CARTER SAYS AIDES INDUCED SOVIETS TO SPARE U.S. SPY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000200030010-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 5, 2007
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: November 3, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/04/06: CIA-RDP99-00498R000200030010-9
STAT
Carter Says Aides
laducecl SoLt,ets
To Spare U.S. Spry
By Michael Getler.
W'ashingwr. Post Staff WrIter
The Soviet Union, in a 1979 deal worked
out. with top aides of president Carter,
agreed not to execute a spy condemned to
death after being caught working for the
United States in Russia.
The revelation that the Soviets "also
agreed not to execute ... one of our spies
who had been condemned to die," is included
in the just-published memoirs of the former
president as an entry in his diary on April
26, 1979.
Carter discloses that the heretofore secret
American attempt to save the life of the un-
identified spy was part. of a larger negotia-
tion in which the administration arranged
for five imprisoned Soviet dissidents to leave
the Soviet Union. In return, the United
States sent back to Moscow two Soviet em-,
ployes of the United Nations in New York,
who were convicted here of espionage.
The swap involving the Soviet dissidents
and what Carter, in his memoirs, calls the
"two United Nations minor spies" was rather
widely publicized at the time. The portion
involving the spy for the United States, pre-
sumably a Russian who was caught in the
Soviet Union, was not made public here.
When asked about the comment in Car-
ters new book, "Keeping Faith," two former
senior officials in his administration ex-
pressed the view that the ex-president had
committed an "indiscretion," as one put it,
by revealing this.
The negotiations over the fate of the spy
Were conducted in private between former
Carter national security adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski and his deputy, David L. Aaron,
and Soviet ambassador to the United States.
Anatoliy F. Dobrynin. A condition of those
talks, officials said, was that they would not
be made public.
Other officials said it is unusual for an
American president to voluntarily acknowl-
edge that there are American spies inside the
Soviet Union.
The prospect that an important spy work-
ing for the United States in the Soviet Union
had been inadvertently compromised and ar-
rested became the subjects. of allegations in
some news media during the election
campaign of 1980.
The allegations centered on claims
that Aaron had engaged in. some
loose talk at a diplomatic, gathering
which ultimately exposed the' spy in
the Kremlin. ..
On Oct. 2, 1980, columnist Jack
Anderson reported that. "Aaron's slip
allegedly exposed the identity of
Anatoly N. Filatov, a Soviet 'inteNi-
gence officer who worked undercover
as an American agent known to the
CIA by the code name Trigon.".
Anderson noted that the Soviet
press reported he had been executed
but that Filatov's lawyer claimed he
was still alive, serving a 15-year sen-
tence.
At the time, the White House
strongly denied that Aaron had any
role in whatever had happened in
Moscow, and the Senate Intelligence
Committee reported in December
1980 that it. had found no evidence
to support allegations that Aaron
had accidentally exposed the spy.
Several Carter administration of-
ficials contacted yesterday, including
Brzezinski, Aaron and ex-CIA direc-
tor Stansfield Turner, declined to
comment on the spy's identity and
would not confirm it was Filatov.