Book Commentary: Molehunt

The account of the Golitsyn arrival and behavior is well done. But once again, the role of the CI Staff is distorted, claiming that it is responsible for preventing penetration of CIA. That is not its function, which is why Ames was identified as a penetration by the Soviet Division in which he worked , not by the CI Staff ( or the Office of Security (05), whose job it was). As Helms is quoted as having said later in an interview by the author ”...it was Angleton who raised the possibilities, but investigations had to be conducted by 05, not by Angleton". Angleton never mentioned Ames.

The Belitskiy case is raised and presented from the viewpoint of the case officer, who had first met Belitskiy in Brussels in 1958, and was always reluctant to admit that he had been taken in by Belitskiy, and that Belitskiy was at that time under KGB control. I reported that Belitskiy was under KGB control when l was asked to review his reporting in London in April 1961, and reported it to C/CI Staff at his request, but HQ did not accept it until Golitsyn confirmed that in January 1962 and Nosenko in June 1962.

There is a peculiar account of the meeting of Artamonov with the KGB in Montreal in 1972, at which time RCMP C/CI Bennett was advised of the upcoming meeting to monitor his actions and see if he alerted the KGB. This account alleges that Bennett was warned of such a meeting but that there was no such meeting actually planned. The meeting was planned, and took place, but the snowstorm at the time left the conclusion uncertain.

Another error arises regarding the codewords for Penkovskiy's material—the separation was not of missile from other material, but separation of his documentary material (IRONBARK) from his oral reporting (CHICKADEE).

There is a discussion of responsibility for Loginov’s being turned over to the South Africans, with an unnamed station chief citing Angleton as being behind it. That is correct. Just before it happened, the Loginov case officer called me and told me that was about to happen. I called DCI Helms the next day and objected that Loginov was bona fide, only accused because he supported Nosenko's bona fides. Helms was irritated, and said "That is out of my hands, Jim (Angleton) is handling that".

In describing our correction of the case of Norwegian secretary Lygren, accused by Angleton of being a KGB agent, the new CI Staff chief, Kalaris, is said to have assigned my deputy to review the

case. In fact, I assigned that job to my deputy, and approved his conclusion that Lygren was bona fide. Then Kalaris is described as tall and thin—totally untrue, more descriptive of us two deputies. In describing the recovery of classified documents from Golitsyn, CI Staff Operations deputy Sternfield is said to have managed that project, while it was actually two of my officers who did that.

Molehunt, David Wise, 1992

http://www.amazon.com/Molehunt-Secret-Search-Traitors-Shattered/dp/0394585143