By Tony Jordan, retired senior CIA Operations Officer Full Bio
Member of the Senior Intelligence Service
There are no end of internal CIA politics at play in this book. Baer tells the story at the behest of one of his CIA rabbis who was a contemporary of the person named as the suspect spy. The rabbi and the suspect did not get on and when Baer’s rabbi was caught out late in his career for approaching the National Security Counsel on behalf of a questionable individual trying to gain access to the White House, the person who would be the suspect was the senior Counterintelligence Official who would oversee the investigation that would result in the “Suggested” retirement of the rabbi, who then went to work for the questionable individual.
Most of this, without some of the names, is available in open source material if you know where to look. Thus, there are many officers of this generation who believe this book is a “Hit Piece” on the suspect Baer names in the book. Most of these officers are former senior counterintelligence personnel who would know the backstory. Also, in the public domain is the information that a CIA officer, “Bob” NLU (as in no last name) made several telephone calls to the NSC on behalf of the questionable individual. The reader may draw their own conclusions.
As for the author, he is a talented story teller. His CIA career proved that. As for the sources remember the eventual suspect transferred them. What is not mentioned in the book is that they had administrative recourse at the time of the transfers, if they had chosen to take it. Did they? That they may still carry a grudge would only be human nature, as a good case officer would know and exploit.
The title of the book, while trying to make a tie to the Cambridge Five is inaccurate. If, indeed there was another spy then he or she would have been the “first” man not the “fourth” since the entire premise of the book is there was another spy who predated, Ames, Howard, Hanssen and Nicholson. Remember Hanssen was FBI and you also had Earl Pitts another FBI special agent who spied for the Russians from 1987 to 1992.
So, they really should have picked another title. So, using Baer’s premise there would have been not four but six Russian spies who could have named agents and officers. By the way there are a number of CI professionals who believe Ames actually started spying much earlier than he admits to so, if there was information divulged, it may well have been Ames.
I won’t address the SVR agent mentioned in the book because that information should not have been released, but I will say that even the best of agents lie to you when they don’t want to do something or they will tell you things that aren’t so when they’ve run out of things that are. It is all part of the great game and good case officers know, expect and will respond accordingly when this starts to happen.
The CIA investigation was started on the premise of “if there was another spy” who might it be. It was not started on the premise of “there is another spy.” Rumor, innuendo, unexplained happenings do not a conspiracy make. In an investigation of this nature you’re always going to arrive at a suspect because the premise is, if there is, who is it most likely to be. Without fail it’s going to be a very active, accomplished officer who is in on most of the operations the organization is undertaking.
Thus, arriving with a name of the most likely is no big deal. If there had been any actual evidence the Agency would have taken action. It did not, promoting this individual into more senior slots and if, as Baer claims, the FBI has an incredible amount of derogatory information on this individual why would he have been, upon leaving the CIA, appointed to one of the most important security oversight positions in the USG? While Baer makes sure he does not openly accuse the individual, he has the reader leaning towards conviction without due process.
Other reviewers have noted this, but no self-respecting intelligence officer calls a recruited intelligence official a “double agent” simply because they are spies. In the case of Ames, Howard, Hanssen, Nicholson, and Pitts, and all other intelligence turncoats, they are simply agents. Baer should have known that.
As for the timing of this book the ill heath of Baer’s former rabbi may have something to do with it.
Baer has written some interesting books and made some interesting claims in those books. That he is well-traveled is not in dispute, but other claims like being one of the best ever case officers in the CIA causes some mirth among his contemporaries, some of whom will tell you that, like his rabbi it was “Suggested” he retire.
The medal his publicists claim he “won,” the CIA Career Intelligence Award, is given to most officers upon retirement. He has no other awards of which to speak like a Donovan Award or a Commendation Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Intelligence Star, Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the Intelligence Cross or the Intelligence Collector of the Year Award. These are awards presented to the top performing case officers in the CIA.
All in all, the book makes for a fascinating read for conspiracy theorists and those who either fear or have a strong aversion to the CIA, but it does not prove or disprove anything other than an investigation was carried out on the premise of “IF there was another spy, who would be the chief suspect.”
From Tony’s blog, May 16, 2022
ANOTHER SPY BOOK
I don’t usually do book reviews although I did discover a new take on “To Kill a Mockingbird” that is making the circuit of editors looking for a home in someone’s literary review magazine. Still, I feel compelled to comment on Robert Baer’s new book, “The Fourth Man.” I haven’t read the book but I have read several reviews and articles about the book, its subject and its conclusions.
Baer did interviews with a number of former CIA counterintelligence personnel and it appears he is telling the story of how Aldrich Ames, Edward Lee Howard and Robert Hanssen could not have been responsible for exposing some of the agents who went missing in the 1970s and 80s. According to the articles the story is about a special investigative group set up to look at the problem and how the name of the CIA senior officer they came up with just happened to be the officer charged with overseeing the investigation. I’m sure it’s an intriguing read, BUT…
How do you know when an author doesn’t know diddly about the CIA? When they call CIA Operations Officers “Agents.” If they don’t know and understand that extremely basic fact then how much else have they mangled in the translation from interview to page?
Now I know Bob Baer and it is true he had little formal counterintelligence experience but he should know that Ames, Howard, Hanssen, Nicholson, et alia were not “Double Agents” as they are referred to in the reviews and articles. They were just straight forward “agents, sources, penetrations, or assets” for the Russian intelligence services. When you misuse a basic term within the premise of your argument how can we then put much faith in the rest of what you want us to believe.
Still, the story has merit but looking for a spy is not always the answer. Spies get blown (exposed) in all manner of ways. Many times it is the spy’s fault; they spend too much, make a verbal slip, are seen somewhere they aren’t supposed to be or ask the wrong questions in the office. Sometimes they are sloppy; sometimes other counterintelligence apparatuses lead to their exposure, like National Security Agency intercepts leading to the identification of U.S. Persons acting on behalf of other governments or terrorist organizations.
Sometimes a friendly service will pass on information that, when parsed, sifted and perused, provides the name of a potential spy and the eventual investigation proves it. Sometimes it is sloppy tradecraft on the part of the spy’s handler. We like to think we’re better than that but I can point to a number of cases where sloppy tradecraft or just plain bad luck was responsible for the agent’s compromise.
So, just because a spy or a couple of spies are blown, does not mean you have a mole in your midst. But, in this case, there was an investigation and a tentative, yet unverifiable, result in that investigation. Ames once left a briefcase of classified documents on a subway and was routinely drunk in the afternoon. Howard attempted to lie on his polygraph. Hanssen confessed to a priest. Nicholson went weird in Bucharest and he should have been investigated. Any of these agents might have been spotted by a sharp counterintelligence service as was Howard. Alas, the others, while reported for their suspicious behavior, were not caught early on, as they should have been.
Some of this story of a fourth man was referred to by Milt Bearden and James Risen in their 2003 book “The Main Enemy,” not all the investigative details or the continuing speculation, but enough for the reader to grasp the difficulties of counterintelligence work when you don’t know if your assumption about there being a spy is even correct.
This morning Risen published his own comments so you might want to look them up. Remember, the investigation was based on this premise, “If there was a spy who could have compromised these cases who was it most likely to be?” Without direct input from the Russians or a confession on the part of a CIA officer it would be almost impossible to legally prove espionage or even that a mole was responsible for the compromises.
Were I the author or the editor of “The Fourth Man,” I might have done a little more work re the title. I’m sure the desire is to make an allusion to the Cambridge Five but “The Fourth Man” is also the title of a Dutch horror movie and a Jack Reacher story, both of which you have to make your way through if you’re looking for the book online.
But, in truth this story isn’t about the Fourth Man, but the First, since the argument is the unexplained compromises occurred before Ames, Hanssen or Howard began spying. Thus, the person being looked for isn’t the fourth, but the first. The title fails in drawing the hoped for allusion with the British spies because they were a ring aiding one another and the three American spies cited in this book all worked independently. I’m sure the book is an interesting read; Bob has always been good at telling a story and I’ll read it as long as it’s available on Kindle.
For the record: With the exception of James Risen, I know all the people I’ve named in this article, as well as those not named, as in the suspected senior officer and the investigators.