31,000 ASSASSINS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000606500002-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: October 28, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000606500002-4
ARTICLE APPEARED NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
ON PAGE 28 October 198+
STAT 31,000 Assassins
INSIDE SOVIET
M'MRLETARY
INTELLIGENCE
By Viktor Suvorov.
193 pp. New York:
Macmillan Publishing
Company. $15.95.
By David Wise
His most sensational charge
- one he made-earlier this year
in a United States Army journal
- is that the G.R.U. has Spet-
Suvorov's handbook is therefore snaz, or special purpose, forces
very slow going, although with whose mission in wartime is to
patience, sifting and panning, seek out and kill Western politi-
the text. yields a few nuggets. cal and military leaders. A Spet-
Among the more interesting snaz brigade, he claims, consists
are the assertions that the of "1,300 professional cut-
G.R.U. budget is bigger than the throats" ready to perform such
KG.B.'s, although the G.R.U. it- chores. Since Mr. Suvorov says
self is not, and that most Soviet there are 24 intelligence director-
cosmonauts spend about half ates in the G.R.U., each with a
their time in space on tasks for Spetsnaz brigade, he seems to be
the G.R.U. Mr. Suvorov cor- suggesting that' the Russians
rectly identifies Gen. Peter I. -I have 31,200 trained killers ready
Ivashutin as the director of the to turn loose on the United States.'.
G.R.U. The 75-year-old army or any other enemy.
general has beaded it since The number does seem a
March 1963, which must make trifle high. But of course, allega-
him the longest-reigning chief of tions of this sort raise a basic
PYING for the G.R.U.,
the Soviet military intel-
ligence service, must be
a dreary affair. Its offi-
cers we rk hard - they may even
have stolen'the plans for an
American nuclear submarine,
and NASA's space shuttle - but
the K.G.B., the Soviet Union's
civilian intelligence service, gets
all the credit.
It matters not that Richard
Sorge, who may be the only mod-
em spy to appear on a postage
stamp, was a G.R.U. agent.
(Sorge ran a highly successful
Soviet spy network in Japan but
was caught and executed by the
Japanese during World War II.)
Or that Oleg Penkovsky, the cele-
?brated Soviet spy who was also
working for the West (and was
caught and executed by the Rus-
sians) was a G.R.U. agent. Com-
pared to the K.G.B., who's ever
heard of the G.R.U.?
A Soviet defector from the
G.R.U., the pseudonymous Vik-
tor Suvorov, has set out to
remedy the situation by provid-
ing a history and description of
the objectives, organization and
techniques of the Soviet military
intelligence arm. According to
the publisher, Mr. Suvorov, the
author of a previous book on the
Red Army, now lives in Great
Britain, "where his new identity
and exact whereabouts are kept
a closely guarded secret--
- The C.I.A., Britain's M.1.6or
even the publisher could at least
have provided him with the help
of a - writer. Most of "Inside
Soviet Military Intelligence"
reads like instructions written in
Cyrillic for assembling an enor-
mous machine. Unhappily, Mr.
E
ast or west.
i
Mr. Suvorov also describes
dachas around Moscow where
Soviet "illegals" - spies in-
serted into another country with-
out benefit of diplomatic or offi-
cial cover - are trained by im-
mersion in the culture and cus-
toms of the country for which
they are headed. They wear the
appropriate clothes, eat the ap- '.
propriate food and listen to tape,-
recorders that "continuously
broadcast news from the radio',
Programmes" of the target coun-
try-
."It is quite obvious," Mr
Suvorov writes, "that after a
number of years of such training,
the future illegal knows by heart
the composition of every football
team, the hours of work of every
restaurant and nightclub, the
weather . forecasts and every-
thing that is going on in the realm
of gossip as well as current af-
fairs, in a country where he has
never been in his life."
everything written about espio-
nage, especially works by defect
tors: How much is true? And how
much is part of the endless game
laying between the United
'States and Soviet intelligence
services?
One is struck by the similari-
ties in some respects between the
intelligence agencies of both
sides. Mr. Suvorov complains
that the Russian services provide
correct information but cannot
persuade the Soviet leadership of
its accuracy; in the end, the chief
of the G.R.U. tailors his views to
fit policy. It doesn't sound all
that different from the C.I.A. ^
David Wise is the author of
"The Children's Game," a novel
of espionage, and other books
about intelligence activities.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000606500002-4