by Jonathan Rickert
In the Foreign Service, as in most other professions, one seldom really knows the people one works with and what the future may hold for them. A few may be destined for fame or at least prominence, others for obscurity or worse.
Obscurity or Worse
For example, the (declared) CIA station chief when I was serving in Bucharest in the early 1990s, Harold James “Jim” Nicholson, later was convicted of spying for the Russians and imprisoned for about 26 years. Jim, whose previous experience had been exclusively in Asia and whose principal duty was to coordinate with his Romanian government counterparts, maintained a low profile within the embassy community, seldom speaking up at staff meetings or interacting with other embassy employees. Though he was taciturn, his wife was much less so, complaining often and bitterly to anyone who would listen about how much she hated living in Romania. The marital strains were obvious, and no one at post was surprised when the couple divorced soon after their transfer back to Washington. Jim moved on to Kuala Lumpur with the three children for his next overseas assignment, eventually becoming the highest-ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage.
Fame and Prominence
At the other end of the spectrum was then-Major Mike Hayden, who was the air attaché during the first year of my 1985-88 tour as deputy chief of mission at Embassy Sofia. He later rose to four-star rank in the Air Force and headed first the National Security Agency and then the CIA. Over the year that we served together at the embassy, Mike impressed me with his energy, aggressiveness, and dedication. A go-getter, he was frequently on the road to the far-flung corners of Bulgaria. Also notable was his mastery of the Bulgarian language, obviously acquired through discipline and hard work, and his extensive use of it in his work.
Sneaking and Peeking
Once, he invited me to join him, in the dead of winter, for one of his car trips to engage in overt intelligence gathering on Bulgarian military targets. This was known in the trade as “sneaking and peeking”. Mike told me that it would be useful for me, as DCM, to see firsthand exactly what he was doing and how.
Under the host government’s rules at the time, official Americans were forbidden to stay overnight in any hotel away from Sofia without prior permission. Therefore, our attachés usually relied on day trips to carry out their responsibilities –- Bulgaria was small enough that one could drive across the whole country and back in a very long day.
Starting at an ungodly hour on a cold, overcast winter morning, four of us clambered into the defense attaché office’s (DAO) Volvo and headed toward the northeast corner of Bulgaria, on the opposite side of the country. Though I do not recall all of the locations that we “visited,” they included important Bulgarian air force bases at Balchik and Tolbukhin. Photographs were taken from a safe distance, and, surprisingly, we experienced no interference or other unpleasantness from Bulgarian security operatives, not a given for Mike and his attaché colleagues in what was still very communist Bulgaria. It was an eyeopener for me to watch DAO personnel carrying out some of their day-to-day duties.
The sky became increasingly threatening as the day progressed, and by the time we started back to Sofia that afternoon heavy, wet snow was falling and showed no signs of letting up. By nightfall, we were less than half way home, near Kazanluk, when the car broke down and could not be restarted. We tried to find a hotel where we could spend the night and ride out the storm but were rebuffed at every turn, on the basis of the aforementioned Bulgarian government rule.
Eventually, we were able to secure space on a late train headed for Sofia. All that I recall from the long trip home was sitting, shivering, in an ice-cold compartment with two heavily bundled North Koreans as companions. Assuming that I would be spending the day in a comfortably heated car, I had not dressed warmly enough and paid the price –- I do not think that I have ever felt colder for such an extended period, two Moscow winters notwithstanding. Drab, smoggy Sofia never looked better than when our train finally pulled into the station there early the next morning.
Achievements and Lessons Learned
Mike was promoted to lieutenant colonel not long thereafter and left Sofia in the summer of 1986. He went on to have a distinguished career as an intelligence officer in the Air Force, eventually attaining four-star rank. The culmination of his career was his service as director of the National Security Agency (1999-2005) and then of the Central Intelligence Agency (2006-2009). Although all of us who knew him at Embassy Sofia recognized him as an outstanding practitioner of his craft, none, I believe, foresaw the professional heights to which he ultimately would rise.
Mike and I crossed paths on several occasions after we both had left Sofia. Despite a number of decidedly unpleasant encounters with Bulgaria’s state security (Durzhavna Sigornost) and other such organs, he told me how much he enjoyed serving there, a view that he later reiterated in his book, Playing to the Edge. In it he writes that “until I got to Langley, that attaché position was the best job I ever had.” He cited the value of “the challenge and the importance of learning a second language and culture”. . . and “the absolute value of just being there.” He added that he also “got some valuable exposure to collecting intelligence on the ground in a hostile environment.”
Once, we reminisced about our ill-fated car excursion. I asked him what, if anything, he had learned from that experience. He paused for a moment and then responded laconically that the main lesson was always to check the weather forecast before taking off on an all-day car trip.
Retired Senior Foreign Service officer Jonathan B. Rickert spent over 35 years of his career in London, Moscow, Vienna, Port of Spain, Sofia, and Bucharest (twice), as well as in Washington. His last two overseas assignments were as deputy chief of mission in Bulgaria and Romania. Mr. Rickert holds a B.A. degree in history from Princeton University and an M.A. in international relations from George Washington University.