Richard Kovich, 79, CIA Mole Suspect Who Cleared Name
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Richard Kovich, a Central Intelligence Agency case officer whose career stalled amid accusations of disloyalty and who eventually won financial compensation for damage to his reputation, died February 11 at his home in Jacksonville, N.C. He had heart disease. He was 79.
Kovich, who spoke Serbian from childhood, was a promising figure in the CIA’s Soviet Russia division early in the Cold War. Based in Europe for many years, he aided in the defection and debriefing of notable Soviet intelligence figures.
Among them was Mikhail Federov, a former confidant to the Soviet minister of defense. Federov told Kovich about a planned Soviet rocket mission and its technological capabilities, crucial information after the Sputnik launch into space.
At first, Kovich’s work with Federov brought a congratulatory note and orchids from James Jesus Angleton, the agency’s mysterious and powerful chief of counterintelligence. This attitude soon changed.
Provoked by high-profile moles in the British secret service, Angleton instigated an internal mole hunt under the code name HONETOL, a notorious operation that scuttled many careers, including Kovich’s.
Angleton’s suspicion toward Kovich was given added credibility by a KGB defector. At Angleton’s behest, the CIA bugged his home and office but found nothing suspicious. Nevertheless, Angleton prevented Kovich from rising in government rank.
By the time Kovich decided to leave the CIA in 1974, much had changed. The new CIA chief, William Colby, dismissed Angleton for domestic snooping, and Kovich became a full-time agency consultant, which instantly elevated him two government grades.
Still unsatisfied, Kovich requested his personnel files and began to see for the first time the extent of the accusations against him. He wrote to the new central intelligence director, George H.W. Bush, receiving a reply saying that his continued employment should suffice as vindication.
In retirement in North Carolina, he carried on a fight for recognition of the agency’s abuses toward its employees.
In 1978, at a private session of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he presented his case and carried with him a quotation from author Robert Louis Stevenson: “The cruelest lies are often told in silence.”
Kovich eventually reaped a six-figure settlement.
