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Episode 6: Crossing the Rubicon Transcript
One day, John Gibbons, a top lawyer in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco, received an urgent message at his desk.
A senior official at the Department of Justice would soon call from Washington on a secure line.
John Gibbons: In those days, we did not have the facilities in the US attorney's offices. So you had…
(00.30)
…to go down to the bureau, to speak on the funny telephone.
It was the spring of 1983. Gibbons had been at his perch in San Francisco for a few years, prosecuting high-profile corporate espionage and other criminal cases. But this was something new.
John Gibbons: But anyway, I went down to the bureau and took the call and, uh, he said, you know, you've, you've got a spy in your neighborhood or something.
(01.00)
A nuclear spy. Gibbons immediately understood the seriousness of the case.
John Gibbons: It was very clear what they had unearthed.
By the time the DOJ official called Gibbons, the Bureau had already identified Harper, and begun its surveillance. But there weren't any plans to arrest him. Not yet.
John Gibbons: So he talked a little bit about our friend, Mr. Harper, and, uh, what was beginning to gel…
(01.30)
…as far as the discussions with the bureau at his end.
At this point, James Harper’s gambit with Bill Dougherty, his defense lawyer, was already in full swing.
Under the pseudonym “Jay,” Harper had been feeding Dougherty information about his spying—and whatever other misconduct in Silicon Valley he could recall.
It was Harper’s bid to entice U.S. intelligence officials to use him as a double agent against the Soviet bloc…
(02.00)
…In exchange, Harper wanted immunity for his past crimes.
And a big pile of cash.
Justice Department officials never took “Jay’s” proposition seriously. They found it laughable.
John Gibbons: The communications with uh, Doherty, the guy in LA. Um, even to me made it worse, you know, that, uh, he was looking for a walk away.
Still, they needed to keep Doughtery’s mystery client talking.
(02.30)
But what Harper didn’t know was just how close U.S. officials were to swooping in on him.
If they could get one, key, witness into their custody first.
I’m Zach Dorfman.
From Project Brazen and PRX…
This is Spy Valley…
Episode 6: Crossing the Rubicon.
(03.00)
So… you’ve been hearing a lot from James Harper himself, and the FBI agents who hunted him down. But there are other important players in this story. Like the prosecutors tasked with putting Harper away.
And that job wasn’t as simple as you might think.
First, they had to learn Harper’s case inside and out, and quickly. So they reached out to the FBI spy hunters who knew it best.
Prosecutor John Gibbons, again:
(03.30)
John Gibbons: I went down to the Bureau, and went over what they had, and went over what was pointing at our man Harper. We had the surveillance up, we had the foreign counterintelligence wires up. And then looked towards: where is this gonna take us?
For Gibbons, the investigation had two paths. The first was finding out if, or where, Harper might be stashing more missile documents…
(04.00)
…If they could find that sort of evidence, it would be powerful in court.
The second was the trail of evidence Harper may have left across Europe. That, too, might prove useful at trial.
John Gibbons: We had to see what was going on with his contacts in the European sector. Whether it be, you know, Vienna or Poland or Switzerland. And, uh, I said, look, we gotta start focusing on that.
Harper, meanwhile…
(04.30)
…was still very much a free man. And, by then, his wife–and co-conspirator–Louise Schuler, was already at death’s door. Time was essential.
John Gibbons: Meanwhile, you know, our hairy little friend is out there, scurrying around, grabbing nuts, you know, and he is out there and Louise Schuler was about to pass away.
Bureau agents were getting skittish.
They wanted to arrest Harper, now. But Gibbons…
(05.00)
…wasn’t going to be rushed. If he and his co-prosecutors didn’t think they had enough evidence to indict, they wouldn’t let the Bureau pull the trigger.
At this point, Harper was just kind of frittering away his time in Silicon Valley. So it was mostly easy enough to keep track of him. But when the FBI learned that Harper was planning on traveling to Europe, a battle broke out between the Bureau and federal prosecutors.
On the one hand…
(05.30)
…if Harper crossed into the Eastern Bloc, who knows if he’d ever return?
But on the other, if investigators didn’t have enough evidence yet, why tip their hand and blow a high-profile spy case?
If Harper flew to Europe, federal agents could secretly search his luggage for any classified documents. And, besides, Harper’s movements abroad might lead to new evidence.
The clash—between the DOJ and the FBI—came to a head while Gibbons was visiting his wife’s…
(06.00)
…family in northern Virginia.
John Gibbons: I get a call that, you know, Harper wants to go overseas again and go to Europe, go to possibly Poland. But the Bureau didn't wanna let him go. They wanted to pop him.
Gibbons and the DOJ were under intense pressure. A high-level FBI official in Washington pushed for the Bureau to arrest Harper. Still, Gibbons wouldn’t back down.
John Gibbons: And the guy, who was a fellow in Washington at the time… Honestly, couldn't find his ass with both hands…
(06.30)
…I mean, he was a bureaucrat’s bureaucrat. That's probably how he got the job. And he was really pushing. So, I said, look, I'm telling you now do not arrest him. I will not give you authorization.
But Gibbons needed cover from a senior member of the Justice Department.
He went back to the person who entrusted the case to him in the first place. The DOJ’s top counterespionage guy, John Martin.
John Gibbons: Uh, and quick like a bunny. I called John Martin at home. And, uh, John listened to me…
(07.00)
…He said, I'll call you back in a little bit.
Gibbons: And he called me back in a little bit, and apparently had quite several strong conversations.
Martin had once been an FBI agent himself. And he got the Bureau to stand down.
John Gibbons: He knew what being an agent was all about. And he also knew what it was like to have a set of balls as a prosecutor and that’s why he was so, really really good at this job.
That settled it: if Harper took the trip to Europe…
(07.30)
…he wouldn’t be arrested.
At least - Not yet.
Meanwhile, Gibbons’ battle with the FBI had disrupted his trip to his in-laws’. But they were unusually understanding. You see, his father-in-law, Joe, was a decorated retired CIA officer.
John Gibbons: Just an incredible guy.
So when Gibbons was battling with the Bureau officials over the phone, his father-in-law…
(08.00)
… overheard the conversations. And he said that, back in the day, the CIA would have handled it very differently.
John Gibbons: <Laugh> Joe said, “Uh, you know, John, uh, I don't have any clearances anymore, obviously, but in the old days we probably would've let him take the trip. He might not have made it back.”
ZD: [Laughter]
John Gibbons: Would've been “fully debriefed”.
ZD: [Laughter embedded]
John Gibbons: So I said, well, it ain't gotta happen, you know.
(08.30)
This wasn’t the 1940s or 50s, and Harper was definitely not going to be “fully debriefed,” if you catch the drift.
By the fall of 1983, the Harper probe was in limbo. Even with Harper and Hugle under intensive FBI surveillance, there still wasn’t enough direct evidence to bring them to trial.
Unless, that is, prosecutors could get a witness. Someone who could corroborate…
(09.00)
…key aspects of Harper’s nuclear espionage from the Polish side.
Unless they could call on the CIA’s secret mole within Polish intelligence. Caribou.
Buck Farmer: Until he's actually here, we were not willing to go forward with the indictment and we wanted to talk to him. As a potential witness before that.
That’s Buck Farmer. He helped lead the Harper prosecution with John Gibbons.
Gibbons and Farmer…
(09.30)
…needed Caribou in the courtroom for Harper’s trial. As their star witness, only he could connect all the dots.
So if Harper was going to be prosecuted, Caribou had to defect. The CIA would have to secretly whisk him and his family out of Europe and onward to the United States.
After a stint in Warsaw, Caribou was posted in Stockholm, Sweden–a Western capital…
(10.00)
…So conditions were ripe.
Caribou, as it happens, had long been itching to start a new life. The timing was perfect.
Buck Farmer: Then we were told by the agency when he was expected to come out, he was gonna have some transportation set up for him.
Caribou had negotiated with the CIA about when he could escape–and what his payout would be once he was stateside.
For years, he had provided the U.S. with…
(10.30)
…key intelligence on a number of investigations–not just Harper’s.
Here’s the Bureau’s Bill Kinane:
Bill Kinane: He gave the FBI three or four cases. That wasn’t the only one.
Zach: That’s Caribou?
Bill: Yeah. [FADE]
Caribou was, in a few words, a big deal.
Now, however, it was time for him to come in from the cold. And he had one final job to do for the United States. Help prosecutors put James Harper away.
(11.00)
So the CIA helped Caribou and his family flee from Europe. To do that they had to maneuver around the watchful eye of his own Soviet-aligned intelligence service.
Buck Farmer: I remember that day when we knew he was supposed to arrive and he gets out safely and we were just kind of watching the phone, waiting for it to ring. And sure enough, you’re getting the call…
Farmer: They said, “He's made it. He's out.” Oh, thank God…
(11.30)
…Said, now we can go ahead.
Caribou was now stateside, protected by the CIA.
John Gibbons: They had yanked him out and yanked his family out, and they were somewhere outside of DC.
But Gibbons and Farmer needed to interview the Polish defector, to see if his testimony would stand up in court. So, the two prosecutors boarded a plane to Washington to meet with him.
Time was of the essence. But when it came to Caribou’s security…
(12.00)
…the CIA wasn’t taking any chances.
They kept changing the location for the meeting with prosecutors, in order to throw off potential surveillance.
Buck Farmer: It was typical CIA stuff. We're not gonna meet at the CIA headquarters. And the address is, and then a phone call comes into the FBI, says, sorry, we'll call you in an hour and tell you where [FADE] and then, okay, so an hour before we're gonna meet or 45 minutes before they call and say, okay, here's the address.
Interviewing Caribou was turning into an odyssey of its own.
John Gibbons: We had to, to put blindfolds on us and all this, which I, I understand…
(12.30)
…but I just thought it was kind of outta a Ludlum book or something and uh, a bad Ludlum book.
Robert Ludlum: you know, the Jason Bourne author?
Eventually, the prosecutors were whisked to an office in a gray, nondescript business park. They were led to a small, bare room. They closed the door. A U.S. official turned the radio on.
(13.00)
Minutes later, Caribou walked in, with a few CIA minders. One stood outside the door, as security.
And Caribou seemed nervous at first. So the two prosecutors tried to put him at ease.
John Gibbons: It took him a while to warm up on us and who we were.
They praised him effusively—told him he was an American hero—in order to coax him out of his shell. And they genuinely liked him.
Buck Farmer: Very straightforward, very polite.
(13.30)
John Gibbons: He was very, uh, measured, but very honest, very straightforward.
Caribou struck the two prosecutors as a solid witness. He could provide firsthand testimony on how Moscow coveted Harper’s stolen nuclear secrets.
John Gibbons: One of the things that, uh, I recall pretty distinctly was the way he described how quickly they had to get this stuff to the KGB. Uh, I mean really quickly, they were very obviously very interested in getting this.
(14.00)
But Caribou was scared.
Even though he and his family were now under the CIA’s protection, his safety wasn’t guaranteed.
John Gibbons: He said, look, I, I know what they’re capable of. I know what they’re capable of in this country. Uh, so I'm very, very concerned and I want you to know how concerned I am… You know, they're still pretty bad dudes and they do stuff and they, they kill people here. You know, I heard a few things from agents…
(14.30)
But with Caribou stateside, the CIA lobbied intensely for Harper’s arrest.
Buck Farmer: They wanted to tell us whatever they could to make sure we indicted. They wanted Harper punished. And they also wanted Hugle, but they reluctantly agreed we didn't have enough evidence yet. Maybe we get it from Harper.
Prosecutors agreed. They could see the path forward. With Caribou available as their star witness, Harper’s time…
(15.00)
…was up.
We’ll be back after the break.
AD BREAK
We’re back.
Early in the morning of October 15, 1983, James Harper woke up, put on his bathrobe, and read the newspaper over coffee.
By then, FBI agents had already encircled his…
(15.30)
…apartment.
He was still living in Louise Schuler’s old flat.
Harper, a car buff, had parked his canary yellow Ford Capri, and Blue Oldsmobile Cutlass, in the complex’s lot.
Bureau agents in unmarked cars watched the place from across the street. Other agents were stationed around the block. One group commandeered a nearby apartment from some college kids as a surveillance post.
Then…
(16.00)
…Bureau agents swarmed Harper’s apartment. Escape would have been impossible.
And the Silicon Valley nuclear spy surrendered without a fight.
When plainclothes FBI agents led Harper away… neighbors thought the agents were traveling real estate salesmen.
When they found out what Harper was accused of…
(16.30)
…nuclear espionage …shocked neighbors asked “Him? HIM?”
Yeah. Him.
The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour [Oct 18, 1983]: Big cloak-and-dagger story. James Harper had a million-dollar deal with Polish espionage agents. He also tried to turn himself in to the FBI with an offer to become an counterintelligence agent, but they arrested him instead and charged…
(17.00)
…him with selling secrets about the Minuteman missile to the Polish agents.
Harper’s indictment read like a Cold War spy thriller. The story of his arrest was huge news from coast to coast.
The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour [Oct 21, 1983]: The plot thickened some more today in the West Coast spy story, the one involving electronics expert James Harper, accused of selling missile secrets to Poland for $250,000. The documents Harper handed to Communist agents were extremely sensitive and may have compromised U.S. military capabilities…
(17.30)
…in an extraordinary way.
You need to understand the climate at the time. U.S.-Soviet tensions were reaching an apex.
America was gripped by spy fever. And Harper’s nuclear espionage upped the temperature.
Even Harper had been doing some spy-related reading of his own. When FBI agents searched his apartment and nearby storage locker, they found a book by an infamous CIA turncoat. A…
(18.00)
…magazine with a cover story about “The KGB in America.” An article about rampant tech theft in Silicon Valley.
James Harper was taking a crash course in espionage while he committed it.
Now in custody, a terrified Harper waited to hear from federal investigators about his fate.
But beneath the surface, all was not well with his prosecution. Because as soon as investigators…
(18.30)
…arrested Harper, the FBI and CIA began to walk back their commitment to put Caribou – the prosecution’s star witness – on the stand.
John Gibbons: <Laugh> The Bureau got a little, uh, antsy and so did the CIA, about him having to testify.
Buck Farmer: Contrary to what they told us at the beginning.
John Gibbons: And, after we met with the guy several times, me and Bucky, you know, how do you get around it? You know? A perfect, great witness.
(19.00)
Gibbons and Farmer traveled to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to force the issue.
John Gibbons: That was an argument we shouldn't have to have, but we had it.
They had an appointment with two agency bigwigs. One, a CIA lawyer and the other, a shadowy senior agency operative. They met in the latter man’s office.
He was clearly a powerful guy. A big corner office, glass windows. And a bar with shining decanters of golden scotch.
(19.30)
The prosecutors walked into the operative’s office at about 11 in the morning for their showdown.
“Gentlemen,” said the senior agency operative, “Would you like a drink?”
Caribou’s fate was now in the CIA’s hands.
John Gibbons: They were very, very opposed to this asset taking the witness stand.
The meeting quickly turned contentious. If Caribou took the stand, the CIA…
(20.00)
…wanted prosecutors to close the courtroom to the public. But that was a non-starter for Gibbons and Farmer. Transparency was key.
John Gibbons: They wanted to know, if we could block the courtroom and I said, well, you know, maybe we could do that in the Soviet Union or Russia. We don't do that. We can't do that.
So the CIA officials asked if the Polish defector could appear in disguise, or even behind a curtain, to shield his identity.
That wasn’t going to fly for Gibbons and Farmer, either…
(20.30)
…Harper was going to be on trial–in front of a jury. And that jury needed to be able to look the prosecution’s star witness in the eye, to judge him for themselves. The workarounds being floated by the CIA could endanger their case.
Buck Farmer: And we said, that's not gonna work. It's just not gonna be allowed.
John Gibbons: It's just, you know, like what are you kidding me? You know, what did they teach you at special agent school, about a trial? No, the guy gets, gets, you know, on the stand, takes his clothes off and tells…
(21.00)
…us what he’s gotta tell us. And that’s what I told them. And uh. They were shocked, shocked.
But the senior CIA operative wouldn’t relent. He emphasized Caribou’s past sacrifices for the U.S.government–and that the Polish defector had his family to think about.
Buck Farmer: I said, well, we understand, but this case depends on him being a witness. And we need him to come testify under those conditions. It's, it's due process of law.
(21.30)
They were at an impasse. And it became clear who had the upper hand. The CIA was not going to grant permission for Caribou to testify.
Prosecutors fumed that the CIA may have been playing the Justice Department the whole time.
The agency had pushed for an indictment of Harper. And it had got one. But now that the Silicon Valley engineer was in custody, it was balking at its prior commitments regarding Caribou.
(22.00)
John Gibbons: It was a problem.
The CIA had gotten what it wanted. The agency had fulfilled its obligation to a star source–helping Caribou and his family defect. And it had promised the moon to prosecutors to help force an American nuclear spy off the street.
But, now that Caribou was stateside, the CIA’s assurances to Gibbons and Farmer just… weren’t so ironclad.
(22.30)
From the agency’s perspective, allowing Caribou to testify would expose the Soviet Bloc spy and his work for the agency. Above all, the CIA wanted to remain in the shadows.
For the agency, this sort of paranoia was typical, a former senior Justice Department official told me. The CIA, he said, wanted to kill every case that even tangentially involved the agency…
(23.00)
…The CIA prioritized secrecy above all else, and had an almost “childish view” of prosecutions.
According to this former official, the CIA thought the FBI was trying to generate good PR for itself from the Harper case. And, the agency was angry at the Bureau for airing details about Caribou in its court filings–and took its revenge by stymying prosecutors.
But the Caribou issue wasn’t…
(23.30)
…all just about bureaucratic jockeying. The Polish spy’s personal safety was also at stake.
Caribou had told Gibbons how scared he was of Soviet bloc hit teams, even within the U.S.
Almost immediately, Warsaw realized that Caribou had defected.
The Poles knew that Caribou could compromise numerous undercover intelligence officers and operations. They wanted to shut him up, badly.
(24.00)
A Polish court sentenced him to death, in absentia. Warsaw’s spies even cased a home in rural New Jersey they thought Caribou might be hiding out in. But their hunt for Caribou turned up nothing.
Gibbons and Farmer left CIA headquarters in a bind. If Caribou couldn’t appear as a witness, they would need loads of other corroborating evidence to put Harper away.
They had one other option…
(24.30)
…prosecutors could lean on Harper himself.
Buck Farmer: We needed a confession. Otherwise we're gonna have a big battle with the CIA over this. We needed him to plead.
But how could they convince Harper?
They got a little luck with the federal judge assigned to the case: Sam Conti.
Gibbons: Judge Conti was a total gentleman on chambers, but he was a tough guy. You know he didn’t put up with a lot of crap.
Judge Conti was an old-school law-and-order guy…
(25.00)
…who did not take kindly to accused spies. He had two nicknames… “Slammin’ Sam” and “Hangin’ Sam” for what he did to defendants in his courtroom.
So when Harper was brought in for a hearing, Judge Conti was taking no prisoners. Literally. He asked Gibbons and Farmer why Harper wasn’t potentially subject to the death penalty for his crimes.
Harper was shook.
(25.30)
John Gibbons: I mean, he just about shit himself right there. I mean you could just see it.
The prosecutors told the judge that, due to a recent Supreme Court ruling, convicted spies were no longer eligible for lethal punishment.
John Gibbons: Judge Conti said, “What do you mean there's no death penalty?” He said, “Well, we'll see about that.”
So Judge Conti put the fear of god in Harper. Gibbons and Farmer, meanwhile, gave him the hard sell: cooperate, and you might get some…
(26.00)
…leniency. But plead “not guilty,” and make us go to trial? And we’ll hit you with everything we’ve got.
Buck Farmer: We made it clear to him that, look, if you get an attorney, we cannot talk to you. Whatever benefits you might be able to work out for yourself now, are not gonna be open to you if you have an attorney come in here. Your ass is grass. You’re dead. And we will uh, do a lot for you if you plead guilty in this thing, if you enter into a voluntary plea. If we have to go to trial…
(26.30)
…look out: life term after life term.
Harper didn’t need much time to think it through. He agreed to cooperate fully with federal investigators.
And so Harper began talking about everything. His deceased wife, Louise Schuler, and their nuclear spying scheme. About Hugle, and his shipments of prohibited hi-tech to the Soviet Bloc. About Harper’s own spying. And much more.
But the Silicon Valley engineer…
(27.00)
…still didn’t get off easy. In May 1984, Judge Conti sentenced Harper to life in prison–the maximum allowable sentence.
ARCHIVAL: [The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour]: A man who pleaded guilty last December to selling U.S. missile secrets to communist agents was sentenced to life in prison today. A California district judge branded James Durwood Harper, Jr. a traitor “who never expressed his regrets for his crimes.” The judge, Samuel Conti, said he would recommend that Harper, 49…
(27.30)
…never be paroled.
James Harper would be going away for a very, very long time.
Harper’s cooperation with prosecutors created a blast radius of its own.
He gave up his old friend Jack Stouffer. The guy who helped bury those stolen missile documents in the Sacramento Delta. Stouffer was indicted on tax evasion charges, but he never saw the inside of a prison…
(28.00)
…U.S. officials believed he jumped in his boat and sailed straight for Mexico. But it’s not clear he actually made it.
Here’s the FBI’s Don Ulrich:
Don Ulrich: He turned up missing. He may still be down in Zihuatanejo for all I know. It’s my recollection that it was pretty well established that he had met with an accident at sea. A fatality.
Penny Cook–Harper’s new wife, was also questioned intensively by the…
(28.30)
…FBI. But she faded out of sight. Cook did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this story.
Now, the big fish for U.S. officials was Bill Hugle. The FBI and CIA had wanted to nab Hugle long before they had even heard the name “James Harper.” Now, with Harper in custody, they thought they might have their shot.
Buck Farmer: We felt that Hugle was, you know, if anything…
(29.00)
…more of an important target than Harper was, if evidence justified it, he should be prosecuted. And the agencies, I believe, felt the same way. Hugle [INLAID WITH ZD MM] was a guy that should be prosecuted.
Buck Farmer never forgot what a CIA operative said to him about Hugle:
Buck Farmer: I remember a comment: “A person like that needs to be taken off the street.”
FBI agents searched Hugle’s…
(29.30)
…house in Silicon Valley. They scoured his finances. Prosecutors even explored an indictment with a grand jury.
But Hugle wasn’t Harper. If Harper was a one-man spying start-up … Hugle was a titan of the industry.
Here’s Don Ulrich again:
Don Ulrich: Hugle was far cagier than Harper. Hugle was no dummy. Harper made some stupid mistakes…
(30.00)
…that Bill Hugle didn’t.
ZD: Like what, like documenting everything?
Ulrich: Like going to Dougherty. That was, I mean… asinine!
And, much to their frustration, the DOJ had problems making charges stick.
If prosecutors could call Caribou as a witness, it might have also made the case against Hugle. But with the CIA stonewalling on Caribou, that was moot.
And with the Harper plea deal wrapped…
(30.30)
…Gibbons was planning on leaving his post in the U.S. attorney’s office.
He had a message for Don Ulrich:
Don Ulrich: John, before he left said, don't let ‘em drop this case. This was kind of his baby. Uh. However, [big sigh] both Buck and the deputy AG, neither one felt confident. They said it was—it's not prosecutable. All we have is Harper's word against Hugle.
(31.00)
The word of a convicted nuclear spy against that of a respected Silicon Valley bigwig.
Don Ulrich: So Bill Kinane and me, and Buck, and the deputy from Washington, met in Bill's office and we hashed it out. They were the prosecutors, uh, they felt they couldn't make the case. And I did not feel in a position to push it.
(31.30)
After the FBI raided his home, Hugle was spooked. He left the U.S. entirely, seeking safe harbor in Switzerland.
The FBI made sure to brief their Swiss counterparts on Hugle’s schemes. And while he was spared arrest, Hugle lost his perch in Silicon Valley. He was forced into an exile of sorts.
But Hugle still managed to persevere in the tech industry. He founded new semiconductor-related…
(32.00)
…start-ups, trying to strike gold. And, somehow, despite it all, he eventually returned to live in the United States.
Hugle died at age 76, at his home in Arizona, in 2003. He was never prosecuted.
As for James Harper? He served over 30…
(32.30)
…years in federal penitentiary. Harper was paroled in 2016.
When the two of us began our correspondence in 2019, Harper was marooned in northwest Arkansas. He was an old man in poor health… a world away from his hometown of San Francisco.
James Harper: It's Arkansas, 2000 miles away from where I grew up. And I miss California something fierce.
Harper and I spoke frequently for a while. He was bracingly open and…
(33.00)
…eager.
But he would also swing noticeably from excitement to exhaustion.
James Harper: One of my problems is, is I go manic so quickly. I'll, I'll get triggered by, um, by an input, uh, on, on something that, uh, is interesting and I just go balls out on it. The next thing I know the next thing I know I'm pooped.
So, when Harper got tired, we would end our calls, and pick up a few days later.
But…
(33.30)
…then he went radio silent for a while.
Until the summer of 2021, when he called me out of the blue.
HARPER: Yeah hi Zach, it’s uh almost 8 o’clock here Saturday night here, in Arkansas—uh, tornado valley <laugh> [FADE] um I’ve, I’ve uh been working on…
Harper, the eternal optimist, told me he was…
(34.00)
…planning to travel home to California to reunite with his long-estranged family there. He wanted to continue our interviews in person...
That was the last time we spoke.
James Durwood Harper died in August 2022. Ironically, the ex-spy was granted a soldier’s burial. He was laid to rest in a military cemetery in Arkansas because of his brief stint as an army engineer…
(34.30)
…a half century earlier.
Harper never made that final trip back to California.
There was so much I wish I had been able to ask Harper. Did he regret betraying his country? Did he feel any remorse? What, if anything, would he go back and…
(35.00)
…change about his decisions?
But what he did reveal—even about the tiny details of his life—has continued to shock me. And has had me thinking about this story—and this experience, being connected to a person like Harper—in a new light.
Why James Harper decided to speak with me, I’ll never entirely know. But I can venture a guess.
James Harper: I get wound up and I, you know…
(35.30)
…I wanna talk about it. I want, you know, you, you like to talk with somebody that wants to hear about your life.
Sometimes, maybe even especially, somebody willing to listen about your life as a drunk, as a gambler, as a cheat, as a thief—as a man who betrayed his own country’s nuclear secrets for what, in the grand scheme of things, was a paltry sum.
Sometimes…
(36.00)
…people even want their ill deeds to grant them a form of immortality. A legacy. Fallout be damned.
During Harper’s three-decades in prison, the world passed him by. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union collapsed. Poland went from an Eastern Bloc nemesis to one of America’s closest allies…
(36.30)
…in Europe.
And many heralded the dawning of a new era in U.S-Russia relations. Harper’s nuclear espionage appeared increasingly anachronistic, a vestige of a dim and distant past.
Then… a former KGB officer took over Russia. Vladmir Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule plunged relations between the two nuclear superpowers ever lower.
(37.00)
And that meant a new shadow war between Washington and Moscow’s intelligence operatives.
Suddenly, the sort of spying committed by James Harper was very much back in vogue.
Moscow would love to have a new James Harper today. As would Washington, for his Russian equivalent.
Especially right now…
…as Russia wages a war of imperial…
(37.30)
…conquest in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley’s star has continued to shine even brighter.
And spies from all over the world know it. From microchips, to AI, to the newest drone technologies: if it has some sort of intelligence or military value spy services are after it.
This is a target-rich landscape, one of the most fertile on the planet.
(38.00)
As Harper’s story shows, espionage has been coded into Silicon Valley since its birth. Hardwired into the place.
So… how many James Harpers, or Bill Hugles, are in the Valley today, selling sensitive hi-tech or information?
James Harper wasn’t the first of his kind. And he definitely won’t be the last.
(38.30)
Not here, in Spy Valley.
–
Spy Valley is a production of Project Brazen in partnership with PRX.
It's hosted, written and reported by me…
(39.00)
…Zach Dorfman.
Bradley Hope and Tom Wright, are the Executive Producers.
The show is produced by Goat Rodeo.
To find more of Goat Rodeo’s work go to goatrodeodc.com.
The lead producer is Jay Venables.
Story editing from Siddhartha Mahanta, Jay Venables, and Max Johnston.
Executive Producers at Goat Rodeo are Megan Nadolski and Ian Enright.
Creative Producers at Goat Rodeo are Max Johnston, Rebecca Seidel, and Ian Enright.
(39.30)
At Project Brazen, Lucy Woods is the Producer. Georgia Gee is Lead Researcher. Mariangel Gonzales is our Project Manager and Megan Dean is Programming Manager. Ryan Ho is the Creative Director. Cover art designed by Julien Pradier.
Mixing and engineering by Rebecca Seidel.
Music from Goat Rodeo and Blue Dot Sessions.
Editorial and Production assistance at Goat Rodeo from Isabelle Kerby-McGowan, Cara Shillenn, Jay Venables, and Megan Nadolski.
Polish Translation and narration…
(40.00)
…by Hanna Kozlowska.
Narration recorded at Outpost Studios in San Francisco.
Continue to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. And subscribe to Brazen Plus on Apple Podcasts for exclusive reporting and bonus material.
##
This series is dedicated to former FBI agents Bill Kinane and Don Ulrich, who both passed away during the reporting of Spy Valley. And a special thank you to all the former Bureau and DOJ officials who entrusted me with their story. I hope I’ve done justice to it.
(40.30)
The FBI and CIA declined to provide official comment on Spy Valley.
Thank you also to Bradley, Tom, Sid, Lucy, Mariangel, Georgie Gee and the whole Project Brazen team for believing in this podcast idea, and taking a chance on it. And to Jay, Max, Megan, and Ian at Goat Rodeo, who worked so hard to make the whole series sing.
Finally, the biggest thank you of all to my wife, Jess…
(41.00)
…who has heard me prattle on about the Harper story for half a decade. I couldn’t do any of this without you.
(41.19)
End Credits
A senior official at the Department of Justice would soon call from Washington on a secure line.
John Gibbons: In those days, we did not have the facilities in the US attorney's offices. So you had…
(00.30)
…to go down to the bureau, to speak on the funny telephone.
It was the spring of 1983. Gibbons had been at his perch in San Francisco for a few years, prosecuting high-profile corporate espionage and other criminal cases. But this was something new.
John Gibbons: But anyway, I went down to the bureau and took the call and, uh, he said, you know, you've, you've got a spy in your neighborhood or something.
(01.00)
A nuclear spy. Gibbons immediately understood the seriousness of the case.
John Gibbons: It was very clear what they had unearthed.
By the time the DOJ official called Gibbons, the Bureau had already identified Harper, and begun its surveillance. But there weren't any plans to arrest him. Not yet.
John Gibbons: So he talked a little bit about our friend, Mr. Harper, and, uh, what was beginning to gel…
(01.30)
…as far as the discussions with the bureau at his end.
At this point, James Harper’s gambit with Bill Dougherty, his defense lawyer, was already in full swing.
Under the pseudonym “Jay,” Harper had been feeding Dougherty information about his spying—and whatever other misconduct in Silicon Valley he could recall.
It was Harper’s bid to entice U.S. intelligence officials to use him as a double agent against the Soviet bloc…
(02.00)
…In exchange, Harper wanted immunity for his past crimes.
And a big pile of cash.
Justice Department officials never took “Jay’s” proposition seriously. They found it laughable.
John Gibbons: The communications with uh, Doherty, the guy in LA. Um, even to me made it worse, you know, that, uh, he was looking for a walk away.
Still, they needed to keep Doughtery’s mystery client talking.
(02.30)
But what Harper didn’t know was just how close U.S. officials were to swooping in on him.
If they could get one, key, witness into their custody first.
I’m Zach Dorfman.
From Project Brazen and PRX…
This is Spy Valley…
Episode 6: Crossing the Rubicon.
(03.00)
So… you’ve been hearing a lot from James Harper himself, and the FBI agents who hunted him down. But there are other important players in this story. Like the prosecutors tasked with putting Harper away.
And that job wasn’t as simple as you might think.
First, they had to learn Harper’s case inside and out, and quickly. So they reached out to the FBI spy hunters who knew it best.
Prosecutor John Gibbons, again:
(03.30)
John Gibbons: I went down to the Bureau, and went over what they had, and went over what was pointing at our man Harper. We had the surveillance up, we had the foreign counterintelligence wires up. And then looked towards: where is this gonna take us?
For Gibbons, the investigation had two paths. The first was finding out if, or where, Harper might be stashing more missile documents…
(04.00)
…If they could find that sort of evidence, it would be powerful in court.
The second was the trail of evidence Harper may have left across Europe. That, too, might prove useful at trial.
John Gibbons: We had to see what was going on with his contacts in the European sector. Whether it be, you know, Vienna or Poland or Switzerland. And, uh, I said, look, we gotta start focusing on that.
Harper, meanwhile…
(04.30)
…was still very much a free man. And, by then, his wife–and co-conspirator–Louise Schuler, was already at death’s door. Time was essential.
John Gibbons: Meanwhile, you know, our hairy little friend is out there, scurrying around, grabbing nuts, you know, and he is out there and Louise Schuler was about to pass away.
Bureau agents were getting skittish.
They wanted to arrest Harper, now. But Gibbons…
(05.00)
…wasn’t going to be rushed. If he and his co-prosecutors didn’t think they had enough evidence to indict, they wouldn’t let the Bureau pull the trigger.
At this point, Harper was just kind of frittering away his time in Silicon Valley. So it was mostly easy enough to keep track of him. But when the FBI learned that Harper was planning on traveling to Europe, a battle broke out between the Bureau and federal prosecutors.
On the one hand…
(05.30)
…if Harper crossed into the Eastern Bloc, who knows if he’d ever return?
But on the other, if investigators didn’t have enough evidence yet, why tip their hand and blow a high-profile spy case?
If Harper flew to Europe, federal agents could secretly search his luggage for any classified documents. And, besides, Harper’s movements abroad might lead to new evidence.
The clash—between the DOJ and the FBI—came to a head while Gibbons was visiting his wife’s…
(06.00)
…family in northern Virginia.
John Gibbons: I get a call that, you know, Harper wants to go overseas again and go to Europe, go to possibly Poland. But the Bureau didn't wanna let him go. They wanted to pop him.
Gibbons and the DOJ were under intense pressure. A high-level FBI official in Washington pushed for the Bureau to arrest Harper. Still, Gibbons wouldn’t back down.
John Gibbons: And the guy, who was a fellow in Washington at the time… Honestly, couldn't find his ass with both hands…
(06.30)
…I mean, he was a bureaucrat’s bureaucrat. That's probably how he got the job. And he was really pushing. So, I said, look, I'm telling you now do not arrest him. I will not give you authorization.
But Gibbons needed cover from a senior member of the Justice Department.
He went back to the person who entrusted the case to him in the first place. The DOJ’s top counterespionage guy, John Martin.
John Gibbons: Uh, and quick like a bunny. I called John Martin at home. And, uh, John listened to me…
(07.00)
…He said, I'll call you back in a little bit.
Gibbons: And he called me back in a little bit, and apparently had quite several strong conversations.
Martin had once been an FBI agent himself. And he got the Bureau to stand down.
John Gibbons: He knew what being an agent was all about. And he also knew what it was like to have a set of balls as a prosecutor and that’s why he was so, really really good at this job.
That settled it: if Harper took the trip to Europe…
(07.30)
…he wouldn’t be arrested.
At least - Not yet.
Meanwhile, Gibbons’ battle with the FBI had disrupted his trip to his in-laws’. But they were unusually understanding. You see, his father-in-law, Joe, was a decorated retired CIA officer.
John Gibbons: Just an incredible guy.
So when Gibbons was battling with the Bureau officials over the phone, his father-in-law…
(08.00)
… overheard the conversations. And he said that, back in the day, the CIA would have handled it very differently.
John Gibbons: <Laugh> Joe said, “Uh, you know, John, uh, I don't have any clearances anymore, obviously, but in the old days we probably would've let him take the trip. He might not have made it back.”
ZD: [Laughter]
John Gibbons: Would've been “fully debriefed”.
ZD: [Laughter embedded]
John Gibbons: So I said, well, it ain't gotta happen, you know.
(08.30)
This wasn’t the 1940s or 50s, and Harper was definitely not going to be “fully debriefed,” if you catch the drift.
By the fall of 1983, the Harper probe was in limbo. Even with Harper and Hugle under intensive FBI surveillance, there still wasn’t enough direct evidence to bring them to trial.
Unless, that is, prosecutors could get a witness. Someone who could corroborate…
(09.00)
…key aspects of Harper’s nuclear espionage from the Polish side.
Unless they could call on the CIA’s secret mole within Polish intelligence. Caribou.
Buck Farmer: Until he's actually here, we were not willing to go forward with the indictment and we wanted to talk to him. As a potential witness before that.
That’s Buck Farmer. He helped lead the Harper prosecution with John Gibbons.
Gibbons and Farmer…
(09.30)
…needed Caribou in the courtroom for Harper’s trial. As their star witness, only he could connect all the dots.
So if Harper was going to be prosecuted, Caribou had to defect. The CIA would have to secretly whisk him and his family out of Europe and onward to the United States.
After a stint in Warsaw, Caribou was posted in Stockholm, Sweden–a Western capital…
(10.00)
…So conditions were ripe.
Caribou, as it happens, had long been itching to start a new life. The timing was perfect.
Buck Farmer: Then we were told by the agency when he was expected to come out, he was gonna have some transportation set up for him.
Caribou had negotiated with the CIA about when he could escape–and what his payout would be once he was stateside.
For years, he had provided the U.S. with…
(10.30)
…key intelligence on a number of investigations–not just Harper’s.
Here’s the Bureau’s Bill Kinane:
Bill Kinane: He gave the FBI three or four cases. That wasn’t the only one.
Zach: That’s Caribou?
Bill: Yeah. [FADE]
Caribou was, in a few words, a big deal.
Now, however, it was time for him to come in from the cold. And he had one final job to do for the United States. Help prosecutors put James Harper away.
(11.00)
So the CIA helped Caribou and his family flee from Europe. To do that they had to maneuver around the watchful eye of his own Soviet-aligned intelligence service.
Buck Farmer: I remember that day when we knew he was supposed to arrive and he gets out safely and we were just kind of watching the phone, waiting for it to ring. And sure enough, you’re getting the call…
Farmer: They said, “He's made it. He's out.” Oh, thank God…
(11.30)
…Said, now we can go ahead.
Caribou was now stateside, protected by the CIA.
John Gibbons: They had yanked him out and yanked his family out, and they were somewhere outside of DC.
But Gibbons and Farmer needed to interview the Polish defector, to see if his testimony would stand up in court. So, the two prosecutors boarded a plane to Washington to meet with him.
Time was of the essence. But when it came to Caribou’s security…
(12.00)
…the CIA wasn’t taking any chances.
They kept changing the location for the meeting with prosecutors, in order to throw off potential surveillance.
Buck Farmer: It was typical CIA stuff. We're not gonna meet at the CIA headquarters. And the address is, and then a phone call comes into the FBI, says, sorry, we'll call you in an hour and tell you where [FADE] and then, okay, so an hour before we're gonna meet or 45 minutes before they call and say, okay, here's the address.
Interviewing Caribou was turning into an odyssey of its own.
John Gibbons: We had to, to put blindfolds on us and all this, which I, I understand…
(12.30)
…but I just thought it was kind of outta a Ludlum book or something and uh, a bad Ludlum book.
Robert Ludlum: you know, the Jason Bourne author?
Eventually, the prosecutors were whisked to an office in a gray, nondescript business park. They were led to a small, bare room. They closed the door. A U.S. official turned the radio on.
(13.00)
Minutes later, Caribou walked in, with a few CIA minders. One stood outside the door, as security.
And Caribou seemed nervous at first. So the two prosecutors tried to put him at ease.
John Gibbons: It took him a while to warm up on us and who we were.
They praised him effusively—told him he was an American hero—in order to coax him out of his shell. And they genuinely liked him.
Buck Farmer: Very straightforward, very polite.
(13.30)
John Gibbons: He was very, uh, measured, but very honest, very straightforward.
Caribou struck the two prosecutors as a solid witness. He could provide firsthand testimony on how Moscow coveted Harper’s stolen nuclear secrets.
John Gibbons: One of the things that, uh, I recall pretty distinctly was the way he described how quickly they had to get this stuff to the KGB. Uh, I mean really quickly, they were very obviously very interested in getting this.
(14.00)
But Caribou was scared.
Even though he and his family were now under the CIA’s protection, his safety wasn’t guaranteed.
John Gibbons: He said, look, I, I know what they’re capable of. I know what they’re capable of in this country. Uh, so I'm very, very concerned and I want you to know how concerned I am… You know, they're still pretty bad dudes and they do stuff and they, they kill people here. You know, I heard a few things from agents…
(14.30)
But with Caribou stateside, the CIA lobbied intensely for Harper’s arrest.
Buck Farmer: They wanted to tell us whatever they could to make sure we indicted. They wanted Harper punished. And they also wanted Hugle, but they reluctantly agreed we didn't have enough evidence yet. Maybe we get it from Harper.
Prosecutors agreed. They could see the path forward. With Caribou available as their star witness, Harper’s time…
(15.00)
…was up.
We’ll be back after the break.
AD BREAK
We’re back.
Early in the morning of October 15, 1983, James Harper woke up, put on his bathrobe, and read the newspaper over coffee.
By then, FBI agents had already encircled his…
(15.30)
…apartment.
He was still living in Louise Schuler’s old flat.
Harper, a car buff, had parked his canary yellow Ford Capri, and Blue Oldsmobile Cutlass, in the complex’s lot.
Bureau agents in unmarked cars watched the place from across the street. Other agents were stationed around the block. One group commandeered a nearby apartment from some college kids as a surveillance post.
Then…
(16.00)
…Bureau agents swarmed Harper’s apartment. Escape would have been impossible.
And the Silicon Valley nuclear spy surrendered without a fight.
When plainclothes FBI agents led Harper away… neighbors thought the agents were traveling real estate salesmen.
When they found out what Harper was accused of…
(16.30)
…nuclear espionage …shocked neighbors asked “Him? HIM?”
Yeah. Him.
The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour [Oct 18, 1983]: Big cloak-and-dagger story. James Harper had a million-dollar deal with Polish espionage agents. He also tried to turn himself in to the FBI with an offer to become an counterintelligence agent, but they arrested him instead and charged…
(17.00)
…him with selling secrets about the Minuteman missile to the Polish agents.
Harper’s indictment read like a Cold War spy thriller. The story of his arrest was huge news from coast to coast.
The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour [Oct 21, 1983]: The plot thickened some more today in the West Coast spy story, the one involving electronics expert James Harper, accused of selling missile secrets to Poland for $250,000. The documents Harper handed to Communist agents were extremely sensitive and may have compromised U.S. military capabilities…
(17.30)
…in an extraordinary way.
You need to understand the climate at the time. U.S.-Soviet tensions were reaching an apex.
America was gripped by spy fever. And Harper’s nuclear espionage upped the temperature.
Even Harper had been doing some spy-related reading of his own. When FBI agents searched his apartment and nearby storage locker, they found a book by an infamous CIA turncoat. A…
(18.00)
…magazine with a cover story about “The KGB in America.” An article about rampant tech theft in Silicon Valley.
James Harper was taking a crash course in espionage while he committed it.
Now in custody, a terrified Harper waited to hear from federal investigators about his fate.
But beneath the surface, all was not well with his prosecution. Because as soon as investigators…
(18.30)
…arrested Harper, the FBI and CIA began to walk back their commitment to put Caribou – the prosecution’s star witness – on the stand.
John Gibbons: <Laugh> The Bureau got a little, uh, antsy and so did the CIA, about him having to testify.
Buck Farmer: Contrary to what they told us at the beginning.
John Gibbons: And, after we met with the guy several times, me and Bucky, you know, how do you get around it? You know? A perfect, great witness.
(19.00)
Gibbons and Farmer traveled to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to force the issue.
John Gibbons: That was an argument we shouldn't have to have, but we had it.
They had an appointment with two agency bigwigs. One, a CIA lawyer and the other, a shadowy senior agency operative. They met in the latter man’s office.
He was clearly a powerful guy. A big corner office, glass windows. And a bar with shining decanters of golden scotch.
(19.30)
The prosecutors walked into the operative’s office at about 11 in the morning for their showdown.
“Gentlemen,” said the senior agency operative, “Would you like a drink?”
Caribou’s fate was now in the CIA’s hands.
John Gibbons: They were very, very opposed to this asset taking the witness stand.
The meeting quickly turned contentious. If Caribou took the stand, the CIA…
(20.00)
…wanted prosecutors to close the courtroom to the public. But that was a non-starter for Gibbons and Farmer. Transparency was key.
John Gibbons: They wanted to know, if we could block the courtroom and I said, well, you know, maybe we could do that in the Soviet Union or Russia. We don't do that. We can't do that.
So the CIA officials asked if the Polish defector could appear in disguise, or even behind a curtain, to shield his identity.
That wasn’t going to fly for Gibbons and Farmer, either…
(20.30)
…Harper was going to be on trial–in front of a jury. And that jury needed to be able to look the prosecution’s star witness in the eye, to judge him for themselves. The workarounds being floated by the CIA could endanger their case.
Buck Farmer: And we said, that's not gonna work. It's just not gonna be allowed.
John Gibbons: It's just, you know, like what are you kidding me? You know, what did they teach you at special agent school, about a trial? No, the guy gets, gets, you know, on the stand, takes his clothes off and tells…
(21.00)
…us what he’s gotta tell us. And that’s what I told them. And uh. They were shocked, shocked.
But the senior CIA operative wouldn’t relent. He emphasized Caribou’s past sacrifices for the U.S.government–and that the Polish defector had his family to think about.
Buck Farmer: I said, well, we understand, but this case depends on him being a witness. And we need him to come testify under those conditions. It's, it's due process of law.
(21.30)
They were at an impasse. And it became clear who had the upper hand. The CIA was not going to grant permission for Caribou to testify.
Prosecutors fumed that the CIA may have been playing the Justice Department the whole time.
The agency had pushed for an indictment of Harper. And it had got one. But now that the Silicon Valley engineer was in custody, it was balking at its prior commitments regarding Caribou.
(22.00)
John Gibbons: It was a problem.
The CIA had gotten what it wanted. The agency had fulfilled its obligation to a star source–helping Caribou and his family defect. And it had promised the moon to prosecutors to help force an American nuclear spy off the street.
But, now that Caribou was stateside, the CIA’s assurances to Gibbons and Farmer just… weren’t so ironclad.
(22.30)
From the agency’s perspective, allowing Caribou to testify would expose the Soviet Bloc spy and his work for the agency. Above all, the CIA wanted to remain in the shadows.
For the agency, this sort of paranoia was typical, a former senior Justice Department official told me. The CIA, he said, wanted to kill every case that even tangentially involved the agency…
(23.00)
…The CIA prioritized secrecy above all else, and had an almost “childish view” of prosecutions.
According to this former official, the CIA thought the FBI was trying to generate good PR for itself from the Harper case. And, the agency was angry at the Bureau for airing details about Caribou in its court filings–and took its revenge by stymying prosecutors.
But the Caribou issue wasn’t…
(23.30)
…all just about bureaucratic jockeying. The Polish spy’s personal safety was also at stake.
Caribou had told Gibbons how scared he was of Soviet bloc hit teams, even within the U.S.
Almost immediately, Warsaw realized that Caribou had defected.
The Poles knew that Caribou could compromise numerous undercover intelligence officers and operations. They wanted to shut him up, badly.
(24.00)
A Polish court sentenced him to death, in absentia. Warsaw’s spies even cased a home in rural New Jersey they thought Caribou might be hiding out in. But their hunt for Caribou turned up nothing.
Gibbons and Farmer left CIA headquarters in a bind. If Caribou couldn’t appear as a witness, they would need loads of other corroborating evidence to put Harper away.
They had one other option…
(24.30)
…prosecutors could lean on Harper himself.
Buck Farmer: We needed a confession. Otherwise we're gonna have a big battle with the CIA over this. We needed him to plead.
But how could they convince Harper?
They got a little luck with the federal judge assigned to the case: Sam Conti.
Gibbons: Judge Conti was a total gentleman on chambers, but he was a tough guy. You know he didn’t put up with a lot of crap.
Judge Conti was an old-school law-and-order guy…
(25.00)
…who did not take kindly to accused spies. He had two nicknames… “Slammin’ Sam” and “Hangin’ Sam” for what he did to defendants in his courtroom.
So when Harper was brought in for a hearing, Judge Conti was taking no prisoners. Literally. He asked Gibbons and Farmer why Harper wasn’t potentially subject to the death penalty for his crimes.
Harper was shook.
(25.30)
John Gibbons: I mean, he just about shit himself right there. I mean you could just see it.
The prosecutors told the judge that, due to a recent Supreme Court ruling, convicted spies were no longer eligible for lethal punishment.
John Gibbons: Judge Conti said, “What do you mean there's no death penalty?” He said, “Well, we'll see about that.”
So Judge Conti put the fear of god in Harper. Gibbons and Farmer, meanwhile, gave him the hard sell: cooperate, and you might get some…
(26.00)
…leniency. But plead “not guilty,” and make us go to trial? And we’ll hit you with everything we’ve got.
Buck Farmer: We made it clear to him that, look, if you get an attorney, we cannot talk to you. Whatever benefits you might be able to work out for yourself now, are not gonna be open to you if you have an attorney come in here. Your ass is grass. You’re dead. And we will uh, do a lot for you if you plead guilty in this thing, if you enter into a voluntary plea. If we have to go to trial…
(26.30)
…look out: life term after life term.
Harper didn’t need much time to think it through. He agreed to cooperate fully with federal investigators.
And so Harper began talking about everything. His deceased wife, Louise Schuler, and their nuclear spying scheme. About Hugle, and his shipments of prohibited hi-tech to the Soviet Bloc. About Harper’s own spying. And much more.
But the Silicon Valley engineer…
(27.00)
…still didn’t get off easy. In May 1984, Judge Conti sentenced Harper to life in prison–the maximum allowable sentence.
ARCHIVAL: [The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour]: A man who pleaded guilty last December to selling U.S. missile secrets to communist agents was sentenced to life in prison today. A California district judge branded James Durwood Harper, Jr. a traitor “who never expressed his regrets for his crimes.” The judge, Samuel Conti, said he would recommend that Harper, 49…
(27.30)
…never be paroled.
James Harper would be going away for a very, very long time.
Harper’s cooperation with prosecutors created a blast radius of its own.
He gave up his old friend Jack Stouffer. The guy who helped bury those stolen missile documents in the Sacramento Delta. Stouffer was indicted on tax evasion charges, but he never saw the inside of a prison…
(28.00)
…U.S. officials believed he jumped in his boat and sailed straight for Mexico. But it’s not clear he actually made it.
Here’s the FBI’s Don Ulrich:
Don Ulrich: He turned up missing. He may still be down in Zihuatanejo for all I know. It’s my recollection that it was pretty well established that he had met with an accident at sea. A fatality.
Penny Cook–Harper’s new wife, was also questioned intensively by the…
(28.30)
…FBI. But she faded out of sight. Cook did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this story.
Now, the big fish for U.S. officials was Bill Hugle. The FBI and CIA had wanted to nab Hugle long before they had even heard the name “James Harper.” Now, with Harper in custody, they thought they might have their shot.
Buck Farmer: We felt that Hugle was, you know, if anything…
(29.00)
…more of an important target than Harper was, if evidence justified it, he should be prosecuted. And the agencies, I believe, felt the same way. Hugle [INLAID WITH ZD MM] was a guy that should be prosecuted.
Buck Farmer never forgot what a CIA operative said to him about Hugle:
Buck Farmer: I remember a comment: “A person like that needs to be taken off the street.”
FBI agents searched Hugle’s…
(29.30)
…house in Silicon Valley. They scoured his finances. Prosecutors even explored an indictment with a grand jury.
But Hugle wasn’t Harper. If Harper was a one-man spying start-up … Hugle was a titan of the industry.
Here’s Don Ulrich again:
Don Ulrich: Hugle was far cagier than Harper. Hugle was no dummy. Harper made some stupid mistakes…
(30.00)
…that Bill Hugle didn’t.
ZD: Like what, like documenting everything?
Ulrich: Like going to Dougherty. That was, I mean… asinine!
And, much to their frustration, the DOJ had problems making charges stick.
If prosecutors could call Caribou as a witness, it might have also made the case against Hugle. But with the CIA stonewalling on Caribou, that was moot.
And with the Harper plea deal wrapped…
(30.30)
…Gibbons was planning on leaving his post in the U.S. attorney’s office.
He had a message for Don Ulrich:
Don Ulrich: John, before he left said, don't let ‘em drop this case. This was kind of his baby. Uh. However, [big sigh] both Buck and the deputy AG, neither one felt confident. They said it was—it's not prosecutable. All we have is Harper's word against Hugle.
(31.00)
The word of a convicted nuclear spy against that of a respected Silicon Valley bigwig.
Don Ulrich: So Bill Kinane and me, and Buck, and the deputy from Washington, met in Bill's office and we hashed it out. They were the prosecutors, uh, they felt they couldn't make the case. And I did not feel in a position to push it.
(31.30)
After the FBI raided his home, Hugle was spooked. He left the U.S. entirely, seeking safe harbor in Switzerland.
The FBI made sure to brief their Swiss counterparts on Hugle’s schemes. And while he was spared arrest, Hugle lost his perch in Silicon Valley. He was forced into an exile of sorts.
But Hugle still managed to persevere in the tech industry. He founded new semiconductor-related…
(32.00)
…start-ups, trying to strike gold. And, somehow, despite it all, he eventually returned to live in the United States.
Hugle died at age 76, at his home in Arizona, in 2003. He was never prosecuted.
As for James Harper? He served over 30…
(32.30)
…years in federal penitentiary. Harper was paroled in 2016.
When the two of us began our correspondence in 2019, Harper was marooned in northwest Arkansas. He was an old man in poor health… a world away from his hometown of San Francisco.
James Harper: It's Arkansas, 2000 miles away from where I grew up. And I miss California something fierce.
Harper and I spoke frequently for a while. He was bracingly open and…
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…eager.
But he would also swing noticeably from excitement to exhaustion.
James Harper: One of my problems is, is I go manic so quickly. I'll, I'll get triggered by, um, by an input, uh, on, on something that, uh, is interesting and I just go balls out on it. The next thing I know the next thing I know I'm pooped.
So, when Harper got tired, we would end our calls, and pick up a few days later.
But…
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…then he went radio silent for a while.
Until the summer of 2021, when he called me out of the blue.
HARPER: Yeah hi Zach, it’s uh almost 8 o’clock here Saturday night here, in Arkansas—uh, tornado valley <laugh> [FADE] um I’ve, I’ve uh been working on…
Harper, the eternal optimist, told me he was…
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…planning to travel home to California to reunite with his long-estranged family there. He wanted to continue our interviews in person...
That was the last time we spoke.
James Durwood Harper died in August 2022. Ironically, the ex-spy was granted a soldier’s burial. He was laid to rest in a military cemetery in Arkansas because of his brief stint as an army engineer…
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…a half century earlier.
Harper never made that final trip back to California.
There was so much I wish I had been able to ask Harper. Did he regret betraying his country? Did he feel any remorse? What, if anything, would he go back and…
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…change about his decisions?
But what he did reveal—even about the tiny details of his life—has continued to shock me. And has had me thinking about this story—and this experience, being connected to a person like Harper—in a new light.
Why James Harper decided to speak with me, I’ll never entirely know. But I can venture a guess.
James Harper: I get wound up and I, you know…
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…I wanna talk about it. I want, you know, you, you like to talk with somebody that wants to hear about your life.
Sometimes, maybe even especially, somebody willing to listen about your life as a drunk, as a gambler, as a cheat, as a thief—as a man who betrayed his own country’s nuclear secrets for what, in the grand scheme of things, was a paltry sum.
Sometimes…
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…people even want their ill deeds to grant them a form of immortality. A legacy. Fallout be damned.
During Harper’s three-decades in prison, the world passed him by. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union collapsed. Poland went from an Eastern Bloc nemesis to one of America’s closest allies…
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…in Europe.
And many heralded the dawning of a new era in U.S-Russia relations. Harper’s nuclear espionage appeared increasingly anachronistic, a vestige of a dim and distant past.
Then… a former KGB officer took over Russia. Vladmir Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule plunged relations between the two nuclear superpowers ever lower.
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And that meant a new shadow war between Washington and Moscow’s intelligence operatives.
Suddenly, the sort of spying committed by James Harper was very much back in vogue.
Moscow would love to have a new James Harper today. As would Washington, for his Russian equivalent.
Especially right now…
…as Russia wages a war of imperial…
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…conquest in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley’s star has continued to shine even brighter.
And spies from all over the world know it. From microchips, to AI, to the newest drone technologies: if it has some sort of intelligence or military value spy services are after it.
This is a target-rich landscape, one of the most fertile on the planet.
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As Harper’s story shows, espionage has been coded into Silicon Valley since its birth. Hardwired into the place.
So… how many James Harpers, or Bill Hugles, are in the Valley today, selling sensitive hi-tech or information?
James Harper wasn’t the first of his kind. And he definitely won’t be the last.
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Not here, in Spy Valley.
–
Spy Valley is a production of Project Brazen in partnership with PRX.
It's hosted, written and reported by me…
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…Zach Dorfman.
Bradley Hope and Tom Wright, are the Executive Producers.
The show is produced by Goat Rodeo.
To find more of Goat Rodeo’s work go to goatrodeodc.com.
The lead producer is Jay Venables.
Story editing from Siddhartha Mahanta, Jay Venables, and Max Johnston.
Executive Producers at Goat Rodeo are Megan Nadolski and Ian Enright.
Creative Producers at Goat Rodeo are Max Johnston, Rebecca Seidel, and Ian Enright.
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At Project Brazen, Lucy Woods is the Producer. Georgia Gee is Lead Researcher. Mariangel Gonzales is our Project Manager and Megan Dean is Programming Manager. Ryan Ho is the Creative Director. Cover art designed by Julien Pradier.
Mixing and engineering by Rebecca Seidel.
Music from Goat Rodeo and Blue Dot Sessions.
Editorial and Production assistance at Goat Rodeo from Isabelle Kerby-McGowan, Cara Shillenn, Jay Venables, and Megan Nadolski.
Polish Translation and narration…
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…by Hanna Kozlowska.
Narration recorded at Outpost Studios in San Francisco.
Continue to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. And subscribe to Brazen Plus on Apple Podcasts for exclusive reporting and bonus material.
##
This series is dedicated to former FBI agents Bill Kinane and Don Ulrich, who both passed away during the reporting of Spy Valley. And a special thank you to all the former Bureau and DOJ officials who entrusted me with their story. I hope I’ve done justice to it.
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The FBI and CIA declined to provide official comment on Spy Valley.
Thank you also to Bradley, Tom, Sid, Lucy, Mariangel, Georgie Gee and the whole Project Brazen team for believing in this podcast idea, and taking a chance on it. And to Jay, Max, Megan, and Ian at Goat Rodeo, who worked so hard to make the whole series sing.
Finally, the biggest thank you of all to my wife, Jess…
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…who has heard me prattle on about the Harper story for half a decade. I couldn’t do any of this without you.
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End Credits