Circle of Treason by Sandra V. Grimes Page A

to the West. If any portion of Polyakov’s reporting on these cases differed from Popov’s, it was proof that Polyakov was lying. If Polyakov’s information corroborated Popov’s, the Black Hats’ lecture was always the same: “The KGB has to provide us with some good information to guarantee that we will continue to handle the operation.” With such circular reasoning, no source could establish his bona fides. Polyakov’s lighthearted impatience on the topic of Illegals was seen as a further sign of KGB control of the contact, intended only to mask the “truth.”
    Fortunately for Polyakov, there were some brave souls who did not accept the Monster Plot theory. The SE Division component that provided day-to-day support to the Polyakov operation was headed at the time by Walter Lomac. Lomac was a gentle bear of a man with an infectious laugh who took a straightforward approach to the case. To him, there were two simple questions that needed to be asked, and the answers to these questions would determine whether Polyakov was what he claimed—a GRU staff officer who was committing continuous treason against the USSR. First, was Polyakov providing the U.S. government with secrets he should have access to as a colonel in the GRU, as the Soviet military attaché in the Soviet embassy in Rangoon, and as head of the GRU contingent in Burma? Second, did the members of the U.S. intelligence community to whom this information was disseminated judge it to be accurate and valuable? If the answers to these two questions were yes and remained yes after each debriefing, Polyakov’s bona fides were established to Lomac’s satisfaction and the Black Hats were wrong.
    Under Lomac’s oversight, the branch’s duties were the same as those of any DO headquarters component responsible for managing an agent from a hostile intelligence service. Lomac insisted that the focus remain on those duties.
    The branch had a small number of employees at the time, and a typical day would find officers and secretaries in their cramped quarters writing and typing cables, dispatches, and memoranda; transcribing and translating Russian language material; and collating and filing the mounds of paper generated by the operation. The branch had infrequent contact with Joe Evans, Peter Kapusta, and other Black Hats in SE CI’s Investigations Branch. They viewed the GRU component as enemy territory, an attitude Lomac did not discourage, and appeared only briefly to deliver follow-up questions about the GRU Illegals of the 1950s, with instructions to send them to the field in time for the next meeting.
    Angleton himself did not personally visit the branch, but during Polyakov’s tour in Burma all correspondence to the field had to be coordinated with him. If he objected to something, the cable was changed or not sent. Simply stated, Angleton had veto rights in the management of the case and used them as he saw fit. This was contrary to accepted DO policy and practice because such authority belonged to the operating division. Yet this was the daily routine in the Polyakov case until his departure from Rangoon.
    Lomac’s stance was not without personal risk. Frequently summoned to the division’s front office, berated for his position on the case, and ordered to see the light, he never wavered in his two-question, two-answer approach to the operation and by extension to Polyakov himself. He protected his branch, but his belief in Polyakov eventually cost him his career.
    In early 1968 William Colby, then-chief of the Far East Division, was scheduled to take over the Soviet Division from David Murphy. Colby had apparently heard rumors as to discord within the division on the Polyakov case, and asked to be briefed by Lomac. Lomac was instructed to present the case to Colby along management’s line that Polyakov was a suspected provocation agent. Lomac flatly refused, claiming that his views