A Private Tour Of The CIA's Incredible Museum

David Wise, a veteran journalist and author of numerous books on espionage, offers an interesting piece on the CIA's spy museum for Smithsonian magazine.

A chill wind whipped off the Warnow as a retired railroad worker shuffled through the streets of the port city of Rostock one winter night in 1956. He wore the drab clothes typical of East German residents. But when a second man appeared from the shadows, the elderly German revealed that he was wearing a pair of distinctive gold cuff links embossed with the helmet of the Greek goddess Athena and a small sword.

The second man wore an identical pair. Wordlessly, he handed the German a package of documents and retreated back into the shadows. The German caught a train for East Berlin, where he handed the package and the cuff links to a CIA courier. The courier smuggled them to the agency’s base in West Berlin—to George Kisevalter, who was on his way to becoming a legendary CIA case officer.

The man who retreated back into the shadows was Lt. Col. Pyotr Semyonovich Popov, an officer of the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency. Three years earlier, Popov had dropped a note into an American diplomat’s car in Vienna saying, “I am a Soviet officer. I wish to meet with an American officer with the object of offering certain services.” He was the CIA’s first Soviet mole, and Kisevalter was his handler. Popov became one of the CIA’s most important sources through the 1950s, turning over a trove of Soviet military secrets that included biographical details on 258 of his fellow GRU officers.

It was Kisevalter who had decided on the cuff links as a recognition signal. He gave them to Popov before Moscow recalled the GRU officer in 1955, along with instructions: If Popov ever made it out of the USSR again and renewed contact with the CIA, whoever the agency sent to meet him would wear a matching set to establish his bona fides.

Popov renewed contact after he was assigned to Schwerin, East Germany, and the cuff links worked as intended. He fed Kisevalter information through the retired railroad worker for another two years. But after Popov was recalled to Moscow in 1958, he was arrested by the KGB. There are various theories on why he fell under suspicion. However, in a series of interviews two decades ago, Kisevalter told me it was the result of a botched signal: He said George Payne Winters Jr., a State Department officer working for the CIA in Moscow, “got the instruction backward” and mistakenly mailed a letter addressed to Popov at his home. The KGB spotted him in the act and fished the letter out of the mailbox. Popov was doomed.

The Soviets expelled Winters from Moscow in 1960, the same year they executed Popov—by firing squad, Kisevalter believed. He told biographer Clarence Ashley he doubted a rumor that Popov had been thrown alive into a furnace as a lesson to other GRU officers, who were required to watch.

Today, the cuff links rest in one of the most compelling and least visited museums in the United States. The museum has an extraordinary collection of spy gadgets, weapons and espionage memorabilia from before World War II to the present—more than 28,000 items, of which 18,000 have been cataloged—and hundreds are on display.

But the museum is run by the CIA and housed at its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, eight miles outside Washington, D.C. The agency’s entire campus is off-limits to the public, and the museum is open only to CIA employees, their families and visitors on agency business.

By special arrangement, Smithsonian magazine was allowed to tour the museum, take notes and photograph select exhibits. Our guide through the looking glass was Toni Hiley, the museum’s director. “Every day, CIA officers help to shape the course of world events,” Hiley said. “The CIA has a rich history, and our museum is where we touch that history.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/private-tour-cias-incredible-museum-180952738/?no-ist

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine interview with David Wise via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2011/08/q-with-david-wise-author-of-tiger-trap.html

Tinker, Tailor, Chinese Spy: China's Spies Are Catching Up

David Wise, the author of Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War With China, writes about the threat from Chinese espionage in the New York Times.

During the cold war, dozens of counterintelligence agents in the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. pursued Soviet and then Russian spies. The K.G.B. was seen as the enemy; China took a back seat. Only a handful of F.B.I. agents specialized in Chinese spy cases, and their work was not regarded as career-enhancing. Washington’s ongoing failure to make Chinese espionage a priority has allowed China to score a number of successes in its espionage efforts against the United States.

China’s foreign intelligence service and its military intelligence agency actively spy on the American defense industry, our nuclear weapons labs, Silicon Valley, our intelligence agencies and other sensitive targets.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/opinion/sunday/chinas-spies-are-catching-up.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=David%20Wise&st=cse

I interviewed David Wise about Chinese espionage and his book Tiger Trap for Counterterrorism magazine.

You can read the interview via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2011/08/q-with-david-wise-author-of-tiger-trap.html

Brush Up On Your Mandarin, Mr. Bond

Christopher Carothers at the Wall Street Journal takes a look at David Wise's book on Chinese espionage, Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War With America.

The book's central case study is FBI informant Katrina Leung, a double agent who was in bed with the MSS (figuratively) and with two FBI agents (literally). Mrs. Leung confessed to stealing classified documents out of an FBI agent's briefcase on numerous occasions, but which documents and how many remains a mystery. The extent of the damage done is likewise unknown, not least because her arrest cast doubt on her FBI reports, some of which were passed on to the White House.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904194604576580150848391410.html

David Wise is one of America's foremost experts on espionage and intelligence.

I recently interviewed David Wise about Chinese espionage and his book for Counterterrorism magazine.

You can read the interview via the below links:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/DavidWiseQAndAOnTigerTrapChineseEspionage.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/DavidWiseQAndAOnTigerTrapChineseEspionage2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/DavidWiseQAndAOnTigerTrapChineseEspionage3.jpg

Communist Chinese General Spills Secrets On YouTube

David Wise, the author of Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War With China, wrote in the Los Angeles Times about the Chinese general who spilled communist state secrets when his briefing was posted on YouTube.com.

Maj. Gen. Jin Yinan of the People's Liberation Army, in what he apparently thought was an internal briefing, revealed half a dozen cases of Chinese officials who had spied for Britain, the United States and other countries. Somehow, the video of his sensational disclosures leaked out. Clips of his hours-long talk appeared on at least two Chinese websites, Youku.com and Tudou.com, but were quickly removed by government censors.

It was too late. The extraordinary video is on YouTube and can be viewed the world over, although not in China, where YouTube is blocked.

You can read the rest of David Wise' piece via the below link:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wise-chinaspy-20110906,0,4630211.story

I recently interviewed David Wise for Counterterrorism magazine. You can read the interview via the below links:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/DavidWiseQAndAOnTigerTrapChineseEspionage.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/DavidWiseQAndAOnTigerTrapChineseEspionage2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/DavidWiseQAndAOnTigerTrapChineseEspionage3.jpg

My Q & A With David Wise, Author of Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War With China

My Q&A with David Wise, the country's leading expert on intelligence and espionage, and the author of Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War With China, was published in Counterterrorism magazine.

You can read the interview below:

Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War With China

Joseph C. Goulden, the author of several fine nonfiction books, including The Death Merchant, wrote an interesting review of David Wise's Tiger Trap: America's Spy War With China in the Washington Times.

David Wise, who has been writing about intelligence since the early 1960s and is, in my view, the best in the business, now turns his considerable talent to a little-noted facet of the espionage wars: the ongoing campaign by the People's Republic of China to steal U.S. nuclear-weaponry secrets. For years, of course, Soviet spying spawned movies, best-selling books and incessant publicity elsewhere. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, China has become “America’s chief rival” in the intelligence wars and has scored many signal and unheralded successes.

You can read the rest of the review of this important book via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/7/our-chief-rival-in-intelligence-wars/

You can also read a magazine piece I wrote on Communist Chinese espionage for Counterterrorism magazine via the below links:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/RedFlowerChineseEspionage.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/RedFlowerChineseEspionage2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/RedFlowerChineseEspionage3.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/RedFlowerChineseEspionage4.jpg