ARKADY SHEVCHENKO/SPYING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301800004-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 14, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: July 19, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO N REPORTS, ~N~.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
As It Happens SiAnOrv WAMU-FM
NPR Network
~~ July 19, 1985 11:00 P.M. GTY Washington, D.C.
Arkady Shevchenko/Spying
ALAN MAITLAND: "I swore at myself, locked in
bumper-to-bumper traffic in the middle of New York's Queensboro
Bridge. I poured out my anger in Russian invective, cursing
myself for not anticipating the traffic jam, exasperated at the
prospect of disruption of my carefully laid plans. Tonight, of
all nights, I couldn't be late for this critically important
meeting.
"I had learned to coexist with the KGB, accepting their
threats and intrusions throughout my life and work. But finally,
this evening, I was going to try and escape them for good."
So writes Soviet defector Arkady Shevchenko, author of
the current bestseller Breaking with Moscow. Shevchenko caused a
sensation in the '70s when he went over to the Americans, and
he's told a gripping tale of how he became a super-mole for the
CIA while serving as Undersecretary General of the United
Nations.
The juicy details of how he spied for Washington and why
lace the pages of this book. But a blistering review in The New
Republic magazine says Shevchenko has spun a tall tale and was
minor-mole, not super-spy.
We reached the reviewer, Edward J. Epstein, in London.
PETER DOWNING: Mr. Epstein, when did you first doubt
Shevchenko's story?
EDWARD EPSTEIN: When I read the interviews with
Khrushchev that he claimed to have had. Here was a 28-year-old
junior diplomat traveling with the head of state. And the idea
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that he had private conferences with Khrushchev seemed to me
extraordinary.
And then I happened to meet Henry Hurt, who's the
Reader's Digest editor, and Hurt told me that he had interviewed
Shevchenko in 1980. He'd asked Shevchenko specifically whether
he had had a chance to speak to Khrushchev about some matter, and
he told Hurt that how could, you know, "I have an interview with
Khrushchevd?" You know, "I was just a very junior person."
And so then I began to wonder whether the entire book
had been made up.
DOWNING: Well, let's start with the very first
paragraph in the book. Mr. Shevchenko is writing about his first
contact with American Intelligence and how he was swearing at
himself, caught on a bridge, the Queensboro Bridge in New York in
traffic, and that this was going to throw his, as he calls them,
carefully laid plans out the window.
plan?
Is it your contention that he had no carefully laid
EPSTEIN: Well, my contention is that the book was
written by a novelist, and so therefore I decided to check
whatever facts were in the book, and in that opening of the book
with the car chase, what the prerequisite was for driving a car
and having a car chase and getting a speeding ticket with a
driver's license. In America it's very easy to check whether
someone has a driver's license. You only need their date of
birth.
So I called the Motor Vehicle Bureau and I checked the
archives of the international driver's license and I found that
the first time he had ever had a license in America -- and he had
never had an international license -- was October 1977, which was
more than a year after this entire incident took place.
His account of it is fictitious. You know, a spy can
write a novel, and a novelist can be a spy. But, you know, I was
reviewing the book.
DOWNING: What else did you find to be false?
EPSTEIN: Well, in the book he gives an account of his
espionage, and he sets most of the espionage in the year 1975.
But then Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who aside from being
the Ambassador to the United Nations at the time, later was the
Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence, wrote in the New York
Times, himself, very specifically, that his first contact with
the United States was in December of 1975. And when you go
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through after that first contact, you realize he couldn't have
started spying till 1976. And therefore everything he says in
1975 has to be fictitious, because he wasn't in contact with the
Americans in 1975.
DOWNING: What about his own importance? Was that
blown up in the book?
EPSTEIN: I can only go through the claims he made in
the book. But meeting after meeting that he describes with
Soviet officials, I found the Soviet officials -- and he dated
them himself by saying, for example when he was speaking to the
KGB residente, he dated the meeting to just before he was
replaced by another Soviet residente. And the date of that was
July 1975. And yet the entire meeting, he says, was 1976. So
that entire meeting had to be fictitious.
Now, when someone writes a book of nonfiction, a book of
history, you know, they're not entitled to fictionalize scenes,
to make up characters, to make up interviews. And there's no
real reason to give any credence at all to Shevchenko. I mean if
he was still with the Soviet delegation and he wrote this book,
no one would believe a word of it.
My contention is he's writing a novel. That doesn't
mean that there isn't some things that are true about Shevchenko.
It means that the book that has been passed off to the world
public as a true-life story is a fiction. And in that sense,
it's a fraud.
DOWNING: It was passed off as nonfiction to media
organizations like CBS and Time. They certainly went to some
lengths, apparently, to check out Mr. Shevchenko's story.
EPSTEIN: In the case of CBS, to be fair to CBS, you
know, they had very credible witnesses appear on television and
say that this man was a major intelligence source.
Time magazine, it's interesting. Many of the fictions
that I found in the novel were actually not in the Time magazine
abridgement. So they might have -- I don't know what their
processes were, but they might very well have caught the fact
that he didn't have a driver's license, or some of the meetings
couldn't have taken place.
They did have other major fictions. For example, they
could have checked the date that this Soviet residente left the
country.
It's interesting to me because if they began to find
that part of the book was fictionalized, rather than telling
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their audience that, they just attempted to fudge over those
areas and print the other areas. In a sense, it's more serious
than not doing fact-checking at all.
DOWNING: They certainly called him the CIA's most
successful spy.
EPSTEIN: Well, he wasn't a very successful spy. I have
spoken to many people in the intelligence community who
considered him to be basically worthless. That doesn't mean --
that's not to say he didn't have some contact with American
Intelligence.
But Time magazine also, let me point out, in 1980 said
that he was absolutely worthless as a spy.
DOWNING: Have you tried to contact Mr. Shevchenko
himself to put your findings to him, or have you had any reaction
from him?
EPSTEIN: I called him without getting any response.
And, you know, it's rather interesting because when my article
appeared, the New York Times tried to call him, as well as
numerous other people. And his agent and his editor, Asheville
Green, who speaks for him, said he was out of the country.
During this entire period, he was at his home address in
Washington. So he was just hiding out and was refusing to speak
to anyone.
DOWNING: Mr. Epstein, I'm glad we got to talk to you.
Thank you.
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