Disrupter of CIA’s Counterintelligence Capability to Protect Himself as the Master Spy
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The book says Ms. Bannerman believed Mr. Redmond had a vendetta against her and launched a war of attrition against the three women to destroy the SIU because it was closing in on him as the spy.
The book also says Mr. Redmond wanted to undermine CIA’s ability to identify spies to protect himself. (page 188, 193-196, 235)
Ms. Bannerman’s claim Redmond shut down the SIU is 100 percent false—and she and the other sources were well aware of this fact. Indeed, the SIU was expanded, with more CIA officers, FBI Agents and resources while Ms. Bannerman was Chief and continued long after Ms. Bannerman was replaced with a new Chief SIU.
The management decision to replace Ms. Bannerman had nothing to do with a “vendetta” by Mr. Redmond. Ms. Bannerman’s alleged assumption that Mr. Redmond had to close down the SIU because they were closing in is utterly without merit and frankly reflective of what her management at the time found was a very dangerous tendency to jump to incorrect conclusions which were not supported by the facts.
Other FBI and CIA managers and investigators involved at the time confirm Mr. Redmond did not destroy the SIU but rather supported their request to expand it with additional FBI agents and CIA officers and replace Ms. Bannerman with new, more effective SIU leadership.
This is well known to people working the investigations at the time and is documented extensively in CIA files and some open source; and Mr. Baer even mentions it in his book. He writes “since Bannerman stood her ground with the FBI, refusing to allow it to expose the CIA’s sensitive Russian agents within the FBI he (Curran) was forced to replace her with Mary Sommer a CIA analyst.” (Page 190).
In fact, Ms. Sommer was selected to replace Ms. Bannerman because she was an accomplished senior reports officer with extensive Russia background, strong leadership, a record of success working with the Intelligence Community, including the FBI, and she understood the post-Ames reforms.
But Mr. Baer does not provide that perspective. He accepts and repeats Bannerman’s dishonest assertion that Mr. Redmond was conducting a vendetta against her and destroyed the SIU because it was closing in on him. Importantly after months of tremendous frustration with Ms. Bannerman, Mr. Curran and his two Deputies had no choice but to replace her and it was a very wise decision.
Also Mr. Baer’s key sources—Ms. Bannerman, Mr. Milburn, Ms. Worthen, and Mr. Lofgren were all very well aware of this at the time and one has to wonder why they provided such a blatant falsehood to Mr. Baer. It is a fundamental pillar —albeit a dishonest one—to Mr. Baer’s case for Mr. Redmond as the 4th Man and Master Spy.
In addition to losing the confidence of her CIA management, FBI agents had expressed increasing frustration with their working relationship with Ms. Bannerman, complaining about her unwillingness to share complete information, her tendency to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions, and resistance to the FBI’s primacy in espionage investigations.
A critical fact on Ms. Bannerman’s removal as Chief/SIU is omitted from Mr. Baer’s book. After months of confrontation, it was Bannerman herself who set her own removal in motion when she requested the SIU be taken out of the chain of command of FBI Agent Edward Curran—Chief of Counterespionage— in circa August or September 1995 and placed under the Chief of Counterintelligence.
That meeting was the final straw; the decision to replace Bannerman was made by her immediate management team who experienced the day-to-day problems (in Counterespionage Group in the Counterintelligence Center in coordination with Chief of the Counterintelligence Center) NOT Mr. Redmond as she claims. Mr. Redmond concurred with the change in SIU leadership and was instrumental in finding a new, more capable leader who continued the important work of the SIU.
There are several related references Mr. Baer uses in his book which illustrate this distorted picture. For example:
Ms. Bannerman obscures that the major source of contention was her failure to share complete source information during a time when there were multiple major espionage investigations underway and conflicting source information. Instead, she incorrectly claims that Mr. Curran couldn’t understand the complicated mechanics and time it took to break out the sensitive source reporting. In fact, sharing complete reports was the central problem but they omit that from the book along with her request to be removed from Mr. Currans management—a violation of Presidential Directive-24.
Mr. Curran, a key person in this whole story, would have been the perfect person to give Mr. Baer an accurate picture of the SIU dynamic under Ms. Bannerman but Mr. Baer says in his book he “did not catch up with him.” Instead, Mr. Baer uses a short quote sourced to David Wise’s book which briefly addresses the issue but does not elaborate on the full magnitude of Ms. Bannerman’s insubordination:
Curran later described his feelings toward Ms. Bannerman. She was very friendly, a DO person from the Russian side,” Curran said “but very protective of the CIA. She thought she was in charge and would decide what the FBI got. We had to resolve that right away. We immediately had conflicts. She’s trying to protect the Agency’s jewels and we’re trying to investigate.” (“Spy” by David Wise, Random House, 2003. (Baer’s book—Page 196, 267)
Mr. Baer’s failure to explore that further enabled him to leave the reader with the highly inaccurate but key part of his thesis of the Fourth Man; specifically the problems with how Ms. Bannerman managed source information and FBI complaints ultimately resulted in her removal, not a dishonest claim of a vendetta by a spy. Baer thus leaves this fundamentally dishonest assertion by Ms. Bannerman against Mr. Redmond uncorrected and unchallenged.
A couple other noteworthy assertions add to the pattern of falsehoods and incorrect assumptions in order to claim Mr. Redmond destroyed the SIU to protect himself.
Bannerman believed Mr. Redmond sent FBI analyst Jim Milburn back to FBI to further undermine the “spy catchers” in SIU.
Absolutely incorrect. Mr. Milburn’s work as an analyst supporting the Squad at Washington Field Office (WFO) on sensitive investigations with the CIA continued including his close work with the SIU at CIA for many years; he spent much of his time at SIU along with FBI agents.
Beyond that, the FBI made administrative decisions regarding its employees.; not Mr. Redmond. Indeed, the assignment of a specific mid-level FBI analyst was frankly well below Mr. Redmond’s management level at the top of the CIA.
Ms. Bannerman claimed if Milburn had not been withdrawn, they would have caught Hanssen seven years earlier. (Page 189)
Absolute nonsense—dozens of investigators at CIA and FBI would challenge this ridiculous assertion. There are numerous critiques of the FBI’s work on the Hanssen investigation, to include its analytical effort. The many reasons that it took so long to get to Hanssen are beyond the scope of this review, but it had nothing to do with Milburn being administratively assigned to WFO.
Hanssen was ultimately identified in 2000 by brilliant operational work by CIA, FBI and a Russian source who provided forensic evidence identifying Hanssen as the spy for whom FBI and CIA had been looking since 1994.
For more information on the Hanssen investigation, the unclassified Department of Justice report mentioned above and an unclassified Damage Assessment provide additional open source insight and investigative challenges. It does not appear Mr. Baer or his principal sources used them to inform their assessments.
There are numerous books and other open source information on the Hanssen Case well as classified reports in CIA and FBI with even more detailed documentation of all the SIU activities.
Bannerman claimed she came into the office before Christmas in December 1994 and found the FBI had come in over the weekend and seized all the SIU’s paper files.
None of our reviewers recalled such an event though it is possible it might have happened if the FBI thought she had been withholding critical information from them. In the book Mr. Baer notes Ms. Bannerman’s attribution of the raid as follows,
“There was no way to know for sure, but she could only assume Redmond was behind this raid. Who else could it have been?”
Baer then claims Mr. Redmond confirmed the FBI role. That is absolutely incorrect. Rather, Mr. Redmond told Mr. Baer that some rather uncouth FBI agents did come roaring into CIC after Ames’s arrest but this was not linked to the kind of “raid” Bannerman claims.
In any case, any kind of activity like alleged by Ms. Bannerman would not have been done without concurrence of Mr. Curran and his CIA Deputies. Any such action, if it happened, would be a matter of documentation in CIA or FBI chronologies. (Page 189)
Ms. Bannerman thought she had CIA surveillance on her way home one evening and assumed Mr. Redmond was responsible.
“She knew the Counterintelligence Center ran surveillance teams inside American Borders, usually to follow CIA employee under investigation.”(Page 197)
She does not provide a date. This is paranoia on her part and/or Mr. Baer’s effort to make this story more interesting. Management decided to replace her on performance issues and had no interest in surveilling her.