>>4194
Reading lot of things on both sides. Both successful operations and horrible fuckups. Don't have an opinion yet.
American capabilities are scary. Their failures are spectacular too.
The Mountain Climber had served the agency all over the world. After the Berlin Wall fell, files retrieved from the KGB and the East German secret police revealed that they had taught a course on the Mountain Climber to their agents. His tradecraft was impeccable. Once, Soviet intelligence officers tried to recruit him: they literally placed bags of money in front of him. He waved them off, mocked them. The Mountain Climber was incorruptible. He spoke Spanish like a Cuban. He was Aspillaga’s role model. Aspillaga wanted to meet him face-to-face.
“I was on an assignment in another country when I got a message to rush to Frankfurt,” the Mountain Climber remembers. (Though long retired from the CIA, he still prefers to be identified only by his nickname.) “Frankfurt is where we had our defector processing center. They told me a fellow had walked into an embassy in Vienna. He had driven out of Czechoslovakia with his girlfriend in the trunk of his car, walked in, and insisted on speaking to me. I thought it was kind of crazy.”
El Alpinista went straight to the debriefing center. “I found four case officers sitting in the living room,” he remembers. “They told me Aspillaga was back in the bedroom making love with his girlfriend, as he had constantly since he arrived at the safe house. Then I went in and spoke to him. He was lanky, poorly dressed, as Eastern Europeans and Cubans tended to be back then. A little sloppy. But it was immediately evident that he was a very smart guy.”
When he walked in, the Mountain Climber didn’t tell Aspillaga who he was. He was trying to be cagey; Aspillaga was an unknown quantity. But it was only a matter of minutes before Aspillaga figured it out. There was a moment of shock, laughter. The two men hugged, Cuban style.
“We talked for five minutes before we started into the details. Whenever you are debriefing one of those guys, you need someone that proves their bona fides,” the Mountain Climber said. “So I just basically asked him what he could tell me about the [Cuban intelligence] operation.”
It was then that Aspillaga revealed his bombshell, the news that had brought him It was then that Aspillaga revealed his bombshell, the news that had brought him from behind the Iron Curtain to the gates of the Vienna embassy. The CIA had a network of spies inside Cuba, whose dutiful reports to their case officers helped shape America’s understanding of its adversary. Aspillaga named one of them and said, “He’s a double agent. He works for us.” The room was stunned. They had no idea. But Aspillaga kept going. He named another spy. “He’s a double too.” Then another, and another. He had names, details, chapter and verse. That guy you recruited on the ship in Antwerp. The little fat guy with the mustache? He’s a double. That other guy, with a limp, who works in the defense ministry? He’s a double. He continued on like that until he had listed dozens of names—practically the entire U.S. roster of secret agents inside Cuba. They were all working for Havana, spoon-feeding the CIA information cooked up by the Cubans themselves.