookout. She pulls up the car past the intersection and waits for him about a block beyond the drop. He crosses the street, walks a block to the car, right under the engineering firm. He gets in, and they drive off the island at the eastern end.”

Three months later, on December 20, the espionage ballet was repeated, with the FBI at the same three observation posts. Inside the hollow rock this time were films of three documents stamped
SECRET
, including another one dealing with troop pullouts from Vietnam, dated September 24, 1971, and entitled “Letter of Instruction for the Ninth Incremental Redeployment of U.S. Army Forces from RVN(U), - AGDA-A(M) (17 SEPT 71) OPS OD TR.”

As Cassidy was placing his fake rock, FBI agents saw a white two-door Vega, with Florida plates, 1E-23144, cruising north on nearby North Shore Drive. At 9:29
P.M.
, Gilberto Lopez appeared again, on foot, but with a bold new approach, O’Flaherty recalled. “Lopez, his wife, and their two-year-old son walk up. They’re holding the kid’s hand. Lopez, actively assisted by his wife, began searching the area under the bushes, and they clear the drop. They left in the Vega.”

The Russians were picking up the pace. Cassidy had now had three drops and a personal meeting in Washington in only nine months.

Four days after Christmas, although it was not the usual form of communication from the Soviets, Cassidy received a one-page letter, dated Christmas Day, in the mail, addressed to him at his home in St. Petersburg. Inside was what looked like a blank piece of paper. To develop it, Cassidy used the special pencil lead he had received from the GRU. But it was not an easy task.

“The lead was difficult to crush,” O’Flaherty said. “Joe was using a rolling pin for a while to crush it into powder and then add water. The idea was to dissolve it and use a cotton swab on the blank page, and it would raise the writing. The lab said the writing itself was prepared from barium, strontium, and lead and raised with tetrahydroxyquinone. The lab identified that as the chemical in the special pencil lead.”
⁴

As Cassidy swabbed cotton over the blank sheet he had received, the words slowly appeared:

“Dear Friend, Thanks for your efforts Top Secret September document was good. For it I’ll pay three thousand for whole September package I owe you six thousand. Don’t worry about money, I never failed you.”

The letter went on to approve the next series of numbered drop sites. “Places 2, 5, 6, 7 aren’t good, so correct our schedule as follows: September ten place ten; December twenty place three . . . I need new Secret document . . . now your film are good. My best wishes for New Year.”

The letter also informed Cassidy: “Your trip abroad is canceled.” For Cassidy, it was a reprieve from another round of beer, peanuts, and corn flakes in Mexico City.

But for the FBI, the cancellation posed a puzzle. The counterintelligence analysts speculated that it was linked to the FBI’s recent arrest on espionage charges of Walter Perkins, an air force master sergeant. Perkins had been the highest-ranking noncommissioned intelligence officer in the Air Defense Weapons Center at Tyndall Air Force Base, in the Florida panhandle. He had had complete access to classified information on sophisticated air-to-air missile systems. He had been arrested by the FBI in October at the Panama City airport as he prepared to board a plane for Mexico City with five classified documents in his briefcase. According to the FBI, Perkins was en route to meet his GRU handler.

At Perkins’s court-martial, an air force counterintelligence agent in the Office of Special Investigations said the tip about Perkins had come from the police in Tokyo, where the sergeant had been formerly stationed. An informant said that Perkins had been in contact with Edward Khavanov, a Soviet colonel in the Tokyo embassy. OSI then put Perkins under full-time surveillance, installing six video cameras in his office that recorded him copying information from classified documents onto index cards. Perkins was convicted and sentenced to three years by a military judge.

In Salt Lake
City, where he had been sent to bug and wiretap the Lopezes, George Owen was alarmed at what he saw. FBI agents there, more attuned to following around bank-robbery suspects than Russian spies, were too obvious to suit Owen, according to Charlie Bevels. “Owen came back and told headquarters, ‘I’ve watched those guys handling surveillance. Every bureau car has antennas nineteen feet high.’ ”

Hearing of Owen’s dismaying report, Robert J. Schamay, an FBI counterintelligence agent in Washington, urged that something be done, fast. Schamay, six foot four with the frame of a linebacker, volunteered and became the case agent in Salt Lake City.

Wiretapping and bugging the Lopezes had presented problems, Schamay remembered. “They lived in married housing at the university with one child, the little boy. They were in a two-story concrete building, on the top floor. George had put in the technical coverage, but it was hard to do in a concrete building.” Owen installed a dual-purpose microphone that tapped the phones and also allowed the FBI to overhear room conversations. The microphone was concealed in a wall telephone; the FBI had managed to gain access to the spies’ apartment long enough to switch the wall phone for an identical “hot” unit. The bureau had also installed a remote surveillance camera, trained on the entrance to the building, that transmitted its pictures to a television screen in the FBI’s office downtown. Agents conducted physical surveillance of the couple as well.

Since illegals working as Soviet spies are rarely identified, the bureau wanted to learn as much as possible about the Lopezes and their actions. Eugene Peterson, supervising the case from FBI headquarters, decided to insert an undercover agent who would have the difficult and delicate mission of trying to become close to the
PALMETTOS
.

Peterson reviewed the files of several hundred FBI agents, looking for just the right candidate. Finally, he narrowed the field to fourteen agents with Hispanic backgrounds. From the list, Peterson zeroed in on Aurelio Flores, a twenty-nine-year-old agent in Miami. Not only was Flores of Mexican-American background and bilingual in Spanish and English, he was almost exactly the age of Gilberto Lopez.

Peterson sent the paperwork up to John P. Mohr, the number-three official of the bureau. Mohr noticed that Flores had a toddler.

“What about the child?” he asked. “There might be a security problem.”

Peterson was incredulous. “He’s only eighteen months old,” he protested.

“Yeah,” Mohr said, “but my grandson is eighteen months and he says, ‘Grandpa G-man.’ ”

Mohr had a point, although as events were to unfold, it was not the undercover agent’s child who talked out of turn. Headquarters approved Peterson’s choice, and Flores prepared to move to Salt Lake City with his wife and son.

Peterson arranged a new résumé for Flores. Peterson contacted a former FBI man who was chief of personnel security for a large private corporation in Miami, and the ex-agent agreed to insert a fake employment record for Flores into the company’s files.

Aurelio Flores, a compact man with brown hair and hazel eyes, was born in Del Rio, Texas, graduated from Saint Mary’s University in San Antonio, and served as a captain with the army airborne special forces for five years before he joined the FBI in 1970.