MISSING U.S. AGENT DEAD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000606040003-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 25, 2010
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: October 30, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/25: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606040003-4
ARTICLE APPEa
ON FAW
WASHINGTON POST
30 October 1985
Missing U.S. Agent Dead
Shadrin Disappeared 1'0 Years Ago in Vienna
7 By Patrick E. Tyler
3 Washington Post Staff Writer
A high-level Soviet defector has
explained the decade-old mystery of
the disappearance of Nicholas G.
Shadrin, an American double agent
who disappeared while meeting
with KGB agents in Vienna Dec. 20,
1975.
Shadrin, then 47, was acciden-
tally and fatally chloroformed wile
struggling in the back seat of a se-
dan with Soviet agents trying to
spirit him out of Austria and away
from his Central Intelligence Agen-
cy protectors.
This account was relayed yester-
day from government officials to
the lawyer for Ewa Shadrin, widow
of the agent. In an interview.
Shadrin said yesterday that two FBI
agents went to her McLean house
just before 2 p.m. Sunday and told
her they had confirmed beyond
doubt that her husband is dead.
"I was sort of prepared for some-
thing like this," she said, "but at the
same time it is very disturbing. I
would like to know mpre about what
happened, and what they did with
the body. One consolation is that he
really didn't suffer. I have worried
so many times about that."
After the FBI agents left her
house, Shadrin said, she relived
events of the night 10 years ago
when she passed the time waiting
for her husband at the Vienna opera
house. "I was ... reliving those mo-
ments, they were killing Nikki while
I was in the opera," she said.
Shadrin's disappearance while he
reportedly was in the care of CIA
officers has been a controversial
episode in the murky history of
U.S.-Soviet espionage.
Concern for his safety led Pres-
ident Gerald R. Ford in December
1976 to make an unusual personal
appeal to then-Soviet leader Leonid
Brezhnev to investigate the case
and reunite Shadrin with his wife,
even if it meant they had to live
secretly to conceal such extraordi-
nary Soviet cooperation.
Using private diplomatic chan-
nels, Brezhnev told Ford that
Shadrin had not appeared for the
fateful meeting with KGB agents.
The role of the three U.S. intel-
ligence agencies for whom a yin
was working has been examined in
thousands of inches of press ac-
counts and in a book-length study of
hadrin's life as a spy and his mys-
terious disappearance. News of his
dear first reported by NBC News
Monday night, is the latest revela-
tion to leak from the top-secret de-
briefing of Soviet defector Vitaly
Yurchenko, a senior officer of the
KGB, the Soviet secret police, who
defected last July on a visit to
Rome.
Yurchenko, being debriefed at an
disclosed location near here,
served in several senior KGB posts
over the last two decades, including
those of deputy chief for' North
American spy operations, chief of
worldwide counterintelligence op-
erations and from 1975--86 as _apo-
litical officer in the Soviet Embassy
here,
His first known contribution to
U.S. intelligence was to identify
Edward L. Howard, a formeA
officer trained for duty in Moscow-
as a Soviet spy who provided details
about U.S. information-gathering
techniques in Moscow.
Yurchenko also has reportedly
told debriefers that, based on How-
ard's information, the Soviets were
able last June to arrest a Soviet avi-
ation scientist who had been pro-
viding the CIA with data about o-
viet research to conceal anes and
missiles from U.S. radar.
Shadrin and her attorney said
yesterday that they would like to
interview Yurchenko to seek an-
swers to questions remaining in the
case.
Richard D. Copaken. who has
represented Shadrin in her long
standing effort to pry? information
from the FBI and the CIA about the
disappearance said the FBI has not
responded to his request.
Copekan said he is disturbed that
FBI officials did not notify Shadrin
of her husband's death until it ap-
peared imminent that the news
would be reported on television.
"I think this country owes
Shadrin a great deal ... and at least
owes him enough to be truthful to
his widow," Copekan said.
Shadrin was born Nikolai F. Ar-
tamonov and defected to the West
in 1959 as a young Soviet naval of-
ficer. He became a consultant to the
Defense Intelligence Agency and, in
1966, after being contacted by K G13
agents in this country, went to work
for FBI counterintelligence and the
CIA as a double agent.
His trip to Vienna in 1975 was
one of several contacts intended to
persuade the KGB that he was
working for his native country as a
spy in the United States.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/25: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606040003-4