Widow of ‘assassin' says full story will never be known

By Kristi E. Swartz and Larry Hartstein

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Marilyn Haas called her husband a soldier who died with secrets.

Roland Haas, a self-described CIA assassin, accidentally killed himself last Saturday in Newnan, according to authorities.

"There are a lot of things we're not privy to, and we probably wouldn't want to know everything," Marilyn Haas told the AJC on Wednesday, referring to her husband's covert activities. "He was definitely a patriot."

Roland Haas, who died at age 58, once described his work as "the dirtiest end of a dirty business." He wrote a 2007 memoir that some praised as a gritty, realistic account of Cold War spying. Others called him a fraud.

In the book, “Enter the Past Tense: My Secret Life as a CIA Assassin,” Haas wrote that he was a 19-year-old Purdue University student on an NROTC scholarship in 1971 when the CIA recruited him to be a deep cover operative.

His first assassination was in Afghanistan, he said, where he killed a major heroin dealer and his two bodyguards.

"Three people were deleted, they were removed," he said in 2007 at a bookstore appearance in Fayetteville. "Those three acts irrevocably changed who I was. ... The day I undertook that first mission successfully, I ceased being the person I had been."

He also described being tortured in an Iranian jail.

"The good thing is, you only feel about the first three or four hits and then you pretty much pass out," he said.

Marilyn Haas said that when her husband wrote the book, "it answered a lot of questions for the family."

"The family did not know -- believe me," she said, referring to the couple's 27-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son. "We knew when everyone else did, when the book came out.

"He did a lot of this stuff before we even met."

Haas' book sparked a controversy. Some former CIA officers began protesting Haas’ employment as deputy chief of staff of intelligence for the U.S. Army Reserve at Fort McPherson,  according to the SpyTalk blog in the Washington Post.

"As one of an increasing number of former intelligence officers who believes that Roland Haas' book ... is a hoax, I find your willingness to tolerate Mr. Haas in his scam very disturbing," John F. Sullivan, a retired CIA polygrapher, wrote to commanders.

But Haas kept his intelligence job until his death.

Marilyn Haas said the reaction he got from the book was mostly positive.

"The people he worked with at Fort McPherson, the generals, nobody questioned him on the book, but there were other people who said it could have never happened," she said. "There are both sides to the story."

Haas died after accidentally shooting himself in the leg and rupturing his femoral artery, Major James Yarbrough of the Coweta County Sheriff's Office told the Times-Herald of Newnan.

Haas had just left home last Saturday night when he pulled his car to the side of the road and got out, according to reports.

A passing motorist heard the "pop" of a gunshot and saw Haas on the side of the road, according to reports. The motorist called 911, even after Haas said he was OK. A second passer-by also called authorities, the Times-Herald said.

Then, Yarbrough said, an officer happened to be on Shenandoah Boulevard -- near where Haas was -- and went to his car.

That officer found Haas lying face down at the back of his car.

Haas’ body was taken to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which ruled his death as accidental, Yarbrough told the Times-Herald. Authorities believe he was in medical distress at the time of the shooting, the newspaper said. He was in diabetic shock, he suffered heart disease and had "several other things going on," Yarbrough said.

Marilyn Haas said her husband had a quadruple bypass last November and his kidney removed five weeks ago. But she does not think the health problems had anything to do with his death.

"It was an accident," she said. "Nobody's going to ever know exactly how or why."