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short period the two branches merged, with Jeanne as the chief. I became her Soviet section chief.
    The mid-1970s to 1980 were busy times for everyone in the Soviet CI Group. (The following are some highlights of selected operations only. Details on these and other cases appear in separate chapters.) Vacations were put on hold during the summer of 1976 as we readied Polyakov’s internal communications plan for his return from New Delhi to Moscow. KGB officers Piguzov and Yuzhin and GRU officers Filatov and Bokhan were abroad and productive. Gus Hathaway met with FBI source Kulak in New York to prepare him for turnover to, and internal contact with, the CIA in Moscow. As with Polyakov, Kulak provided high-level intelligence upon his return to the Soviet Union. Viktor Sheymov, a communications specialist of the KGB’s Eighth Chief Directorate, volunteered while on an official trip to Warsaw. There was the successful exfiltration of Sheymov and his family from Moscow and the attempted exfiltration of Kulak from Moscow.
    In 1981 after fourteen years in Soviet CI operations I left on a two-year rotation to the Directorate’s Career Management Staff (CMS). While a number of interesting cases remained, the excitement was gone for me. We had lost contact with Polyakov. A year earlier, he left New Delhi on what we and he assumed would be a short trip to Moscow. He did not return. I waited for a year, hoping he would reappear in the West orre-establish contact with us in Moscow, but there was silence. The final impetus for my departure occurred during my participation in a debriefing of a junior-level GRU defector. Thanks to Polyakov I knew more about the defector’s organization and modus operandi than he. Time to move on.
    I was as ill prepared for my new position in the CMS as head of the secretarial/clerical panel as I had been for my initial job in SE Division. However, the change was good for me and what a change it was from the world of Soviet spies and intrigue to secretarial-clerical personnel management. The responsibilities of the new position were to balance the needs and interests of the employee with those of the operating divisions and the directorate. Expectedly, conflict was inevitable and gray areas abounded, although a satisfactory resolution was usually possible. Days were filled with career counseling, promotion panels, irate division chiefs, directorate politics, and egos galore. Despite the times of discord it was one of the most rewarding jobs I ever held.
    In early 1983 my rotational assignment to the CMS was coming to an end. I preferred to return to SE Division—however, not to the CI Group as the division strongly suggested. I wanted a managerial position in SE external operations. This was the front line of CIA operational activity against the Soviet and East European target, and with few exceptions, the closest a person at headquarters could get to field operations. These jobs were staffed by experienced case officers who had served several tours abroad.
    SE Division management reacted negatively to my request. I was an analyst, not a case officer, and had spent only five weeks overseas in a support role. I had neither the knowledge nor the credibility to advise field case officers on how to run their Soviet and East European cases.
    Part of management’s assessment was correct. I would have to establish my credibility. Part was not. During most of my thirteen years in SE CI, the group handled all recruited Soviet intelligence officers abroad, directing the field station on every aspect of its case. That work drew some of the Division’s top case officers between their field assignments. Just as I had learned about the KGB and GRU from many of its senior officers, my CIA instructors in field operations were some of the best—Paul D, Ben Pepper, Don Vogel, Burton Gerber, Gus Hathaway, Walter Lomac, Ruth Ellen Thomas, Cynthia Hausmann, Dick Stolz, Serge Karpovich, andmany more.