her photography work, which she now does every variety of places. it is on exhibit and at their home in maryland. she and tony have lectured in a variety of places, world affair councils colleges, and so forth. she is a regular appearer here on either a panel or as a single lecture. i will mention one book. i think this was your first book. "spy dust." it is about their years in moscow. denied area operations. this is where you first hear the term "moscow rules." it is used, this book, in, often with new intelligence personnel coming into the agency. it's that good, and it covers that many operations. so i have said enough. jonna, it is delightful to have you here. please help me welcome jonna mendez. [applause] >> good morning. there is no better way to start the day than to be introduced by peter. it is inspiring. in another life, in another time , i lived in d.c. and i was the smithsonian resident associate. i did so many programs with the smithsonian once we moved out of washington, d.c., into the countryside, an hour and a half from here where it is beautiful, where the blue ridge mountains are rolling, where there is no traffic, there are some things i miss. i miss trader joe's. i miss the bustle of the city and i miss these kinds of events sponsored by the smithsonian. there is no way to replicate them. so, it is good to see the faces. you're not familiar to me but your programs are very familiar to me. just to follow-up on what peter was saying, i spent most of my adult life working for the central intelligence agency. i went to europe when i was 20. i went over there to be in my friend's wedding in germany. i never went home. home was kansas. we didn't have hills and trees and green grass in kansas and i stayed. i did start working for the cia overseas. came back to washington, d.c., worked for them back here and then it was a series of overseas and back home and overseas and back home. it was a way to see the world. i highly recommend it. we have mentored a lot of young people into the cia. it's a profession, an honorable profession, a great place to work and participate to give back something to your country. i'm so proud at having served there. having said all that, let's talk about some of the people we were working against. some of the enemies we were confronting, some of the techniques they were using, some of the techniques we use to try and stop them or at least nullify what they had done. in this lead up to valentine's day, i get hanna koecher as a subject. she was one of the most attractive, really beautiful blue-eyed blonde czechoslovakian intelligence officer working in the united states. she's an elusive woman to track down. she was part of a team. she and her husband came as a unit. they worked as a unit. and they left as a unit. so we will get into the story. you might discover somewhere along the way here, while i am delivering a powerpoint presentation, powerpoint is not my friend. the young man in the back of this room named memphis. memphis is my friend. [laughter] so, we will start out -- [video clip] >> the first foreign agent ever planted inside the cia -- karl was arraigned today in court. karl koecher was born in czechoslovakia 50 years ago, charged with passing u.s. secrets and the names of intelligence agents to the communist homeland. the fbi said he was trained to become a mole inside the cia. he worked for the agency from the 1970 -- >> from 1973 for 20 years. he worked in the united states for 20 years, spying for the czechoslovakian intelligence service, which meant spying for the kgb and the russians because it was a direct line. it went through czechoslovakia but his real masters were back in moscow. koecher was a very interesting man. he was an intellectual. he was firmly pro-communist in his police. -- in his beliefs. he was born in bratislava in 1934. he was hired by the czechoslovakian intelligence service relatively early to come to the united states and to be a mole, to be one of the sleeper agents. you have all sat and watched in the news, you watched the 10 moles that were arrested. more recently we had three more. , god knows how many there are left, but there are probably a lot. but karl and hana koecher were two of those. they embedded themselves in american society and they proceeded to wreak some devastation while they pretended to be other than they were. he started out in czechoslovakia as a comedy writer for a radio show. this is a really smart man. but when he was young, he joined the communist party, and his bride-to-be, hana, she joined the communist party. that is not quite as devastating as that might sound, because it was expected of young people at that time in communist societies that they would be party members. so, we gave away the punch line, the very first slide. you know they were arrested in 1984. they had three years of intelligence training in czechoslovakia with a specific goal of coming and burrowing into american society. they didn't come directly from czechoslovakia. that would have been too easy. that might have set off some flags. the first thing they did is they left czechoslovakia and they went to austria. they went to vienna. when they did come to the united states, they emigrated from vienna. some people, peter would be one, would be suspicious of vienna. vienna has to be one of the spy capitals of the world. there is so much activity that goes on there. historically and even today. they came in 1965. they showed up in the united states and presented themselves. this is a staged defection. karl koecher said we are being persecuted in our home country because we are anti-communist. we have been driven out of our country because i speak up against communism and now i can't get a job, they are going to put me in jail, and i have fled my home country and i'm coming to the shores of america, home of democracy to start a new life. right. well, it works. by 1971, he had become a united states citizen. and in the 1970's, and the 1980's, he became an employee of the cia. it's not easy to become an employee of the cia. anybody who has joined recently will tell you that it is -- it's enormous background checks security checks. but the fact is someone who has come from abroad and become a u.s. citizen, the background check can only go back to the day they landed on our shores. cia security does not go knocking on the doors of your ex - neighbor in czechoslovakia. they do not go interviewing your former employer in czechoslovakia. and so it is little trick in the system that the security check cannot really go back that far. and that is one reason the cia has always been so leery about hiring foreign-born citizens. because there is a little room for mischief in there. and hana koecher certainly took advantage of that. he was 28 when he joined the czechoslovakian intelligence service. he married hana who was also a member, already, of the intelligence service and already a member of the communist party. interestingly, i think, the day of their wedding was november 22, 1963. does that ring a bell? they got married the day kennedy was assassinated. so they completed their intelligence training, which would have involved a lot of tradecraft, a lot of language skills. when karl koecher came out of czechoslovakia he was fluent in four languages. he spoke czech. he was fluent in english. you will hear him speak later. his english is very good. he was fluent in french and most importantly he was fluent in russian. you have to remind yourself because you know this already, but americans are not good with languages. it's a hole in the fabric of the society. we do not speak foreign languages. we pretty much expect everybody else to speak english. to a large extent, that works. but if you have a real skill in a foreign language it will get you very far in this country. and in today's world, the more exotic the language, the more valuable it is, of course. so if you speak farsi today fluently, natively, for instance, you can find a job quite easily. they had this staged defection after they were married. hana was 10 years younger than her husband. she was 21, he was 31. they come to the united states. they are already spies when they set foot on these shores. but they have a little work to do because they have just shown up, but now they are going to have to establish themselves as good citizens of this country. so, the first thing that they do, karl gets a job at radio free europe. perfect. his language skills are excellent. he is building actually a doussier. he is building his current past. for the cia's consumption, because his goal is to get that job at the cia. hana actually got a different kind of a job. hana ended up working in the diamond industry in new york city. she worked off and on for harry winston. some of you in here may even have a harry winston on your ring. i do not know. but that was her job that gave her incredible flexibility in traveling the world, going nd moving back and forth, say to switzerland which was one of her favorite places, carrying large sums of money. she was a diamond merchant. of course she was carrying large sums of money. karl also went to school here and he ended up getting a doctorate at columbia university. so, he's got his radio free europe. he has got his scholarship that he can fall back on. he went to wagner college in staten island working in the philosophy department. so they're building, building, building this file for the cia to review. he got his citizenship in 1971. hana got her citizenship in 1972. i love this first bullet. wouldn't mika just cringe to know this? as part of this package that he was building, he p osed a theory -- he posed as a virulantly anti-communist guy. that is why he left home. that is why he could not get work in his home country. when he was here, that was one of the things he would ran t about. and karl koecher was a ranter. he would get on a subject and you could not get him off it. he would not leave it alone. but when the subject was fake, it really becomes kind of interesting. so he was anti-communist. he was also anti-jewish, and he would go on and on. he was an outspoken, noisy, loud anti-semite. but he was jewish. this is part of the deal. this is part of what he is building. he was half jewish. the other half is catholic. guess what? he was also anti-catholic. so, everyone that ever met him heard him speak against communism, judaism, and catholicism. this was the persona that he was building as he was making his way. so he is establishing what we call his bona fides for american consumption. a fake dissident, fake anti-communist, and a fake religious zealot. how is that for a package? i have to say it worked. because, after several years, he was hired by the cia. there was another side to karl koecher. there was not so much for public consumption. but it was very much about his job as a czechoslovakian intelligence officer collecting intelligence, collecting information, putting out a dragnet to see how many contacts he could make in high places or at least places where the information he wanted was and one of the tacks that he and hana took was the swinging 1960's sexual underworld that was going on in washington, d.c. it is interesting. i was telling peter before. during this time that they were having all of these parties and these group sex clubs, and there is more to come, i was working at the cia. and the koechers say that cia employees at least 10 of them, , were very much involved in this kind of activity. and people from the pentagon. a u.s. senator and all these high-level government officials, which when i first heard this, i did not believe it. i thought, somebody has written a story to make a splash in some newspaper. but the more you read about it the more real it becomes. and a man named ron kessler has written a book, it's 1988. it's an old book. it is called "spy versus spy." and after the arrest, and after the koechers are back in czechoslovakia, he interviewed them. he interviewed them for five days. amazingly karl koecher was very , frank and substantiates all of this and adds more. so, i feel comfortable presenting this as the way it was back in the day. i have done some work for a man named david major. he had a company called ci-center that did a lot of training for the central intelligence agency. and that's where i first ran into this video. this is a story about the koechers and about washington, d.c., and a restaurant called the exchange. and david is going to tell you quite gleefully, may be to o gleefully, the story of the exchange restaurant. oops. memphis? it will work. i'm pushing the wrong button. if it does not work, i will tell the story, but david tell the so it so much better because he just cannot contain himself. there was a restaurant down on g street, near the white house. and there was a group that met there. they were called the capital couples. and it was quite a group. does not want to play. so i will tell them. don't tell david. it was called capital couples and he loved the fact that the restaurant was named the exchange restaurant because that is exactly what happened there. people would literally come in after work and they would, the young people today would say they would hook up. they would find their partner for the evening or for the next hour or for whatever. and off they would go. this was official washington d.c., in the heart of the city. a couple of blocks from the white house. and this is all going on. the koechers are right in the middle of this. it is an opportunity for them to have access to people who had information that they were interested in. there is such a thing as pillow talk. and talking comes in somewhere along the line. and they could elicit a little bit of information here and there. but think about it. not just information. they now had a little leverage with people that they are meeting with, the people that they are leaving with, the people they are spending the night with. leverage in terms of blackmail ability possibly, because people that were doing this for not -- were not doing it in the open. this was done quietly after hours. you did not take this kind of activity into work. and so the koechers just by definition had the goods on some of these people they were meeting with. and karl koecher was all about making this network that was going to work for him, give him the information that he and prague and moscow wanted. they loved washington, d.c. the sex capital of the world they called it. [laughter] i did not make this stuff up. capital couples, that was at the exchange restaurant, saturday nights. they were there. a place called virginia's in place which was further out in the suburbs of virginia. meetings in hotels and private homes. 10 members were bona fide cia. there were pentagon officials, reporters for major newspapers if there are any reporters in here from a major newspaper, i'm sorry but you are being wrapped up in this. and one u.s. senator. this could absolutely change your view of your government at work. hana served as a kind of bait, because hana was absolutely stunning. she was gorgeous. and to show up at one of these things with hana on your arm going in the door, hana probably came out of this with more information, more useful information that he did. also, hana was the enthusiastic one in these proceedings. i do recommend "spy vs. spy" if you are home on a saturday night and want some juicy reading. hana was quite the date. hana was working in new york city. he was working in washington d.c. they were commuting back-and-forth to see each other. there were commuting back and forth to pass documents. she would go overseas, pick up payment from their spy masters bring it back to washington, d.c. to drop it off. and, of course, this commute had very much to do with sex parties, not just here in d.c. also up in new york where you can imagine there are 10 more of these places. that is what it looks like on the outside. it is not there anymore. thank god. so to sum up. in 1971, karl becomes a u.s. citizen. the next year, hana joins him. now they are both citizens which is important because at the cia they want your spouse to be a citizen. he applies for staff work with the cia. he passes a polygraph because, of course, he had been trained in how you go about passing the polygraph. in 1973, they moved to the washington, d.c., area. his office was in roslyn. the office he worked in. and they lived in falls church. they could be your next door neighbors. they might've been, and you probably would not have known that. he worked for the cia from 1973 to 1975 in washington. and then later he is promoted. and they moved to new york city. now, one of the things -- peter, is this hard for you to understand? he was granted a top-secret clearance with sci access. that is a lofty security clearance. sci stands for special compartment information. it is one of the most sensitive compartmented projects there is and karl had access to that. with that, he had access to almost everything. and he began work as a staff translator. he was working for se division that a soviet and east european division. the translating would have been all the eastern european languages, but primarily i would say the emphasis would be on russian. he'd be listening to audio tapes, he'd be reading transcripts, he'd be looking at some of the photography of classified documents that had been gathered by agents working for the cia. he would be putting all of it into readable english. it is such a sensitive place for an asset to be parked. and it is just kind of amazing that he got that kind of access. in 1976, the cia started to get a sense that something was not quite right. they began to have a feeling that he might be leaking a little bit of information. and they started giving him less and less work. and this time, as a matter of fact, he had such restricted access that he did not even contact his czechoslovakian intelligence service for three years. he was being a mold. he went quiet. the cia is acting a little suspicious. so he stops doing what he's doing, except for the sex clubs. and he goes to ground. he is very, very quiet. then in 1982, the fbi started having some suspicions about karl koecher. and what caught their attention was they were not looking for him. they were watching known czechoslovakian officers in washington, d.c. that is their job. they were doing surveillance on czechoslovakian intelligence officers, they were listening to their phones. they were bugging some places they went. that is the fbi's job. and they kept bumping into karl koecher. so, they started watching koecher very closely. and they started seeing what were recognizably what we call brush passes, where you're on a street and you are just doing this and there something in your hand, like passing the baton. you do not see it when it is done right. right, peter? you don't see it at all. he was having brief encounters with these people, just very quick, short and on. and then they noticed that hana was also behaving a little oddly. hana was picking up some dead drops for karl koecher. hana was also doing some brush passes. then they start listening to the telephone. and pretty soon the fbi gets a , good sense that they've got a working operational case here, that they might be looking at two moles. karl was actually let go by the cia in 1977. you have to understand that to let someone like that, to let them go and to get rid of them is a highly strategic kind of decision, because you do not want to spook them. you do not want them to do what ed howard did and run for the the hills. you want to be able if you are the fbi to build a case, a case that you can take to court and prosecute. you want to arrest these people. you want to prosecute them. and so it was a very delicate dance at the end. karl, while he had difficulties, and he was looking for a job. hana was still doing her diamond thing. she was at 30 west 47th street. she actually set up a company. a diamond import company. hana's having a great time. karl does not have a job now. so hana had a very, very good reputation. in the diamond industry. karl was a little up and down. people that got to know him pretty much did not like him. hana became so american it was hard to separate her out from the rest of the crowd. when she lived in new york, when they lived in new york, they were living the life. they lived in a high-rise building. i think it was on 87th street. it was the same -- the saint regis at 50 east 89th street in manhattan. their neighbors were mel brooks, the actor yvonne lindahl, the tennis player, and bancroft. this was a ritzy building they lived in. true to form, living his cover he is on the condominium board of directors and is vehemently denying ivan llendl's request to buy an apartment because he said he was a communist and did not want a communist in his building. he made a huge deal out of this. llendl prevailed and moved into the building. hana she is watching 60 minutes, she is reading all the best books. the great tragedy of her life today, when she looks over her shoulder, is that she had to leave new york city and go back to prague where there isn't a trader joe's or any of that stuff. she is back to some pretty basic stuff. but when they were in new york city, it took their swinging lifestyle with them and they expanded it. of the new york city they had nudist camps, and they loved to go there. they went to the playboy club to have drinks. they were all over the place. they were meeting with other swingers they would come back down to washington dc because he had the key. he lost his cia access but he did not lose access to the people he had met in his actor hours activity. the fbi watched them for two years. from bugs and surveillance, they could tell you what they did on june 3, 1984. they can tell you that on june 6 they visited another swinging couple in westchester county. they contain that the next day they went to a place call rock lodge which was a nudist colony in new jersey. at other times they went to something called pinetree associates. that is in annapolis. they were very much on top of them. but here it starts getting a little tricky. it's really hard to make an espionage case. you can have circumstantial evidence all over the place but unless you can prove in a court that this piece of information was given to that person who didn't have authority, you cannot prevail. so prosecuting a case like this is really, really hard. their hand was pushed because they learned through telephone intercepts in june of 1984 that the couple were planning on leaving the u.s. and were planning on going back to europe. they told friends and neighbors, we are going back to austria. karl said, i have a job there and construction. this is not working out. i am having trouble finding work. i will work in austria. we will sell our condominium. they put it on the market. this is 1984. they bought it for $40,000. they sold it for $240,000. that would be their seed money to get back to europe and get reorganized. anyway, their friends never had a clue that they were working for the foreign government, that they were collecting intelligence. they never, ever knew. which is how it discussed to be. the fbi is in a bind, because they believe, and once they leave these shores, there is no hope of prosecuting them. the fbi had to do something. they had to arrest them. they were hoping that they would arrest them, they would interview them, they would confess, and it would make a case. so, in fact, they did arrest them. they arrested then in 1984 after 20 years here in america. they are getting ready to fly back home. but karl didn't exactly confess. and they didn't actually make the case. there were some mistakes made. the story i am telling comes from an fbi account of it. of course, it has the cia making the mistakes. i have a feeling that this is how it actually happened. the fbi is in the job of apprehending, taking to court, getting prosecutions for a crime. the cia is in a different business. the cia is in the business of following a lead to where it goes, never really apprehending, but trying to get back to the source, the truth, what really happened. the cia and the fbi are always a little bit at odds. one of them is talking more about bank robbers, the other is talking more about -- not arrests, but finding the truth. what happened with the koechers, there is an interview after they were arrested. promises were made to them verbal promises that, if they helped in the case, if they would just fess up and help out in this case, they would go free. they would be allowed to go free. because of that, once this got into court, it couldn't move forward. the prosecutor of this case for the united states government was rudy giuliani, back when he was the public attorney for new york. giuliani must have been tied in a knot, because he didn't really have anywhere to go with this. they tried to charge koecher with section 794. they held hana as a material witness. she was never charged. they were held without bond for two years. the case could not be made. they were never taken to trial. in the end, the way it worked out was, a trade was arranged. this was one of those spy exchanges they did in berlin on a bridge. hana and karl koecher were traded for sharansky, antoine sharansky, the soviet dissident. most of them were considered high value by the respective sides. it was an indication for the united states government that that high level of trade could be made for the koechers, and it gave the u.s. government a sense of what the couple had been able to do while they were here. we will talk about that in a moment. when they went back to prague, crowd lined the streets. there was a parade. they were given a new car, a villa outside of prague. they were to restart their lives in prague. the author who wrote the book, "spy versus spy," went to prague and interviewed karl. he is still an active czech intelligence officer. he admitted that it was unthinkable to have him speak to a journalist. but he was frank about what he had accomplished and not accomplished. i will play, next, a video, i hope, a video of koecher speaking out, and reply of speaking out, a board member at the museum, used to be had of counterintelligence for the kgb, speaking out. in all of that, you get a peek at what we call the wilderness of mirrors. a series of accusations and counter accusations about who was actually telling the truth and what was really going on here. in this video, the russians are accusing our lovely board member, the youngest kgb general ever, have any of you met oleg? you will like this. they accuse him of being a cia plant. a cia infiltration of the kgb. they said all the time that he was working for the kgb. that he was actually working for the cia. of course, he denies that. he talks about karl koecher and what a villain he was, what a hardhearted man he was. it is an interesting bit of film. we will see if we can get it to play. it is said, when they were walking across the bridge in berlin, hana was wearing a white mink coat and a white mink hat for this exchange. and, that she looked like a movie star. which, i am sure, was the goal. here we go. [video clip] from the moment he was in the cia, questions were raised about his loyalty. at the kgb, people doubted the truth of the reports. they began to wonder whether mr. koecher had changed sides. he was asked to return to prague, smuggled across the border and taken to a safe house, when he met the man sent to investigate him. >> as a senior official of the kgb in counterintelligence maybe i shouldn't have said that. because he definitely felt nervous. when you deal with counterintelligence, you expect unpleasant things. pictures that identified cia agents with whom koeche had workedr, with their names written on the back. >> that was simple. you show a picture of someone, and say, listen. i forgot -- what's his name, by the way? you would expect your partner to immediately mention a name. i was amazed, koecher would not know these people. i gave him another picture. how about this one? and he would not remember again. that made me feel weird. what is going on? how come he gave the pictures, he put their names on the back now he doesn't remember. who put the names of these individuals? maybe it was someone else, maybe it was the cia. maybe he is a cia plant. this came to my mind, and i felt uneasy with this man. >> i couldn't remember the particulars. >> of course, this is koecher. >> it would allow him to accuse me of being a traitor, for the cia. that's what he told me. >> i said, listen, this is your guy. you should continue. we cannot impose our well, but i am, as a director of foreign counterintelligence, seeing no reason why i should trust this man and expect results from him. thank you, that's it. >> his version of the story is the one that is accepted in the united states. in russia, there is a different version. >> he himself was a cia agent. he was a mole within the kgb. it was his task to neutralize koecher. >> i heard that story from russia. my former chief of soviet intelligence, who spent 18 months in jail for high treason after an attempt to overthrow gorbachev, he is the author in most minds of this version. >> while he was head of the foreign counterintelligence, he did not expose a single american agent. after we removed him, we exposed dozens and dozens of enemies. that fact alone says a lot. >> that is absolute rubbish, an attempt -- a typical soviet style cheap accusation, which i often take in stride, because it also reveals how on inventive they have become. >> he was sentenced in absentia to 14 years. it is now very clear, there is evidence. >> he will tell you, i was one of the foulest, meanest, most murderous lowlifes in the whole game. >> koech felte he had been set up to be killed. fortunately for him, the intelligence of both sides fearing retaliation, had become reluctant to kill people they believed to be traitors. >> when they kept telling me i was an american agent, i said, well, you know, in that case the cia would of course be looking for me. it seems [inaudible] eventually, they let me board a plane to vienna. the last thing i heard from them was that, you will stop working against us or we will [inaudible] >> koecher returned to the u.s. and withdrew from spying. he found a job teaching at a university. for four years, he believed his career as a spy was over. he was wrong. he would be called back into service as the world edged closer to global nuclear war. ask ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. >> as the 80's again, the cold war heated up. ronald reagan, america's president, initiated a series of moves that made soviet leadership nervous. until then, the american nuclear doctrine was based on the fear of mutually assured destruction. but now, the u.s. began to develop a commanding and potentially destabilizing lead in the arms race. >> when reagan got into the white house, they came upon the idea of limited nuclear war, which would begin with a first strike. and, as is important, which could be won by the united states. >> most people forget how dangerous the 1980's were. it was in the early 1980's that the soviet union became convinced that the united states was going to conduct a preemptive attack against the soviet union in an operation called ryan, they told intelligence officers to look for signals for nuclear attack. they then planned a preemptive bolt from the blue nuclear attack against the united states. >> it was part of operation ryan that koecher was called in from the cold. >> in 1981, when the head of czech intelligence came to moscow to meet crews to have then head of kgb counterintelligence, only then did we find out in his own words, how koecher had been smeared. >> the story of koecher's misfortune and suffering is a direct result of his actions. they sent an officer to new york, he apologized in the name of the soviets, and he talked about a nuclear alert being somehow prevented. >> the soviets were in a state of hairtrigger tension. they expected attack, and were ready to launch their own. a single misunderstanding could have triggered a catastrophe. karl koecher's homeland would be, crossfire. >> that was an indication of the degeneration of the soviet system. some of the saber rattling in washington at the time made soviet leadership nervous that they decided something is brewing, and they have to alert their intelligence services, the armed forces, to potential attack. so it was paranoia. >> soviet counterintelligence had field agents who were serious, tested, trustworthy, and reliable. >> we knew precisely whether or not the americans were preparing a surprise nuclear attack on the soviet union. and that is why peace was preserved. because of the work of those field agents. >> kar was inl active service, using his contacts to provide vital information that fed into a massive global intelligence gathering operation. at the same time, however, it seems that the f ei had somehow learned that he was the spy. from the moment he was reactivated, the fbi was on to him. mounting around-the-clock surveillance, they had his car bugged. >> he was home-bugged, his place of business was bugged. what happened to give him later the fbi? had he slipped up, or had he been betrayed? >> we will stop that right then. the next thing that comes is that they will never reveal a source of what gave him away. does that give you a sense of looking inside the intelligence community and trying to sort out the truth, the allegations, the half-truths, the blame? it is kind of a profound look at what the cia has always been up against. i would point out, at the end of the day, we stand by oleg. he is an upstanding guy. what was coming at him there had to be alarming. so what happened after they went back to czechoslovakia? what happened to hana? she was hired by the british embassy in prague. it was a wake-up call for their security apparatus the u.k. letter slide through. in 1994, she was fired as of the publicity about her spying background when that came out. in 1995, the next year, the local press reported that hana was complaining that publicizing information about her spy activity was damaging her business. [laughter] the prague court dismissed her charges, and they have not been publicly heard from since then. so that is a little bit of the story of hana and karl koecher their adventure in the u.s., there activities in the intelligence community, there embarrassment and expulsion to europe. but it doesn't give you a sense of the seriousness of what it was they were up to and the consequences of their activities. i will talk to you about one case they impacted directly, just one case. it can be talked about because it is in the public domain. there are other cases that i don't think he will your mentioned in the press. this is a story of a russian named alexander ogorodnik, a cia agent. his codename was trigo hen was initially spotted in colombia. as a junior diplomat at their embassy, at the russian embassy. it was the colombians who decided, he might be ripe for recruitment. he was having some shady dealings of his own. he had a mistress. he could be blackmailed. they always look for things like that. they approached him, they were having difficulty convincing him that he wanted to work for the west, and they called in the cia to see if we could do anything with him. it was a very well known cia officer named jack downing, who appears again and again in the history of our agency, when we need help. they took downing to columbia. he met with ogorodnik and they formed a friendship that lasted throughout his career. ogorodnik was being posted back to moscow, where it is so hard to run a case, as peter alluded to, it is considered a denied area. a denied area is a part of the world where you won't meet face-to-face with an agent. it is too dangerous. you can't come in contact with an agent. everything is done him personally in a denied area. that is why it signals on mailboxes, it is ed drops, encrypted electronics. you are never face-to-face with an agent, because if they catch him in moscow, they will kill him. so, when trigon was sent to moscow, his recognition signal to start the case and make it active in moscow, was jack downing's face. he knew jack downing, and there would be one brief encounter. he would see jack, and then the whole plan would kick in. jack downing was in moscow. he was just getting ready to leave. ogorodn isik reassigned to moscow, and jack has to go out on the street to meet him because he is the key. jack, who is the deputy chief of station, could not get free. there was no way to step out there without having surveillance all over him. my husband, tony mendez, chief of disguise back then, was in moscow back then that week. he was visiting. between tony and jack, they came up with this plan. there was another person from the united states, a unique looking man. he wore a cowboy hat. he wore a big belt and he had a huge mustache. he was just so distinct, you could spot him a block away. jack downing and tony mendez decided that they were going to turn jack downing into that guy. they borrowed the hat, they got the mustache out of a disguise thing, they dressed jack up like the visitor, and he went to security and out onto the street. nobody cared, because he was just a visitor from washington. he met with trigon, and the washington operation began. this operation, which is mentioned in a book for sale here on the back table, it is called "the spy widow," this was one of the most significant operations the cia ever ran. it turned out trigon's new assignment was in the ministry of foreign affairs in moscow. he sat at the connection where all the classified traffic, to all the embassies, the russian embassy, all over the world, came in and went out through his office. and so, the cia is sitting on this incredible goldmine of information and intelligence. this is back when they were doing the start talks, the strategic arms imitation talks. it has been said that the cia knew the russians's bottom line, and those negotiations, before anybody ought off the plane in helsinki. this was an amazing source of information we had. to run this operation, required the cia, and my office in particular, the office of technical service, to give case officers and agents in moscow, people like peter, and trigon, give them capabilities they had not had before. this was so important. we developed a camera, call the t-50, a camera so small -- there is one in this museum, one on display upstairs. it was so small you could put it in a key father, a lipstick, a pin. you could put it in anything. this was a camera that had a tiny cassette. this is not digital, it was film. the little cassette had the tiniest piece of film in it you ever saw. it was so small, to get film in the cartridge, you had to go to extraordinary efforts. we went to aerial reconnaissance film that the satellites used, which was very thin film, it is a weight thing, you can't lift that much weight into space. aerial reconnaissance film is so thin, in the dark room, when you put it on the reels, you couldn't even feel it. these tiny strips of film, god for bid if you ever drop one in the dark rum, you would never find it. -- in the darkroom. i am telling you. we invented a series of cameras, and a series of film, and a way to develop a tiny strip of film, and a way to print. we collected, with those cameras, eventually, more significant intelligence than any satellite system, any other technical capability. i was the gal in the dark rum putting the film in, taking it out, and developing it, and printing it. the agents who were using it were risking their lives every time they took a shot. that was one set of technical capabilities that we gave to moscow station. some others were considered proprietary. it would not be used or any other station in the world, only moscow could use some of our technical wherewithal, because we did not want it exposed anywhere else. we wanted the best saved for moscow, for an operation like trigon. trigon was stellar. moscow rules were invented for a case like trigon, a case where you just couldn't do enough to protect this guy. there was a female case i was are sent to moscow, whose only job was to handle this case. for her whole assignment, that is all she did. her name was marty peterson, and she wrote "the widow spy." the whole time she was in moscow, her only job was never to associate with another cia person outside the embassy never hang out with cia, never acknowledge cia. she went with secretaries to the marine house on friday night. she had a completely different profile in a professional cia officer would have. she never met trigon in the time she spent there. she put down dead drops through him, and picked up dead drops from him. that is all she did. but one night, she did a two and a half hour surveillance detective run out of the embassy. she wasn't followed much, because she was like a secretary. they didn't care. besides, they didn't use women, and they thought we didn't use women, so we used a lot of women. she did her 2.5 hour sdr, she was on the subway, she walked, it was dark at night, she was making sure she didn't have surveillance. because she would go out on this bridge, over the moscow river, and she had in her purse a thing that looked like a lump of coal, but it wasn't. it was from our office. you could open it up and inside, there were some rubles, some medicine, some notes, some of those preloaded cameras for him to take around and take photographs for us. she walked out on the bridge and think about this. if you are worried about being followed, this is a good place to see if you are being followed. you can see 360 degrees around you. there was no one there. she took the stone out of her purse, she put it in a niche in the bridge where he would look for it. she turned to walk away, and all of a sudden, she has 15 soviets all over her. she was arrested. they came popping up out of nowhere. of course, they can popping up out of somewhere, and that somewhere was, they had cut an opening in the bridge, and they had hung a ladder underneath. it was like a bunch of spiders. they were waiting, but they did not know who they were waiting for. they knew someone would, and put something in that bridge that night. they were going to arrest whoever it was. well, it was marty. and they arrested marty peterson. that was the end of her career. it was all over in the press the next day, the international herald tribune had her picture being interrogated. pictures of all the stuff she was going to leave. and then, she was persona non grata, she was sent home. but what happened to trigon? he had been arrested, because karl koe had beenc translating some of the documents that he had beenher providing to the cia. not the documents in moscow, the documents in bogota. what they did, was a triangulation. koecher says, well, this man is obviously, he is married. he served in bogota, he is been reassigned to moscow. by process of elimination, they figured out that it was trigon. they arrested trigon and asked him to write his confession. when trigon met with jack downing in bogota and agreed to work for the cia, he said act then, i will work for you, but you, in turn, have to give me the wherewithal to take my own life. because, if i am arrested, i don't want to go through what they will put me through. if i -- i want to know that i have the ability to take my life if i feel i need to. the cia said no. there is something called an alto. it lived in my office when i was a secretary in the technical services division. it was in a box that had two keys. my boss had one of the keys, and our chief of operation had the other. you could just pick one up, it was very controlled. the cia said, no, you can't have that. it is an incredibly unique circumstance that we would give one of those things out. and trigon said, fine, i will not work for you. eventually, he won. we gave him one of those pills. we did not just hand him a pill. we took his favorite pen, and we took his pen, we machined out the end of the barrel so it looked fine from the outside. it was actually kind of fragile. it was very thin. inside of that, was the pill. when they asked trigon to write his confession, he said, i want my pen. at that point, they had him stripped to his underwear. he was wearing his shorts and nothing else, because they didn't know and didn't trust, they had no idea what was going on, but they were so excited to get this confession. they gave him his pen, and he simply bit down on the end of it. the russians in the report, say he was dead before he hit the floor. that is the cost of someone like koecher, and that is the end of this prepared talk. marty peterson was in jail for three days, and she left the country. the soviets waited a year before they announced the death of trigon in 1978. it all went back to the koechers. that is one case of what happened based on their activities. so, i think what we will do is take questions if anyone has any questions. i bet they do. my favorite, peter, is going to field them. >> thank you for a wonderful presentation. [applause] if i could add a footnote to this wonderful retelling of the case, when koecher was in the unit, i was in the division. one of my functions is working with the fbi on double agent cases. also, i was part of the training crew. i had a location to go down and train these folks who were doing this transcribing, in how to read those friendly than just the language. in other words, what is the meta meaning of what you're reading? are people talking in code? can you detect tension? he was part of the group i trained. i will tell you, he did not have the word "spy" written across his four head. he was just part of the group there. interestingly, i was in on the recruitment of koecher from headquarters. it was exciting, because it was so rare for us to have success in that kind of case. thank you so much for recapturing that. questions, and if you would be kind enough to wait for the microphone, so everyone could hear it. right here, let's take first one. >> yes, i remember back in -- i remember seeing the washington post story on marty's neighborhood. i worked with a woman who the washington post identified as an fbi officer, an agent. but anyway, i can't remember the reasons that the agency let koecher go in 1975, 1976. i seem to remember we fired him for swinging back then. i can or member of that was a reason given, or was that the reason given? >> i'm not sure the agency knew that was going on when it was going on, the swinging part. i don't think that anybody officially connected to the united states government was taking that information in, that they were engaged in that kind of thing. and i don't think the cia was particularly looking for that kind of thing. is that your experience? >> i think you are correct. i, frankly, don't recall that he was let go for cause. i think there was concern, and he was let go. that, i would have to go back and read into the case again. obviously, he was out there, even though the bureau was still trying to be alert to what he was up to. as you know, they stayed on here. >> [inaudible] >> yes. >> i can't remember. did he leave of his own accord? x i don't member either. other questions, here is one right over here. >> the koechers were hired in the early 1960's by czech intelligence. while they were in the u.s., the soviet union invaded prague. i wonder if the koechers'attitude was more loyalty in the old czech republic, or loyalty to the soviet union. >> that is a wonderful question. i have no information on that. i would think they were old-school, they were raised in that culture, they were raised in that society. but i cannot speak to that. i don't know. >> as she mentioned, they will -- underwent training before they even -- this is a classic case of a mole. they were trained, sent here to insert themselves into society and eventually, of course, he am applied for employment. he may have applied elsewhere. the idea was to get a job in what we now call the intelligence community. >> [inaudible] >> yes. and of course, the soviet union, very much, was the senior among equals over the eastern european intelligence services. hence, that is why oleg was brought in. my recollection is, you looked over the case more recently than i have. wasn't trigon first surfaced with oleg in that meeting? i think so. the reason why karl, shown these pictures, didn't know these people, is that he was looking at recordings of these people, the transcript from operations or telephone transcript. it was an interesting -- we are past each other. >> have you seen that video before? i thought that was a fascinating -- >> no, not before. >> if oleg walked into my office and said, i would like to have a chat with you, he is quite the character in that role. >> right back here. yes. >> was hana as vehemently anti-semitic as her husband? >> i don't think even karl was anti-semitic. that was what he presented. you see them in that tape, a bit older and more moderated, but the one you read about was not a moderate man at all. in all the interviews, and all the recorded interviews with hana, she was very much in love with her husband. if he was anti-communist, she was anti-communist. of course, he wasn't. but whatever she was -- whatever he was, she was right there, mimicking, going along with it. he said he is an atheist. >> his defection in austria, did he defects to the austrians or the americans? >> i think he moved to vienna, he lived in vienna, and he got on a plane in vienna and said, i stopped in vienna, but i am fleeing from czechoslovakia, looking for a new home. >> it was not an outright romantic defection. they sought asylum in the u.s. they indicated they had cause to flee, and so it was not a great defection with headlines and so forth. let's take one more over here. then we will come right back. >> this is a little different perspective, when reagan became president, the soviets had quite a bit of paranoia about attack. i believe it was in operation in 1983 or 1984, it may have been nato forces, in which the soviets thought this was the beginning of a preemptive attack. somebody, i don't know if it was intelligence are the cia, who said, we need to stand down, or something like that. do you recall that at all? >> i do not. >> not precisely, no. it was a very tense time, with fears on both sides. you did have that. we had the cuban missile crisis much earlier, and a similar crisis in the early 1980's. yes. one over here. >> do we know if the two of them are still alive, and where they are? and have they done interviews recently that bring these things to light? >> i can't find anything. i can't find interviews are any indication that they are not alive. >> she was working for the english embassy in prague, right? >> we can track them up to 1995. she was working for the british embassy in prague., did not get traction back in czechoslovakia. they were little-known. there was not a lot of press. >> the british did not realize who was working for them? >> how about right here, amanda? >> there is an aspect that is tangential, but of great interest. the fall of novotny led to the prague spring. the debate as to how much of a threat the product spring posed to brezhnev, did the czech intelligence continue its cooperation during the prague spring, or was there any sign that the government was getting away from cooperating with soviet intelligence as we got into the prague summer? >> that is a fascinating question. i'd like to know the answer, but i do not have the answer. >> i think if yet lived, you would have seen that. but that, too, is a very tense time. if you have political change like that, there is often the old guard, that you are contending with, as you had in moscow as well, he was sentenced in absentia, charged with giving up secrets. oleg was not even a effector. he came here on an at&t contract, and it didn't take off. he chose to stay on. it is a good thing. >> it is hard to track some of these things back, historically, when you can see from that bit of tape how history can be manipulated depending on who you are asking the question of. it gets harder and harder to find, where is the truth? >> yes? other questions? >> right here. >> thank you. >> this is almost a dumb question. i teach aspects of espionage at the university of delaware senior center every fall. this will be my sixth year. what i lecture on for those 10 weeks, they end up asking me questions about what they see on television. most of the time, i can make fun of it. that's easy. but now there is a program called "the americans, and it has been written up a bit in the post. i watched it the other night and about one third of it -- you know the program i am talking about? x i do. i get asked about it as well. >> about one third of it is good operationally. i thought this was coming out of nowhere. but, what would your opinion be? were they some sort of symbol or something of what the american -- americans ended up doing? >> are you familiar of -- with the americans? you're about to eat challenged by another program, about an illegal couple living in america. in the case of "the americans," do you -- >> i would mention that there will be a piece on abc sunday morning, this coming sunday. they interviewed tony, i know they have interviewed sandy grimes. i think, maybe, the cia gentleman behind "the americans, co -- wiseman? i think he was interviewed about this phenomenon of these shows that are based on former cia employees. that is the point of the show on sunday. it is a martha radin each, george stephanopoulos. they will address that. the thing that strikes me is the enduring popularity of the subject. i find it amazing. >> what you have, and many of you will remember in 2010 the arrested 10 russians living here as what we consider illegals. if you recall, they traded them back, they being us, the u.s. -- they traded before people -- it was a fascinating exchange reminds you of the department of agriculture catch and release program for fish. we caught them and release them. what you saw recently is the arrest of an individual in new york, in the banking industry, living as an illegal. that is, he was undeclared, he was not declared as a foreign agent, he happened to be russian. his handlers happen to be in the russian embassy. the case of "the americans," the big distinction i see is, there were illegals in this country, people sent -- sometimes, the term sleeper agent is used. typically, they are kept for handling a sensitive operation or in wartime, they are behind the lines. we have never seen illegals engaged in the range of activity that you have in "the americans," or that you will see in this forthcoming series called "allegiance." it is hollywood. in other words, it has to be a dramatic program. often, the trade is quite good. you'll see that to a degree in "allegiance" as well. >> i look forward to it. >> there are no dumb questions. anything else? go ahead. right here. >> you mention that this was a cia employee who invented intricate inventions. any of the cia technical inventions made it into the industry, similar to how nasa's inventions make it into the industry? >> the question was, working in the office technical services, where we develop a lot of unique proprietary kinds of materials and techniques, did any of it ever make into commercial technology? the answer is, yes. i will give you one example. batteries. we had people who spent their entire lives on batteries. that is all they did. batteries. one of them became so famous that one of the schools, one of them is named after him. batteries paid off in the end. our particular problem, is, we needed smaller and smaller and smaller, and more and more power. if you're going to put a bug in the conference table of a bureau in moscow, and put it under the conference table and plant it or put it in the woodwork like they did in the state department, do you think you will ever get into change the batteries in that thing? you are not. it will only last as long as it lasts. and so, you need these little, small, teeny tiny, and i mean very small, very strong -- those came out into hearing aids. that technology came into that or he watches. though small batteries are based on research and development done at the cia. there are a lot of small things like that the translated. thank you for the question. >> thank you so much for this wonderful presentation. [applause] and thank you all so much for coming and joining us. have a good rest of your day. we will see you back for program two. >> you are watching "american history tv," 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter @cspanhistory. for information on the schedule of upcoming programs and to keep up with the latest history news. >> monday night, we spoke with two industry executives at the consumer electronics show in las vegas. the senior vice president at ericsson and the senior cisco vice president talk about their companies and the technology on which the internet, mobile phones, and the clout operate. >> we talk about the network society. it's a society where everything they can benefit from having a connection would actually have one. we put a vision forward in 2009 in barcelona in the trade show that is going on there over 50 billion connected devices in 2020, which has caught on very well in the world. the mobile industry is not limited to the smartphones and the devices that we carry around personally. it also is a great technology to connect so many other things and be able to build a better society based on those kinds of things. >> the internet started with this thing that people need to get through some wear and somehow by dial-up connection etc. we have brought it to be with every device you have around. the next stage of the internet is about taking it from all these mobile devices and connecting not just people that things with people, information with people, and processes with people and things so we can actually create what we call the internet of everything. i think we are at the early stages of building the internet of everything. >> all this month on american history tv, we will be focusing on the life and legacy of george washington. to mark the anniversary of his birth on february 22, 1732. next, the national portrait galley senior curator talks that amateur depictions of george washington created by his contemporaries. instead of focusing on portraits -- portrait strong from life i wish explores the less accurate images of washington that circulated around the country in the late 18th entry. george washington's mount vernon hosted this 50 minute event. >> good afternoon. my name is elizabeth stock known to many people here as betty. together with my husband stanley scott, i am in enthusiast for george washington of many varieties, including portraiture. we have collected all of our adult lives as were several members of our families, before us, and they acquired a number of survey drawings, medallions coins, rare books, and metals, as well as documents on the subject of george washington and his time.

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