THE SPYMASTER OF MONTE CARLO: 29) NATIONAL INSECURITY
A Throwback Thursday Memoir of Intrigue & Lunacy
October 2005
On October 19th, I sat down to a working lunch with Prince Albert, one-on-one, at the Palace—shirtsleeves, tie-less, relaxed.
I conveyed details of my recent meetings in Paris with DST chief Pierre de Bousquet and Customs Intelligence chief Jean-Michel Pillon.
The prince seemed pleased with both outcomes.
Then I briefed him on what we’d found on Dan Fischer/Francu (bad news, bad guy), as previously detailed in this serial.
Albert green-lighted Operation Scribe, which would endeavor to get word out to Monaco’s bad actors that the prince meant business: a media campaign designed to rid Monaco of undesirables by getting them to understand they were no longer welcome.
Albert gave me Jean-Luc Allavena’s cell number and instructed me to brief him before he assumed his chef de cabinet duties.
On October 20th, I introduced myself by phone to Jean-Luc Allavena, who was expecting my call. We agreed to meet at M-Base on the afternoon of November 1st.
Then I flew to Washington and sat down in a conference room at the McLean Hilton with my liaison partners from CIA.
They brought me up to date on matters involving our mutual interests and objectives.
On the subject of secure databases, one bright CIA officer reminded me that “Feliks Dzerzhinsky’s database was a series of leather notebooks—and he built the most successful intelligence organization in history.” (The KGB.)
I, too, am a devotee of leather journals. In the course of over five years as spymaster to the prince, I journalized every meeting, phone call and briefing with Albert, plus contact with all assets and liaison partners.
Phil R joined us near the end of our marathon four-hour session.
Phil requested we open an account at Nat West Bank on Guernsey, a Channel Island, to receive CIA funding for the expense of operations and security that related to our relationship.
From this meeting, I went straight to Café Milano in Georgetown to join the ex-CIA crowd for lunch: Bill Murray and Tyler Drumheller, joined by Mike Sulick, who would soon be called back from retirement to become deputy director for operations.
They allowed me to pick their brains for liaison contacts at foreign intelligence services of interest to us. I took the opportunity to invite them to a party at M-Base in honor of Prince Albert’s enthronement on November 18th.
My next round of official-dumb, next day, was with my old friends from the FBI: Special Supervisory Agent Charles McGonigal and a Special Agent from their LA field office.
We met mid-morning at The Daily Grill in Georgetown.
One year had passed. The paperwork they needed for permission to talk to me had finally been processed and signed by the U.S. Attorney General. (They had, of course, been talking to me all along.)
Now they could "officially" talk to me.
That was the good news.
But there was some bad news as well: A new “blanket policy” necessitated that I submit to a polygraph examination as a condition to having any further contact with FBI agents.
“We’ve been through this,” I said. “I do intelligence work for Prince Albert of Monaco. I’m not applying to the FBI for a job. Nor do I wish to be an asset for the FBI. I only wish to provide the FBI with intelligence, on the prince’s behalf, about U.S. citizens who are committing crimes.”
“We understand that,” said McGonigal. “But we can no longer have any contact with you—nor can anyone else from the Bureau—unless you take a polygraph examination, as part of our new blanket policy.”
“You mean I’m not allowed to report a crime to the FBI?” I asked.
McGonigal shrugged. That’s what he meant.
“Yet,” I said, “I can phone the FBI’s new hotline, report a spy, and if you catch him I’m entitled to a hefty reward.”
“You could do that.” McGonigal shifted with discomfort.
“Or I could give the intelligence I’ve got to a United States Senator on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and he can pass it directly to the FBI Director.”
“Yes, I suppose you could do that too,” said McGonigal.
“So why the hell should I take a polygraph examination?”
“That’s your choice.” McGonigal gulped. “But our instructions are, we’re not allowed to have any further contact with you unless you do that.”
“Part of your ‘blanket policy’?” I said.
“Exactly.”
“So if I, or anyone else, hear there’s going to be a bank robbery across the street tomorrow, we’re not allowed to report it to the FBI because we haven’t taken polygraph tests?”
Both Bureau-crats squirmed.
Then, against their own new rule, they told me the latest on their investigation of MING: He had been keeping a low profile in Malibu and seemed very spooked.
They said they were “around the corner—10 to 12 weeks” from closing their counterintelligence investigation. Due to MING’s financial irregularities, McGonigal intended to transfer the case to the Internal Revenue Service.
Part of the problem, they said, was that they’d requested information on MING and Pastor International from Monaco through official channels and “it never came.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s why Prince Albert asked me to create an unofficial intelligence service.”
With regard to MING’s presence near PFIAB meetings, the FBI discovered that MING, when still serving in the USAF, had been a “chart-flipper” at PFIAB for a general.
My new theory, which I didn’t bother to tell the FBI, was that the Russians had blackmailed MING to report on PFIAB and, consequently, he was just going through the motions, fudging, and possibly fabricating "intelligence" to appease them.
Finally, McGonigal asked if I had ever signed a confidentiality agreement during the nearly ten years I spent operating undercover for FBI Counterintelligence.
(They had checked their files and could not find one.)
No, I replied, I had not.
McGonigal produced a two-page agreement titled Non-Disclosure of Sensitive Information.
“Would you mind signing one now?” he asked.
I wanted to retain this document to demonstrate it had been presented to me and gone unsigned—so I replied, “I don’t sign anything without running it past a lawyer—may I take this with me?”
A brief reflection:
Here we were, trying to help the Bureau identify criminals (as we had from the beginning) while seeking nothing in return, and in return these Bureau-crats spewed nonsense, lost in a funk over my past association with them; in a quandary over their lack of leverage to inflict a polygraph upon me.
National Insecurity.
And CIA?
Thus far, despite assistance promised at the very top (the so-called Goss Doctrine to protect Monaco), we continued to endure little more than time-wasting lip service (from LIPS) and empty promises of more to come (from Langley).
While still in Washington, as part of Operation Scribe I met with Peter Eisler, a special assignment reporter for USA Today who had been recommended to me.
Eisler listened to my pitch for a story on Prince Albert flexing his muscle in Monaco and referred me to their paper’s new London-based foreign correspondent, Jeff Stinson, who would be handling all reporting from Europe.
Back in London, I instructed my deputy to travel to Guernsey to open an account at Nat West Bank, as CIA's Phil R requested
And I connected to Jeff Stinson of USA Today to get the ball rolling on Operation Scribe.