Gardner Hathaway | CIA officer, 88

Gardner R. Hathaway, 88, a former CIA chief of counterintelligence whose nearly four-decade career with the agency took him to Cold War focal points ranging from Berlin to Moscow and placed him at the center of many espionage episodes, died Nov. 20 at the Vitas hospice in Vienna, Va. The cause was complications from cancer, said his wife, Karin Hathaway.

Taciturn but courtly, Mr. Hathaway, who was known as Gus, was an undercover officer known for his mastery of espionage tradecraft and his aggressive efforts to best the Soviet KGB.

"Gus was a risk-taker," said Jack Downing, a former CIA deputy director of operations who served with Mr. Hathaway. "We needed good intelligence, and we needed to be aggressive to get it. He was canny and smart about how to do it."

Mr. Hathaway persuaded superiors at agency headquarters in Langley to approve an operation in 1978 involving Russian engineer Adolf Tolkachev. The episode provided the CIA with a huge amount of sensitive intelligence on the Soviet military for nearly a decade.

Mr. Hathaway served in the Army in Europe during World War II and was wounded in the leg by mortar shrapnel. After his discharge, he enrolled at the University of Virginia and joined the CIA a year after graduation in 1950. He worked in Frankfurt, Germany, and then Berlin as a case officer. He later served in South America before arriving in Moscow as chief of station in 1977.

At Mr. Hathaway's retirement ceremony in 1990, CIA Director William Webster called him "a consummate operations officer." He was presented with the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, which noted his "willingness to challenge the conventional wisdom, inspiring leadership . . . penetrating intellect and profound compassion." - Washington Post