Viktor Cherkashin

His slate-gray eyes and granite face give Viktor Cherkashin the drained, slightly menacing look of a long Russian winter. When he speaks, it is in controlled bursts that never seem to betray him. He projects the intimidating aura of a man who would feel at home in a Las Vegas casino, running the cards. In fact, Viktor Cherkashin spent his life playing a game with infinitely higher stakes. He was a spy--an exceptionally good one.

His slate-gray eyes and granite face give Viktor Cherkashin the drained, slightly menacing look of a long Russian winter. When he speaks, it is in controlled bursts that never seem to betray him. He projects the intimidating aura of a man who would feel at home in a Las Vegas casino, running the cards. In fact, Viktor Cherkashin spent his life playing a game with infinitely higher stakes. He was a spy--an exceptionally good one.

The original Soviet handler of confessed spy Aldrich H. Ames is quoted in a new book as saying Ames turned over valuable information from the beginning of his spying, rather than duping the Soviets at the start with worthless data as Ames has claimed.

In Howard Rosenberg's Dec. 21 column ("Spy the Flaws as '60 Minutes' Tries to Peer Into the Mind of a Mole"), he asked the question: "How were [Norman] Mailer and [Lawrence] Schiller able to gain access to [Robert] Hanssen's mind...?" "60 Minutes" was provided with that answer; however the response did not make the final cut. Here is a complete answer. Interviews conducted by Mailer and myself began in March 2001 and are still going on as I finish the book that will be published in April 2002.

A mole is a deep-penetration agent so called because he burrows deep into the fabric of Western imperialism . . . --British agent Ricky Tarr in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" by John le Carre * In 1985, CIA man Aldrich H. Ames entered the Soviet Embassy in Washington offering to go on the KGB payroll. Nine years later, he entered the federal penitentiary in Allenwood, Pa., for life. Now comes a movie explaining how he got there.

When Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, the Kremlin's top spy for almost two decades, died in Moscow 10 days ago, little notice was taken in the U.S. media. That wasn't surprising because the Soviet apparatchik-turned-spymaster was hardly a household name. But in the CIA and the FBI, close attention was paid. It was Kryuchkov who, first as head of the KGB's First Chief Directorate and then as chief of the spy agency, presided over the worst damage ever done to U.S.

Dear Mr. Cherkashin: Soon, I will send a box of documents to Mr. Degtyar. They are from certain of the most sensitive and highly compartmented projects of the U.S. Intelligence Community. All are originals to aid in verifying their authenticity. . . . As a collection they point to me. I trust that an officer of your experience will handle them appropriately. * With this October 1985 letter to the KGB foreign counterintelligence chief at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C.

As if out of nowhere, on a fall day 15 years ago, came a letter to a Soviet KGB agent. The writer, identifying himself simply as "B," was promising to send a box of documents from "the most sensitive and highly compartmented projects of the U.S. intelligence community." For his services, "B" wanted $100,000. Thus began, according to his supervisors, the eventual undoing of FBI Agent Robert Philip Hanssen.

Near the end, Robert Philip Hanssen descended into a madness of his own making. Caution gone, he prowled the darkness of a neighborhood park with a penlight searching for a signal that wasn't there. A lumbering figure, he waved his arms and seemed to shout at the sky. "I have come about as close as I ever want to come to sacrificing myself to help you and I get silence. I hate silence," he had complained a few months earlier when communications with his Russian handlers had lapsed.