REAL SPIES DON'T HOLD PRESS CONFERENCES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650046-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 46
• Publication Date: November 10, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650046-8
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BALTIMORE SUN
10 November 1985
Real spies don't hold press conferences
By Stephen Hunter
I t was a scene to break an old espio-
nage novelist's heart.
There was Vitaly Yurchenko, for-
mer KGB superstar. at. of all places, the
Soviet Embassy in Washington, yakking
out his peculiar tale of being mugged,
drugged and de-bugged by the Central in-
telligence Agency for cameramen and re-
porters of all ilk and stripe. He was act-
Ing, for all the world and to the tips of his
ludicrous guardsman's moustache, like a
guest on Merv.
It only proved what has become in-
creasingly obvious over the past few
years: that besides the silenced High-
Standard .22, the Minox palm camera,
the SAMOS satellite and the miniaturized
microphone. there is a new weapon in
the inventory of the intelligence trade:
the press conference.
Doesn't anybody read le Carre any-
more? Whatever happened to spies that
kept their lips buttoned?
Spying was once the pursuit of enig-
matic chaps from the old schools who did
unspeakable things to each other but had
the good graces never to speak of them, at
least within three decades' of the acts
themselves, and then only to Reader's
Digest. In fact, that was the point: The
nasty tricks these lads played on each
other took their meaning from their lack
of public acknowledgement.
Kim Philby never
scheduled a "photo
opportunity."
We plant one of ours with them: they
find out about it, but rather than separat-
ing his head from his body in flamboyant
ways, they make a pet of him by feeding
him worthless information, but never
quite worthless enough for us to stop
trusting him: except that we never
trusted him in the first place, and so
we've always suspected his information
is worthless. Now it's our turn to use him
to funnel equally worthless information
to them.
So if you could freeze any single mo-
ment in the espionage history of the cen-
tury for dissection, you'd uncover what
might be called a latticework of bogus
information, a dense traffic in semi-de-
mi-half-but-never-quite-whole truths and
zero degrees of trust coursing by sub rosa
methods between the capitals of the
world. To try and make sense of any of
this was challenging: It was like playing
three-dimensional chess with hand gre-
nades against the invisible man in a
burning barn. Only the steady of nerve
and the rigorous of mind need apply. One
historian of this baroque world called it a
wilderness of mirrors.
And it was the very insularity and am-
biguity of this world that made it so at-
tractive to novelists, particularly the Brit-
ishers from Graham Greene on down to
the great le Carre and his lesser but quite
good acolytes. Gerald Seymour and the
American Charles McCarry. It was a se-
cret. sealed-off world whose traditions
and ironies reflected the world above it.
but to an exaggerated extent, like a fun-
house mirror: it was a bizarre version of
the modern world in which we all shunt-
ed to and fro. a world whose principles
were familiar but whose byways were
very dangerous indeed. For many years.
our only real entry into the psychology of
the spy was via the spy novelist.
The archetypal personality in reality
must have been Kim Philby, who could
spy for the Russians for four decades,
frozen in the adolescent enthusiasms
that had caused him to embrace Marxism
In 1933: here was a man with a secret as
big as the Ritz, who daily betrayed his
closest friends and yet who never ever
acknowledged a moment of guilt. a sec-
ond of hesitation. His memoir. "My Secret
War," consists of throat clearings, blurred
intimations and anecdotes of the safely
dead - an autobiographer who would
prefer not to mention himself is an odd
bird, indeed.
The only spy you could really connect
with came from fiction. The best of these
was le Carre's wonderful George Smiley,
the greatest literary spy of all time.
Now Smiley was truly a gentleman.
the exemplar of the patrician code of si-
lence. An almost neurotically private
man. Smiley has the true insider's
Mr. Hunter, film critic for The Sun.
has written four spy novels; the latest
is "Target."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650046-8
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650046-8
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deep-seated need not to talk. He stands. in
his way, for all that is the best about the
Establishment - the British in particular
but any establishment in general. He seeks
out truth, but refuses to employ it flamboy-
antly. or for the self. He understands that
authority is a more precious principle than
justice, but that doesn't mean he has given
up on justice.
But the Smiley-Philby tradition of
upper-class discretion is as dead as Dracula
today: if it persists in spy fiction (and it does),
the reason is primarily nostalgic. It is re-
freshing to look back on the deadened.
hushed world and feel so safe from the tyr-
anny of the Now.
Primarily, it seems to me. two forces have
conspired to drag the spies out of the dark
alleyways and dusty corridors and fabled
back streets of Europe and place them in the
limelight.
The first of these is the mediazation of
the world. It is almost impossible for any-
thing to happen anywhere without. in very
short order, legions of electronic journalists
arriving to record its residue and prowl its
wreckage. chatting glibly with survivors.
Were Kim Philby to defect today. NBC News
would be scouring the streets of Moscow for
a glimpse of. and perhaps a chat with, the
old gent. Of course espionage services are
aware of this. and have used it to their ad-
vantage.
For the professionals. the media. particu-
larly the Western media. offer a potential to
embarrass the target unparalleled in histo-
ry. if indeed the Yurchenko "defection" was,
as many now suspect. rigged from the start.
it was an espionage coup planned with a
sublimely realistic idea of how the Western
media operate, what qualifies as a big story.
how they will turn the slightest glimpse of
institutional failure into a three-ring circus.
It's as if the KGB had hired a media consul-
tant: they now know that going public can
do far more harm to the enemy than staying
private.
'Of course it isn't Just the KGB that la
the e o FROM onage public re -
ttons tter known as creative lealung: n-
d__ ---" a IA's own essrteer-
ness to score a media coup for the Western
irate done community er revs _____o1
the Walker and West German etrauons
last that a it era a to the KGB
recen y or w Lever reason, ele-
The second force, perhaps mgre.dijficult
to document. is something very much in the
air. That is. as Christopher Lascb tagged It.
the culture of narcissism, the rampant ur-
gency to place the self above all else. to de-
tract maximum gratification from every mo-
ment.
This toxin, released perhaps by that mad
genius Andy Warhol when he cursed the
century with his wish that everybody could
be famous for 15 minutes. subverts all insti-
tutions exactly as it diminishes all accom-
plishments. We see those humble servants
of literature, editors, demanding thdr own
lines from their publishers: it's no longer a
Simon and Schuster book, it's a Richard
Seaver book or a Donald L. Fine book. We
see the most mediocre directors demanding
and getting their names above ft title (Or-
son Welles. John Huston and Akita Kurosa-
wa never had their names above the title).
As this works out in the espionage trade. the
spies no Longer derive their pleasures from
getting away with it rather than by talking
about it. One of the pleasures of defecting is
having your book excerpted in Time and
going on the talk-show circuit.
It throws up the hideous spectre of a Kim
Philby showing up. these long years past, on
Nightline." Or. God forbid. "The Johnny
Carson Show."
wo a to undermine the Kadafi
regime to the as ' on Post.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650046-8