A Casualty of Chaos

By J.F.O. McAllister/Washington

Fred Woodruff was just another diplomat until he died. But when CIA director James Woolsey flew to Tbilisi to collect his body last week, it was not hard to deduce that Woodruff was actually a U.S. spy. His death dramatized America's increasing involvement in the volatile remnants of the old Soviet empire. As Washington tries to boost its ties with these disorderly states, even to mediate their conflicts with Russia, Woodruff's slaying raises a sharp warning: these lands are increasingly chaotic, and chaos has its perils.

Woodruff, ostensibly a regional-affairs officer assigned to the new Tbilisi embassy but actually the CIA's acting station chief, spent Sunday afternoon on a sight-seeing trip to the village of Kasbegi. He was riding home in a white, four-wheel-drive Niva jeep driven by Eldar Gogoladze, who heads the security unit in charge of protecting top Georgian officials, when suddenly, sometime after 9:30 p.m., a single bullet pierced the brain of the 45-year-old American. Gogoladze was unharmed.

Was Woodruff killed by criminals in a botched stickup? Or by an overzealous guard at a checkpoint? Or by assassins gunning for him or Gogoladze? The murder remains a mystery. American officials say the killing may have been a random event. Highwaymen regularly prey on motorists along that road. Although three locals were detained and questioned by Georgian authorities several days after the murder, a U.S. official says they were "not political." Two FBI agents flew to Tbilisi last week to participate in the investigation.

The slain agent was a seasoned veteran of service in Russia, Turkey, Ethiopia and Sudan. "Freddie was an enormously charming guy. You liked him, , you liked to tell him secrets," said a diplomat who served with Woodruff in Africa. "He was an aggressive, old-fashioned, street-smart spook. When everything was falling apart, you could ask him to get the hell out there and find out what's going on."

Woodruff may have learned his way with people as the son of a tent-preaching Oklahoma evangelist; his job was to take around the collection plate, and by the age of 10, he was giving his own sermons. After joining the CIA in 1975, he thrived on Third World crises. He loathed neckties and wore cowboy boots and sometimes a ten-gallon hat. But he was no cowboy on the job. Joseph O'Neill, who served with Woodruff in Africa and is now charge d'affaires in Eritrea, considered him a rock-steady operative who "knew exactly what he was getting into. When things were going bad," he recalls, "you'd count on Freddie to be quiet, thoughtful, and then go out and stick his head in the lion's mouth."

Georgia was certainly the jaws of peril. State Department officials regard the current tensions there as "chaotic to the point of anarchy." Eduard Shevardnadze's government is threatened not only by a war in the breakaway region of Abkhazia but also by violence from supporters of ousted communist President Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Says a Western diplomat: "Georgia is a country full of people with guns who shoot them all the time."

Washington wants to help Shevardnadze's government regain control, and dispatched Woodruff to provide antiterrorist training to the bodyguards of top Georgian officials, teaching them defensive measures, negotiation tactics and crisis management. But in Georgia's highly charged politics, something as benign as preventing assassination can still be taken as a provocation.

The CIA is quietly providing the same service to some other former Soviet republics that have asked for it: Georgia is not the only one being torn apart by a brutal combination of ethnic separatism, factional fighting and tensions between locals and Russians. The U.S. has a strong interest in tamping down the conflicts. "If they are left unsettled," says a senior U.S. official, "they will threaten reform in the new republics, and Russia itself."

In a little-noticed policy initiative last week, James Collins, the former acting ambassador in Moscow, was assigned to provide U.S. "good offices" to ex-Soviet republics that would like outside help in settling disputes with their neighbors. U.S. officials insist that Collins will mediate only when both parties to a conflict want him to, that Washington will never deploy peacekeeping troops in the former U.S.S.R., and that the U.S. will scrupulously avoid manipulating the politics of Russia's neighbors for its own advantage. "We may never be able to convince every Russian that we have this altruistic motive," says a senior State Department official, "but quite frankly, that's what it is."

Woodruff's personal tragedy in Tbilisi underscores what dangers can lurk even in altruism. Many Russians are acutely suspicious that Washington aims to block a return of their influence in areas they long controlled. Russia's neighbors wonder what help the U.S. can offer in defusing their ethnic problems and strife with Moscow except token amounts of aid. So far, programs like Woodruff's are strictly defensive. But the more the U.S. takes sides in these disputes, the more enemies it will acquire.

Consummate spy that he was, Fred Woodruff would be surprised by his fame in death. On Monday, the day of his burial, flags at U.S. embassies and consulates around the world were ordered flown at half staff. That seems fitting for the first U.S. spy to die helping, not harming, a onetime Soviet republic.

With reporting by John Kohan/Moscow and Jay Peterzell/Washington