In CIA lore, a mysterious Moscow double agent known as ‘The Fourth Man’ is believed to have embedded himself in the Agency back in the ‘80s and has remained undercover to this day. If the suspicions are correct, the Russian spy appears to have gotten away with it. No one has been arrested. No one has been charged. The investigation is far from over, however.
“The evidence says it's somebody who's been at headquarters. It's somebody who was head of USSR operations. It's somebody who is counterintelligence,” former CIA case officer Robert Baer tells the SPYSCAPE True Spies podcast.
There have been lingering questions about a prominent CIA figure, but nothing that can be pinned definitively on the now-retired officer.
In CIA lore, a mysterious Moscow double agent known as ‘The Fourth Man’ is believed to have embedded himself in the Agency back in the ‘80s and has remained undercover to this day. If the suspicions are correct, the Russian spy appears to have gotten away with it. No one has been arrested. No one has been charged. The investigation is far from over, however.
“The evidence says it's somebody who's been at headquarters. It's somebody who was head of USSR operations. It's somebody who is counterintelligence,” former CIA case officer Robert Baer tells the SPYSCAPE True Spies podcast.
There have been lingering questions about a prominent CIA figure, but nothing that can be pinned definitively on the now-retired officer.
For a time, Baer’s job was to find ‘The Fourth Man’ - a role that led him to bypass bureaucratic red tape and made Baer persona non grata among colleagues who didn’t want to get tainted by the controversy. No matter. Baer is used to ruffling feathers and doing things his way.
You may have already heard about Bob Baer, particularly if you’ve seen the film Syriana (2005) starring George Clooney as a disillusioned spy or if you've read Baer’s 2003 memoir See No Evil. Syriana is loosely based on Baer’s book so Clooney spent a lot of time studying Bob while preparing for the film. There were many layers for Clooney to unpack. Baer had spent more than 20 years in the Agency, much of it posted overseas.
“He more or less plays me - sort of a bedraggled spy who meets a bad end,” Baer said. “I haven't met a bad end yet, but you never know.”
George Clooney studied Bob Baer for his role as a CIA Spy in Syriana
The CIA/FBI nest of spies
The CIA hunt for The Fourth Man was so secretive that notes couldn’t even be recorded on the Agency’s computer network. Leads, dates, and other information were written on index cards to ensure there was no electronic spying. The working environment was one of paranoia - understandably so. The CIA and FBI had already been rocked by the arrest of three double agents.
Edward Lee Howard (1951-2002) was a CIA case officer who defected to the Soviet Union and somehow broke his neck in Moscow, according to Baer’s latest book, The Fourth Man.
Aldrich ‘Rick’ Ames (born 1941) was a counterintelligence officer and CIA-KGB double agent who spied for the Russians for more than a decade. Ames, convicted of espionage in 1994, was sentenced to life without parole in Indiana.
Robert Hanssen (born 1944) was an ex-FBI double agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services from 1979 to 2001. Bob Hanssen has been described as ‘possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US history’. He was sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences without parole in Colorado.
But what about The Fourth Man?
Edward Lee Howard (left), Rick Ames, and Robert Hanssen (right)
The Missing Fourth Man
The chief suspect worked on the seventh floor of the CIA offices in Langley, Virginia, where the top brass sat. Exposing him would be a coup, but even if the initial investigators unearthed a KGB mole, the CIA would hardly have been celebrated for their success.
Many years after the initial investigation was closed down for lack of evidence, the CIA was still asking questions. They wanted Baer, now retired, to look into it afresh and Baer had many of his own questions: “Why has it been the longest-running espionage case in American history? It's essentially been open since 1994. And as we speak, I believe it's still going on. I mean, don't you find that a mystery? Don't you find that curious?”
Find out more and hear Bob Baer’s inside story exclusively in True Spies' podcast: The Fourth Man.
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