SPY DEALING, DEFECTION, DISINFORMING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100140011-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 24, 2011
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: November 3, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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