BRITISH BLUSH RED, LIKE SPIES, AS A DEFECTOR TELLS 100 NAMES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201460009-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: September 24, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201460009-3
AMU PPE I
9APM 4A .2
WASHINGTON TIMES
24 September 1985
100 names
defector hells
Britain has dealt a serious blow to For the British, the economic
By Arnaud de Borchgrave British representation in Moscow. stakes are not small. Mrs. Thatcher,
THE WASHINGTON TIMES FOREIGN SERVICE Sir Geoffrey Howe, the foreign intelligence sources in London say, is
secretary, met his Soviet counter- acutely aware of a huge joint air-
LONDON - More than 100 Brit- part, Eduard Shavardnadze, in New craft manufacturing deal that Brit-
ons and other foreigners who have York yesterday to begin mending ish Aerospace (BA) has been
been working for the Soviet Union in fences. negotiating secretly with the Soviet
Britain have been compromised by Britain has lost 23 diplomats in its Union for the past year. It concerns
the defection of KGB spymaster Moscow embassy, eight of whom had up to 1,000 short-haul 64-passenger
Oleg Gordievski, ranking intelli- wives working in the mission. The turboprop airliners known as ATP,
gence sources say. Soviets lost only 13 embassy for Advanced Tlirboprop.
Mr. Gordievski, the former KGB staffers. The rest were identified as The aircraft is scheduled to make
station chief in London, had actually "journalists" or members of other its debut next year, and the Soviets
been secretly working for the West Soviet offices. Moscow still main- have expressed intense interest in
since he defected in Denmark in tains 203 diplomats and other offi- building it, too, under license. Mos-
1972. cials in London; Britain maintains 62 cow is in the market for a short-haul,
The names of the Britons who had such persons in Moscow. fuel-efficient airliner to replace its
been witting or unwitting agents for In London, Mr. Gordievski was the aging fleets of AN-24s and AN-26s.
the Soviet intelligence agency are KGB', No. 2 agent until he became Aside from a possible deal on the
being kept secret by the British gov- head of the "residency" last new airliner, British companies -
ernment, trying to minimize its December. As such, he would not John Brown and Davy - are now in
acute embarrassment. It was have known about GRU networks the lead for two $1.4 billion petro-
learned the compromised agents run in London or the KGB's "Line chemical turnkey plants to be
include politicians - not iust from KR operations." These include coun- erected in the Soviet Union. A new
the left - and trade unionists as well terintelligence penetrations of M16, trade treaty, to replace the one
as members of the peace movement. the British CIA, and MIS, internal signed 10 years ago, is scheduled to
The British government has security and discipline of Soviet be signed at the end of October
expelled 31 Soviet diplomats, jour- diplomatic, trade and media person- British exports to the U.S.S.R.,
nalists and trade representatives on nel, and the names of other Russians which rose 65 percent in 1984 to
the grounds that they were using who might have been recruited by almost $1 billion, are still only a
their official covers for their work as British intelligence. quarter of West Germany's and are
intelligence operatives. It is stan- But he knew chapter and verse on far below those of France and Italy.
dard practice among KGB and GRU British citizens who had been Nevertheless, these are trade stakes
(Soviet military intelligence) agents recruited by the KGB in Britain. big enough to act as powerful deter-
rents against further embarrass-
l Of the 31 KGB agents expelled
l
public disclosures, arrests and pros- Peace Council, founded in Washing-
ecutions. In fact, a number of the ton in 1979, which, in turn, set up
agents have been advised to leave branches in all 50 states. WPC is
Britain - and never come back. headed by Romesh Chandra, a for-
Moreover, Prime Minister Marga- mer high-ranking member of the
ret Thatcher is said to be anxious not Indian Communist Party. Many
to rock the boat prior to the U.S.- prominent members of the Commu-
U.S.S.R. summit in Geneva Nov. 19. nist parties in the United States,
She is known to be keenly aware that England and other Western coun-
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's tries hold positions on their national
tit-forstat response to the expulsions peace councils.
of Soviet intelligence agents from
m
to culttvate ro
recruits in the countries in which from Britain after the defection was
they are based. announced, three had close links to
Mr. Gordievski knew the identi- the Campaign for Nuclear Disarma-
ties or identifying particulars of ment. Two of the three - Sergei
over 100 assets, as the recruits are Volovets and Yevgeny Safronov -
called, in Britain. actually put in appearances at CND
meetings in different parts of Brit-
Some of these are high-ranking ain.
men and women of all political par- Though CND has denied it, the
ties. A number them were turned group is known by intelligence
into double agents by MIS - the sources to have played a key role in
British FBI - after Mr. Gordiesvky the strategy of the World Peace
turned their names over to British Council (WPC), a Soviet-front organ-
intelligence. ization created in 1949. WPC has
But political and economic fac- spawned 137 national branches all
tors are also thought to be inhibiting over the world, including the U.S.
C
oca
one to five
ment of the Soviet Union in the spy
scandal.
The British government does,
however, know who were the KGB's
principal British agents and dupes.
They range from what the KGB
calls an osnovny agent (a valuable
operative who has an intimate rela-
tionship with the KGB), to doveryon-
noe litso (people who are totally
reliable politically and will know-
ingly carry out Soviet instructions
but have not been formally
recruited), to tyomhaya verboura
(unwitting dupes who serve Soviet
interests and work under KGB con-
trol without realizing what they are
doing) - the category Lenin called
"useful idiots."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201460009-3