SPY, THOUGHT DEAD, NOW REPORTED ALIVE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000201930014-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: September 24, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/09: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201930014-3
SPY- DEAD'I
NOV' RETORTED A]
A I!YJKTI`i_S
24 Sep-tcmber, 1980
I
Soviet Said to Commute Sentence
of Subject,of Senate Inquiry.,
By CRAIG R. WHITNEY ,..-
c SpecialtoTheNewYork Times "
MOSCOW, Sept. 23 - A former Soviet
official whose unmasking as an Ameri-
can spy Is now under investigation by a
Senate committee in Washington was not
executed after his conviction but is still
alive In a Soviet prison, his lawyer said
today.
The underground agent, Anatoly N.
Filatov, was sentenced to death on July
14, 1978, after a closed military trial in
Moscow on charges of spying for an un-
named foreign power, according to the
Soviet press agency Tass.
But his lawyer at the trial, Leonid M.
Popov, said today that-the sentence was
never carried out. "It was commuted to
15 years In prison," he said after being
reached by The New. York Times. Mr.
Fllatov gave a full confession at the trial,
Tass said.
The Senate Select Committee on Intellf-
gence Is investigating bow a United
States agent in Moscow with the code
name Trigon was compromised in 1977.
Trigon is widely believed to have been,
Mr. Filatov, although other possibilitiesi
have been suggested in Washington.
There have been unsubstantiated
rumors that a high American official
inadvertently revealed Trigon's identity.
The rumors, which said David L. Aaron,
deputy assistant to the President for na-
tional security affairs, was that official,
have been investigated by both the Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency and the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, and Loth agen-l!
cies said they could find nothing to sup-
port the allegation that Mr. Aaron un-'
masked Trigon. The White House also lI
called the allegations "completely un-
founded.
There are indications that the Soviet
in
Union ma
be sa
Mr
Fil
t
d
g
y
v
.
ov 0'r?,
a
e;
for Soviet spies uncovered in Washington,1
which might explain the bizarre twists
the case has taken.
Two months after Mr. Filatov's re-
ported conviction, a woman who said she
was his wife, Tamara, materialized in the
darkness of Red Army Park in downtown
Moscow and told this correspondent and a
colleague: "My husband worked for the
Americans as an agent. Now he is count-
ing on the mercy of President Carter to
save him."
She said then that she had rnet her hus-
Soviet authorities. Her husband could'l
face a firing squad "any minute" unless
she
ed to save him
,
the Americans mov
said.
At the time, two Soviet officials in New
Jersey were about to be tried on espio-
nage charges, and diplomats in Moscow
speculated that Mrs. Filatova's mysteri-
ous appearance was intended to suggest a
swap for them.
i Tass Gave Account of Trial
i
STAT
burg, who went to New York on thy.- same
plane that then took the two spies to Mos-
cow.
Meanwhile, Mr. Filatov's sentence was
commuted, although this fact has never
been published in the Soviet press.
The Tass account of his secret trial,
which began on July 10, 1978, said Mr.
Filatov, who was born in 1940, had
worked as a spy from February 3974 until
his arrest in 1977.
He confessed at his trial, Tass said,
that he had been blackmailed by a for-
eign intelligence service while on an offi-
cial mission in Algeria. The agents, ap-
parently American, set him up with a
"loose woman," the account said, took
detailed photographs and after recruiting
him, trained him to use radio codes, ci-
phers, miniature cameras disguised as
cigarette lighters and secret mail drops
for passing on Soviet political, economic
and military secrets.
In exchange, he allegedly confessed, he
received money in cash and in secret for-
eign bank accounts.
Two committee members, Daniel Pat-
rick Moynihan, Democrat of New York,
anM Malcolm Wallop, Republican of Wyo- `
ming, have asked the intelligence com-
mittee staff to examine the case.
Trigon disappeared in 1977, the year
Mr. Filatov was arrested, after supplying
the C.I.A. with abundant intelligence in-
formation.
The two, Valdik A. Enger and Rudolf P.
Chernyayev, were convicted and sen-
tenced to 50 years each. In April 1979 they
were traded for five imprisoned Soviet
dissidents, including Aleksandr Ginz-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/09: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201930014-3