Chasing Rogue Nukes after the Fall of the Soviet Union (442)

0:00Welcome to Cold War Conversations, the home of real stories of the Cold War.

0:05Susan Miller:So just leave it in your safe and don't get it wet. And I said, OK, but what would happen if it got wet? I mean, how bad could it be? And he goes, oh, how do I explain this to somebody who's not a nuclear scientist? He goes, OK, remember Hiroshima? And I'm like, yeah. And he goes, picture Hiroshima, but without the explosion, but the same amount of dead people. This is Cold War Conversations. If you're new here, you've come to the right place to listen to Cold War history. Please make sure you follow us in your podcast app so you don't miss future episodes. Susan Miller continues the story of her CIA career, recalling a harrowing experience of the 1991 US Embassy fire in Moscow.

0:51She recalls the unexpected humanity displayed by a KGB officer who helped save lives during the crisis. In Poland, a KGB walk-in claims to have microfiche containing the names of every spy the KGB was running overseas. And as CIA chief in Vilnius, Susan is confronted by another KGB walk-in, this time with a box of weapons-grade uranium. I'm delighted to welcome Susan Miller back to our Cold War conversation.

1:22Susan Miller:And this fire, was it quite a bad fire? It was really bad. It went into every floor of the embassy. So what happened was we had fire alarms. That embassy had burnt down once before, many years before I was there. And it was known all these Russian buildings are not built well. There's some cement in them, the floors and stuff like that and everything else. But it's just not good. So our embassy had a smaller fire some years before. And after that smaller fire, we have a fire marshal that is out at the embassy all the time. Because just, you know, working with the Russians, making sure that we have everything that we need.

2:05Susan Miller:And so we all had masks and stuff at our desks, you know, just in case. And we were told that if you're, you know, on this staircase, you'll go out the back. And we would practice this once in a while, you know, once every month or two or something like that. And so every time we would practice it, I was one of the ones that I'm going out the back. And all of us are standing there going, yeah, but there's like a 10 foot, 11 foot wall over. How do we get out of here if the building's on fire? And we mentioned that to the fire guy and he's like, oh no, it would be fine, you know, because, you know, the fire will go out the front windows and, you know, all the rest of stuff.

2:45Susan Miller:And then again, there was always these false alarms that were going off. So false alarm, false alarm. So I'm in the station. I'm not in my cover job, which is downstairs. I'm upstairs. And I'm in the station and the fire alarm had gone off earlier that day and it was a fake one. And then it went off again. And one of the guys in my office, I remember his name is Greg. And Greg's like, I'm so sick of this. I'm going to go out and I'm going to see what, I'm going to go tell what for to the fire guy because I have to write something and I can't do that. It's too loud. So he goes outside and he opens the door and he sees flames.

3:23Susan Miller:And he shuts it really quick. And he comes running in and he's like, it's real. And we're like, it's real. So we're shoving stuff into safes and locking things up so that if the Russians do come in. And we had enough doors we didn't think they'd be able to get in. But we had to do all of that. And then we literally ran by flames, literally, like flames coming in windows, smoke coming up. We all looked like, you know, a little charcoal. And so we get down and we're going down and we go out the back door. And a bunch of other people are on the other staircase where they go out the front door. So maybe half of us were in the back and the other half were in the front.

4:04Susan Miller:And so all of us in the back are like now standing there. It's the back of the building that is burning. this new elevator they were creating on the outside of the building you know um caught fire and we're standing there and it looks like it's going to fall on us the fire tower is going to fall on us and we can't get out because why there's no exit and so what happened was somebody went to and this is where i suddenly realized that soviet people are human beings and this is where I really believe that we hate the government but not the people in it. I don't hate Chinese people. I don't like the government, you know, that kind of thing.

4:50Susan Miller:So anyway, so we put a ladder up and, you know, some guy goes up and then they hook another ladder down, but going down, it's like, you know, there's this long wall and there's a slope on it and there's a Russian Millie man, a uniform KGB guy who guards the embassy. And he was out there and the guy on the top says, hey, does this reach the ground? And he's speaking Russian with him. And the guy down below says, no, it doesn't reach the ground, but I'll catch you guys. And when you get down to the bottom, just jump off and I'll catch you because it's on a slope. I don't want you guys to break a leg, you know, kind of thing.

5:32Susan Miller:And so, okay, fine. So people start going over and I get up there and I look down and I see this guy and I get down there and I ask him in Russia, what, you know, are you going to be okay if I just jump? And he goes, yeah, I'm fine. And I jumped down and he caught me. I didn't fall. I didn't break a leg and he moved me on and he kept doing that. And we all went down to the, um, first of all, so a few of us went out front to see what the fire looked like. And then we went down to the muster place at the, um, at the new building. And that guy stood there and got every single one of us that were trapped back there.

6:08Susan Miller:Not a single person died. Not a single person was injured. One fireman from the Russian side got smoke inhalation. That was it for this major, major fire. And so later on, the ambassador called him, his boss, somebody from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs up into some big fancy room at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and gives him a medal for saving all of us. It was really adorable. And that was also one of those times where it's like, okay, they're human. I can't hate them. I just hate their government. Were you there when President Reagan visited Moscow? Sure was. Oh, that was so much fun. The first thing he did is he came to the embassy to speak to us.

6:53Susan Miller:And I have a picture somewhere of, you know, somebody from the press office was taking pictures as he was there. And he came to speak to us because this is his Gorbachev, you know, tear down this wall thing that he wanted. I think his speech was after that or whatever. But that's what he was going to talk about is how can we get out of this morass and start spending money on other things than military sort of stuff. and so he came and um yeah he came and talked to us he took questions he was very personable I loved him because of course he was a Californian I didn't care what politics he had it was just that he was a Californian and um and so all of the above he went and our ambassador Matlock took him to see Gorbachev and to see all these other people and everything else and they started to work on things, et cetera.

7:49Susan Miller:And then it was not too long after that, that the Soviet Union actually did fall apart, where Russia became Russia and the other countries became their own individual countries. And so in a weird way, Reagan announcing Gorbachev to chair down that wall eventually got torn down, which is kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It sort of became the Commonwealth of independent states, I think. It was, yeah. Was what they described it. So when did you leave Moscow? I left there in 91 to go back to Washington to take Polish language because they wanted me to go do my second tour in Poland. Again, really focusing on the Russians, not the Poles.

8:41Susan Miller:And so I came back and I learned Polish, which is basically Russian, but spoken as if you're drunk. Do you know Russian at all? No, I don't. But I'm sure a lot of Polish listeners are going to be upset with that description. No, it's great because it's easier to learn. And I'm not going to, I love the Poles. That's where I met my husband and everything. And so bottom line is in Russian to go somewhere by car is payekat. In Polish it's payekash. And there's also false cognates. And once in a while you use a false cognate in a word because I have Russian and I accidentally use a Russian word and somebody goes.

9:21Susan Miller:And I'm like, what did I just say? You just called me an asshole. And I'm like, oh, I meant to say, isn't it lovely out, you know, or whatever. It was pretty funny. Brilliant. And so what's your role in Poland? So this is 92. I was also undercover. I was in the economic section undercover. But because the Russians knew me, I was able to do a few more things than just what I did before. Mike Sulik was my COS, my DCOS in Moscow. He was my COS in Warsaw. And he spoke Russian and I spoke Russian and nobody else in the station spoke Russian. And so when a walk-in would come, because now the Soviet Union is starting to fray a little bit and the Berlin Wall has fallen already and things are going southwise for the Soviet Union and the Poles are thrilled about it and everything else.

10:21Susan Miller:But, you know, because of that, we had a lot of walk-ins, people that would come to the embassy and say, I have information because they saw the Soviet Union was falling and they wanted to do something. And most of them were total idiots. You know, I mean, they had nothing, you know, they, I know a guy who, you know, and it doesn't work out. So then, and so Mike and I would take it, take it. If he was in and I wasn't, he would take it. If I was in, he wasn't, he would take it. If we're both in, we decide who wants to take this one day. And so this one day he comes to me and he says, look, there's a walk-in downstairs, Russian.

10:57Susan Miller:He says he's got this fabulous information. And he says, I just can't take it. I have to go do this XYZ thing with the ambassador upstairs. And I said, fine. And so I go downstairs and here's this guy and speaking in Russian. He says, hey, I have for you, he goes, I'm a former KGB officer and I'm from the first chief director, which is the guys that do all the spying around the world from embassies and things like that against us and others' enemies. And he says, I want something like $300 ,000, I think it was, or$400 ,000 in exchange for what I'm going to give you. And I'm like, now I'm rolling my eyes.

11:41Susan Miller:I'm like, great. This guy's an idiot. And then he says, I've got microfiche. And this microfiche has the name of every single spy the first chief director is running overseas in any free country, NATO, U.S., Canada, Japan, everybody. And I was like, okay, because you just don't know, right? And so I said, can I take this up? And so I leave, and I get the Marine Guard and I said, keep this guy here. Don't let him leave. And just in case, and I run upstairs to Mike and I say, Mike, let's go look at the microfiche reader. And I tell him what I told you. And so we stick it in and Mike and I are looking at him like, it looks legit.

12:30Susan Miller:It looks, it's definitely a bunch of names. You can see that you can, even one name we could cut, you know, that Mike's like, I think I might know that, that name is somebody from the Ministry of foreign affairs somewhere else, you know, and all the rest of the stuff. And so we're like, yeah, do you think it's real? And I said, well, it's real. And he goes, but don't you think that, because the Soviet Union has already been falling apart for a little while, don't you think we already have this somehow? We just don't know it, you know, we wouldn't know it necessarily. And he goes, yeah. And he goes, well, we'll just, we'll send it in, you know, of course, we'll send it in like normal.

13:06Susan Miller:We send it in right away. And so we did. And by right away, hey, by this time it's like afternoon. And so it's getting late in Washington. And Mike decided to nyact Washington, which means get somebody up to come in and read this thing. But what it said was, you know, no reason to nyact us back because this guy's coming back at such and such a time. But please immediately talk to us in the morning about what kind of extra requirements you have, or if we already have this information, what we can pay him, blah, blah, blah. And so Mike gets called in overnight and he's like, he gets called in and headquarters like, are you kidding me?

13:52Susan Miller:We've been waiting for this forever. We don't have any of this stuff, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we're so excited about this. And you're sure the guy's going to come? Yeah, the guy's going to come. Well, we'll give him a million dollars. Okay. Or whatever it was. I think it was a million or it was like 500. It was a large amount, whatever it was he wanted. We'll give it to him a hundred percent. And he's got the rest of them. Yes, he does. And so I come in and I go down and I sit and I talk to Mike and he tells me what happened. And he's like, we're never telling anybody that we thought this was a dangle.

14:27Susan Miller:And so I promised him I never would. And so I'm telling you. So anyway, long and short of it. It doesn't matter now, clearly. So anyway, it was really fun. And so, yeah, we met him and got him a lot of money. And so you can look at that time frame, all these people in NATO countries, including the US, getting wrapped up thanks to this guy. It was really cool. Wow, wow, it sounds a bit like the Matrokin archive Yeah, it really was, it's very similar to the Matrokin one, yeah Wow, wow, and was the KGB sort of still operational at this point? Because this is 92, so this is like a year and a bit after the fall of the Soviet Union I would have thought they're focused on other things We were still interested to see if this was real You know, for a couple of years, there was nothing else.

15:24Susan Miller:9-1-1 had not yet happened. And so we were still focused on Russia and China because we weren't sure what was going to happen. We had bits and pieces of information coming in from, you know, diplomatic reporting, our reporting NSA, where, you know, the, you know, the Soviet Union might be coming back or this might happen or X might happen or Y might happen. And it's one of the reasons that the U.S. government wanted to put a U.S. embassy in every single Soviet republic as soon as it fell apart. And all of our NATO allies did the same thing. It was a collaboration. And they did that because they wanted to make sure that the Russians understood this is a different country.

16:14Susan Miller:And so that was while I was in Warsaw that I was told that I was going to go be COS in Vilnius. And I was only a GS-12. That is like a clerk in a store, practically. and um but i spoke russian so they needed russian speakers to go and put and be our cos's at the time and and it was like one it was me and a communicator and my communicator had to go to the cos course in case i died so he would know how to do what i do with the laws and stuff i had to follow and then i had to learn comms in case he died and um or got you know incapacitated somehow and all this. And they did this all over the Soviet Union in the form of what we call the Icky Sands down below, and then the Baltics and Ukraine as well.

17:06Susan Miller:And so that's what we did. So you're talking there of the COS's chief of station. Chief of station, yeah. And what does that mean? What is a CIA chief of station? You're the head of all CIA operations in that country. You are the voice to the government. of that country, the people that you're allied with, you know, like the services, and you also represent CIA to our ambassador. And so normally, I was a GS-12. A GS-12 is like slightly above entry level because I'd gotten, you know, a couple of promotions from the first time, right? Slightly above entry level, but not yet managerial level. But they, when I went to Vilnius, they quickly gave me a 13, which is the first level of manager.

17:58Susan Miller:So I became a 13 there. How many female chiefs of station were there at that point? Zero. So you were the first female CIA chief of station? Well, no, I should say, let me back up. I was the first one ever in the Soviet East European area. There was another female CIA officer who did somewhere in Europe before me. And I think there might have been one other. So I wasn't the first COS ever, but I was one of the first group, again, because they didn't hire that many women at the time. Yeah. And what are you working on there in Vilnius? Because these last Russian troops or Soviet troops don't leave till the end of August, 93.

18:50Susan Miller:Yeah. So they left basically as I was arriving. They were leaving and we had a temporary person there. As soon as it opened up, there was somebody that just went there just to kind of start working with who are going to be the new people to talk to and things like that. And he'd been there just like a couple of months. He wasn't going to be permanent or anything. So he introduced me to the chief of their new Lithuanian intelligence service. And his name was Jurgis when I met him. And this guy was like leaving that day. So he was taking me around very quickly, you know, to meet these people. So we sit down with Yurgis.

19:34Susan Miller:And so I'm like, hi, you know, we're talking in Russian and, you know, all the rest of stuff. And he says, so tell me about yourself. And I said, well, I've just done a tour in Moscow. I just did one in Warsaw. I've been doing Russia. I've been in the CIA for X number of years and this and that. And he goes, good. And in Russian, he's like, good. Then you'll be my teacher. Because guess what? Until today, until like yesterday or the day before or whatever it was, you know, it was only like a week ago. He goes, I was a schoolteacher. He goes, I don't know what I'm doing. And that happened all around the Soviet new countries.

20:10Susan Miller:And so we had a very big training program that then headquarters set up, not me personally. They set up that they would get people and all of us had a native Russian speaker with us. Hi, this is Rhonda in Virginia. and I support Cold War conversations because I think the work that Ian is doing is critically important. I think it's vital to record the firsthand accounts of people who lived and experienced the Cold War because it illustrates history in a way that a book never can. So thank you so much for the podcast. It's my favorite podcast and I look forward to it every week. to be like ronda and help to preserve these incredible stories of the cold war as a monthly or annual supporter you'll be able to listen ad free you'll become one of our community get the sought after cold war conversations drinks coaster as a thank you and you'll bask in the warm glow of knowing that you're helping to preserve cold war history just go to cold coldwarconversations.com slash donate to find out more.

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21:47Susan Miller:And I had a native Russian speaker as one other guy. He was a contractor, but he was a really good guy. He was treated like a diplomat as far as his status and everything. And then I had a communicator. And that was my station. I had two people working for me. And we worked in a place that the Russians kept turning off the heat. And so we would often sit with our Russian hats on and coats inside the office, inside the embassy. And country team, you've heard about country team meetings. That's what the ambassador holds like once a week, usually at every embassy. And so we'd have country team meetings, usually twice a week, because there was so much stuff going on there.

22:28Susan Miller:And so we'd have a country team meeting, the ambassador would say, well, the commies are trying to make a, you know, something, you know, go, you know, something, make a comeback in parliament. And we'd be going, ooh, ah, you know, kind of thing, all 13 of us. And then he'd turn to the next guy and he'd say, do you have anything to say, Mr. You know, political officer? No, I have nothing else to say today, sir. But I went to a restaurant last night and I didn't get food poisoning. And we're like, where is it? And there was no street signs because they toned down all these Soviet signs. So it's like, you go down by the burnt out this, and then you go right where the rubble is, and then left, and then you go down these stairs under this rubble building, and that's what you do.

23:13Susan Miller:And we'd be like, oh, this is great. So it was a really fun time to be there. The other thing they were really worried about at the time was loose nukes. And that word got out to the world, is that we were really worried about Russians or others, you know, a lot of the loose nukes could have been down in the different new countries in the south, you know, like Georgia or Azerbaijan or something like that. And so that was the big thing. And they were worried about the Iranians and, you know, loose nukes and all the rest of this stuff with terrorist groups by this time. And so we would be looking for that all the time.

23:54Susan Miller:And so we got trained, actually all of us COSs from these countries all of us young little 13s got went out to Vienna got trained on what we needed to look for what was a real nuke what isn't and stuff like that for instance if it if they bring in some radioactive material and you test and you have a Geiger counter everybody everybody here is going to take a Geiger counter home so you take you keep that under your desk, you show your one other guy how to use it and take it down. And if it reads at this level, that is going to be something that's very radioactive, but has nothing to do with weapons.

24:35Susan Miller:If it's at this level, it's very low radiation, but that is going to be a, that's going to be a nuke, you know, something that could be used. And so sure enough, it was just me, like I said, me and this other guy, Walken comes in, we get a call. Brian goes downstairs to talk to him first. And the first thing he does is, if he's around, I make him go first, is he has the Geiger counter and he goes in and, okay, it's not reading. And then the guy will lift up the thing and it goes off and he goes, get out of here. And we had a protocol with the nuke guys in Lithuania where they would come and get this off and put it in a safe place, that sort of thing.

25:17Susan Miller:So that's how it would work. And so I did a lot of these too. You know, it's nothing, nothing, nothing. Then one day I go down and I'm like, I was really busy. I was kind of grumpy that I had to go down because my, the communicator was off doing something else. I was like, I'll go down. And so I go in and I, you know, do the whole gig and I look in and I see this, this lead container, just like the picture showed that I saw with a lid and some Soviet, you know, some Russian Cyrillic markings on it that were the correct Cyrillic. And I was like, huh. And I go in and I talk to this guy and I say, so who are you?

25:54Susan Miller:And he goes, well, I'm a former KGB officer and I have fallen in with a group of, you know, basically a bunch of, you know, a clan of other former KGB officers. and we saw that you're paying for people to get loose nukes off and I have highly enriched uranium in this thing and I said well where did you get it and he said I got it in Ukraine and he said and people were selling it you know that that's how they were doing I'm like oh that's bad kind of thing and so he comes up through Belarus and he's like he has this and he has it with me. And so I take off the lid and sure enough, it looks right.

26:36Susan Miller:It has the foam around it. It's got another lead thing inside and then another lead thing inside that thing. And I'm like, huh. And so I pull up the littlest one and I take it out and I lift it and it reads at the right radiation level. And I close it down and I say this guy, I tell this guy, you sit here. I am taking all of this upstairs. I'm going to keep it. And are you okay with that? And he's like, I'm fine with that. And he says, and I will bring the others in as I get them. And I said, fine, but you just stay here now. I'm going to come back and talk to you. So I bring in, you know, the guy and I go upstairs and I call Mr.

27:16Susan Miller:Nuke guy. And Nuke guy in Vienna is like, immediately says, I'm on a plane. He was. So he comes and I said, so what I, he goes, how long was it going to take you to get here? He goes, well, I probably won't get there till tomorrow. And I said, what should I do with this until tomorrow? And he goes, oh, do you get any radiation around it when it's all closed up? No, just bring it up to your office and hang out there. I'm like, okay. And so I did. And there it is, me and my guy, Brian, with this highly rich uranium with us. Anyway, new guy comes and in the office, he opens it up. He looks, he goes, this looks good.

27:55Susan Miller:And then he briefly opens the thing. He looks at it, everything else. He closes it and he says, a hundred percent, this is it. He goes, I knew it when I got the readings, but I can see it because I can feel it. He had gloves to do it because you don't want to get it on you, of course. And he's like, this is it. And if he's got like five, eight more of these, whatever he said, he said, we need them all off. and I said okay that's great and I said so what should I do with this do I give this back to him he goes no no no just keep it here in your office and I said he goes there's no there's no problem with it you know you can see it's not radiation you know you can just kind of leave it in the corner of your office or maybe put it in your safe and then that way um you know nobody would see it when they come in to see you or something like because it was a one-room office that was all it was.