CIA's 'Batman' and son spied for Russia

“You’ve been selected for this position,” one of the agents told Maguire. “We have another Ames, and we have to catch him.”

The FBI and CIA had handpicked Maguire to help catch this new mole. His background as a cop, and his experience testifying in court, made him a shoo-in as a candidate to help the bureau gather evidence inside CIA headquarters and neuter their suspect: Harold James “Jim” Nicholson.

Agents explained that Jim, whom Maguire had never met, was now in his sixteenth year as a CIA operations officer. He taught tradecraft at The Farm, a plum job given to spies who’d proven themselves in the field. Jim, he learned, was a single dad with primary custody of his three kids: Son Jeremi was headed to college; daughter Star and younger son Nathan lived in a two-story government house at Camp Peary, but were soon moving to the family town house in Burke, Virginia.

Maguire knew The Farm well. He had taken his five-month career trainee course and extensive paramilitary training on its grounds before being sent to a CIA demolition school in a covert redoubt in the mid- Atlantic tidewaters. There, he had learned how to build and dismantle all manner of explosives.

The agents had cooked up a scheme for senior CIA officials to call Jim back from The Farm and assign him as a branch chief in the Counter- terrorist Center, or CTC, in the Original Headquarters Building. (It was later renamed the Counterterrorism Center.) Maguire would apply to work as the deputy branch chief under Jim. FBI investigators hoped Jim would pick Maguire over other applicants for the position. If all went according to plan, Maguire would take the office next to Jim’s. The FBI- CIA team would covertly supervise Maguire’s undercover tilt against his own boss, a spy-versus-spy operation in the bosom of CIA headquarters.

No such investigation had ever been run under the roof at Langley.

Investigators knew Jim would interview several experienced CIA officers for the position of deputy branch chief, his top subordinate. But they secretly stacked the deck with Maguire, who had much stronger credentials than the others. Maguire was a founding member of the CTC, a distinction marking him as a “plank holder.” He knew the territory, having worked against Middle East terrorists for years.

Maguire was a good spy, and the kind of guy you’d join for a few rounds of bourbon. But investigators looking to bring Jim to justice were more interested in the skills Maguire had acquired in his former life as a Baltimore City cop. He had worked long hours in the violent corners of Charm City’s neighborhoods, streets later made famous in The Wire. Maguire worked well with prosecutors and logged countless hours on witness stands.

He walked into Room 6E2911 that summer for his interview with Jim. They took seats in Jim’s office, which sat behind a heavy cipher- locked door on the far end of a bullpen of case officers and career trainees. Much was revealed to Maguire when he sneaked a glance at the I-love-me walls flanking his prospective boss’s desk. Everywhere he looked there were framed photos of Jim, certificates, military awards, and other commendations. It was clear the guy was smart, and liked himself. A lot.

“He was a good interviewer,” Maguire recalled. “He was looking for somebody who knew what they were doing, understood the target, somebody he could rely on—somebody he could use.”

Maguire recited his bona fides to Jim, explaining that he was an experienced hand, good at cultivating assets, and was happy to put some of his best Middle East contacts back on the payroll. He said his assets could help Jim’s branch identify and break up cells of Islamic fundamentalists bent on killing Americans or otherwise threatening U.S. security.

Jim wondered how a talented case officer had fallen so far, ending up in HR. So Maguire leveled with him. He’d pissed off Richter, who had cast him into the abyss. Maguire joked about wanting to jump out the window, but HR was on the second floor and he’d only break a bunch of bones. The two veteran spies shared a laugh. Jim knew Richter, and he’d certainly faced his own hassles with agency bureaucracy. But although he appreciated Maguire’s dire predicament, he couldn’t promise him anything.

Maguire walked out thinking he’d nailed the interview. But he knew Jim wasn’t about to hire him until he’d worked the hallway file: the informal vetting of prospective employees in the corridors, back offices, and massive food court on the first floor of the agency’s Original Headquarters Building. There were plenty of people inside who would vouch for Maguire’s native talent as a spy, and a couple who could f**k things up with a mixed review.

Investigators crossed their fingers. Without somebody working for them inside Jim’s locked office, there was no telling how many of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets Jim would purloin and sell to the Russians during daylight duties in the CTC.

Weeks later, Maguire picked up an envelope addressed to him at work. Inside was a directive from the personnel division. The CIA bureaucracy was so big that if you moved from one part of the agency to another, even laterally, someone had to create paperwork to update your salary and benefits. The papers told Maguire to report immediately as deputy branch chief in the CTC under Jim Nicholson. This was his passport out of the Death Star, and a chance to try his spy skills against one of the shrewdest characters he’d ever met.

Not long after Maguire got word he would be working for Jim, Redmond called him for a meeting in one of the agency’s “black rooms,” offices with no descriptors on the door, just cipher locks. There he found himself buttonholed by the veteran counterintelligence supervisor who had headed the long-in-coming apprehension of Rick Ames. Redmond confided in Maguire that if he performed well in his undercover role, he’d serve his country admirably and notch a major milestone in his career.

“If you f**k it up,” he said, “you’re finished. So don’t f**k it up.”