Before I left London, Arthur Martin had arranged for me to brief the CIA on the technical side of the Lonsdale case and, in particular, the development of RAFTER. There was some embarrassment about this in Leconfield House because, although we had informed the FBI about RAFTER from the beginning, the CIA knew nothing. Hollis agreed that they should be indoctrinated fully as soon as the Lonsdale case was concluded, particularly since it had been their information from Sniper which led us to Lonsdale in the first place. The briefing was scheduled after the end of Tordella's conference, and it was held in one of the huge Nissen huts the CIA occupied temporarily next to the reflecting pool in the center of Washington while their Langley headquarters were under construction. I was taken through into a large conference room by Jim Angleton, and shown to a podium in front of at least two hundred CIA officers.
"Are you sure all these people are SIGINT indoctrinated?" I hissed at Angleton.
"Just tell the story, Peter, and let us handle the security," he replied. "There's a lot of people want to hear this!"
I stood up nervously and, fighting my stutter by speaking slowly and deliberately, began to describe the beginnings of the Lonsdale case. After an hour I turned to the blackboard to explain the complicated technical details of active RAFTER.
"Of course, from our point of view, RAFTER represents a major new counterespionage weapon. We are now in the position to establish without question when Soviet agents in the field are receiving clandestine broadcasts from Moscow, and moreover we can use it to detect the frequency of their transmissions..."
RAFTER was not well received. At first it was just a rustle; then I noticed a couple of people talking to each other in the front row with more than usual animation. I knew something was wrong when I caught sight of Harvey sitting at one side of the stage. He was leaning over in front of Angleton, gesticulating angrily in my direction.
"Are there any questions?" I asked, unsure of what was upsetting my audience.
"Yes!" yelled someone at the back. "When the hell did you say you developed this RAFTER?"
"Spring 1958."
"And what the hell date is it today...?"
I stuttered, momentarily lost for words.
"I'll tell you," he shouted again, "it's 1961!"
"Hell of a way to run an alliance," yelled someone else.
I sat down sharply. People began to leave. There were no more questions.
Angleton and Harvey came up afterward. There was no disguising Harvey's rage.
"Look, Peter," said Jim, trying hard to be urbane, "this whole subject needs a lot more discussion, and I really don't feel it's appropriate to continue it in such a large forum. Bill and I would like you to have dinner with us tonight. We'll arrange somewhere secure, where we can talk."
He hustled me away before Harvey could speak.
Joe Burk, Angleton's technical man, collected me from my hotel that evening. He had little to say, and it looked to me as if those were his orders. We crossed the George Washington Bridge, passed Arlington cemetery, and drove out into the Virginia countryside.
"The new headquarters," said Burk, pointing to the right.
There was nothing but trees and gathering darkness.
After an hour's drive, we arrived at a detached timber-framed house set well back from the road. At the back was a large veranda with a table and chairs, completely enclosed with fly netting. It was a warm, humid, late-summer evening. The scent of pine and the sound of crickets floated down from the foothills of the Appalachians. Angleton came out on the veranda and greeted me coolly.
"Sorry about this afternoon," he said, but offered no explanation. We sat down at the table and were joined by the head of the CIA's West European Division. He was polite but nothing more. After a few minutes another car drew up at the front of the house with a squeal of brakes. Doors slammed, and I heard the sound of Bill Harvey's voice inside the house asking where we were. He threw back the flimsy metal mosquito door, and emerged onto the veranda clutching a bottle of Jack Daniel's. He had obviously been drinking.
"Now you limey bastard," he roared, smashing the bottle down on the table, "let's have the truth about this case!"
I knew immediately it was a setup. Normally Harry Stone would accompany me to any serious discussion of MI5 business, but he was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack.
"This is most unfair, Jim, I thought this was a dinner party," I said, turning to Angleton.
"It is, Peter," he said, pouring me a massive Scotch in a cut-glass tumbler.
"I'm not going to be browbeaten," I replied flatly.
"No, no," said Angleton quietly, "we just want to hear it again... from the beginning. There's a lot of things we've got to get straight."
I went over the Lonsdale story a second time, and by the time I finished Harvey could contain himself no longer.
"You untrustworthy motherfuckers!" he spat at me. "You come over here and ask for us to pay for your research, and all the time you've got a thing like RAFTER up your sleeve..."
"I don't see the problem..."
"You don't see shit!"
Harvey spun open the second bottle of Jack Daniel's.
"The problem, Peter, is our operations," said Angleton. "A hell of a lot of our agents use HF radio receivers, and if the Soviets have got RAFTER, a lot of them must be blown..."
"Have the Soviets got it?" asked Angleton.
"Not at first, but I'm sure they have now," I said, quoting a recent case where an MI6 Polish source inside the UB described a joint Polish-Soviet espionage investigation. Toward the end, when they were closing in on the suspect agent, the KGB brought a van up to the apartment building where the spy lived. The UB, according to the MI6 source, were never allowed to see inside the van, but he knew enough to guess that it had something to do with radio detection.
"Jesus Christ," hissed Harvey, "that's our whole Polish setup lost...!"
"But we sent those source reports to your Polish section," I said. "Whoever the agent was, he wasn't one of ours, so we assumed it must have been one of yours. It should at least have warned you that radio communications to Poland were vulnerable."
"We'll check it in the morning," said the head of the West European Division, looking flushed.
"Who else knows about RAFTER?" asked Harvey.
I told him we briefed the FBI and the Canadian RCMP fully as our development progressed.
"The Canadians!" exploded Harvey, thumping the table in anger. "You might as well tell the fuckin' Papuans as the Canadians!"
"I'm afraid we don't see it like that. The Canadians are trusted members of the Commonwealth."
"Well, you should tell them to get another cipher machine," he said, as Angleton, fearful that Harvey in his rage would spill out the secrets of Staff D, kicked him hard under the table.
The argument raged on and on; the intimidation was obviously carefully planned. They wanted to make me feel guilty, to say something indiscreet I might regret later, to tell them more than I should. We gave you Sniper, they said, and look what you do in return. We agree to plow millions of dollars into research for you, and how do you repay us? Harvey cursed and raged about every weakness, every mistake, every piece of carelessness that the Americans had overlooked since the war: Philby, Burgess, Maclean, the lack of leadership, the amateurism, the retreat from Empire, the encroachment of socialism. Angleton lectured me darkly on the need to respect American superiority in the alliance if we wanted access to their sources.