Russell Lee Adler (born 12 February 1937) was an American CIA agent who served during the Cold War's peak and decline. Adler served in the Vietnam War and later fought against former KGB agent Perseus and his spy ring in the early 1980s. In 1991, Adler collaborated with Frank Woods, Troy Marshall, and William Calderon in their operations against Pantheon, an ex-CIA black ops division.
Biography[]
Early life and military career[]
Russell Adler was born on February 12, 1937, in Arlington, Virginia to a military family. He took after his World War II veteran father and enlisted in the US Army in 1955, qualifying for the Green Berets in 1957. Adler served as a military advisor for South Vietnam during the early years of the Vietnam War before his recruitment by the CIA in 1959.
CIA career[]
Vietnam War[]
During his time as an analyst, Adler became fluent in Russian and German, which helped him communicate with embedded agents and informants all over the world. In the early 1960s, he became friends with Russian-American agent Grigori Weaver. Adler also maintained contact with Hans Timmerman, the KLPD chief in Amsterdam, until the mid-1980s.
In 1966, Adler was assigned to the Special Activities Division and later to MACV-SOG to investigate Soviet activity in Vietnam. On 26 January 1968, during Operation Fracture Jaw, Adler discovered minor evidence pointing to the existence of legendary KGB agent Perseus. Shortly after, he defended Firebase Ripcord alongside Lawrence Sims and other MACV-SOG operatives until the nuclear device was extracted from the facility.
Rebirth Island[]
Following the Vietnam War, Adler vanished from public view, disappearing into the archives of the CIA's most covert operations. Because of his bilingual abilities and extensive knowledge of espionage and covert tactics, he rose to become one of the CIA SAD's most trusted agents.
On February 23, 1968, Adler was deployed with a force of CIA SAD operators led by Special Agent Jason Hudson to invade Rebirth Island in the Aral Sea to apprehend Friedrich Steiner and any other high-ranking scientists involved in Project Nova. Adler was tasked with apprehending and interrogating Vikhor Kuzmin, the scientist in charge of Nova 6 production on the island. Following the interrogation, Adler stabbed Kuzmin in the eye in retaliation for Colonel Lev Kravchenko's stabbing of Grigori Weaver's eye during Operation Flashpoint in 1963 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh SSR.
Assassination of Kadivar[]
Amsterdam[]
In January 1981, President Ronald Reagan authorized the assassination of Arash Kadivar, the leader of the Kadivar Mercenaries and the man who sparked the Iran hostage crisis by rallying the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line. Adler and top agents Frank Woods and Alex Mason were dispatched to Amsterdam, Netherlands, to question Kadivar's second, Qasim Javadi, at a recently discovered safehouse and ascertain Kadivar's current whereabouts.
Adler used a favor with Hans Tillerman to reduce police presence around the safehouse. This effort was successful, and on 12 January, they stormed the safehouse, killing several of Javadi's men. They then interrogated Javadi on the rooftop, which led them to Kadivar's location at Trabzon Airport in Turkey. Mason spared Javadi, who later became a CIA asset.
Trabzon[]
18 hours later, the team arrived at the Trabzon airport and witnessed Kadivar's arrival, during which he shot two masked men in his vehicle for unknown reasons. They confirmed his identity and attacked Kadivar as he boarded a cargo plane, forcing the team to pursue it in a jeep. The plane was destroyed with an explosive RC-XD, and Kadivar sustained serious injuries. Adler interrogated the Iranian, who was shot dead while taunting Adler about Perseus' resurgence.
They immediately searched the vehicle Kadivar had shot into and discovered that one of the occupants, Perseus' right-hand man, had survived. Adler took the injured man and his codebook. He later brainwashed the officer into believing that he was Bell, an old friend of Adler who took part in Operation Fracture Jaw, where the codebook was allegedly discovered.
Perseus crisis[]
Adler, Woods, Mason, and Hudson attended the debriefing of the operation, accompanied by then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Chief of Staff James Baker, and President Reagan. Reagan approved the CIA operation to stop Perseus, as each of his resurgences shifted the balance of the Cold War. A team was assembled, consisting of Adler, Bell, Mason, Woods, fellow CIA agent Lawrence Sims, MI6 agent Helen Park and Mossad agent Lazar Azoulay. This team would be placed in CIA Safehouse E9 in West Berlin.
Berlin[]
Anton Volkov, a Russian Mafiya boss in East Berlin working for Perseus in East Berlin, was discovered to be an operative as a result of Bell's decoding of the codebook. Bell's decoding of the codebook led to the discovery of Anton Volkov, a Russian Mafiya boss in East Berlin working for Perseus. Adler, Bell, Park, and Azoulay were to infiltrate East Berlin, follow ex-Stasi agent Franz Kraus to his meeting with Volkov, and either arrest or kill him.