BALTIMORE—Edwin “Ed” Hale Sr., a retired bank executive known locally for his sharp-elbowed approach to business, installed video surveillance on his 186-acre farm and still sleeps with a sawed-off shotgun by his bed.
During that time, he said, he spoke regularly with a CIA handler and allowed the agency to create a fake company under his corporate umbrella, which included shipping and trucking companies he ran at the same time he led the bank. Operatives in the field used the fictitious firm as cover when traveling the world, complete with business cards and hats. Mr. Hale said he worked under “nonofficial cover,” in which his identity was unassociated with the U.S. government.
In the early 1990s, Mr. Hale said, the CIA used agents posing as his employees to track Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts and gather information on the terrorist’s financing operations.
“It was very cathartic” to finally reveal his ties to the CIA, the 68-year-old said in a recent interview at his home overlooking Chesapeake Bay. “To hold a secret like that for so long to yourself, it was difficult.”None of the women he courted after he was divorced ever knew, either. “It would have been a great pickup line,” he said, ruefully. “‘Hey, I’m a spy.’”
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The college dropout, who said he survived three plane crashes and now owns a professional indoor soccer team, first made the disclosure last year in a biography he commissioned that asks, “The most interesting man in the world?” on the dust jacket and features blurbs from Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski, the Democratic senators from Maryland.
Not everyone was pleased that Mr. Hale decided to go public, including the man who Mr. Hale said recruited him to the agency in 1992.
“I am disappointed and upset that Ed would violate his agreement and understanding with the agency,” said A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard in a phone interview.
Mr. Krongard was the executive director of the CIA from 2001 to 2004 and was also once chairman of Alex. Brown & Sons, a Baltimore investment bank that later merged with Bankers Trust and was acquired by Deutsche Bank AG. Mr. Hale and Mr. Krongard were friends who worked in the same office building. Mr. Krongard declined to comment on whether he worked for the CIA in the early 1990s.
Others close to Mr. Hale said they are still processing the revelation. “I had a real hard time believing that he pulled off something that huge but I’ll be damned, he did,” said Ken Jones, who worked with Mr. Hale for 35 years, first at a trucking company and then at another bank Mr. Hale ran.
Mr. Hale, who grew up outside of Baltimore, made most of his fortune through trucking and barge companies that he founded as well as from real-estate development. He said he got involved in banking after he was turned down by Bank of Baltimore for a loan and became incensed by what he called its “snooty blue-blood culture.”
Mr. Hale at a friend’s request said he spent $1.4 million to launch a proxy fight in 1991 that garnered him a seat on the board and the title of chief executive.
Mr. Krongard approached him in early 1992, Mr. Hale said.
It wouldn’t be unusual for the CIA to draft professionals to help gather intelligence, said Peter Earnest, who served in the CIA for 35 years and is currently executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington. The agency has sought the help of professionals in businesses that provide good cover, including those that require frequent travel.
Mr. Hale said his fake company provided cover for agents who traveled throughout the Middle East and Africa. He said he was told the operatives’ names and destinations but not the details of their missions. He said he was also briefed regularly on intelligence issues through meetings with his handler, with whom he spoke between 30 and 50 times a year either over dinner discussions or on the phone. They often met for dinner at the Capital Grille in Washington, he said.
In the interview, Mr. Hale said he traveled to countries including Saudi Arabia, Poland, Denmark and Norway as an unofficial part of his arrangement with the CIA. Mr. Hale said he flew there for legitimate business reasons and would brief the CIA after his return about the economic conditions on the ground.
On one occasion, he said, the agency planned a mission that involved Mr. Hale traveling to the country of Georgia to buy ships that would be retrofitted for intelligence gathering. The mission was canceled after an assassination attempt on the Georgian president, Eduard Shevardnadze, in 1998.
While acknowledging he was never in direct danger, Mr. Hale said there were “a couple close calls” when agents didn’t return from their missions on time. Mr. Hale said he was a “little nervous” they had been caught and revealed his name. In part to protect himself from possible fallout, Mr. Hale began sleeping with a shotgun by his side.
Mr. Hale said his work with the agency stopped after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and he wasn’t needed anymore. He still keeps in touch with two of the agents, he said.Mr. Hale’s banking days are also over. In 1994, he and the board sold the Bank of Baltimore on to a New Jersey bank. In May 1995, he founded First Mariner Bancorp, holding company for 1st Mariner Bank, a Baltimore-based community bank.
During the financial crisis, 1st Mariner ran into trouble with regulators over faulty loans it had made that it had to buy back from Wall Street banks, generating sizable losses. In 2009, federal regulators ordered the bank to come up with more capital, and in 2011, Mr. Hale departed as chairman and CEO. The holding company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year and 1st Mariner Bank was purchased by a group of private-equity investors in June.
Mr. Hale currently focuses on his real-estate investments and the indoor-soccer team he owns, the Baltimore Blast.
The book, called “Hale Storm,” was written by Baltimore journalist Kevin Cowherd and has sold about 600 copies. Mr. Hale, twice divorced, said the book is his way of explaining his frequent absences while his children were growing up. “I want my kids to know where I was and what I did,” he said. His relationships with his daughters were once contentious but have improved as a result of the book, according to both Mr. Hale and the women.
His new passion: flower arranging, not unlike the fictional character played by Robert De Niro in the 2000 film “Meet the Parents.” That character, like Mr. Hale, was also a CIA operative. LINK
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