LETTER TO WILLIAM CASEY FROM SAMUEL S. VAUGHAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87M01152R000300330040-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 18, 2010
• Sequence Number: 40
• Publication Date: September 9, 1985
• Content Type: LETTER

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Doubleday
Director
Central Intelligence Agency
MacLean, VA
'i
UL-L H. -
September 9, 1985 Recoi~
Would someone please send me a copy of the CIA
testimony referred to here in this reply by Edward
Jay Epstein to criticism of his criticism of the
Shevchenko book, in which the agency "itself revealed
to the Church Committee" that The Penkovski (sic) Papers,
published by Doubleday in 1965, was concocted by the CIA's
covert action division"?
SSV:lr
Enc.
41
Samuel S. Vaughan
Editor-in-Chief
Doubleday & Company, Inc. 245 Park Avenue, NewYork 10167 Telephone [phone]
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 'BREAKING WITH
Moscow':
AN EXCHANGE
Editor's note: In his best-selling memoir,
Breaking with Moscow, the former Soviet
diplomat Arkady Shevchenko describes a
colorful career spying for the United
States before his defection from a high
United Nations post in April
1978. In our issue of July
15&22, we published an arti-
cle by Edward Jay Epstein
asserting that many of the
details in Shevchenko's story
are demonstrably false, and
casting doubt on Shevchen-
ko's claim to have been a
valuable spy for the United
States.
In addition to the follow-
ing letters from Shevchenko's
editor and from the producer
of a "60 Minutes" presenta-
tion of his story, an anony-
mous representative of the
Central Intelligence Agency
telephoned TNR and several
other news organizations
with the following statement:
"Shevchenko provided in-
valuable information to the
U.S. government. The CIA
had nothing to do with
writing the book." Finally,
on July 31-a month after
the article was released-
Shevchenko himself held a
press conference at the Na-
tional Press Club in Wash-
ington, denying Epstein's
charges.
chenko accomplished before the end of
1975." It is illogical to assume that Shev-
chenko would not discuss what the So-
viets had done in the months before his
defection. Epstein further claims:
"There is no real evidence that whatever
valuable information supplied came be-
fore rather than after his defection." But
several people in positions of knowl-
edge, including Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan and Admiral Stansfield
Turner, have refuted that allegation,
chenko now also agrees that he could
not have considered approaching John
Scali about his defection in late 1975, be-
cause by then Scali had been replaced as
U.N. ambassador by Moynihan, but
that he thought about revealing himself
to Scali early in 1975, and not as he had
written.
What Epstein omits is equally instruc-
tive as to his line of attack. He disre-
gards Moynihan's published and broad-
cast support of Shevchenko. When
asked on "60 Minutes" of
his evaluation of Shev-
chenko, Moynihan said:
"For the first time we got
an understanding of how
Soviet foreign policy is
made and how it is oper-
ating." Your readers are
free to choose the more
reliable authority....
It is only fair to ask
what Epstein is trying to
prove. That the CIA
wrote Breaking with Mos-
cow? (The agency officers
are portrayed as manipu-
lative and sometimes in-
sensitive.) That the book
is a piece of CIA disinfor-
mation? (The hawks in
this administration might
not appreciate Shevchen-
ko's conclusion that we
must continue "to seek
reasonable and practical
accommodation" with the
Soviets.) That Shev-
chenko was not a CIA in-
formant for more than
two years? (Various
American officials whom
Epstein apparently didn't
interview have attested to
Shevchenko's bona fi-
des.) Or is Epstein trying
Edward Jay Epstein's "review" of Ar-
kady Shevchenko's Breaking with Mos-
cow is so riddled with errors, misrepre-
sentations, and leaps of judgment that
one scarcely knows where to begin a re-
joinder. But having talked to the author,
as well as to knowledgeable authorities,
we are convinced that Shevchenko's
memoir is reliable....
The New York Times on July 1, 1985, ef-
fectively demolished several of Ep-
stein's charges; others of his accusations
reflect attempts to strip Shevchenko of
his verisimilitude. For example, Epstein
writes: "The book details a wealth of es-
pionage coups [Epstein's word] Shev-
and the CIA has issued a statement that
Shevchenko "provided invaluable intel-
ligence to the United States
government."
Of Epstein's many charges we have
been able to find only two with any va-
lidity, both minor confusions in chro-
nology. He is correct that the dinner
meeting between Shevchenko, Boris So-
lomatin, and Georgy Arbatov could not
have occurred in 1976, but Shevchenko
told me after reading the Epstein article
that it did take place in 1975, at a time
when Arbatov was certainly pondering
the 1976 elections, especially given the
political fallout after Watergate. Shev-
ASHBEL GREEN
Editor-in-chief, Alfred A. Knopf
to connect Shevchenko to his favor-
ite espionage subjects, Yuri Nosenko,
Fedora, and Top Hat, all of whom
manage their way into his article,
and all of whom will presumably people
his own book on disinformation
that he is writing for Simon and
Schuster?
However much Epstein has tried to
damage Shevchenko, he has not made a
case. Breaking with Moscow stands as an
extraordinary memoir, and it will sur-
vive Edward Jay Epstein's bizarre
fulminations.
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To the editors:
In response to the article by Edward Jay
Epstein, I find it interesting that he
didn't go to any people who were in-
volved with Mr. Shevchenko at the time
he was a double agent. One of these
people was Stanfield Turner, former di-
rector of the CIA. Another was a deep-
cover CIA agent who participated in the
Shevchenko operation in New York. A
third was Senator Daniel Moynihan,
who was briefed by the agency about the
entire Shevchenko matter while he was
still a member of the intelligence com-
mittee. All verified to us the extent and
value of Shevchenko's service.
An additional note: One month after
doing the "60 Minutes" report on Shev-
chenko, we profiled President Jimmy
Carter. In an off-camera discussion the
former president verified and confirmed
to us the immeasurable value Shev-
chenko provided American intelligence.
IRA ROSEN
Producer, "60 Minutes"
Edward Jay Epstein replies:
There are few, if any, precedents for
the CIA identifying one of its own
alleged agents in a semi-anonymous
telephone tip to the media. The Shev-
chenko affair, however, is hardly set-
tled by this extraordinary phone call.
What the CIA avoided saying, even
when later pressed, was whether Shev-
chenko provided "invaluable informa-
tion" before or after his'defection. If be-
fore, he was a spy. If after, he was a
consultant.
There's no doubt Shevchenko had
contacts with American intelligence be-
fore his defection, as I stated in my re-
view. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
fixes the date of his initial feeler as De-
cember 5, 1975. That doesn't make him
an American spy. There were regular
contacts with other Soviet diplomats,
such as "Fedora" and "Top Hat," who
the FBI later decided were dangling dis-
information. This is one of the regular
occupations of Soviet diplomats at the
U.N.
Admiral Stansfield Turner, who was
director of central intelligence at the
time of Shevchenko's defection, also
claims that he furnished "valuable intel-
ligence"-though without specifying
when. In his own recent memoir, Secrecy
and Democracy, Turner makes only a sin-
gle reference to Shevchenko, in which
he gets the first name of this alleged
CIA masterspy wrong ("Andrei" in-
stead of Arkady), misspells his sur-
name, and misidentifies his position
at the U.N. ("number two man in the
Soviet Mission," rather than under sec-
retary general). The only thing Turner
claims to have learned from Shev-
chenko, even after he had defected, was
that "even senior Soviet diplomats hesi-
tate to report frankly." While this may
have been considered "valuable intelli-
gence," it is not the secrets, coded mes-
sages, and missile negotiating positions
that Shevchenko claims to have
provided.
The CIA's denial that it wrote the
book-an allegation I never made-art-
fully evades the real issue: Did the CIA
foist the Shevchenko-supermole story
on the American public in order to im-
prove its image? To begin with, the CIA
was not an uninterested party. Unlike
most other spy books by Soviet defec-
tors that reveal KGB operations, Break-
ing with Moscow divulges what purports
to be a major CIA espionage success
against the Soviet Union. Every act of
espionage involves a double secret. The
first part is the stolen information. The
second part is the fact that the informa-
tion has been stolen. The second secret
is crucial because once an enemy finds
out that it has been the victim of espio-
nage, it can remedy the situation or
even turn it to advantage. That is why
spies photocopy or memorize docu-
ments, rather than remove them. Even
years after the fact, spies cannot reveal
operations without jeopardizing intelli-
gence services' prized sources and
methods.
If Shevchenko published the story of
his alleged spying without the ex-
press authorization of the CIA, and if
it was not fictional, he would be in
blatant breach of American laws de-
signed to protect intelligence secrets.
And the CIA would hardly endorse
such a leak. (The only other book that
reveals a major CIA espionage opera-
tion, The Penkovskiy Papers, published by
Doubleday in 1965, was concocted by
the CIA's covert action division, as the
CIA itself revealed to the Church
Committee.)
Shevchenko, who got paid $60,000 a
year as a consultant by the U.S gov-
ernment after his defection, was well
aware of these restrictions. Indeed, if
his arrangement was the same as previ-
ous defector-consultants, he had a se-
crecy obligation that specified: "Your
relationship with the Central Intelli-
gence Agency and this contract must
be kept secret and you may not discuss
any aspect of this relationship with
any person other than the authorized
government representative or such oth-
er persons as he may specifically ap-
prove." In the course of a 1981 law-
suit against his previous publisher, Si-
mon and Schuster, Shevchenko stated
under oath that he was not at liberty
to discuss any relations he had with
U.S. intelligence. His subsequent deci-
sion to publish his alleged adventures
with the CIA must therefore have been
authorized.
We also know that the CIA played
more than a passive role in promoting
the Shevchenko story. In 1979 a Soviet
defector named Stanislav Levchenko,
who was in the custody of the CIA
after being flown in from Tokyo, told
the story of Shevchenko as a supermole
to Reader's Digest editor John Barron.
Barron, in a letter to The New Republic,
protested that he did not know then or
now that Levchenko was under CIA
control. Though I have no reason to
doubt his sincerity, the fact remains that
Levchenko did deliver CIA secrets to
Barron (including the identity and re-
cruitment of three CIA clandestine
agents) when he was under CIA parole.
This means that Levchenko could have
been arbitrarily deported, without any
redress, if he made a wrong move, or
otherwise displeased the CIA. He then
very possibly might have faced a Soviet
firing squad. In these circumstances,
Levchenko delivered the Shevchenko
story to Barron for publication and (as
Barron acknowledges) reviewed the
subsequent Reader's Digest story for ac-
curacy before it was published. It is in-
conceivable that Levchenko would gra-
tuitously violate his parole and divulge
CIA secrets to Barron, who was a total
stranger to him, unless he had done so
at the behest of the CIA. As in other
such cases, Levchenko presumably had
a "brief" from the CIA specifying exact-
ly what he could say to Barron about
Shevchenko. If so, the CIA planted the
spy story.
The CIA involvement with the Shev-
chenko story apparently continued up
until its publication. Ira Rosen, the "60
Minutes" producer, asserts that "a
deep-cover CIA agent," who purported-
ly was involved with Shevchenko while
he was at the U.N., verified Shevchen-
ko's espionage story. Since CIA deep-
cover agents do not (by definition) ordi-
narily blow their own cover and reveal
secret CIA espionage activities just to
help hype a book, this alleged agent pre-
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sumably told "60 Minutes" whatever it
was he told them at the behest of the
CIA.
That the CIA went to considerable
length to release, plant, and hype
this spy story does not, of course,
mean that it isn't true. The release of es-
pionage cases does, however, raise a
perverse accuracy problem. Admiral
Turner, who saw an urgent need to en-
hance public and congressional support
of the CIA under his stewardship, dis-
cusses the dilemma in his book: "Clearly
it is impossible for the CIA to attempt to
raise public confidence by revealing
very much about how successful spies
are." The alternative would be pseudo-
spy stories, which brings us to Ashbel
Green's letter and Shevchenko's press
conference.
F OR A MONTH after my article
appeared, Shevchenko was not to
be found. Ashbel Green told reporters
on June 28 that Shevchenko was "out
of the country" and "unreachable."
Shevchenko's lawyer told journalists
the same thing. Actually, on June 28
Shevchenko was at his home at 4941 Til-
den Avenue Northwest in Washington,
D.C. On that day he wrote a
check for $16,850.62 to Simon and
Schuster (partial repayment of an ad-
vance they'd paid him), and sent it by
Express Mail. I have a copy of the signed
and dated Express Mail receipt. When
he suddenly surfaced at the July 31
press conference, Shevchenko conceded
that he had not been out of the country
when his spokesmen said he was.
At that press conference, Shevchenko
accused me of "terroristic journalism."
He called my allegations "ridiculous,"
asserted that "he didn't read my
book," and implied that I was work-
ing in cahoots with the Soviet Union
to undermine him. He asserted that
if his book is a fraud, "then two presi-
dents of the United States are frauds,
both Carter and Reagan, who knew
about my story." (Neither Carter nor
Reagan has verified Shevchenko's story.
Reagan, of course, was a private citizen
and resident of California at the time of
Shevchenko's alleged spying career.)
However, neither Shevchenko nor
Ashbel Green, in his only slightly more
subdued letter, has disproved any of my
specific examples of fabrication. In fact,
Shevchenko conceded several key false-
hoods. ("In some places, I was a little bit
mistaken.")
The most important admission of
falsehood (which Green cavalierly dis- for intelligence in 1962, when he was re-
misses as a "minor confusion in chro- sponsible for nonclandestine intelli-
nology") concerns Shevchenko's pur- gene, not espionage. Since he retired
ported meeting with Boris Solomatin, from the CIA in 1969, and had absolute-
the Soviet deputy minister at the U.N., ly no connection with the Shevchenko
and Georgy Arbatov, the noted Soviet case, he subsequently modified his au-
Americanist, in 1976. This meeting, thentication, explaining to the Times
which he describes in great detail, is im- that he only intended to endorse Shev-
portant because it is the culmination of a chenko's general view of the Soviet Un-
year of alleged spying. Shevchenko de- ion described in the book. As for Shev-
scribes a session with his FBI case officer chenko's putative espionage career, "I
("Grogan") and his CIA case officer don't have a firm view about whether or
("Johnson") just before the meeting, in not he spied-that was all well after my
which they tell him what they'd like him time."
to find out. He positively dates the The Times story also challenges my as-
meeting by writing: "Soon after I de- sertion that a vivid car chase scene
scribed that evening to Johnson, a new Shevchenko describes in the book could
rezident came to New York to replace Bo- not have happened. Shevchenko claims
ris Solomatin ... Drozdov." that he got a ticket from a Nassau Coun-
The problem, as I pointed out in my ty policeman while speeding to his first
article, is that Drozdov replaced Solo- rendezvous with the CIA in 1975. But
matin on July 22, 1975. That means that New York State motor vehicle records
this entire conversation with Solomatin, show that Shevchenko did not get a
set in 1976, and containing verbatim driver's license until October 1977, and
quotes about the imminent American that there was no previous license. The
election, could not have taken place Times, acknowledging that it also found
as described. Shevchenko now admits no record of Shevchenko's having a li-
he was in error about the date, and cense before October 1977, suggested
claims the meeting occurred in 1975, be- the imaginative theory that he may have
fore Solomatin's departure. Back-dating had an earlier license, the record of
the meeting, however, compounds which was expunged before he applied
rather than solves the contradiction. For for a new one in 1977. But New York
if the meeting occurred in 1975, when State law requires that driver's license
Solomatin was still in his post, then records be maintained for at least two
it occurred before the earliest date any- years after the license expires. In addi-
one claims Shevchenko made his initial tion, the policy of the motor vehicle
contact with American intelligence. Sen- bureau is not to remove a license from
ator Moynihan, who undoubtedly veri- its computer for at least two renewal
fied the date with the Senate intel- periods, or eight years. If Shevchenko
ligence committee, established that had a valid license in December 1975
Shevchenko was not a spy until six (when he says he got the ticket), the ear-
months after Solomatin left his post. liest it could have expired would be his
Yet Shevchenko claims that he met next birthday, October 1976, and this
with the FBI and CIA in a CIA-supplied record could not possibly have been ex-
"safe house" (a room at the Waldorf- punged before Shevchenko applied for
Astoria) before the meeting with Solo- a new license in October 1977. In any
matin, and reported the meeting after- event, there is no record of any speed-
ward to his CIA contact. The entire in- ing ticket.
telligence context to this alleged In his new career as a professional ra-
meeting therefore must be a fabrication. conteur, Shevchenko told the American
So must the entire part of Shevchenko s Bar Association in 1980 that in his prior
espionage career that he describes as career as a Soviet official he helped to
having occurred before this climactic prepare fraudulent books and articles
meeting. for what he termed the KGB "disinfor-
The New York Times article of July 1 mation apparatus." There is no reason
that Ashbel Green describes as having to assume he altered his standards of
"effectively demolished several of Ep- truthfulness just because he defected.
stein's charges" does nothing of the He has now admitted fabricating crucial
sort. To be sure, Ray Cline, who is iden- incidents in Breaking with Moscow, and
tified as "former deputy CIA director" is has failed to disprove any of the other
quoted by the Times as saying that Shev- charges of fabrication. Why believe any-
chenko's story is "substantially truth- thing he writes without some independ-
ful." Actually Cline was deputy director ent substantiation? 0