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required psychological testing and an interview with a senior DO officer on the review board. While thankful for the division’s recognition and support, I silently thought that it was about time a wrong was corrected.
    The process went smoothly until the interview. The senior officer noted that I had recently married a non-Agency employee. He then asked when I planned to get pregnant, explaining that motherhood would endmy career since I would be required to stay at home and raise the children. Taken aback by the inappropriateness of such a question, I responded by inquiring as to his plans for additional children. The interview ended without further comment by either of us, along with any hope I might have had for professionalization. Fortunately for me and certainly to my amazement, several days later the division notified me that the directorate had granted me professional status. I was officially a home-based SE Division officer. I never found out who within the division pulled the strings after my disastrous interview, but was then and forever remain grateful.
    For the next eleven years I stayed in the Counterintelligence Group of SE Division, holding various positions and titles. This was a conscious decision on my part despite attempts by well-meaning personnel officers for me to pursue other “career-enhancing” assignments in the directorate. In the view of many in the Agency, the field of Soviet counterintelligence was arcane. It offered few opportunities to broaden one’s knowledge, and limited exposure to those who could assist with career advancement.
    That assessment could not have been further from the truth. One by one I was brought into the cases of many Soviet assets and assigned various operational support tasks. As with Polyakov, each source became a teacher. I was not only able to expand my knowledge of the GRU, but also to learn about the KGB. These assets included, but were not limited to, a number of KGB political, scientific and technical, counterintelligence, and communications officers as well as GRU officers worldwide serving under both civilian and military cover.
    Such schooling also afforded me the opportunity for official travel abroad and selection to several counterintelligence special projects: a four-month stint at FBI headquarters to review material on their source Aleksey Isidorovich Kulak in support of the official CIA position that he was a bona fide penetration of the KGB; an analysis of sensitive source leads on possible penetrations of the CIA; and five weeks in Kathmandu to assist in the handling of CIA source KGB officer Leonid Georgiyevich Poleshchuk. Professionally, my world was exciting, fast-paced, and challenging. The home front was equally rewarding as during this period we had two daughters, Kelly in 1972 and Tracy in 1976. Thankfully I did not listen to those who encouraged me to leave Soviet CI operations.
    In the late 1970s there was an organizational change in the CI Group that brought me into direct and daily contact with Jeanne, thus establishing a friendship and professional relationship that thirteen years later culminated in the Ames mole hunt. Specifically, in 1977 George Kalaris, then-Chief of SE Division, ordered Faith McCoy, a division expert on Soviet positive intelligence reports and requirements, and me to review and recommend a change in the division’s handling of counterintelligence reporting from its Soviet and East European sources. There was now an expanded audience in the U.S. intelligence community for this information, which previously had been disseminated primarily only to outside CI customers such as the FBI. Our proposal, which Kalaris adopted, was the formation of two branches in the CI Group—one to handle Soviet CI production and dissemination and one East European CI production and dissemination. Faith headed the new Soviet Branch and I became her deputy. Jeanne was named chief of the new East European branch. After a