SPY DEALING, DEFECTION, DISINFORMING

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Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00806R000100140011-3
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RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
May 24, 2011
Sequence Number: 
11
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
November 3, 1985
Content Type: 
OPEN SOURCE
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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/05/25: CIA- RDP90-00806R000100140011-3 AQM1E APPEARED ON PAGr f :2) Spy Dealing, Defection, Disinforming By Dsvid Ad.. PI ill ,. LOS ANGELES TIMES 3 November 1985 WASHINGTON A t the annual convention of the Assn. of Former Intelligence Offi. cers in Washington recently, del- egates asked many questions: How seri- ous were the recent defections to the Soviet Union? And how important are the very recent defections from Moscow? Is it possible that in the merry-go-round game of international espionage. the West had snagged three brass rings? Or was one ring a clinker? Conversation was animated as several hundred Old Boys and Girls of the U.S. network of former intelligence people exchanged information and opinions about espionage developments. There was much to discuss. What was the melr!.'g of the Edward L. Howard case in New Mexico, where a former CIA o~ficer. dismissed by the agency, _!ipped away from FBI agents ready to apprehend him? Edwards left his wife a note telling her to sell their house. move in with their in-laws and build a new life. After damage assessment, how serious would the Howard case turn out to be? Happy-hour conversations were even more !.itillaung when former Soviet oper- ation." =pecialists diagnosed the state of health at ,he KGB. Only eeks nefore. the Soviet intelligence agency appeared in excellent shape, when there was a spate of defectives from West to East, the most damaging being Hans Joachim Tiedge, West Germany's counterintelligence chief. Before that, the first FBI special agent ever was indicted in California for collaborating with the KGB. And there was the sad revelation that a family of Americans had spied for the Soviets. The Walker family spy case has con- founded even intelligence veterans, Dele- gates at the reunion, though aware that espionage operations often require deal- ing with grubby people, found it difficult to comprehend how a father, his brother and his son would betray their country in order to enjoy life in the fast lane, and to continue spying for so many years to pay for the ride. Finally, 16 years after Barbara Crawley Walker learned h _ husband was a spy, Mrs. Walker, prodded by her daughter, alerted the FBL But while proliferating evidence indi- cates that U.S. intelligence has been battered in recent months, newer revela- tions demonstrate the Soviet intelligence body has suffered more serious trauma, Three recent developments have shak- en the KGB. Sergei Bokan, a senior military officer in Athens, defected to the West in May. In early September, Oleg Gordievsky, KGB station chief in London. surfaced after years as a double agent. In late bSeptember. it revealed that in the year was f man" In the KGB hierarchy, Vitaly Yurchenko, had slipped away from a KGB tour group in Rome, and is being debriefed by the CIA near Washington. Yurchenko had been in Washington before, as a first secretary at the Soviet Embassy-a diplomatic cover rank tag- ging him as the deputy chief, if not chief, of the KGB's most important station. He later served as deputy chief of the KGB directorate that conducts all operations against the United States and Canada. Knowledgeable delegates whispered that Yurchenko had worked for years as a CIA mole burrowed deep in the KGB-an assertion later confirmed by the State Department. They were confident that Yurchenko would explain lingering espio- nage mysteries. (He revealed that a decade before, in Vienna, Soviet defector Nicholas G. Shadrin, acting as a CIA-FBI double agent, had been the victim of espionage manslaughter: KGB agents, intending to kidnap Shadrin, killed him with an overdose of chloroform.) Most important, former counterintelligence delegates insisted that Yurchenko could identify any moles in CIA. (Whether he knew of any is not yet clear; but he did identify Howard as a CIA man who, after flunking polygraph tests, tried to hawk purloined secrets to the KGB. ) What do the defections signal? Is there some sort of double-agent skulduggery afoot? Its too early to be sure. Veteran operatives are guided by an intelligence maxim: Never assume-know. So, in discussing the significance of the three defections, they temporized. Meanwhile, hunches ran wild. Intelligence officers depend on profes- sional intuition-an ability to sense that a critical development has occurred before all the facts are in and it can be proved,- "That's what I look for," said one convention regular. "That awareness which gives you a funny feeling at the back of your neck-the suspicion which suddenly becomes. a conviction that something important is in motion." occasionally return to their agencies for temporary duty. They have friends still working in intelligence. So they know more about the recent espionage develop- ments than the ordinary citizen. But not much more. In intelligence agencies the "need to know" rule means that most officers never learn the identities of agents-in- place, nor have access to sufficient data to be sure about motivation. Despite their insider's knowledge, intelligence people often fail to reach a consensus about defectors. For more than two decades, CIA officers have been bitterly disputing the bona fides of Anatoli Golitsin a mayor defector-or a major disinformation agent. That dispute continued at the Washington conclave. Thus, even intelligence professionals are tempted to speculate, and, sometimes, to concoct defector conspiracy theories. In some areas experience is useful. Intelli- gence veterans, for instance, recognize as nonsense the contention that defectors are surfaced on the eve of important events, such as a summit conference. Not a Chance. Penetrations of the Soviet intelligence apparat would never be sac- rificed as a propaganda gambit. When they surface there must be another reason. In the case of Gordievsky, for instance, the reason for surfacing him now might be because Yurchenko, when he defected, warned that Gordievaky's double-agent role had been discovered. A sound argument can be made to be wary of the recent defectors; at least one might be a disinformation agent. It's happened before. One delegate explained. "Some people believe that airline crashes occur in threes, that after two air disasters another will follow soon. I believe that whenever there are two defections that jolt the Russians you'd better be prepared for a third-the defector who is really dispatched to spread disinformation to discredit the first two." Intelligence officers remain suspicious, skeptical, even cynical. But they do like to hear circumstantial evidence that will make their suspicions appear valid. Some felt surer about their gut feelings after John Barron's speech at the conven- tion's closing banquet. Barron, who knows more about Soviet intelligence than any non-official in the West, is the author of two authoritative books on the KGB. Continued Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/05/25: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100140011-3