Monthly Archives: December 2015

The Consultation

It was freezing cold outside on Moscow’s inner ring road. The American diplomat, Richard Harris, crunched along on the sidewalk, watching steam rising from the chimneys of nondescript five story apartments, office buildings, and stores lining the streets. The few Muscovites on the streets were wearing heavy coats and fur hats, walking with purpose with their heads down. The sky was November gray. The blackbirds had flown away already, and frost had formed into frozen crystal patterns on the sidewalks where puddles had been. He came to the Embassy.

Two Russian security guards stood at the entrance, blocking the arched driveway leading into the courtyard, walking back and forth to keep warm.  They were wearing the heavy medium blue felt overcoats of the KGB Border Guards, complete with leather Sam Brown belts, and blue-gray felt hats with the ear flaps going up along the sides, tied together at the top. Their official job was to protect the Embassy. The real job was to monitor comings and goings, and report on ordinary Russians entering for visas and other purposes. Of course, it was now late 1991, and Russia had thrown off the communist regime, so who knew. The guards were somewhat relaxed and spoke to each other during lulls.

Harris passed by, flashing his diplomatic passport. The guards recognized him as the new American Consul in Vladivostok. Probably back in Moscow for consultations. One of the guards went to his booth and made a call.

Inside the Embassy, in the secure conference room, Eric Gordon, the Chief of Station sat behind a thin wooden desk, actually just a table without drawers. He was reading a manila folder with a red diagonal stripe across the front and the word “classified” in black across the top. Behind him on the wall was a map of Moscow.

The Chief was thin, in his early 40s, and had prematurely gray hair cut rather short. He wore wire rimmed metal glasses and had gray blue eyes. His overall appearance was intellectual, but also athletic, perhaps a marathon runner. He had a Texas accent, and his tone of voice was soft and yet serious. He closed the folder as Harris entered the room, stood up, excused the escort, and closed the pneumatic door behind them and locked it.

The outer office which Harris and his Station escort had passed through was vacant, the staff temporarily out, probably to protect identities. The Station was the CIA headquarters within the Embassy.

Harris and Gordon shook hands and Harris took a seat, only then noticing a younger man in civilian clothes, a bit hefty like a linebacker, perhaps a former Marine officer, seated in a wooden chair in the corner.

Harris had met Eric Gordon only a couple of times. But, they had close mutual friends in Washington, and that gave Harris a benefit which other State Department officers didn’t always have with the Agency. Gordon relaxed behind his desk, pushing his chair back as far as he could, a couple of feet, taking off his suit coat, and draping it over the back of his chair.

“Richard, you know my Deputy, Steve McNair?” Gordon said, pointing to the man in the corner.

“Nice to meet you Steve,” Harris said. Steve stood up to shake hands, and sat back down without a word.

The phone rang on Gordon’s desk. He picked it up and said, “Yes,” then listened. He put up his index finger to indicate to Harris that his would just take a minute. He made a few simple, one word responses into the receiver, mainly “yes” and “no,” and said to the caller that he would make an appointment with the Ambassador and get back. With that, he hung up, took a yellow sheet of paper and wrote a note on the paper on top of the glass sheet covering his desk. He passed the note to his deputy, who read it, got up, and left the room.  Gordon picked up the phone again, dialed four digits and placed the receiver to his ear. He was speaking to the Ambassador’s secretary in a very polite manner, requesting an appointment sometime that day, just a couple of minutes, a “drop by” on an important matter. He listened and Harris could hear tinny undistinguishable words from the other party. When Gordon hung up, he looked at his watch.

“I’m sorry Richard, I’m afraid I have to see the Ambassador at 10:00, but that gives us fifteen minutes, if that is okay?”

At that point, the door opened with a “whoosh” and the deputy rejoined them, closing the door behind him and taking his seat quietly.

“We have a ten o’clock with the Amb,” Gordon said to Steve, who nodded.

“Richard, we appreciate your coming in to give us a brief on your work in Vladivostok,” Gordon said. “I read your latest reporting cable. Sounds a bit cold out there.”

They both laughed.

The Chief continued, “How would you describe your relationship with the Governor? What do you think of him?

“As you know,” Harris said, “he’ s a reformer who was appointed by Yeltsin. Not a Russian Far Easterner, but a Moscow academic, and a good guy who wants democracy and closer ties to the West. He is Yeltsin’s man, but word is that he is on the way out. He’s encountered heavy resistance from the local parliament, which is mainly communist, and the factory directors. Apparently, Yeltsin has agreed to remove him in favor of a plant manager.”

Gordon nodded as if he had also heard this.

“As you saw from my report,” Harris went on, “there are seven large defense plants which employ about one-third of the city’s workers and take orders not from the governor, but from the Ministry of Defense in Moscow. These directors have the real power in Vladivostok, along with the Russian Pacific Fleet, headquartered there. The local parliament gives the hard liners a constitutional tool to block decrees put forth by Yeltsin. An example of how little power the current Governor has, is our temporary Consulate building. We had supposedly been given a floor in a former Communist Party office building.

“Right.”

“The building director,” Harris continued, “is a real terror who objected to his giving us a floor. She took her case to the communist dominated legislature. She is reportedly a KGB Colonel, and is using those ties as well. Anyway, we had to appeal to the Governor, and this got him into a big local fight. We had to ultimately go the Foreign Ministry in Moscow. We got the building, but the Governor asked us not to put him in this position again.”

“What about the new Governor, Andrei Borisov? Is he on board with reform?”

“He is hard to read. Has a bullying style of the old communists, but supposedly wants foreign business. My guess is that he will support Yeltsin on allowing reform in general, and he will have power, but he will tread carefully to avoid antagonizing the local hard liners. We have to remember that the Russian Far East is still a bit conservative and has been sitting on the fence watching how things go in Moscow. When Yeltsin is strong, so are democrats in Vladivostok. When Yeltsin is buckling before the Duma in Moscow, the democrats in Vladivostok keep their heads down.

Gordon nodded.

Harris continued. “Borisov, when he takes over, will compromise and remain pragmatic, allowing some foreign ties but also showing his independence from Yeltsin and the Western influence. He has asked to pay a call on me, and that seems good. But, I don’t think he understands democracy or has democratic instincts like the current governor. He is an enterprise director type, a man of action, and not a politician or democrat. He will tend to rely on the old apparat. But, he says he likes the U.S. If he wanted, he might have the power to push through democratic reforms.”

“Which way is the wind blowing there, do you think, democratic or hard line?” Gordon asked.

“The Russians like to support their President, no matter who, even if they have concerns over the policy. So, that is a big push for reform in the long run. The older people and former Party types are opposed to reforms, but, interestingly, Vladivostok, unlike Khabarovsk and some other cities in the region, seems to have an outward orientation, being a port city. Its citizens are used to contact with the outside world, Australia, Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, and even San Diego, through their work in the Far Eastern Shipping Company, Navy, and fishing fleet. They feel particularly close to the U.S. Pacific Coast and Alaska. I don’t think they’re going back to the old Marxist days. No one seems to want that, and they fear the unspoken words, “civil war.” But, its hard to shake off old thinking. It takes time.”

Harris glanced over at Steve, who was looking up at the ceiling. Harris asked Gordon, “What is your read on the situation?”

Gordon spoke deliberately after thinking a few seconds: “I fear that policy makers in Washington may overestimate the amount of change that has taken place under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The old Soviet cadres are still strong and not entirely out of the picture. We can’t afford to let our guard down. Things in the security services are pretty much the same, and they still control a lot more than people realize. I think the old corrupt Marxist system has been discredited enough that we don’t have to worry about it coming back. That doesn’t mean that we could not end up with a dictatorship, however, and it may not be pro-West.”

Gordon looked at his watch and apologized again, saying they would have to get together again for a longer discussion after Harris’s next trip.

As Harris started to leave, Steve, the deputy, had a word of departure for him, “Enjoy your trip to Vladivostok,” he said, “I hear you have a lot of good KGB friends out there.” There was nothing to indicate what he meant by it, or that he was joking. It was just a flat statement. Harris assumed they sympathized with his situation as Consul General in the hinterland, knowing he had to work closely with people in the local government who were probably KGB. He was nagged by the tone, however.

As the door opened, Harris said to Gordon, “that reminds me, it would be useful for me to have a briefing on ‘who’s-who’ out there?” Gordon changed the subject, but offered to walk with Harris to the elevator.

As Harris left the Embassy into the cold sunlit courtyard, passing through the arches to the street outside, he saw the two beefy Russian guards blocking the entrance to an older Russian couple, examining their passports. The elderly grandmother was angry, scolding the guard, saying, “Don’t you know, the Cold War is over!”  The guard’s look said that things had not changed.

 

 

Russia, 1979-81, “The Bad Old Days”

I was stationed in the Moscow Embassy, but had come to Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, to do some sightseeing over Thanksgiving, arriving aboard the maroon-colored overnight “Red Arrow” train, checking in at the Astoria Hotel, a former Czarist palace which had served as German army headquarters during the World War II siege of Leningrad. The Astoria was fully restored, but not one of the more expensive hotels near the Kirov Ballet used by foreign visitors.

From the hotel, I set out on foot for St. Isaac’s cathedral, passing along the way a four story apartment building with a metal historical marker attached to the outside wall denoting the site of Tchaikovsky’s final residence, in 1897, where he composed his “Pathetique” Symphony. I finally came to St. Isaacs cathedral, with its large golden dome, copper statues, and beautiful gray marble columns which Tolstoy described in War and Peace.

After lunch back at the hotel, I walked over to Nevsky Prospect, the main city boulevard, where I caught a taxi to Peter and Paul Fortress with its twin red brick spires, touring the cells where Dostoyevsky had been imprisoned and Lenin’s older brother executed. There were names carved into the walls by political prisoners from Stalin’s purges in the 1930s. Back outside, it was bitter cold, well below zero, and the afternoon sun was low on the distant horizon. There were only few people on the streets, and those were bundled up in long wool overcoats and fur hats. I could see thin trails of steam in the clear blue sky, drifting horizontally from buildings across the bay.

Keeping my head down to avoid the wind, I forced myself to make it one block to the museum ship “Aurora,” docked on the Neva River across from the Hermitage Museum, formerly the Winter Palace. The Aurora’s guns had fired the opening shots of the Bolshevik Revolution. It was warm inside the ship museum, or at least seemed warm out of the wind. There were two Russian couples besides me aboard, as I drifted around the decks examining photographs of the Revolution and street crowds gathering in 1917.

After an hour or so, as I was leaving the ship, a group of about ten young men appeared on board, milling around and then deciding to depart when I departed, each one shoving a bit as he passed me on the narrow walkway leading from the ship to the street below. They weren’t trying to push me into the icy water below, just providing some welcome to Leningrad. I assumed they were KGB or Naval recruits. Such harassment was not accidental in 1979.

As American diplomats, we knew we were not as well protected when traveling outside Moscow. Leningrad, in particular, was known as a city with an overzealous local KGB, a fact I had discovered during an earlier visit, when I arrived at the US consulate for consultations. One of the Russian security guards in front had stepped out of his guard shack and snapped a photo of me as I passed through the gates. In Moscow, they would not have been so brazen. There was still the semblance of detente.

It was “the bad old days,” before the fall of communism and the Soviet Union. I was on only my second tour, in Moscow, during a low point of the Cold War, with the Soviet military incursion into Afghanistan and US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. It looked like Russia might intervene militarily in Poland to crush the “Solidarity” movement. Reagan came in and later called Russia “the evil empire.” Things would get even worse, culminating in the shoot down of the Korean KAL 007 airliner.

We had very little contact in Moscow with Russians, other than conversations with a taxi driver or sales clerk, and we lived in diplomatic buildings isolated from the population, taking shuttle vans together to and from work. We did get to know the Russians staff working at the Embassy, but had to assume they were reporting to the KGB. We also had some social interaction with Russian intellectuals, artists, and dissidents who were friendly with foreigners, either being allowed to be so, or taking chances.

Our official contacts lived in a different world than we knew. Words like democracy and freedom had different meanings. The average Russian on the street seemingly believed what he read in the newspaper about American imperialism, class separation, and Pentagon aggression. He had little desire to travel outside Russia and touted communism. Russia, itself, in those days was poor, with few items in stores beyond a few staples, and everyone wore cheap clothing and lived in three room apartments. There were no smiles on the streets, and no foreign magazines or books.

We were followed, but could rarely spot our followers. Nor was it uncommon to have a Russian citizen approach you on the street, seeing you were an American, and ask you to take a message to the Ambassador. Occasionally, they would push a package in our hands, saying it was “samizdat,” or unauthorized writings, which they wanted you to take out of Russia. We knew the approach could be a KGB provocation, with the handover being photographed. I was approached one time near the Taganka Theater. We were not hard to spot. Our world was a narrow one: the theaters, the Bolshoi, the museums, our Embassy dacha at Zaviedovo, the diplomatic grocery store or “gastronom,” Red Square, a Georgian restaurant, and perhaps a Volga cruise.

Things could get rough. We had human rights officers and military attaches provoked or attacked by so called “hooligans.” A group of our Marine security guards, including my cousin, were jumped one night on Red Square by a dozen men, presumably KGB, as they were leaving to walk back to the Embassy. They made it back, with only one injured, after fighting their way to the Embassy, a couple of miles.

Work in the Embassy Political Section was demanding, with long hours and time pressure. Each morning, I would arrive at my desk at 8 a.m., scan the Russian newspapers, translating as I read, reading between the lines, then writing a five page cable to Washington. My portfolio was Russian relations with the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, and I was expected to do at least one cable per day. I covered visits to Moscow by PLO leader Arafat, Syrian President Assad, and Jordanian President Hussein, plus a visit by an African National Congress (ANC) delegation asking for support against South Africa, and by Raul Castro, the number two after Fidel, who spent a lot of time in Moscow.

To supplement my reading of Pravda and Izvestiya, I would do some contact work as well, visiting the Latin America Institute, and meeting with experts like Sergo Mikoyan, son of the Foreign Minister under Khrushchev. I might request a luncheon appointment with a Russian journalist, attend a public lecture downtown, take trips to the Baltic States and Russian provinces, and meet Russian analysts at the various African and Middle Eastern think tanks. The meetings we had at the Foreign Ministry were frustrating since relations were tense and formal.

I remember one cable vividly, reporting on the visit by the Algerian President to Moscow. I sent out my usual cable on the event, analyzing the arrival speeches and the joint communique at the end of the visit, proud of some nuances I had unearthed on Russia’s changing policies on the Middle East. That night the phones started ringing with calls from the State Department in Washington, saying the international media had picked up on a Russian political toast during the Algerian visit blasting the US and calling President Reagan a “cowboy.” The seventh floor Chief of Staff called on behalf of the Secretary to chew out the Embassy. How had we not spotted this? I had indeed missed the forest for the trees, reporting the long-winded Russian speeches but missing the reference to Reagan in a dinner toast, and causing the Administration to be blindsided on a major development.

The Ambassador, on instructions from Washington, summoned the entire Political Section into the conference room where he and his Deputy sat stone faced. He said any Foreign Service Officer who didn’t catch a derogatory comment on the President of the United States should consider whether he is suited for this career. I think the word “resignation” was floated. I felt bad because Washington and the Ambassador were right, and because I had caused the entire section to be criticized, whereas I bore sole responsibility. There was silence around the table. I started to apologize, but my boss, Ed Djerejian, the Political Counselor, and my mentor on Russian-Middle East relations, stopped me.

Ed stood up for me, saying he was the head of the Political Section and responsible for anything which came out of it. He, therefore, bore full responsibility, and if the Ambassador and DCM have any beef, they should take it up with him in private. That ended the meeting. That’s the kind of guy Ed Djerejian was.

A week later, things were fine again with the Ambassador, whom I highly respected, and who was helping me report on Russian-Cuban relations. Nonetheless, when I flew out of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in 1981 at the end of my tour, I told myself I would not return. I didn’t want to spend my life in the Soviet Union. And, I didn’t return for ten years, until communism fell and I was called back. When you are called, you don’t say no.