Paul Redmond. (Image via CSPAN by way of Brian Ross Investigates/The Law&Crime Network.)
In his first public comment on the matter, Paul Redmond, a former longtime senior CIA official, has broken his silence to deny suggestions that he is the long sought-after “Fourth Man” — a Russian spy operating at the highest levels of the U.S. intelligence community — as alleged in a new book by former CIA officer Robert Baer.
“Robert Baer’s book is hogwash, filled with mistakes and misinformation,” Redmond said in a written statement to Law&Crime. “I have never ever been a Russian spy.”
Three U.S. intelligence officers are serving life sentences after having been caught spying for Russia — the FBI’s Robert Hanssen and the CIA’s Aldrich Ames and Edward Lee Howard.
But now, in interviews for the Law&Crime Network program “Brian Ross Investigates,” both Baer and former FBI Senior official David Major say there is a growing consensus among the intelligence community that there was a Russian mole inside the CIA or FBI who has yet to be caught — the so-called “Fourth Man.”
(Image via Brian Ross Investigates/The Law&Crime Network.)
In his book, Baer — a legendary CIA intelligence officer whose exploits have been celebrated in books and movies including “Syriana,” where is he played by actor George Clooney — lays out in detail the internal hunt by the CIA’s Special Investigations Unit into the alleged mole and says their evidence points to Redmond.
“According to the investigators — and I only used firsthand sources for this book,” Baer told Brian Ross, “he fit a profile of compromises to Moscow that Ames couldn’t account for and Hanssen couldn’t account for. They decided he was somebody who had been assigned to Langley for ten years, starting on [the] Russia desk and then moving over to counterintelligence. It was a matter of deduction that they came up with this guy’s name.”
Brian Ross and Robert Baer. (Image via Brian Ross Investigates/The Law&Crime Network.)
“Intuition tells me it’s not him — um, the FBI told me I only have a quarter of the evidence against him,” Baer added on Ross’s program. “I haven’t seen the original evidence, and if I were on a jury, I wouldn’t convict.”
Baer also said on Brian Ross Investigates that there was an “active investigation” into who the so-called “Fourth Man” could be.
Baer’s allegations are all the more surprising because Redmond, now retired, was a well-known senior level CIA counterintelligence official famously credited with tracking down Ames, the Russian spy inside the CIA.
(Image via Brian Ross Investigates/The Law&Crime Network.)
Redmond’s longtime colleague, former FBI Senior Official David Major, also known for his work in counterintelligence, told Ross he agrees with Baer there is another traitor still to be unmasked — but says it’s not Redmond.
“There is evidence that there’s something else we don’t even know,” Major told Ross. “I know all the players. I worked all those cases. I was intimately involved in it. So, I really noticed that it made sense that he can be a suspect. Absolutely. But is there evidence that he’s a spy? None whatsoever. ”
Watch the full segment below:
