The Affable Psychopath

A History of Violence, Surveillance and a Lost Book

“The more it looked like a heart attack the better,” Oleg Kalugin stated of the KGB’s effort to develop an assassination weapon. The CIA had earlier tried to develop a similar device, but the KGB was close to perfecting theirs. The lab work was ready to be tested in the field. On August 28, 1978, Vladimir Kostov, a Bulgarian defector living in Paris, was standing on an escalator slowly making its way up to a Metro exit near the Arc de Triomphe. His back was pierced by a stinging sensation and he noticed a man running away afterwards carrying an umbrella. He became ill for two days, but recovered; the sweater he had been wearing was too thick for the pellet to enter far enough into his body. Kostov ended up surviving the attack.

Over a week later on September 7, the Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov was on his way to his job at the BBC in London. He also worked for the broadcasters Deutsche Welle and Radio Free Europe. As he neared a bus stop on the Waterloo Bridge, a crowd of people walked by as he waited and stared across the River Thames. A sharp pain entered the back of his right thigh. He spun around to look a man bending down to pick up an umbrella. The man muttered, “I’m sorry,” with a thick accent. A taxi arrived and within seconds the man got inside and left. The next day, Markov lay in a hospital bed as Dr. Bernard Riley attempted to discover what was wrong with him. “He was complaining of nausea and vomiting,” he recalled, “and was running a high temperature but it all looked like an ordinary fever.” By 10:40 am on September 11, Markov was dead. The autopsy revealed no foul play, but when a sample of his tissue that featured a puncture mark was sent to the U.K. government’s Porton Down laboratory, researchers in conjunction with the CIA discovered a small pellet with two holes visible only under a microscope. There was no trace of what poison had been used to kill Markov. When a similar sample was extracted from Kostov’s back, the analysts found a ricin pellet that was still intact. Researchers at Porton Down assessed that an ounce of ricin could potentially kill 90,000 people. It turned out that Markov in particular had angered Bulgaria’s dictator Todor Zhivkov, who requested the assistance of the KGB. “I had heard about Makov from my colleagues in Bulgarian intelligence,” KGB general Oleg Kalugin remembered. “He was a former close associate of Zhivkov’s who had turned against the Communists, fled to England, and was beaming back strong criticism of the regime to Bulgaria through his position with the Bulgarian radio service of the BBC…my colleagues there had several times mentioned what a nuisance Markov had become.” Kalugin described the research and testing effort which lasted a year and a half as a bumbling trial-and-error pathway “right out of the pages of the blackest comedy. But in the end, even the Soviets and the Bulgarians couldn’t screw it up: we got our man.”

Street Wise

In the summer of 1973, Frank Terpil entered the shop of Martin Kaiser, a surveillance expert who supplied devices to most of the national security community in the United States. Terpil's connections offered him the opportunity to expand his international client base. On his first visit, Terpil handed over a business card and purchased two telephone analyzers for his foreign clients looking for surveillance equipment. He showed Kaiser a small gun and bragged he could “take this baby through any airport security system in the world.” When Kaiser asked how, he laughed: “It’s made of ceramic and fires ceramic bullets. The magic of technology.” During his second visit, Terpil handed Kaiser a different business card and said he provided transmissions for military vehicles and old weapons systems to third world countries. Despite Terpil having left the CIA, Kaiser believed both of these companies to be domestic CIA front companies.

What impressed Kaiser the most about Terpil was his storytelling ability; whether the stories were true or not was always in question, however. Kaiser found him to be “a street-smart, funny guy with an iconoclastic sense of humor” and also a “gregarious, regular guy” who happened to be “a psychopath.” Here was a man who could spin a tale, make a profit, and in doing so cause violence in various parts of the world. Terpil had sold his first machine gun at the age of 15, was hired by the CIA in 1965, and was forced to resign by 1971 for running an illicit currency-exchange money-making scheme while stationed overseas in India. He gained a reputation for selling weapons, assassination devices, and surveillance equipment to dictators across the globe. Terpil told Kaiser a story of his experience supplying bombs to Libyan intelligence officers. The bombs happened to feature detonators attached to radio dial tuners and Terpil urged his clients not to turn on the radios for any reason. Briefly having left to speak to another Libyan intelligence officer, Terpil recalled: “I hadn’t walked more than a hundred yards, when BOOM—there was this tremendous explosion. There wasn’t enough left of the guy to fill a paper bag. I guess he just couldn’t resist playing that radio.”

Kaiser was shown a photo of Terpil arm-in-arm with Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, featuring both of them smiling at the camera. There was an accompanying photo showing them from behind, with both men holding .45 caliber handguns at each other’s backs. “What’s the message here?” Kaiser wondered. Terpil quipped: “There’s always a flip side to every story.” Before Terpil had joined the CIA, the Agency had tried to overthrow François Duvalier, Jean-Claude’s father and president of Haiti from 1957-1971, by sending “100 rifles and ammunition to one Haitian exile group,” according to a recently declassified 1963 White House briefing.

Kaiser and Terpil became good friends over the ensuing months as Terpil would consistently stop by Kaiser’s shop, sometimes to buy equipment and other times to simply talk about the latest technological advances in surveillance or bomb detection. They never discussed names of clients or what they were selling to them. Kaiser invited the Terpil family over for dinner one night and met his children and his wife, Marilyn, who said little while her husband regaled those present with stories of his early years in the CIA. Kaiser was puzzled by Marilyn carrying with her a silver spray can at all times during the visit. He could not decide if the can was a surveillance device or “simply a fancy can of mace.” Within a few years, Kaiser reported, “Terpil left his wife…for a young Filipino woman he met at a Bloomingdale’s cosmetics counter in suburban Washington.”

Cairo

Following Richard Nixon’s resignation as President in late summer 1974, Kaiser received a call from his contact at the CIA, Harry “Al” Montefusco, whose work for the Agency involved “foreign threat material acquisition, operational countermeasures and logistic situations, and high reliability information gathering sensors,” according to his obituary. Montefusco was looking for Kaiser to supply everything he had available to sell to Egypt in terms of devices to counter surveillance methods and train the Egyptians in their use, “but no bugging stuff.” Kaiser was thrilled at the opportunity and went to an Agency office in Crystal City, Virginia to sign a contract. “Mum’s the word, Marty,” Montefusco cautioned. “This is a sensitive deal.” A week before he was scheduled to leave for Cairo, Terpil stopped by his shop and seemed to know everything about the impending transaction. As if to demonstrate his ongoing Agency connections, he congratulated Kaiser on the work to train Anwar Sadat’s palace security forces and cited the exact dollar figure of the contract: $55,000 ($357,000 today). Terpil requested that Kaiser make changes to some of the equipment he was to bring to Egypt, but Kaiser insisted he had to keep to the contract terms.

Before heading to Cairo, Kaiser made a brief visit to British intelligence in London, where a group of officers dressed in military uniforms asked him a series of questions about radio-controlled car bombs. With Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombings taking place in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, the officials were interested in learning the most unlikely location for a bomb to be placed in a car. Kaiser replied that he did not know, but that the most logical place would be “under the dashboard, connected to the car antenna for maximum range.” The officers took detailed notes on legal pads and thanked Kaiser at the conclusion of the two-hour briefing.

It was November 1974 and Kaiser was taking his flight to Cairo with a brief layover scheduled to take place in Athens, Greece. Asleep on the plane, Kaiser was awakened by the sensation of the plane’s descent. The captain informed the passengers that the plane would now land on a Greek airbase in Thessaloniki. “Why is the flight being diverted?” Kaiser asked a flight attendant. “No need to worry,” she responded. Within a few minutes, the plane had landed and approximately a dozen men in black uniforms with balaclavas on their faces entered the plane carrying submachine guns. They walked slowly inside the plane, staring into the faces of the passengers, clearly looking for someone. Kaiser smiled as they passed, relieved that he was not their target. The captain returned to the intercom and apologized for the unexpected diversion. Athens was skipped as the next destination and the plane eventually landed as anticipated in Cairo the next morning.

Kaiser was impressed with the modernity of Cairo; he wrote admiringly of “the broad, European-style boulevards bursting with trucks, luxury cars and ox-drawn carts of merchants hawking their wares and pedestrians walking casually in front of traffic as if they owned the street.” As Kaiser journeyed to his hotel, he could not believe the size of the crowds and the black smoke that hung in the air, accompanied by a cacophony of horns, something one of his hosts referred to as the “Cairo symphony.” Arriving outside the hotel, Kaiser’s escort instructed someone at the front entrance to take his bag out of the trunk and place it on a hotel trolley. The bellhop did so and held out his hand for a tip; instead of offering him money, the escort slapped him across the face. “Why did you do that?” Kaiser demanded. The escort just shook his head. Kaiser thought he had entered an unfriendly environment until he happened upon Terpil inside the hotel. “What are you doing here?” Kaiser wondered, after the two shook hands. “I’m providing customer service, just like you,” Terpil replied. He introduced Kaiser to a man named Omar, who stood 6’5” tall and looked like an NFL linebacker. “He’ll be your contact while you’re here,” Terpil explained. “If you need me for anything, ask Omar to call me.” Omar nodded and remained silent. The trio took the elevator to Kaiser’s room and when they arrived, Terpil remarked, “All right, give him back his stuff.” Omar smiled and wordlessly handed Kaiser his own watch, keys, wallet, and belt. Kaiser was especially impressed with the magic act because he had carried it out “with the biggest hands I’d ever seen.” Terpil laughed as he left: “You take care, Marty. I’ll see you around.”

Kaiser’s job was to train President Sadat’s palace security officers in the countermeasure equipment he had shipped to the country, including a telephone analyzer. The Egyptians were interested in defeating Israeli phone taps. “Somehow I had a feeling that this was not the reason Kissinger included my services on Anwar Sadat’s negotiation wish list,” Kaiser thought. Kaiser was introduced briefly to Sadat, but he spent most of his time with Egyptian intelligence officers, who brought him to a giant warehouse containing a plethora of captured Israeli weapons and surveillance equipment. “Of course, all of the eavesdropping gear was made in the United States,” he remarked. Kaiser discovered their lack of expertise when they were amazed that a light beam could be used to eavesdrop on conversations. He constructed a crude version of a transmitter from a countermeasure kit he had supplied to them and he watched as they were enraptured by the light beam technology. The Israelis, he reported, had already been using that method of attack for over a decade and the Egyptians had been unaware of its existence.

Kaiser enjoyed the restaurants and entertainment of the city, despite there being a lack of alcohol, and was pleased to see “the most exotic belly dancers in town.” He ran into Terpil occasionally, but their interactions were brief. Nearly a week before his departure, Terpil invited him to dinner at a restaurant. The maître d’ inquired if Kaiser liked lamb chops. Kaiser said yes and a few minutes later he was shown a baby lamb on a leash. “How’s that?” the man asked. Kaiser looked at Terpil, who joked: “Well, Marty, at least you know it’s fresh,” followed by his unmistakable laughter. Terpil otherwise seemed subdued at the encounter and the two exchanged few words over the course of the meal. The two shook hands back at the hotel and Kaiser thanked him. Kaiser later heard that Terpil had secured further work in Lebanon and Libya, but he had the distinct feeling that he would never see him again.

Terpil had taught Kaiser a trick for determining if officials had examined his luggage, suggesting the placement of small threads in the collar of his shirts and other spots, making note of their location. Using this method, Kaiser believed that officials had in fact gone through his bag, where they would have found a can of tuna as well as a chain and a lock. Terpil somehow knew the contents of his luggage and wanted to know why Kaiser felt the need to pack these items. Kaiser explained that the tuna was in case he was unable to eat the local cuisine and the chain and lock were to secure his suitcase to his hotel bed: having never been to the Middle East, his “expectations were colored by the negative stereotypes of people from this part of the world.” Terpil laughed: “You really had them scratching their heads, Marty.”

A Lost Book

In the 1980s, Kaiser was fascinated at the prospect of reading a book about Terpil entitled Beyond the CIA. He scoured over twenty used-book websites attempting to find a copy, but had no luck. He learned that the book’s publication had been canceled in the mid-1980s with no explanation given. Did the CIA use its power to get the book pulled on grounds that it violated national security regarding the release of classified information? Kaiser wondered. The book’s contents have not seen the light of day or been written about publicly, until now.