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Episode 4: Tinkerers, Traders, Solderers, Spies Transcript
James Harper was in a dangerous position. After selling secrets to the Eastern Bloc… his partners in crime were becoming more like… enemies.
His contact in the Polish Intelligence Service, Zdzslaw Psyzchodian, had stiffed him on his last job. Harper had also fallen out with Bill Hugle… the Silicon Valley…
(00.30)
…entrepreneur who got him into spying in the first place. Harper’s artless espionage even exposed his mistress, Louise Schuler, his source of the stolen American missile secrets.
But he was desperate, and broke. He needed the money. So Harper continued to press on with his scheme.
By now, he and Schuler had copied as much as one hundred pounds of missile documents. And those hardcopies were…
(01.00)
…piling up in his apartment. It was a security risk. They had to be stashed somewhere.
James Harper: I was a little bit nervous about that, so I said, I gotta, I gotta hide these things someplace else I'm a little bit more comfortable about their, their whereabouts.
Harper had an idea: they could bury the documents somewhere remote.
James Harper: when they had stiffed me on that deal before, that's when Louise and I took all that shit out to the, uh…
(01.30)
…uh, Sacramento, River Delta, and, and, uh, and buried it.
The Sacramento River Delta is The largest estuary on the West Coast. It twists and turns through over a thousand square miles of tidal marsh and farmland. Its wetlands are meandering and vast.
So vast, that Harper and Schuler would need help to navigate them. So Harper called up his close buddy Jack Stouffer, who lived on the delta, on his trimaran…
(02.00)
…sailboat.
James Harper: I just told him that, uh, I had these documents, uh, from Louise. I I think I told him that they, uh, they weren't classified. That stuff was, uh, just a, uh, an accumulation of stuff that Louise brought in from her, uh, boss's office. And so I told Jack, I said, I don't believe this stuff is hot. And he was very cavalier about that. He didn't even worry about it.
(02.30)
Harper may have been “massaging the truth” for his buddy Stouffer, or offering him some form of plausible deniability. Either way, they charged ahead.
Harper, Schuler, and Stouffer sailed deep into the Delta.
James Harper: He took us out in the trimaran and found a place and, yeah. It was in a sheer little island. . . put me ashore. And I, I went in there with a shovel and dug a big hole and…
(03.00)
…and hid that stuff.
Harper buried the documents, which he’d stuffed into cardboard boxes, under the Delta’s mud. Where nobody could find them.
I once asked Harper if he could remember where in the Delta he’d buried the documents.
James Harper: Oh, God, it, the only, the only person that I think could, could ever tell you how to get there again, would be Jack Stouffer.
His main stash of missile-related materials were now safely hidden.
(03.30)
But Harper kept a copy of at least one document. A file that summarized all the classified missile documents in Schuler’s boss’s safe.
Despite everything he and Schuler had been through, Harper still wanted to sell missile secrets to the Soviet Bloc. And he believed that this document, above all others, would pique their interest.
(04.00)
I’m Zach Dorfman.
From Project Brazen and PRX.
This is Spy Valley.
Episode 4: Tinkerers, Traders, Solderers, Spies.
In order to sell more secrets… Harper had to re-initiate contact with…
(04.30)
…the Poles… and his main handler, Psyzchodian.
He didn’t want to call the senior Polish spy directly. What if he or Psyzchodian were being watched?
So he turned to another ally for help. Her name was Juta Bushley.
James Harper: I called up Juta Bushley, who was a girlfriend that I had in Lausanne, who, uh, spoke every language you can think of.
(05.00)
Harper and Bushley were casual lovers. They had met in Switzerland, where she was based, when Harper’s stopwatch business had brought him overseas.
James Harper: I just knew that, uh, if I called her and asked her to do something, she'd do it. Pretty savvy gal. So I got ahold of her and I had Psyzchodian’s number in Warsaw, and I had her contact Psyzchodian.
Harper wasn’t a particularly cautious guy…
(05.30)
…but now, he was trying to shield himself a bit from his Polish handler, Psyzchodian—you know, whose name he butchers. Anyway, Harper was using Bushley.
James Harper: She was what the American agents called a “cut out.” Somebody that you use to get information in the, uh, process, but didn't have to tell any, any—didn't have to tell 'em what the hell they were doing.
(06.00)
Harper’s got his spy lingo right—that’s exactly the benefit of a cut out. A modicum of plausible deniability for all parties.
Harper’s strategy soon paid off.
James Harper: When she called me back after talking to Pryschodizien, she says, you better get your ass over here real quick, cuz he wants to see you real bad. So, uh, I grabbed my shit and went back over there.
(06.30)
So in May 1980, Harper flew to Europe.
Just like before, Psyzchodian greased things for Harper at Warsaw international airport, so he wouldn’t have to go through normal processing channels. After clearing customs, Harper met immediately with the senior Polish intelligence officer.
Psyzchodian was calculatingly cold to Harper last time they had met in Vienna. But this was a whole new Psyzchodian in Warsaw.
James Harper: The first thing he did was hand me…
(07.00)
…$15,000 in hundred dollar bills. And he says, here's the money that I was supposed to give you last time, says, I, I didn't want to give it to you because I wanted to cut Hugle out of the action.
Remember, there was bad blood between his Polish spy handler, Psychodzian, and Hugle, the Silicon Valley bigwig …
James Harper: Hugle had fucked over him real good on a couple of big, big deals. I mean, like half a million dollar stuff. With semiconductor equipment and things like…
(07.30)
…that.
So Psychodizian gave Harper the whole 15,000 dollars. But, believe it or not, Harper didn’t want all the money. He was too spooked to take Hugle’s cut.
James Harper: I took 10,000 of it and I gave him 5,000 back and I says, I'm not gonna take that 5,000. Uh, I consider it Hugle’s part of what we did. And, uh, if he found out that I'd short <laugh>, I'd taken some of his money. I don't know whether he'd kill me or what.
(08.00)
Harper really did fear Hugle’s wrath. He told Psyzchodian that Hugle had connections to the Chinese mafia in San Francisco.
And that Hugle–the semiconductor pioneer and ex-Democratic congressional candidate– could even have a hit placed on someone for $50,000 dollars.
Psychodizian, meanwhile, was undertaking a high-wire act of his own.
Harper had demanded one million…
(08.30)
…dollars for all the missile documents in his possession. But the KGB didn’t want to pay that much.
So, at the meeting, Psychodizian needed to lowball Harper. But the Polish intelligence officer also needed to satisfy Moscow’s orders to obtain everything possible from the Silicon Valley engineer.
It was a delicate balancing act, but Psychodzian believed he had pulled it off..
This task was…
(09.00)
…complicated by, on the one hand, the insistence of the Soviet Union on getting the materials and their request for keeping in touch with “Jim,” and on the other hand, the asset’s exorbitant financial demands.
At the outset of our conversation we had a moral advantage of sorts. The meeting was called by him despite our poker-like play at the previous meeting – i.e. that what he gave us in Vienna was worthless.
The strategy we took and the order…
(09.30)
…of discussing the different elements gave us results that have surpassed our expectations.
Pzsyzchodian’s colleagues in Polish intelligence looked over the documents Harper had given him. Including the table of contents describing what Harper had buried in the Sacramento Delta. And they were interested. Very interested. The Poles would pay–but not a million dollars.
James Harper: So he says, we, we like, uh…
(10.00)
…all of that stuff. He says, if you go back to the United States and, and get that package of stuff for us, we'll give you a hundred thousand dollars <laugh>.
For Harper, that was enough–for now.
So with dollar signs in his eyes, Harper flew back to Silicon Valley. But there was one big obstacle between him and his payday: he had to find those buried documents.
James Harper: So, anyway, I said, shit, I gotta get that stuff back.
(10.30)
Stouffer set sail with Harper and Schuler, following the snaking curves of the Delta.
And there, on the little island, with Stouffer’s sailboat bobbing nearby, Harper’s heart seized up.
James Harper: But it, it, this was after they'd had a, a big, uh, flood that, that, that Delta had flooded over completely.
Flooding had inundated the Delta’s marshy shores…
(11.00)
…Though the waters had receded somewhat, the deluge had submerged Harper’s tiny island.
He dug furiously through the sopping soil for the stolen missile documents.
James Harper: And so all of that stuff, even though it was buried, oh, maybe two or three feet deep, it, it was still water soaked. So I grabbed, I grabbed all that shit, I went, I went ashore and dug it up and brought it back on the boat.
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The documents were completely waterlogged. Harper panicked … he wondered – how badly were they damaged? Could they even be salvaged?
James Harper: And then Jack took us back to Louise's apartment. And uh. I spread that shit all over her apartment drying. And her apartment, smelled like… It smelled like the Delta. Oh God.
(12.00)
Imagine. Harper and Schuler madly plastering musty, classified missile documents all over her apartment like wet laundry.
It took days for everything to dry out.
Lucky for Harper, when the documents did dry, they were still legible. Mostly. So he got ready for his next trip to Warsaw–his big score. He stuffed so many documents together for the Poles that there were literally suitcases of them.
(12.30)
And in June 1980, he again set off for Poland.
We’ll be back after the break.
-
We’re back.
Harper: I met Psyzchodian back in Warsaw and I took the stuff out to um—oh I don’t know. They call it a little chalet. Out on the outskirts of Warsaw…
(13.00)
…And I'm in there in this chalet waiting to see what the hell is going on.
The “chalet” was surrounded by barbed wire, and heavily guarded. There were lots of intelligence operatives buzzing around. But Psyzchodian was clearly in charge.
Harper: They had people wandering around that area. . . I'd look out, occasionally I'd see somebody, another car pull up or something like that, but he always had people around him—other agents.
Eventually, when things settled down a bit…
(13.30)
…Psychodzian and Harper got to talking. Psychodzian said his men would need to examine the documents Harper had brought.
Harper: While we're there, he takes the stuff and says, we gotta take a look at it.
So, Harper handed over the suitcases.
The Polish intelligence officer took Harper’s luggage, and walked outside to a car that had been circling the property’s perimeter. He handed the suitcases to a man inside. Harper watched from the chalet as the car sped away with the…
(14.00)
…document stash.
Harper: So, uh. He took the stuff and gave it to some other agents. And they started spreading it out and collating it and all that kinda shit.
When we spoke, I asked Harper whether he was nervous at the time.
I mean, I certainly would be: Surrounded by communist intelligence operatives, in a safe house behind…
(14.30)
…the Iron Curtain, actively committing espionage against my own country…?
But his answer took me back a bit.
ZD: How did you—were you, I mean what are you…
Harper: I mean, I was shit-faced drunk most of the time!
ZD: Oh, [restrained laughter] okay. There you go. There you go.
Harper: So anyway…
I don’t think he was joking, either. You see, while scouring the Polish intelligence file on Harper, I saw something that stopped me cold: poems. Limericks. In Harper’s handwriting…
(15.00)
…On lined paper.
They don’t rhyme perfectly, but you’ll get the drift. Remember, Harper pronounces Psychodzian’s first name, “Geeswaf,” phonetically, as “ZIZSLAW”.
AS WE SAT IN THE FORREST BY THE FIRE
ZIZSLAW & I BEGAN TO CONSPIRE
THE FIRE WAS HOT
BUT IDEAS WE HAD NOT
THE ONLY PROBLEM WAS TO DECIDE WHO WAS THE LIER
(15.30)
And another…
LOGICALLY, IDEOLOGICAL ZIZLAW
TOLD ME MORALITY IN POLAND WAS RAW
THE IMPORTANT THING WAS PROGRESS
SO, I SAID I GUESS
I’LL DO WHAT I CAN FOR WARSAW
And finally.
AS I SAT IN WARSAR
DEALING WITH ZIZSLAW
WE TALKED OF MONEY
WHICH HAD TO DO WITH MY HONEY…
(16.00)
…& CHOOSE NOT TO WORRY ABOUT THE LAW
If these aren’t smoking gun evidence–and great blackmail material for the Poles–I don’t know what is.
So, after a period of drunken purgatory there at the chalet, Harper finally got some good news: the Poles were going to pay him in full. And give him a new shopping list based on the missile docs he’d already…
(16.30)
…provided.
Finally, as a treasonous Soviet Bloc agent… he had some job security.
Meanwhile, big things were happening behind the scenes. The KGB had flown in twenty operatives from Moscow to Warsaw to scour the 2,100 pages of Harper’s documents. The KGB officers worked for nearly twenty-four hours straight. And they were ecstatic at what they found.
(17.00)
James Harper: Pretty soon, Psyzchodian comes in and says uh, we’ve decided to give you a hundred thousand dollars.
James Harper: And get some other stuff for us that was indicated in, in that material. So I ended up with another list of stuff from them and, and this envelope with a hundred thousand dollars <laugh>. Oh, geez, I’m thinking…
(17.30)
…“What in the hell's going on!”
Before he could even think about smuggling the next round of documents into Poland, though, Harper had to figure out how to bring his 100,000 dollar payout home.
James Harper: And, uh, even though it was in hundred dollars bills, it was a pretty big package.
So Harper decamped to Switzerland to scheme for a bit.
And for some R&R, at a fancy hotel on Lake Geneva with his European girlfriend, Juta Bushley.
(18.00)
But Harper and Bushley’s alcohol-fueled tryst turned sour.
James Harper: So finally, I, I just left her. I put some money on the table in the hotel room for her, and I grabbed that money, and everything else and I headed for a casino in Geneva. And so, I stayed there a while…
(18.30)
…trying to figure out what the hell to do.
Frustrated and bored, Harper decided to try and deposit the funds into a French bank.
James Harper: And they had a bank there because of the gambling casino. So I went to the bank and I tried to deposit that hundred thousand dollars there. But they couldn't take it unless I had this document that showed where it came from, and this sort of thing.
But it’s not like…
(19.00)
…Harper could pull out a receipt for “faithful espionage services rendered.” So, in true Harper style, he opted for the most brazen plan possible.
James Harper: I left right there and headed for the airport in Geneva. And while I was at the airport in Geneva, I think I went into the men's room and I, I strapped, $50,000, [Harper does simple maths in his head]...
(19.30)
…I put half of that money in the, in the bottom of my shoe and, and wrapped around my ankle on both feet <laugh>. And I had it strapped to my ankles.
With 50,000 dollars tied to each ankle and stuffed into his tennis shoes, Harper bought his ticket home to San Francisco.
(20.00)
He flew back all the way with the money taped to him. Miraculously, he passed through customs stateside without a hiccup.
Mind you, Harper made some bigoted calculations…
James Harper: When I was coming through customs in New York, they had an Indian couple in the line that had about 14 suitcases. <Laugh> And I knew that I knew that custom agent when he got through with them, he wasn't gonna spend much…
(20.30)
…time on me. So I went right on through there.
Back in San Francisco, Schuler picked Harper up at the airport. It was time to split their espionage spoils.
James Harper: I sat there and, um, on Louise’s dining room table and, uh, divvied up with her.
Harper gave his sailboat buddy Stouffer 20 thousand for helping hide the missiles documents. He and Schuler kept…
(21.00)
…the other 80 thousand.
But, one person who wasn’t getting paid? Bill Hugle. By that point, Harper had cut him out of the scheme entirely.
James Harper: See that all took place without Bill in it. They didn't want to deal with him. At that point in time, I just kind of had my own contact set up with them and knew how to work with them and everything. And I just avoided Bill <laugh>.
Harper and Schuler, meanwhile…
(21.30)
…decided to formalize their partnership. Soon after he returned to the States, the two eloped during a booze-soaked jaunt to Reno. Was it love? Or perhaps Harper knew that married couples cannot be compelled to testify against one another?
Either way, it bound the two co-conspirators more tightly together.
After his big payout, Harper went back to Warsaw a few more times. But with much smaller tranches of documents than before…
(22.00)
…He was given 10,000 dollars, here and there, by Psyzchodizan.
Eventually the Poles started worrying that Harper’s trips to Europe would set off alarm bells at the FBI or CIA.
The Poles still wanted Harper to spy for them … just more professionally.
So they instructed Harper to pretend to lose his U.S. passport and get a new one, to hide his prior travels. But he flubbed their orders.
They also told him to buy a camcorder. So he could…
(22.30)
…videotape the missile materials, and bring a tape or two at a time to Europe, instead of physically transporting massive bags of secret documents. But Harper got annoyed with the device, and ignored them.
So the Poles decided to switch things up.
James Harper: After that first contact where they gave me that hundred thousand, they decided they didn't want, they didn't want me bringing that stuff into Poland again.
(23.00)
Psyzchodizan wouldn’t be dealing with Harper anymore. Instead, Harper’s new contact would be a Polish intelligence officer in Mexico codenamed “Jacques.”
But how would the two strangers know each other? Well, Psyzchodizan had a keepsake from Harper: a laundry ticket. Harper—the dilettante poet—had written one of his trademark limericks across it.
James Harper: So um. Przychodzien ripped up…
(23.30)
…a laundry ticket and gave me half of it and said, hang on to that.
It was a neat bit of spycraft.
Since Harper and his new contact Jacques had never met, at their first checkpoint, each man would show the other their half of the ripped laundry ticket. The limerick would align. And that way, the two strangers would be able to confirm the other’s true identity.
To assist Jacques in identifying Harper…
(24.00)
…Psychodizen also instructed the Silicon Valley engineer to wear a medallion around his neck that read, “IRISH BROTHERHOOD.”
You can’t say Psychodizen didn’t have a sense of humor.
In December 1980, Harper met with “Jacques” for the first time in Mexico City.
He received another $10,000 the Poles owed him. But Jacques left empty handed. This time, Harper had been too spooked to bring new documents with him.
(24.30)
Eventually, he got his courage up, and returned to Mexico City–with Schuler–in February 1981.
With them, they brought a large stash of classified documents and received a much bigger payout. With characteristic indiscretion, Harper even chartered a private jet to take Schuler and him back home.
The Poles were thrilled over Harper’s new missile secrets. They were even more valuable than materials he’d previously provided.
(25.00)
The obtained materials fulfill a specific order from [our] Soviet comrades . . .
Soviet intelligence deems documents from this source enormously valuable.
The USSR party and government leadership has been informed about the fact that Polish intelligence passed on these documents to our brothers in the Soviet service.
Harper’s stolen missile secrets were strengthening the ties between Moscow and Warsaw…
(25.30)
…But Harper was becoming nervous about his trips to Mexico–and cranky about all the travel. So he brought it up with Jacques.
James Harper: I told him that, you know, this place is too fucking far away. You gotta set this up so I'm a little closer to home. So, um, they said we can't, we can't do anything in Tijuana. They said the place is crawling with American agents.
Instead, they met in Matamoros, directly across the border. Where Harper was paid 50,000 dollars for some more…
(26.00)
…classified documents. And again in Guadalajara.
Then, ignoring Jacques’ advice, Harper and Schuler drove to Tijuana from San Francisco, where they stashed some classified documents in a safe deposit box.
Harper’s paranoia was beginning to take over.
He had been passing missile secrets to the Eastern Bloc for roughly two years. He craved the money but feared the consequences…
(26.30)
…Sometimes, he would arrive at scheduled meetings with Jacques without documents, demanding more cash for past deliveries. The meetings turned contentious, and Harper began slowly pulling back from contact with his Polish handler in Mexico.
He pushed for a meeting with Psychodzian.
In November 1981, Harper arrived in Warsaw. Like actors reprising their…
(27.00)
…roles, Harper again sat down with the senior Polish intelligence officer. And Harper again demanded more payment for his past spying.
But, Harper hadn’t brought any new documents with him.
At this point, Psychodizan’s patience was wearing thin. Here’s what he wrote about the meeting:
I firmly explained to him that I am not interested in this kind of cooperation either, even if just because I don’t have suicidal tendencies.
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He knows that we pay. He received from us $250,000 in just one year. He knows that he never gets money if he doesn’t deliver anything. Hence the question – what is going on?
It would be the last time the two men would meet face-to-face.
Harper left Warsaw. It was the closest he'd gotten to seeing what life was really like in the Soviet Bloc.
The Polish capital was then being rocked by major…
(28.00)
…labor protests.
For months, nationwide demonstrations, led by the “Solidarity” movement, had threatened one-party communist rule in Poland–and Moscow’s domination of Eastern Europe, more broadly.
Things in Poland were spinning out of control.
In a bid to preempt an invasion by Moscow, the Polish regime imposed martial law on December 13, 1981.
NewsHour: Poland’s Solidarity union…
(28.30)
…claimed today that its workers were on strike in many mines and factories in defiance of the martial law imposed yesterday, but the extent of the stoppages could not be checked by Western newsmen hampered by the almost total shutdown of communications.
NewsHour: For 16 months the question in Washington has been, what will the United States do if?—If the situation in Poland turns rough.
NewsHour: Is this the end—or only another stage—for Poland’s liberal revolution?
At their final meeting…
(29.00)
…Psychodzian had set up another rendezvous between Harper and Jacques in Mexico. It was supposed to take place early in the new year. Harper was to deliver twenty-nine new classified missile-related documents.
It never happened. In late December, Harper received a typewritten postcard from Mexico. It read:
“Dear Jim, I'm leaving for Europe for good next week. Don't hesitate to call on me being there. Best regards…
(29.30)
…for Louisa. Truly yours, John.”
Harper knew what Jacques’ coded message meant: the rendezvous was off. And without any future ones scheduled, who knew when–or if–he’d ever meet his Polish spy handlers again.
But what the Poles didn’t know was that–even before he’d received the coded postcard; indeed, even before he’d had that last meeting with Przychodzien in Warsaw…
(30.00)
…James Harper was already scheming ahead, thinking about his next big move.
He was cooking up a new plot: about self-preservation—from prosecution. He wanted to safeguard the hundreds of thousands of dollars he’d already received from Moscow, while also opening up a new revenue stream.
Harper would offer himself as a double agent ... to the CIA.
Borne from hubris…
(30.30)
…it was a plot that would hasten Harper’s own downfall.
That’s next, on Spy Valley.
##
–
Spy Valley is a production of Project Brazen in partnership with PRX.
It's hosted, written and reported by me, Zach Dorfman.
Bradley Hope and Tom Wright, are the Executive Producers.
(31.00)
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.
At Project Brazen, Lucy Woods is the Producer. Georgia Gee is Lead Researcher…
(31.30)
…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 by Hanna Kozlowska.
Narration recorded at Outpost Studios in San Francisco.
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Continue to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on new episodes.
And subscribe to Brazen Plus on Apple Podcasts for exclusive reporting and bonus material.
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##
His contact in the Polish Intelligence Service, Zdzslaw Psyzchodian, had stiffed him on his last job. Harper had also fallen out with Bill Hugle… the Silicon Valley…
(00.30)
…entrepreneur who got him into spying in the first place. Harper’s artless espionage even exposed his mistress, Louise Schuler, his source of the stolen American missile secrets.
But he was desperate, and broke. He needed the money. So Harper continued to press on with his scheme.
By now, he and Schuler had copied as much as one hundred pounds of missile documents. And those hardcopies were…
(01.00)
…piling up in his apartment. It was a security risk. They had to be stashed somewhere.
James Harper: I was a little bit nervous about that, so I said, I gotta, I gotta hide these things someplace else I'm a little bit more comfortable about their, their whereabouts.
Harper had an idea: they could bury the documents somewhere remote.
James Harper: when they had stiffed me on that deal before, that's when Louise and I took all that shit out to the, uh…
(01.30)
…uh, Sacramento, River Delta, and, and, uh, and buried it.
The Sacramento River Delta is The largest estuary on the West Coast. It twists and turns through over a thousand square miles of tidal marsh and farmland. Its wetlands are meandering and vast.
So vast, that Harper and Schuler would need help to navigate them. So Harper called up his close buddy Jack Stouffer, who lived on the delta, on his trimaran…
(02.00)
…sailboat.
James Harper: I just told him that, uh, I had these documents, uh, from Louise. I I think I told him that they, uh, they weren't classified. That stuff was, uh, just a, uh, an accumulation of stuff that Louise brought in from her, uh, boss's office. And so I told Jack, I said, I don't believe this stuff is hot. And he was very cavalier about that. He didn't even worry about it.
(02.30)
Harper may have been “massaging the truth” for his buddy Stouffer, or offering him some form of plausible deniability. Either way, they charged ahead.
Harper, Schuler, and Stouffer sailed deep into the Delta.
James Harper: He took us out in the trimaran and found a place and, yeah. It was in a sheer little island. . . put me ashore. And I, I went in there with a shovel and dug a big hole and…
(03.00)
…and hid that stuff.
Harper buried the documents, which he’d stuffed into cardboard boxes, under the Delta’s mud. Where nobody could find them.
I once asked Harper if he could remember where in the Delta he’d buried the documents.
James Harper: Oh, God, it, the only, the only person that I think could, could ever tell you how to get there again, would be Jack Stouffer.
His main stash of missile-related materials were now safely hidden.
(03.30)
But Harper kept a copy of at least one document. A file that summarized all the classified missile documents in Schuler’s boss’s safe.
Despite everything he and Schuler had been through, Harper still wanted to sell missile secrets to the Soviet Bloc. And he believed that this document, above all others, would pique their interest.
(04.00)
I’m Zach Dorfman.
From Project Brazen and PRX.
This is Spy Valley.
Episode 4: Tinkerers, Traders, Solderers, Spies.
In order to sell more secrets… Harper had to re-initiate contact with…
(04.30)
…the Poles… and his main handler, Psyzchodian.
He didn’t want to call the senior Polish spy directly. What if he or Psyzchodian were being watched?
So he turned to another ally for help. Her name was Juta Bushley.
James Harper: I called up Juta Bushley, who was a girlfriend that I had in Lausanne, who, uh, spoke every language you can think of.
(05.00)
Harper and Bushley were casual lovers. They had met in Switzerland, where she was based, when Harper’s stopwatch business had brought him overseas.
James Harper: I just knew that, uh, if I called her and asked her to do something, she'd do it. Pretty savvy gal. So I got ahold of her and I had Psyzchodian’s number in Warsaw, and I had her contact Psyzchodian.
Harper wasn’t a particularly cautious guy…
(05.30)
…but now, he was trying to shield himself a bit from his Polish handler, Psyzchodian—you know, whose name he butchers. Anyway, Harper was using Bushley.
James Harper: She was what the American agents called a “cut out.” Somebody that you use to get information in the, uh, process, but didn't have to tell any, any—didn't have to tell 'em what the hell they were doing.
(06.00)
Harper’s got his spy lingo right—that’s exactly the benefit of a cut out. A modicum of plausible deniability for all parties.
Harper’s strategy soon paid off.
James Harper: When she called me back after talking to Pryschodizien, she says, you better get your ass over here real quick, cuz he wants to see you real bad. So, uh, I grabbed my shit and went back over there.
(06.30)
So in May 1980, Harper flew to Europe.
Just like before, Psyzchodian greased things for Harper at Warsaw international airport, so he wouldn’t have to go through normal processing channels. After clearing customs, Harper met immediately with the senior Polish intelligence officer.
Psyzchodian was calculatingly cold to Harper last time they had met in Vienna. But this was a whole new Psyzchodian in Warsaw.
James Harper: The first thing he did was hand me…
(07.00)
…$15,000 in hundred dollar bills. And he says, here's the money that I was supposed to give you last time, says, I, I didn't want to give it to you because I wanted to cut Hugle out of the action.
Remember, there was bad blood between his Polish spy handler, Psychodzian, and Hugle, the Silicon Valley bigwig …
James Harper: Hugle had fucked over him real good on a couple of big, big deals. I mean, like half a million dollar stuff. With semiconductor equipment and things like…
(07.30)
…that.
So Psychodizian gave Harper the whole 15,000 dollars. But, believe it or not, Harper didn’t want all the money. He was too spooked to take Hugle’s cut.
James Harper: I took 10,000 of it and I gave him 5,000 back and I says, I'm not gonna take that 5,000. Uh, I consider it Hugle’s part of what we did. And, uh, if he found out that I'd short <laugh>, I'd taken some of his money. I don't know whether he'd kill me or what.
(08.00)
Harper really did fear Hugle’s wrath. He told Psyzchodian that Hugle had connections to the Chinese mafia in San Francisco.
And that Hugle–the semiconductor pioneer and ex-Democratic congressional candidate– could even have a hit placed on someone for $50,000 dollars.
Psychodizian, meanwhile, was undertaking a high-wire act of his own.
Harper had demanded one million…
(08.30)
…dollars for all the missile documents in his possession. But the KGB didn’t want to pay that much.
So, at the meeting, Psychodizian needed to lowball Harper. But the Polish intelligence officer also needed to satisfy Moscow’s orders to obtain everything possible from the Silicon Valley engineer.
It was a delicate balancing act, but Psychodzian believed he had pulled it off..
This task was…
(09.00)
…complicated by, on the one hand, the insistence of the Soviet Union on getting the materials and their request for keeping in touch with “Jim,” and on the other hand, the asset’s exorbitant financial demands.
At the outset of our conversation we had a moral advantage of sorts. The meeting was called by him despite our poker-like play at the previous meeting – i.e. that what he gave us in Vienna was worthless.
The strategy we took and the order…
(09.30)
…of discussing the different elements gave us results that have surpassed our expectations.
Pzsyzchodian’s colleagues in Polish intelligence looked over the documents Harper had given him. Including the table of contents describing what Harper had buried in the Sacramento Delta. And they were interested. Very interested. The Poles would pay–but not a million dollars.
James Harper: So he says, we, we like, uh…
(10.00)
…all of that stuff. He says, if you go back to the United States and, and get that package of stuff for us, we'll give you a hundred thousand dollars <laugh>.
For Harper, that was enough–for now.
So with dollar signs in his eyes, Harper flew back to Silicon Valley. But there was one big obstacle between him and his payday: he had to find those buried documents.
James Harper: So, anyway, I said, shit, I gotta get that stuff back.
(10.30)
Stouffer set sail with Harper and Schuler, following the snaking curves of the Delta.
And there, on the little island, with Stouffer’s sailboat bobbing nearby, Harper’s heart seized up.
James Harper: But it, it, this was after they'd had a, a big, uh, flood that, that, that Delta had flooded over completely.
Flooding had inundated the Delta’s marshy shores…
(11.00)
…Though the waters had receded somewhat, the deluge had submerged Harper’s tiny island.
He dug furiously through the sopping soil for the stolen missile documents.
James Harper: And so all of that stuff, even though it was buried, oh, maybe two or three feet deep, it, it was still water soaked. So I grabbed, I grabbed all that shit, I went, I went ashore and dug it up and brought it back on the boat.
(11.30)
The documents were completely waterlogged. Harper panicked … he wondered – how badly were they damaged? Could they even be salvaged?
James Harper: And then Jack took us back to Louise's apartment. And uh. I spread that shit all over her apartment drying. And her apartment, smelled like… It smelled like the Delta. Oh God.
(12.00)
Imagine. Harper and Schuler madly plastering musty, classified missile documents all over her apartment like wet laundry.
It took days for everything to dry out.
Lucky for Harper, when the documents did dry, they were still legible. Mostly. So he got ready for his next trip to Warsaw–his big score. He stuffed so many documents together for the Poles that there were literally suitcases of them.
(12.30)
And in June 1980, he again set off for Poland.
We’ll be back after the break.
-
We’re back.
Harper: I met Psyzchodian back in Warsaw and I took the stuff out to um—oh I don’t know. They call it a little chalet. Out on the outskirts of Warsaw…
(13.00)
…And I'm in there in this chalet waiting to see what the hell is going on.
The “chalet” was surrounded by barbed wire, and heavily guarded. There were lots of intelligence operatives buzzing around. But Psyzchodian was clearly in charge.
Harper: They had people wandering around that area. . . I'd look out, occasionally I'd see somebody, another car pull up or something like that, but he always had people around him—other agents.
Eventually, when things settled down a bit…
(13.30)
…Psychodzian and Harper got to talking. Psychodzian said his men would need to examine the documents Harper had brought.
Harper: While we're there, he takes the stuff and says, we gotta take a look at it.
So, Harper handed over the suitcases.
The Polish intelligence officer took Harper’s luggage, and walked outside to a car that had been circling the property’s perimeter. He handed the suitcases to a man inside. Harper watched from the chalet as the car sped away with the…
(14.00)
…document stash.
Harper: So, uh. He took the stuff and gave it to some other agents. And they started spreading it out and collating it and all that kinda shit.
When we spoke, I asked Harper whether he was nervous at the time.
I mean, I certainly would be: Surrounded by communist intelligence operatives, in a safe house behind…
(14.30)
…the Iron Curtain, actively committing espionage against my own country…?
But his answer took me back a bit.
ZD: How did you—were you, I mean what are you…
Harper: I mean, I was shit-faced drunk most of the time!
ZD: Oh, [restrained laughter] okay. There you go. There you go.
Harper: So anyway…
I don’t think he was joking, either. You see, while scouring the Polish intelligence file on Harper, I saw something that stopped me cold: poems. Limericks. In Harper’s handwriting…
(15.00)
…On lined paper.
They don’t rhyme perfectly, but you’ll get the drift. Remember, Harper pronounces Psychodzian’s first name, “Geeswaf,” phonetically, as “ZIZSLAW”.
AS WE SAT IN THE FORREST BY THE FIRE
ZIZSLAW & I BEGAN TO CONSPIRE
THE FIRE WAS HOT
BUT IDEAS WE HAD NOT
THE ONLY PROBLEM WAS TO DECIDE WHO WAS THE LIER
(15.30)
And another…
LOGICALLY, IDEOLOGICAL ZIZLAW
TOLD ME MORALITY IN POLAND WAS RAW
THE IMPORTANT THING WAS PROGRESS
SO, I SAID I GUESS
I’LL DO WHAT I CAN FOR WARSAW
And finally.
AS I SAT IN WARSAR
DEALING WITH ZIZSLAW
WE TALKED OF MONEY
WHICH HAD TO DO WITH MY HONEY…
(16.00)
…& CHOOSE NOT TO WORRY ABOUT THE LAW
If these aren’t smoking gun evidence–and great blackmail material for the Poles–I don’t know what is.
So, after a period of drunken purgatory there at the chalet, Harper finally got some good news: the Poles were going to pay him in full. And give him a new shopping list based on the missile docs he’d already…
(16.30)
…provided.
Finally, as a treasonous Soviet Bloc agent… he had some job security.
Meanwhile, big things were happening behind the scenes. The KGB had flown in twenty operatives from Moscow to Warsaw to scour the 2,100 pages of Harper’s documents. The KGB officers worked for nearly twenty-four hours straight. And they were ecstatic at what they found.
(17.00)
James Harper: Pretty soon, Psyzchodian comes in and says uh, we’ve decided to give you a hundred thousand dollars.
James Harper: And get some other stuff for us that was indicated in, in that material. So I ended up with another list of stuff from them and, and this envelope with a hundred thousand dollars <laugh>. Oh, geez, I’m thinking…
(17.30)
…“What in the hell's going on!”
Before he could even think about smuggling the next round of documents into Poland, though, Harper had to figure out how to bring his 100,000 dollar payout home.
James Harper: And, uh, even though it was in hundred dollars bills, it was a pretty big package.
So Harper decamped to Switzerland to scheme for a bit.
And for some R&R, at a fancy hotel on Lake Geneva with his European girlfriend, Juta Bushley.
(18.00)
But Harper and Bushley’s alcohol-fueled tryst turned sour.
James Harper: So finally, I, I just left her. I put some money on the table in the hotel room for her, and I grabbed that money, and everything else and I headed for a casino in Geneva. And so, I stayed there a while…
(18.30)
…trying to figure out what the hell to do.
Frustrated and bored, Harper decided to try and deposit the funds into a French bank.
James Harper: And they had a bank there because of the gambling casino. So I went to the bank and I tried to deposit that hundred thousand dollars there. But they couldn't take it unless I had this document that showed where it came from, and this sort of thing.
But it’s not like…
(19.00)
…Harper could pull out a receipt for “faithful espionage services rendered.” So, in true Harper style, he opted for the most brazen plan possible.
James Harper: I left right there and headed for the airport in Geneva. And while I was at the airport in Geneva, I think I went into the men's room and I, I strapped, $50,000, [Harper does simple maths in his head]...
(19.30)
…I put half of that money in the, in the bottom of my shoe and, and wrapped around my ankle on both feet <laugh>. And I had it strapped to my ankles.
With 50,000 dollars tied to each ankle and stuffed into his tennis shoes, Harper bought his ticket home to San Francisco.
(20.00)
He flew back all the way with the money taped to him. Miraculously, he passed through customs stateside without a hiccup.
Mind you, Harper made some bigoted calculations…
James Harper: When I was coming through customs in New York, they had an Indian couple in the line that had about 14 suitcases. <Laugh> And I knew that I knew that custom agent when he got through with them, he wasn't gonna spend much…
(20.30)
…time on me. So I went right on through there.
Back in San Francisco, Schuler picked Harper up at the airport. It was time to split their espionage spoils.
James Harper: I sat there and, um, on Louise’s dining room table and, uh, divvied up with her.
Harper gave his sailboat buddy Stouffer 20 thousand for helping hide the missiles documents. He and Schuler kept…
(21.00)
…the other 80 thousand.
But, one person who wasn’t getting paid? Bill Hugle. By that point, Harper had cut him out of the scheme entirely.
James Harper: See that all took place without Bill in it. They didn't want to deal with him. At that point in time, I just kind of had my own contact set up with them and knew how to work with them and everything. And I just avoided Bill <laugh>.
Harper and Schuler, meanwhile…
(21.30)
…decided to formalize their partnership. Soon after he returned to the States, the two eloped during a booze-soaked jaunt to Reno. Was it love? Or perhaps Harper knew that married couples cannot be compelled to testify against one another?
Either way, it bound the two co-conspirators more tightly together.
After his big payout, Harper went back to Warsaw a few more times. But with much smaller tranches of documents than before…
(22.00)
…He was given 10,000 dollars, here and there, by Psyzchodizan.
Eventually the Poles started worrying that Harper’s trips to Europe would set off alarm bells at the FBI or CIA.
The Poles still wanted Harper to spy for them … just more professionally.
So they instructed Harper to pretend to lose his U.S. passport and get a new one, to hide his prior travels. But he flubbed their orders.
They also told him to buy a camcorder. So he could…
(22.30)
…videotape the missile materials, and bring a tape or two at a time to Europe, instead of physically transporting massive bags of secret documents. But Harper got annoyed with the device, and ignored them.
So the Poles decided to switch things up.
James Harper: After that first contact where they gave me that hundred thousand, they decided they didn't want, they didn't want me bringing that stuff into Poland again.
(23.00)
Psyzchodizan wouldn’t be dealing with Harper anymore. Instead, Harper’s new contact would be a Polish intelligence officer in Mexico codenamed “Jacques.”
But how would the two strangers know each other? Well, Psyzchodizan had a keepsake from Harper: a laundry ticket. Harper—the dilettante poet—had written one of his trademark limericks across it.
James Harper: So um. Przychodzien ripped up…
(23.30)
…a laundry ticket and gave me half of it and said, hang on to that.
It was a neat bit of spycraft.
Since Harper and his new contact Jacques had never met, at their first checkpoint, each man would show the other their half of the ripped laundry ticket. The limerick would align. And that way, the two strangers would be able to confirm the other’s true identity.
To assist Jacques in identifying Harper…
(24.00)
…Psychodizen also instructed the Silicon Valley engineer to wear a medallion around his neck that read, “IRISH BROTHERHOOD.”
You can’t say Psychodizen didn’t have a sense of humor.
In December 1980, Harper met with “Jacques” for the first time in Mexico City.
He received another $10,000 the Poles owed him. But Jacques left empty handed. This time, Harper had been too spooked to bring new documents with him.
(24.30)
Eventually, he got his courage up, and returned to Mexico City–with Schuler–in February 1981.
With them, they brought a large stash of classified documents and received a much bigger payout. With characteristic indiscretion, Harper even chartered a private jet to take Schuler and him back home.
The Poles were thrilled over Harper’s new missile secrets. They were even more valuable than materials he’d previously provided.
(25.00)
The obtained materials fulfill a specific order from [our] Soviet comrades . . .
Soviet intelligence deems documents from this source enormously valuable.
The USSR party and government leadership has been informed about the fact that Polish intelligence passed on these documents to our brothers in the Soviet service.
Harper’s stolen missile secrets were strengthening the ties between Moscow and Warsaw…
(25.30)
…But Harper was becoming nervous about his trips to Mexico–and cranky about all the travel. So he brought it up with Jacques.
James Harper: I told him that, you know, this place is too fucking far away. You gotta set this up so I'm a little closer to home. So, um, they said we can't, we can't do anything in Tijuana. They said the place is crawling with American agents.
Instead, they met in Matamoros, directly across the border. Where Harper was paid 50,000 dollars for some more…
(26.00)
…classified documents. And again in Guadalajara.
Then, ignoring Jacques’ advice, Harper and Schuler drove to Tijuana from San Francisco, where they stashed some classified documents in a safe deposit box.
Harper’s paranoia was beginning to take over.
He had been passing missile secrets to the Eastern Bloc for roughly two years. He craved the money but feared the consequences…
(26.30)
…Sometimes, he would arrive at scheduled meetings with Jacques without documents, demanding more cash for past deliveries. The meetings turned contentious, and Harper began slowly pulling back from contact with his Polish handler in Mexico.
He pushed for a meeting with Psychodzian.
In November 1981, Harper arrived in Warsaw. Like actors reprising their…
(27.00)
…roles, Harper again sat down with the senior Polish intelligence officer. And Harper again demanded more payment for his past spying.
But, Harper hadn’t brought any new documents with him.
At this point, Psychodizan’s patience was wearing thin. Here’s what he wrote about the meeting:
I firmly explained to him that I am not interested in this kind of cooperation either, even if just because I don’t have suicidal tendencies.
(27.30)
He knows that we pay. He received from us $250,000 in just one year. He knows that he never gets money if he doesn’t deliver anything. Hence the question – what is going on?
It would be the last time the two men would meet face-to-face.
Harper left Warsaw. It was the closest he'd gotten to seeing what life was really like in the Soviet Bloc.
The Polish capital was then being rocked by major…
(28.00)
…labor protests.
For months, nationwide demonstrations, led by the “Solidarity” movement, had threatened one-party communist rule in Poland–and Moscow’s domination of Eastern Europe, more broadly.
Things in Poland were spinning out of control.
In a bid to preempt an invasion by Moscow, the Polish regime imposed martial law on December 13, 1981.
NewsHour: Poland’s Solidarity union…
(28.30)
…claimed today that its workers were on strike in many mines and factories in defiance of the martial law imposed yesterday, but the extent of the stoppages could not be checked by Western newsmen hampered by the almost total shutdown of communications.
NewsHour: For 16 months the question in Washington has been, what will the United States do if?—If the situation in Poland turns rough.
NewsHour: Is this the end—or only another stage—for Poland’s liberal revolution?
At their final meeting…
(29.00)
…Psychodzian had set up another rendezvous between Harper and Jacques in Mexico. It was supposed to take place early in the new year. Harper was to deliver twenty-nine new classified missile-related documents.
It never happened. In late December, Harper received a typewritten postcard from Mexico. It read:
“Dear Jim, I'm leaving for Europe for good next week. Don't hesitate to call on me being there. Best regards…
(29.30)
…for Louisa. Truly yours, John.”
Harper knew what Jacques’ coded message meant: the rendezvous was off. And without any future ones scheduled, who knew when–or if–he’d ever meet his Polish spy handlers again.
But what the Poles didn’t know was that–even before he’d received the coded postcard; indeed, even before he’d had that last meeting with Przychodzien in Warsaw…
(30.00)
…James Harper was already scheming ahead, thinking about his next big move.
He was cooking up a new plot: about self-preservation—from prosecution. He wanted to safeguard the hundreds of thousands of dollars he’d already received from Moscow, while also opening up a new revenue stream.
Harper would offer himself as a double agent ... to the CIA.
Borne from hubris…
(30.30)
…it was a plot that would hasten Harper’s own downfall.
That’s next, on Spy Valley.
##
–
Spy Valley is a production of Project Brazen in partnership with PRX.
It's hosted, written and reported by me, Zach Dorfman.
Bradley Hope and Tom Wright, are the Executive Producers.
(31.00)
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.
At Project Brazen, Lucy Woods is the Producer. Georgia Gee is Lead Researcher…
(31.30)
…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 by Hanna Kozlowska.
Narration recorded at Outpost Studios in San Francisco.
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Continue to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on new episodes.
And subscribe to Brazen Plus on Apple Podcasts for exclusive reporting and bonus material.
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