Brian Kelley, who has died aged 68, was a former American spy accused, and later exonerated, of being a double agent working for the Russians from inside the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
For two years, in 1999-2000, Kelley was hounded by the FBI in the mistaken belief that he was the “mole” for whom they were searching inside US intelligence. Although innocent, the CIA officer was kept away from his desk for nearly two years and confronted with “facts” that might have been borrowed from a spy novel: that he visited strip clubs, was paid in diamonds, took trips to Panama, and had access to pertinent information at certain crucial times.
Code-named Grey Deceiver, Kelley was, the FBI said, the most damaging mole ever in American intelligence. Because of his “treachery”, American agents abroad had been executed and the Russians handed highly sensitive information about US military capability.
In fact, the double agent was not working at the CIA at all, but within the FBI itself: Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent code-named Grey Day, had spied for Russia for 22 years in what has been called the “worst intelligence disaster in US history”.
With Aldrich Ames, a counter-intelligence officer working for the CIA and also a Soviet spy, Hanssen had betrayed three Russians secretly spying for the FBI — including a Soviet general code-named Top Hat — who were executed by Moscow. When he was working for the KGB, Hanssen even directed a study of potential traitors in the FBI when — as he alone knew — he himself was the mole.
Eventually, in an unprecedented operation, the FBI paid a defector $7 million to pull a file from KGB headquarters in Moscow. The file contained an audiotape of the mole talking to his Russian handler, which agents expected to contain Kelley’s voice. Instead, the aghast investigators heard the voice of one of their own men: Hanssen. It was Hanssen, not Kelley, who had been paid in diamonds for his spying, Hanssen who had frequented a strip club, and he who had been in the right places at the right time.
Brian Joseph Kelley was born on January 8 1943 at Waterbury, Connecticut, and graduated from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont with a degree in Political Science. He joined the US Air Force in 1964, and spent 20 years with the Office of Special Investigations on counter-intelligence work. In 1984 he moved to the CIA.
Five years later he worked out a method used by Moscow to communicate clandestinely with deep-cover agents called “illegals”. The discovery led to the unmasking of the State Department diplomat Felix Bloch, a suspected spy who was photographed meeting a KGB “illegal” in Vienna and exchanging a briefcase believed to contain secrets.
But Bloch got away, leading the FBI to suspect that Kelley had tipped off the very man he was investigating. They tapped his phone and tried to trap him into confessing.
When agents secretly searched Kelley’s home, they found a map of a park marked, they said, with places at which he would leave secret documents for the KGB.
They even spotted a KGB officer in the park and were convinced that the spy was picking up documents left there by Kelley; only later did they realise that the park was also yards from Hanssen’s house in the same neighbourhood. Kelley had used the map to plot his jogging routes.
The false accusations against Kelley and his family continued for a further two years. His two sisters were confronted and interrogated by the FBI, as were his three grown-up children, his friends and his colleagues. His daughter, who was also working at the CIA, was taken into an interview room and told that her father was a spy. Agents even threatened to go to the nursing home where Kelley’s ailing mother was living and tell her that her only son was a traitor.
After finally being exonerated, Kelley worked in the Office of the National Counter-intelligence Executive; he retired from the CIA in 2006. While working for the government he earned numerous intelligence awards, and in retirement became a teacher.
According to a CIA spokesman, Preston Golson, Kelley had kept the faith with his country and his colleagues. The Pentagon press secretary, George Little, a former CIA spokesman, called him “a national treasure”. Explaining his story in an interview in 2006, Kelley said: “I just want to make sure that what happened to me never happens again to anyone.”
Brian Kelley, who died of an apparent heart attack on September 19, is survived by his wife, Patricia, and by their two sons and one daughter.
Five years later he worked out a method used by Moscow to communicate clandestinely with deep-cover agents called “illegals”. The discovery led to the unmasking of the State Department diplomat Felix Bloch, a suspected spy who was photographed meeting a KGB “illegal” in Vienna and exchanging a briefcase believed to contain secrets.
But Bloch got away, leading the FBI to suspect that Kelley had tipped off the very man he was investigating. They tapped his phone and tried to trap him into confessing.
When agents secretly searched Kelley’s home, they found a map of a park marked, they said, with places at which he would leave secret documents for the KGB.
They even spotted a KGB officer in the park and were convinced that the spy was picking up documents left there by Kelley; only later did they realise that the park was also yards from Hanssen’s house in the same neighbourhood. Kelley had used the map to plot his jogging routes.
The false accusations against Kelley and his family continued for a further two years. His two sisters were confronted and interrogated by the FBI, as were his three grown-up children, his friends and his colleagues. His daughter, who was also working at the CIA, was taken into an interview room and told that her father was a spy. Agents even threatened to go to the nursing home where Kelley’s ailing mother was living and tell her that her only son was a traitor.
After finally being exonerated, Kelley worked in the Office of the National Counter-intelligence Executive; he retired from the CIA in 2006. While working for the government he earned numerous intelligence awards, and in retirement became a teacher.
According to a CIA spokesman, Preston Golson, Kelley had kept the faith with his country and his colleagues. The Pentagon press secretary, George Little, a former CIA spokesman, called him “a national treasure”. Explaining his story in an interview in 2006, Kelley said: “I just want to make sure that what happened to me never happens again to anyone.”
Brian Kelley, who died of an apparent heart attack on September 19, is survived by his wife, Patricia, and by their two sons and one daughter.
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