OUT IN THE COLD? U.S. FEARS COUNTERSPY WAS SEIZED BY SOVIETS; AGENCY BUNGLING SEEN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000100050085-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Sequence Number: 85
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Approved For Release 2007/06/21: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100050085-6
WALL S RE:ET JOURNAL
1i. JULY 1977
Out in the Cold?
U.S. Fears Counterspy
Was Seized by Soviets;
Agency Bungling Seen
By JEmy LA.NDAuta
Staff Reporter of THa WALL STIR exrJOUR.YAL
On the evening of Dec. 20, 1975, an Amer-
ican working undercover for the Federal Bu-
reau of Investigation walked to the.steps of
the Votivkirche.in Vienna for a prearranges'
meeting at the, cathedral. with Oleg Kozlov
and Mikhail Kuryshev, two agents for the
KGB, the Soviet secret police. It was his last
stroll on free soil. He has never been seen
since.
The disappearance of the American, Ni-
cholas Shadrin, - hasn't been publicized or
.even publicly acknowledged. The, Russians
won't concede that; he was kidnapped-
though the U.S. believes he was-especially
not from the capital of -a -neutral nation. And
U.S. officials aren't anxious to disclose the
bureaucratic bungling that preceded his dis
appearance and the diplomatic blunders;
that may be keeping him in captivity.
But Mr. Shadrin's fate could become a
prickly political- issue soon. Whether for
good reason or- not, his many admirers in
the U.S. intelligence community fear that he
is being abandoned by the U.S. - even
though the State Department insists it is
doing its best to get Mr. Shadrin released, if
he is still alive'*' -
Now, some of Mr. Shadrin's friends are
beginning to speak up about what they feel
are the government's half-hearted efforts to
retrieve him; -and details are seeping out
They raise troublesome- questions - espe-
cially for an administration,espousing. hu-
man rights for foreigners-about the govern-
ment's. obllgation-,ta.'.Americana -who risk
President. Ford did appeal for Mr' Shad-
rin's release in a private letter last Decem-
ber to Soviet party-.leader Leonid Brezhnev,
and before leaving office Mr. Ford met with
Mr. Shadrin's -wife.. Blanka, at- the White
House. But for reasons of global diplomacy,
the Ford administration decided not to make
a major push for Mr:.Shadrin's return.
In January, outgoing Central Intelligence
Agency Director. George Bush briefed
Jimmy Carter-about the Shadrin case, and-
row National: Security Adviser. Zbigniew
Brzezinski is taking charge of it: He doesn't.
sound particularly- hopeful, "FfuUy sympa-
thize with your frustration and anxiety,"
Mr. Brzezinski. told. Mrs. Shadrin Ina letter
dated July 5,.'Ionly wish I could strike a
more positive note and offer you immediate
reassurance." . ..
As all this high-level attention attests,. Ni-
cholas Shadrtn wasn't just an ordinary spy.
He was a captain' In the Soviet navy. who
fled to the U.S..in'1959."He brought along "a
great amount-'of : good..-h and intelligence
about Soviet military developments," says-
retired Navy Capt.Thomas L. Dwyer,. who
Adds William. Howe, a. civilian then
working in the. Office of Naval Intelligence:
"His Information was extremely valuable.
Our government had no doubt" that Mr.
Shadrin wasn't. a Soviet agent.
Attention in Congress
At the CIA's request, Sen. James East-
land, chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee and a conservative Mississippi
Democrat, helped to get through Congress i
special legislation conferring U.S. citizen.
ship on the one-time Communist Party
member. In the House,.the Committee on
Un-American Activities eagerly put him on
the witness stand to denounce Soviet expan-
sionism abroad and repression. at home; he
testified under his given name, Nikolai Fc-
dorovich Artamonov (he chose to use the
name Shadrin after his defection).
In the- early -1960s, . Mr. - Shadrin began
working for the Defense Intelligence Agency,
as an, analyst of Soviet naval literature ("he
was an excellent man," a superior recalls).
and he.lectured once a year--at the Naval
War College. The Russians reacted fu-
riously, trying and convicting him in absen-
tia on. charges of treason: His sentence was
death.
Nevertheless, starting in 1966 or so. Mr.
Shadrin heeded his adopted country's call. to
serve without pay as a counterintelligence)
.agent acting under FBI direction. At sub-
stantial risk, he pretended that he desired to
return to Russia, feigned cooperation with.;
the KGB, and slipped to the' Russians "mil-
itary secrets" supplied by the CIA.
Some sideline work for the FBI took him
on missions abroad. to Canada in 1971 and to
Europe in 1972, for example. No slip-ups oc-
curred. "I considered him to be absolutely
reliable and completely on our side;" says
James Wooten, an FBI man who controlled
Mr. Shadrin's counterspy activities for 10
years.
The Fateful Mission ` ' -
Then dame the fateful mission to Vienna
in December 1975. Mr. Shadrin took his wife
along (to go skiing, he told her). An initial
meeting with the two KGB agents on the
night of. Dec. 18 went smoothly:
Mr..Shadrin became- edgy, however, per
haps because the. Russians-said he' soon:
would be promoted to colonel in the KGB.
and he knew the KGB commonly", awards
such promotions to marked men as a way of
making them feel'trusted. So after a CIA of-
ficer had debriefed- him; next to a running
shower in Suite 361 of the Bristol Hotel in Vi'
enna, he' 'told Mrs- Shadrin the names of
agents Koziov and Kuryshev and asked her
to write them.down. "Something apparently,
was said or inferred which made him con-
cerned..-.she recalls. .
The acting CIA station chief - in MVlenna
had canceled all leaves and had planned to
keep Mr;: Shadrin under protective surveil-
lance. "We could have put people on the
street or in autos," he says. But the Rus-
sian-speaking. CIA officer sent from' Wash.
ington .to supervise the mission says the
planned 'surveillance was canceled "at 'the I
STAT
FBI's request out of concern that, if spottedi
by the KGB, It might be a,,tip-off that Mr.
Shadrin was a U.S. agent. And on the night*
of Dec. 20, the night - Mr.. Shadrin disap?}
peared. the CIA official went to dinner at a
friend's home in a Vienna suburb.and didn tt
return to the city until after 1 a.m. " -
By then, Mrs. Shadrin was frantically
phoning to report that her husband hadn't
come back from his meeting with the KGB.
She hasn't seen him since that night, and
she blames a bureaucratic snafu by U.S. in-
telligence agencies for his disappearance.
Some intelligence experts agree.""I don't
think they did right by Shadrin," says Lt.-
Gen. Daniel O. Graham, who retired last
year as director of the Defense Depart-
ment's Defense Intelligence Agency. "Quite
obviously the - U.S. people., who were sup-
posed to keep an eye out lost track of him.
They, didn' t keep him- under direct surveil-
lance when they should have, or else I don't
think this could have ,happened,' W;,,. Gra-
ham savs.
When news?!ot bfrk Shadrin's "presumed
kidnapping hit Washington, the bureaucracy
scurried for :cover:.''tThere= are too. many
agencies involved, and they're all running,"
William Hyland of the National- Security
Council told a visitor weeks afterward. Sec-
retary of State Henry Kissinger broached
the disappearance with Soviet Ambassador
Anatoly Dobrynin; Mr. Dobrynin'sald* hiss
government didn't know anything about the'
case.
Dissatisfied, Mrs. Shadrin early last year
hired Richard Copaken, a 36-year-old part
ner in the Washington law firm of Covington
& Burling. Within a month, Mr. Copaken
opened unofficial. channels to . Moscow
through Wolfgang. Vogel, an attorney in East
Berlin who often acts as a secret conduit for
exchanging spies or political prisoners be-
tween East and West; . among other deals,
he handled the celebrated exchange of So
viet spy Rudolf Abel, for American U2 pilot
Gary Francis Powers in the early 1960s.
coordinated the mont--_ .---?---'-_
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