Declassified Untold Stories of American Spies_6of8_The Spy Game Russian Espionage
Transcript
00:00Secrecy is the essential of state.
00:10You can deliver a devastating blow to a country without a bomb by using classified information.
00:18And Russian intelligence officers are a serious foe to the United States.
00:25They're well-trained, they're well-motivated, and they're fanatically pro-Moscow.
00:32Spying is an insidious game, and the SPR is arguably the best in this business.
00:42As a former FBI agent and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, I had oversight
00:46of all 16 of our nation's intelligence agencies.
00:50My name is Mike Rogers.
00:53I had access to classified information gathered by our operatives, people who risked everything
00:59for the United States and our families.
01:02You don't know their faces or their names.
01:04You don't know the real stories from the people who live the fear and the pressure until now.
01:16Information warfare against the United States.
01:19That's the heart of an extraordinary federal indictment announced today against 13 Russians.
01:24The Russians accused of working together to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
01:30Since World War II, our biggest adversary has been Russia.
01:33Breaking news.
01:34Ten alleged secret agents arrested, accused of spying on the United States for Russia.
01:39We are tracking reports that Russian hackers stole U.S. cyber secrets from the NSA in one
01:44of the most significant security breaches in recent history.
01:47We cannot trust Russia.
01:48We should never trust Russia.
01:50Their history is one of conquest, and so that's pretty much embedded in their culture, that
01:55you have to be spying on your enemies.
01:57You know, you can't trust anyone.
01:59The United States has been the global superpower, and we have everything that every other country
02:05on earth wants—wealth, technology—and all of that is tied to sensitive classified
02:11information.
02:12And the Russian intelligence services work very hard to steal our secrets.
02:17The reason people spy is to gain advantage over the person being spied on.
02:21You want to have knowledge that they don't have, or you want to have knowledge that they
02:26don't know you have.
02:28And vice versa.
02:29They spy on us, and we spy on them.
02:32It's one of the oldest occupations in the world.
02:35It's not ever going away.
02:39Espionage probably represents the greatest threat to America's national security today
02:44than anything else.
02:46The foreign intelligence service of Russia, they're trying to learn what U.S. policies
02:50are, what's behind them, because we have enough nuclear weapons to blow them off the planet
02:57just like they have enough nuclear weapons to blow us off the planet.
02:59So it's hard to bridge that gap, but in the 90s, we were starting to get there.
03:05Certainly, I agree with what President Yeltsin said, that there is no animosity.
03:11The Cold War days are over.
03:12The wall had fallen in West Berlin, East Berlin, and there was jubilation as it appeared
03:18as though the dictatorship in Russia was finally ending.
03:21Frontier police from the two sides of the wall met in a moment which symbolized this
03:26healing of psychological wounds.
03:32The White House clearly wanted to have a reset in our diplomatic and military relations with
03:37new Russia.
03:39And there was thought that maybe finally this Cold War was over.
03:44The Cold War is over, and for the first time in history, an American president has set
03:49foot in a democratic Russia.
03:52And so in June 1992, the State Department released a memorandum indicating that Russian
03:59diplomats no longer needed to be escorted inside the main State Department building.
04:05I thought someone was pulling my leg.
04:07I simply could not believe that that decision had been reached.
04:11It ran contrary to what I'd been doing for 25 years.
04:15You do not allow foreign diplomats to walk inside the State Department unescorted.
04:23They would never let an American diplomat walk inside the Russian Ministry of Foreign
04:28Affairs unescorted.
04:29It would just never happen.
04:30I can't believe for one second that the Russian resident at the embassy in Washington, D.C.
04:37was not laughing every night over the non-escort policy.
04:41This goes back to State Department not being a counterintelligence agency.
04:45Their purpose is to build bridges with other countries.
04:48We were trying to normalize relations with the Russians and not treat them like the bad
04:53old Soviets that they were used to.
04:55The FBI always kept countering the efforts of SVR intelligence officers in Washington,
05:01D.C.
05:02But we dialed back the resources and just kind of slowly backed off, thinking, OK, let's
05:06see if they do come around.
05:09Well, it didn't take us long to learn that the bear was not in hibernation and that the
05:16Russian intelligence service that had morphed from the KGB to the SVR had simply not changed
05:22their mission or their goal.
05:24When the wall came down, it didn't change anything.
05:26From a national security counterintelligence standpoint, that cat-and-mouse spy-versus-spy
05:31thing is always there.
05:40In the summer of 1998, I was the deputy director of the Office of Counterintelligence at the
05:45U.S. Department of State.
05:47Don Sullivan, my counterpart at the FBI's Washington field office, arranged for me to
05:51come down and meet with him and another agent.
05:54They said, Robert, this is a catalog of Russian diplomats coming to visit the State Department.
06:03Most of them were diplomats, had been to their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but a fraction
06:07of the diplomats were spies, intelligence officers serving under diplomatic cover.
06:13They're trained in all the tradecraft of recruiting people, detecting and evading surveillance,
06:19scanning bugs.
06:20And he says, they're coming in numbers and frequency the likes we've never seen before.
06:29And to him, that suggested something was afoot.
06:32You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to see that something was going on.
06:36I mean, they were there all the time, they were in and out of the place.
06:39Typically, Russian diplomats visit the State Department to work on common issues like reducing
06:45nuclear stockpiles.
06:48The goal of a Russian intelligence officer is different.
06:52They're not concerned about diplomatic negotiations.
06:55They want to obtain sensitive, classified, or restricted information.
07:01Policies are formulated, State Department have classified information at work there.
07:05A lot of sensitive things go on there.
07:07Right off the bat, I knew we have a problem.
07:14If a Russian intelligence officer is inside the State Department, he or she is obviously
07:21up to no good.
07:23Whenever you're dealing with spies, it's what you don't know will hurt you.
07:28So what can we do to better understand what we're seeing?
07:33We didn't know what the Russians were doing inside, who they were doing it to, or how
07:36they were doing it.
07:37But my job was to find out.
07:45In the summer of 1998, I was the Deputy Director of the Office of Counterintelligence at the
07:52U.S. Department of State.
07:53Don Sullivan was my counterpart at the FBI's Washington field office.
07:57I showed him a spreadsheet tracking the visits of these Russian spies serving under diplomatic
08:03cover to the State Department, and like any spreadsheet, you could see increased frequency
08:08and duration of their visits.
08:09This is clearly evidence of activity inconsistent with regular diplomatic dialogue.
08:18It's a good indication of something going on.
08:21The State Department is the spear of foreign policy.
08:26It conducts foreign negotiations, they maintain conflict resolution, and their most important
08:32job is to keep things stable.
08:36If the Russians figure out our bottom bargaining line, they may be able to out-negotiate us.
08:42So right off the bat, I knew we have a problem.
08:47No question.
08:49At the end of our meeting, when Robert told everybody that there was not an escort policy,
08:54I was pretty flabbergasted.
08:55I mean, we would get escorted.
08:58We, the FBI, went through all kinds of hoops to get in there.
09:01It didn't seem right.
09:03Russian diplomats, yes, FBI agents, no.
09:07It doesn't get any worse than that.
09:09Robert and I decided we needed to do a surveillance that was not just outside the building but
09:14inside the building, using both our personnel.
09:16Don and I created a six-week operational plan to identify Russians coming to the main State
09:23Department building, what offices they visited, and then how long it took for them to go back
09:29outside and get into their car.
09:31We would follow them to the outside of the building and notify Robert's team inside the
09:36building of who was coming in, and then they would try to follow them inside.
09:40When the Russians stepped out of the car, we had cameras rolling with high-resolution,
09:45focused strictly on them, looking for anomalies in their clothes, in their hands, in their
09:51briefcases, anything at all that might give us an idea of what he or she might have been
09:56bringing into the main State Department building.
10:01We saw one after another SVR officer going in, sometimes several at the same time.
10:08One day, we saw a Russian diplomat entering the building, empty-handed, and coming out
10:14with a briefcase.
10:16We were very concerned at that point.
10:20Another incident that gave us a lot of concern, our surveillance team spotted a Russian diplomat
10:28as he walked up to the main entrance of the State Department.
10:31Now, when you go into the main State Department building, there is a physical barrier.
10:35You have to present a certain ID card, and the receptionist writes it out for you, and
10:40then you go to a gate guard who stands there and opens the gate for you.
10:45When the Russian diplomat walked inside, we noticed he didn't go to the receptionist,
10:50but sat down in some easy chairs in the lobby.
10:54And there's noise going everywhere, there's phones everywhere.
10:59Ten minutes later, another Russian diplomat comes up to the receptionist's desk, gives
11:04the receptionist a telephone number to call, allegedly to an office, where the person would
11:09say, oh yes, we're expecting Dmitry, send him on up.
11:12So she picks up the phone, and ba-ba-ba-ba, and actually is to the house phone on the
11:18table next to where the other Russian diplomat is sitting.
11:23He picks up the phone, and Flora Singer says, well, let Dmitry in.
11:28Hangs up, she writes it in, and off he goes.
11:33And where he went, we have no clue.
11:36In this case, unfortunately, we did not have an asset able to follow.
11:41Doing surveillance of the outside of the State Department is easy.
11:45Doing surveillance on the inside of the State Department, very, very difficult.
11:50Sometimes it's just two of you going down a hallway, and it's, you know, you can get
11:54away with that only so long.
11:55Why didn't you get rid of them, kick them out, arrest them?
12:01Well, they violated no laws.
12:05They have violated an internal security rule, sure.
12:12But if you do that, you let them know you're on to them.
12:14Let them do it a second or third time, let's see what's going on here.
12:17We thought they could be outright stealing documents, they could be planting bugs, anything
12:22like that.
12:23But, you know, frankly, we didn't know what they were doing.
12:27That was the concern.
12:29Unfortunately, after six weeks, we were no closer to the answers we were seeking than
12:34when we began.
12:36All that we confirmed was that they were coming to the main State Department building in numbers
12:41and frequencies that simply is inconsistent with diplomatic dialogue.
12:47We were unable to go beyond that.
12:49When it was done, Robert took it up within his chain of command to present it to the
12:54higher-ups and say, we probably have a threat here.
12:57In May 1998, the FBI gave me permission to brief Thomas Pickering, the number three man
13:04at the State Department, and the former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, about what we had uncovered.
13:09He was shown the photographs, he was shown the spreadsheets.
13:12We explained to him how we felt the no-escort policy was detrimental to the security of
13:17the building, but unfortunately, there was no proof they were going outside their regular
13:26diplomatic duties and responsibilities.
13:29What we had was a lot of smoke and no fire.
13:33Unfortunately, after that meeting, the policy continued that the Russians would not be escorted
13:39within the State Department.
13:41And from our observation, the activity continued.
13:44Robert and I put our heads together against it.
13:47It's our job.
13:48We have to find out what's going on.
13:49So we started a second round of the surveillance program.
13:53At the beginning of the second operation, we noticed that Russian diplomats were arriving
13:58at the same rate and frequency that we had seen during the first operation.
14:03Then all of a sudden, all of these Russians, and especially intelligence officers, coming
14:09to the State Department, just evaporated.
14:12And we had nothing.
14:13There was nothing to see.
14:15Whatever was being done had now been done.
14:19We were convinced the Russians had a success story.
14:23What it was, we did not know.
14:34In the middle of the second operation, all of a sudden, all of these Russian intelligence
14:39officers coming to the State Department just evaporated.
14:43And we had nothing.
14:45Of course, we thought they were outright stealing documents, they could be planting bugs, anything
14:49like that.
14:50And there was no telling what they did.
14:52That was the concern.
14:54We were convinced the Russians had a success story.
14:57What it was, we did not know.
15:05In the late 90s, I was the most junior agent on my squad.
15:09So I had the work that no one else wanted.
15:13I was in charge of investigating the SVR Line OT.
15:19OT means operational technical.
15:24These Russian technical officers were supporting operations, like our tech agents support us,
15:31but they're not doing the operations.
15:36So it wasn't the glamorous stuff.
15:39Early 1999, the State Department received an accreditation package from Russia announcing
15:45Stanislav Gusev's intended arrival.
15:48Now to send a diplomat overseas, other countries have to announce to the host government your
15:54intention, your request for that person to be accredited as a diplomat.
16:00The standard procedure for us is to check with the intelligence community just to see
16:04what pops up.
16:05A lot of times there's absolutely nothing.
16:07I guess the assumption there is that they're a clean diplomat.
16:11In his case, it did not come back that he was a clean diplomat.
16:13It came back that he was very specifically a Line OT officer.
16:18His predecessor was the Line OT chief in the embassy, and he was replacing him.
16:24Everything matched.
16:26So even though we knew he was a spy, State Department still accredited Gusev as a diplomat.
16:31And so in comes Gusev.
16:33Wasn't he compromised from the moment he got here because you already knew who he was?
16:39But they didn't know that.
16:40They didn't know that we knew everything we did.
16:44When they come into the United States, they will be followed.
16:47We have to establish their patterns.
16:49Typically, you don't see a lot of operations in the first few months.
16:53They assume they're under heavy surveillance.
16:57At the time that Gusev came to the United States, I had way more work than I could handle.
17:02I'd been following a multitude of Line OT officers, including his predecessor.
17:07And so my assumption was I can focus on other things, and then when he gets settled, then
17:11I'll dig in my heels and start tracking.
17:16It was my luck, his misfortune, that a surveillance team who was sitting outside of State Department
17:25were surveilling another target.
17:28But when they saw a Russian diplomatic vehicle pull in to a metered parking space, it got
17:34their attention.
17:35Why?
17:36Because he fed the meter.
17:39Diplomats don't care about parking tickets.
17:40The Russian embassy had, I think, tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid parking tickets.
17:46EMV figure show Russia tops the list of deadbeat diplomats and owes more than $27,000.
17:53So there were red flags right away.
17:56And so it was just on a whim that they actually followed him to this park and took a couple
18:00of what we call happy snaps, photos.
18:04The pictures showed somebody sitting on a bench with his arm elbow deep in a bag.
18:10The thought was he's just doing area familiarization in preparation for a future operation.
18:16And so it doesn't really invoke a reaction.
18:23Two days later, Gusev's car was spotted roughly in the same area that it was parked before.
18:29This time, the surveillance team started taking about a 30-minute video.
18:35Gusev was there in the same bench with his arm elbow deep in the same bag.
18:42I get a call from the team leader imploring me to come out to their offsite to see this
18:48video immediately.
18:51He believed it definitely indicated there was some kind of technical operation going
18:56on.
18:57And so the thought was he's doing area familiarization.
19:01He's a technical guy.
19:02So maybe he's just sweeping the radio spectrum for the area.
19:06I believed he was doing something nefarious, but not operations, because line OT officers
19:11don't do operations.
19:13That was the conventional wisdom at the time.
19:15But I switched my attention very closely to him.
19:21I was out there every day of the week for months.
19:26And I had an old Thomas guide, and I was plotting everywhere he parked his car, every time he
19:31re-parked his car, everywhere he walked, and everywhere he paused or sat while he
19:36was on foot.
19:37He continued to come out, continuing to park and re-park and walk around and sit in park
19:42benches.
19:44The difference, though, there was no more sitting in a bench with his arm elbow deep
19:49in the bag.
19:51He was just walking around and sitting on park benches, reading novels, smoking cigarettes,
19:56just whiling away time.
19:59When I finally took a moment to look back at everything I had collected, all those dots
20:05where his car was parked just jumped off the map.
20:10Once he actually parked onto Virginia Avenue, he would not move his car again.
20:16It was like the light bulb going off.
20:19He was trying to get as close to State Department as possible.
20:23So I started shopping that 30-minute video of Gusev asking for help.
20:30I said, hey, I have a guy on a park bench who looks like he's doing something technical.
20:35I think there might be radio frequencies involved.
20:39And do we have equipment that's portable to just do basically a survey of what radio frequencies
20:45are there when he's there and then what's there when he's not there, do the overlay
20:50and eliminate the common frequencies and only be left with ones that are there only when
20:56he's there.
20:57And that would be him.
20:59I get a call from my headquarters program manager saying, here's a name and a number
21:03of a guy.
21:04He has what you need.
21:05Who was the guy?
21:07It was somebody within the intelligence community, but I'm not at liberty to say.
21:13And after a week, the guy who gave me the equipment, he identified one specific frequency,
21:19an unauthorized signal that came on and then went off with Gusev's coming and going.
21:25It appeared to be Gusev's rogue frequency.
21:30At this point, we need to know where it's coming from.
21:34If there's a penetration of State Department, the stakes are huge.
21:39You can't even quantify them.
21:41And so we went to Robert Booth.
21:43It was a national emergency.
21:50In 1999, while following Russian intelligence officer Stanislav Gusev, we discovered Gusev
22:00appeared to be working an operation involving State Department.
22:04If there's a penetration of State Department, it's a national emergency.
22:09And so we went to Robert Booth.
22:11In the spring of 1999, I was informed that the FBI had developed an investigation of
22:16an incredibly sensitive nature.
22:19And so I played him the video of Gusev.
22:22I told him that we didn't really fully understand what was going on, but we had identified a
22:28signal that correlated with the Russian intelligence officer's movements around State Department.
22:35And he was alarmed.
22:36I thought it was related to my earlier investigation with Don Sullivan.
22:41My interest perked up immediately.
22:44State Department sees the intelligence community's most sensitive information, CIA, DIA, NSA,
22:53everything.
22:54So I look at Andy, without any further explanation, and I say, the first thing we have to do is
23:00locate that audio transmission, and we need to move fast on this.
23:07Robert arranged for us to have electronic access badges that made us look like contractors
23:13within State Department.
23:15With those access badges, we could bypass security and go straight into the building.
23:20And he also gave us a tiny little coat closet with a window in it that faced directly to
23:29the street below where Gusev was parking.
23:33The FBI began using equipment offered to us by the intelligence community in order to
23:39figure out where the audio transmission was coming from.
23:43It did not take long.
23:46The first day that we got into the State Department annex, the electronics technician was setting
23:52up and I was just playing around with the antenna.
23:57I was kind of, you know, pointing it across the street at the State Department building
24:00while he was tuning, and it was connected by a cable to his equipment.
24:04In the middle of all that, Gusev drives into the area and we see the signal come on.
24:10Now this was important because we needed the signal to be on.
24:12So great, day one, we're there, we could figure out a lot.
24:17And so while I'm messing around with the antenna, the ET, electronic technician, says,
24:24hey, stop, what are you pointing at?
24:27And I'm like, top floor of State Department.
24:29He's like, where in the top floor?
24:31I'm like, there's a glass stairwell there.
24:33And he goes, well, that makes sense because RF signals pass through glass more easily
24:38than concrete.
24:40After one day, they came in and they said, there's no question in our mind, there are
24:45radio frequencies emanating from the wall of the building.
24:53Our first priority was to prove that some kind of audio device was in fact inside State
25:01Department.
25:02So a second electronics technician went out with another piece of equipment that would
25:08then measure the signal strength.
25:11He walked into State Department and then proceeded to go towards the glass stairwell where it
25:17got stronger.
25:18And as he climbed the stairs, it got stronger, got to the top, went out the double doors
25:23into the corridor and it was screaming because it got louder as he got closer to the signal.
25:28Right near him was the door to the conference room, closed the meeting in progress.
25:34The signal seemed to be coming from that conference room.
25:39That conference room was located on the seventh floor of the State Department, the same floor
25:43that contains the executive office spaces and the office for the Secretary of State,
25:48Mrs. Albright.
25:49Any group could reserve the conference room.
25:53In fact, the conference room could be used by visiting dignitaries, the Department of
25:58Defense, other agencies.
26:01Any number of conversations could happen in there, from brown bag lunches where random
26:05things could be talked about to classified conversations because just down the hall,
26:10there was a unit that dealt in classified information and if they needed a conference
26:14room, they could go in there.
26:15At this point, we had no clue what the Russians had captured.
26:20But in that conference room, sensitive information was discussed on a daily basis.
26:28Once we had determined that it was the conference room on the seventh floor, we planned to
26:32go back in that night to actually find the device.
26:37The plan was to enter the State Department clandestinely.
26:41We wanted to make sure no staff were in there.
26:44To keep the integrity of investigations, you just have to make sure that the least amount
26:48of people know about it.
26:50And we knew that people started arriving at the main State Building for work maybe around
26:546.
26:55So, we needed to get what we needed to get done within four hours.
27:01In a conference room that's 20 by 40 feet, that's not a lot of time.
27:07We started with the carpet and slowly worked our ways up the walls and then everything
27:13in that room.
27:15It was a total nightmare from a technical perspective because it could be anywhere.
27:21They ultimately got around to a portion of the chair rail molding.
27:26Chair rail molding sits on the wall so that when you move your chair back, you don't bang
27:30the back of your chair against the wall and scuff it up.
27:34We all gathered around the chair railing and they ran the equipment over it.
27:39And this piece of wood had weird kind of signatures that were coming off of it.
27:45This specific section of chair rail molding was hidden behind the curtain.
27:51This curtain, whether you open it or close it, that section of chair rail molding is
27:58always covered.
28:00And in front of the curtain was this massive plant.
28:02Kind of being skeptics, we would run the equipment along the railing almost all the way around
28:08the room just to see if anything remotely similar popped up.
28:12And it kept on coming back to that one piece going, no way, this is unique.
28:16It's got to be this.
28:19It was clear Russians had successfully planted a bug inside the State Department building.
28:25Did you take the piece of railing off?
28:27Oh no.
28:28We didn't want to disturb it because we didn't know if it had a trip wire in it which would
28:32go off to let the Russians know we found it.
28:35Just leave it in place because there are options.
28:38The need to have secrets is critical.
28:41We needed to get a handle on this immediately.
28:50In late 1999, while working the investigation of Russian technical officer Stanislav Gusev,
28:58we discovered a listening device inside the seventh floor conference room of our main
29:02State Department building.
29:07This was the first time anybody anywhere had seen something like this.
29:11The fact that they got a bug in a conference room on the seventh floor, just down the hall
29:16from the Secretary of State, is just astounding.
29:21A huge, and I mean huge, interagency IC meeting was held over at the FBI headquarters.
29:30The agencies all had their own different preferences and it was debated.
29:36One group said, let's disable it and see if they come in at night to fix it and then arrest
29:41the guys coming in at night.
29:43The other people said, rip it out right away so we can technically examine it and do countermeasures.
29:48It was finally decided at this big meeting to leave it in place, let's see if we can
29:52learn something from it.
29:53But we have to monitor it in the conference room 24-7.
29:58We were going to install audio and video in the conference room that got piped to another
30:04listening post that his people could staff 24-7 for the duration of the operation.
30:10We had total control of the operation at that point.
30:14We set a camera looking into the room, facing towards the rubber tree in the curtains.
30:19That's where the bug is.
30:20And then we put a camera looking down directly over the top of it.
30:24So if Robert's people saw somebody come in the room, then they would watch the second
30:29monitor to see if there was a hand reaching through the rubber tree in there.
30:34And they had a panic button.
30:36They had the power to lock down the entire building in the middle of the day if somebody
30:41went in there to do something.
30:44In monitoring Gusev, we had noticed that when Gusev pulled his car up on Virginia Avenue,
30:51all of a sudden the listening device in the conference room would turn on and a radio
30:57frequency would be directed down in the general vicinity of his car.
31:02What kind of car was it?
31:04A 1999 Chevy Malibu.
31:06Which we lovingly nicknamed the Malibu-ski.
31:10We try to have a sense of humor, and that's how we nicknamed it.
31:14I never once referred to it as the Malibu-ski.
31:17The information was directed from the conference room into the car, which had some kind of
31:22reel-to-reel tape recorder.
31:24And there was a funny Kleenex box that never seemed to move in the back of the car.
31:28That's where the antenna was.
31:30My office was located on Virginia Avenue.
31:34You could see the street below and the prime parking area that Gusev would ultimately want
31:40to be at, clearly visible from Robert Booth's windows.
31:44There are times when I would hear on the radio, Gusev's off the park, meaning he's left the
31:49Russian embassy.
31:50And I'd just kind of get out of my seat with a cup of coffee, and I'd wait, you know, and
31:54there would come the Malibu-ski up the street.
31:56And he finds a parking spot.
31:58He'd pull in and park, get out, reach into his pocket, pull out all these quarters, start
32:04feeding the meter, and then go for a walk.
32:07And I'm sitting up there saying, I am watching from the warmth and niceness of my office
32:13an espionage operation.
32:15Unbelievable.
32:16After weeks of surveillance, we had found everything that we believed we were going
32:21to find at that time.
32:23With winter coming, not knowing if Gusev would stop coming, State Department wanted
32:28it over.
32:29Then it was just a matter of, how do we end it?
32:35I advised the group that we're running out of bodies.
32:38We're doing surveillance 24-7.
32:40It's been over 45 days.
32:41We did 12-hour shifts.
32:43That's a tremendous amount of time.
32:46The decision was ultimately made to bring it down.
32:51We're going to wait for a day when Gusev arrives in the car.
32:56And we're going to then send in a team into the conference room and actually create a
33:02fake conference.
33:04We had a scripted conversation that was bona fide, classified information that had been
33:11cleared.
33:12And it was something State Department had selected that wouldn't be damaging.
33:16Once we knew he was out there and the signal was on, two analysts would go into a room
33:20and they would have this conversation that they knew was being recorded.
33:23The listening device is broadcasting classified information to a Russian diplomatic car which
33:31meets the tenets of espionage.
33:36Everybody was in place.
33:40We knew his pattern.
33:41He would come once, twice, sometimes three times a week.
33:46Monday shows up, Gusev doesn't show.
33:49That's fine, he only comes two to three days a week.
33:51Tuesday shows up, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Gusev doesn't show.
34:00The moment we decide to take him down and we stage people around the State Department
34:05area, he did not come out of the embassy.
34:09That was a bad, bad thing.
34:11I thought someone leaked the information.
34:13I was absolutely miserable.
34:17We've done everything right.
34:18Someone had to screw us.
34:20I thought we had lost the case.
34:29In December of 1999, the decision was made to detain Gusev.
34:34The moment we decide to take him down, he stops coming out.
34:41That was not a good week.
34:43By December the 8th, I was absolutely miserable.
34:46I thought we had lost the case.
34:49So I'm in the office and I'm talking to one of my DS agents, who had been assigned to
34:53the FBI command center, overviewing the potential arrest, and all of a sudden, he goes, he's
34:59off the park.
35:00I said, he's off the park?
35:03And I slammed down the phone that meant Gusev has just left the embassy compound.
35:07I said, I can't believe it.
35:10So I run out of my office to get everyone set, and nobody's there.
35:14We really had to scramble to get people on station.
35:18Frantically on phone calls and radios, out of the Starbucks, drop your coffee.
35:23Everyone's got to go now.
35:24The adrenaline went through the ceiling.
35:26I'm literally at my office window, and there comes Gusev.
35:32The FBI had two cars parked, one behind the other, in Virginia Avenue.
35:38One car contained camera and surveillance gear, and the other was just an FBI agent
35:42in a car.
35:44So when they said, he's right down the block, the FBI car pulled out.
35:49Lo and behold, a beautiful parking spot for Gusev to pull his car in.
35:53What a coincidence.
35:54And I'm watching all this.
35:57He did exactly what we had expected.
36:00He parked his car right behind a van that we had that had video camera rolling with
36:05a guy in the back.
36:07And my secretary said, Robert, you're going to have a heart attack here.
36:10I really was.
36:11And he gets out of the car, feeds the meter, and takes off for his two-hour walk.
36:17At that point, the break-in team goes into the conference room and started reading the
36:22scripted classified information.
36:25After 20 minutes, the Justice Department representative on the team says, we have got enough.
36:30We have espionage.
36:32And all of a sudden, the FBI guys jump out on Virginia Avenue, Jimmy the lock, jump in
36:37the Malibu ski, and off they go.
36:39And then we confronted Gusev on the street.
36:43When surrounded by the FBI, Gusev said, what is this all about?
36:47He immediately did what we thought he was going to do.
36:49He insisted.
36:50He was not going anywhere.
36:51He's a diplomat.
36:52It was an outrage.
36:54And finally, one of the agents on my squad mumbled, cuff him.
36:58They're taking him down to the Washington field office to continue with this conversation.
37:04When we brought him into our building, they take his belt off, his shoes off, all of his
37:08pocket litter, and put it through a metal detector.
37:11And then he's brought into the interview room with me and the two Russian-speaking agents.
37:16And all of his stuff is kind of dumped in the middle of the table.
37:20He slowly tucked his shirt in, put his belt on, and put his wallet away, and collected
37:25his spare change.
37:27And what began to materialize in the middle of the table was a smaller and smaller pile,
37:32until finally what was left was a pill, a white pill.
37:39Everybody at the table paused.
37:43We all looked at the middle of the table, and we all looked at him, and he's doing the
37:49same thing, looking up and looking sideways.
37:52I'm sure we all had the same thought.
37:54It's a poison pill.
37:55It's a cyanide pill.
37:57Casey got caught.
37:58And he's getting the vibe from the room, and he looks up and he says in Russian, I've been
38:04sick.
38:06Oh, that explains why you haven't come out in a week.
38:10And it gets translated, and he goes, uh, duh, duh.
38:14And it was a huge cut in tension.
38:17Certainly, we wanted to know everything he knew.
38:21But he, as a good intelligence officer, did not say a thing.
38:25A Russian diplomat was caught at his listening post in Washington, right outside the U.S.
38:30State Department.
38:31U.S. officials tell NBC News the secret listening device was hidden on the State Department's
38:35seventh floor, the same floor where the Secretary of State and her top deputies work.
38:41Because he is assigned to the Russian embassy, Gusev has diplomatic immunity and will simply
38:45be sent home without having to answer any questions.
38:48We had him thrown out of the country, what we call PNG, persona non grata, you are not
38:54welcome.
38:55This is a perfect replica of the actual device that was nailed into the wall in the conference
39:07room at State Department.
39:08We took it off the wall in the conference room on December 8th when he was interdicted
39:13on the street.
39:14For the time, the bug was very advanced.
39:17This is the receiver, and that's the transmitter.
39:21The signal would come into this, turn on the device, and then all the content would
39:27be beamed back out to his car to a much larger receiver.
39:31The batteries had a shelf life in tandem operation to go anywhere between 8 and 12 years.
39:37And the audio from this thing was phenomenal.
39:41In a pinhole opening, behind a curtain, behind a plant, you'd think it would be muffled.
39:46It's crystal clear.
39:49Never in the history of counterintelligence have we ever got the listening device and
39:54all the receiving equipment.
39:57We had captured bugs in the past numerous times, not the whole system.
40:04And for the countermeasures people, the NSA and the CIA, this is gold.
40:13This case is actually active today, and there is a debate in the community that the Russians
40:20did it all by themselves or that the Russians had a friendly hand assist them.
40:28Is it possible that a State Department employee helped them?
40:33Absolutely.
40:34Just because no one has been arrested as having been an accomplice or a co-conspirator does
40:40not mean that we don't have information that may or may not be used in the not-so-distant
40:48future.
40:49Shortly after this case, the non-escort policy for Russians was rescinded.
41:00To do what the Russian intelligence service had done was unheard of, a huge success for
41:07their service.
41:09And then for us to come along and do what we did, again, it's a huge success for our
41:15service.
41:16So, are there losers?
41:19Are there winners?
41:20It's hard to say.
41:23It was spies versus spies.
41:25I mean, normally these things involve one person against another person.
41:30This was, on our side, dozens of people against dozens of people on that side.
41:33It's really kind of unprecedented in its scope.
41:36They took the first round and we took the second, and, you know, it was game, set, match
41:40when we got goose-ed.
41:41Do we have bugs in the Russian embassy?
41:44I hope so.
41:45We do.
41:46Now, that's a question.
41:53That obviously I cannot discuss, but like you said, it's a gentleman's game.
42:00It's both sides going after each other.
42:06Yes.
42:07Yes.
42:08Yes.
42:09Yes.
42:10Yes.
42:11Yes.
42:12Yes.
42:13Yes.
42:14Yes.
42:15Yes.
42:16Yes.
42:17Yes.
42:18Yes.
42:19Yes.
42:20Yes.
42:21Yes.
42:22Yes.
42:23Yes.
42:24Yes.
42:25Yes.
42:26Yes.
42:27Yes.
42:28Yes.
42:29Yes.
42:30Yes.
42:31Yes.
42:32Yes.
42:33Yes.
42:34Yes.