Jul 24, 2002 4 min read

MOSCOW (AP) – Edward Lee Howard, a former CIA officer who defected to the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s in a daring Cold War spy adventure, has died at his home outside Moscow, a former KGB officer said Tuesday. He was 50. Howard died July 12 in the exclusive Moscow suburb of Zhukovka and was later cremated, said Igor Prelin, an official with an association of retired Soviet foreign intelligence officers in Moscow, who had known Howard since 1988.

Howard’s defection was the first by someone known to have worked for the CIA, and U.S. intelligence officials blamed him for the collapse of the CIA’s spying operations in Moscow and the execution of a Soviet citizen for treason. Howard maintained his innocence to interviewers.

Author David Wise, who once interviewed Howard and wrote “The Spy Who Got Away,” said Howard died from a fall down a flight of stairs.

However, Prelin said: “As to the cause of death, I don’t know. There is talk that there was an accident or a car crash. There’s lots of contradicting information.”

The State Department said Monday it had received information apparently confirming Howard’s death. Russia’s intelligence services refused to comment.

Howard, a native of New Mexico, started working for the CIA in 1981 and was fired by the agency in June 1983 after he was suspected of selling secrets to the Soviets.

In 1985 Howard escaped an FBI surveillance team in Santa Fe, N.M., and fled to Moscow. He used a dummy in his car to evade the agents, and his wife later reportedly place a telephone call using a recording of his voice to throw the FBI off his trail.

The KGB provided him a Moscow apartment and a country house, and paid him a salary for five years until he set up a trade consulting business, he said in a 1995 interview.

“I never gave information that could hurt America or Americans,” Howard said at the time.

Howard lived in Moscow until 1991, when his chief patron at the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, was charged with treason in the attempted coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Howard then left Russia and lived in Sweden for about a year before returning to the Moscow area.

Howard’s estranged American wife – who helped him defect – and son came to Moscow after hearing of his death, and will leave Wednesday for the United States with his ashes, Prelin said. Prelin said Howard also had had a Russian wife, but they separated several years ago.

The town where Howard spent the last part of his life, Zhukovka, is the place where to many top military officials, politicians and scientists had dachas, or country homes, in the Soviet era. Today many newly rich Russians have built homes there, and castle-like structures line the area behind thick walls and tight security.

Howard said he has dodged Western intelligence services and customs officials while traveling in France, Canada and Mexico. He also said he had traveled widely in Nicaragua, Cuba and Eastern Europe after asking for asylum in June 1986.

Howard was blamed for many activities actually carried out by fellow CIA agent Aldrich Ames, who was only caught in 1994. Ames pleaded guilty to spying for the Soviet Union in the most damaging espionage case in U.S. history.

Howard said that before he was fired the CIA had wanted to assign him to “a technical surveillance project, eavesdropping” related to Star Wars.

Regarding his cooperation with the KGB, Howard said he identified photographs of people he had worked with, described general CIA procedures for recruiting agents and advised the Cubans on how to try to recruit a CIA agent they knew to be a lesbian, according to his 1995 book “Safe House.”