BACK HOME IN THE U.S.S.R.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100580004-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 24, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: October 1, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

CTA-r Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100580004-5
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE
TIME
1 October 1984
published, the security net around Bitov
began to relax, and he was no longer ac-
companied everywhere by an intelligence
agent.
Bitov seemed to be settling into a nor-
mal life. In March he signed a contract
with the British publisher Hamish Hamil-
ton to write a book on Soviet censorship
called Tales I Could Not Tell. In May he
visited the U.S. as a guest of Reader's Di-
gest. On his return, Bitov went to Paris,
where he was offered a job with Radio
Liberty, the U.S.-supported radio station
that broadcasts to the Soviet Union, and
gave three 15-minute interviews. But
something was not quite right. Friends
noticed that Bitov was growing touchy
and suffering from fits of depression. He
seemed especially affected. by the long
separation from his wife Ludmilla, 38,
and daughter Xenia, 15, whom he once
described as "the dearest creature in all
the world." Just before his disappearance
last August, he reportedly told several fel-
low Soviet emigres that he had cancer and
was going into the hospital for tests and
treatment.
Precisely how and when Bitov re-
turned to the Soviet Union remains a
mystery. Some observers speculate that he
was abducted by the KGB. Others suggest
that he could'have been a KGB plant. sent
by the emlin to gather useful informa-
tion about the British intelligence
alea ss with defectors. Both theories, how-
ever, were discounted by a senior British
intelligence officer involved in the case.
Said he: "Bitov was certainly not a double
agent, of that we are sure. He was, in our
assessment, enticed back, not abducted."
Bitov's future position could provide clues
to his new role. He told Western reporters
last week that he would resume his former
job, which would imply some kind of offi-
cial blessing. If he becomes a nonperson,
as British intelligence officials predict it
will suggest he was operating on his own.
D erek Thomas, political director of the
Foreign Office, summoned Soviet
Charge d'Affaires Nikolai Posilyagin and
informed him that London found Bitov's
statements in Moscow "absurd and offen-
sive." The Soviets, for their part, did not
appear eager to turn the episode into an
East-West diplomatic incident-especial-
ly on the eve of Foreign Minister Andrei
Gromyko's meetings with President Ron-
ald Reagan and other U.S. officials this
week. Indeed, the Soviet press seemed to
downplay Bitov's torture charges. Said a
Western diplomat in Moscow: "It looks as
if the Soviet authorities do not want to
make an enormous issue out of this."
Whatever the explanation, the Bitov
affair has clearly damaged the prestige of
British intelligence. What had appeared a
triumphant success has turned into an em-
barrassing failure. As for the Soviets, they
have again proved the value of one of their
most useful weapons against defection:
rarely allowing a citizen to travel abroad
with family. -By Thomas A. Sancton.
Reported by Frank Melville/London, with other
bureaus
Back Home in the U.S.S.R.
A Soviet defector recants, spinning a yarn worthy of a spy novel
T he story had all the makings of
an espionage bestseller. Chapter 1:
Against a romantic backdrop of canals
and palaces, Oleg Bitov, a high-level So-
viet journalist, disappears from his hotel
while covering the Venice Film Festival
in September 1983. Chapter 2: Bitov, the
former foreign culture editor of Moscow's
Literaturnaya Gazeta, surfaces in London
a month later and issues a statement de-
claring that he has fled his homeland to
protest the repression of intellectuals
and. in particular, to denounce the Sovi-
ets for shooting down Korean Air Lines
Flight 007 on Sept. 1, 1983. His defection
is hailed as a major coup for British intel-
ligence, which provides the journalist
with money, a Toyota and a house in ru-
ral Sussex. Chapter 3: Bitov vanishes
from London, leaving his car illegally
parked near the Soviet embassy and
about 550.000 untouched in his British
bank account.
Last week Bitov wrote Chapter 4 at a Oleg Bitov at his Moscow press conference
curious press conference held in Moscow.
Looking tired and dranwn, the 52-year-old judged him to be a genuine defector.
gray-haired editor read an account of Arrangements were quickly made to
what he called his kidnaping, torture and By him to London. There, after- exhaus-
blackmail at the hands of Britishmtel.li tive debriefing, he began to write and
gence agents. As Bitov told it, his ordeal broadcast articles portraying himself as a
began on the night of Sept. 8, 1983, when Soviet intellectual who had realized his
he returned to his hotel room in Venice secret ambition to escape to the West. In
"'only to get a terrible blow at the back of two lengthy pieces that appeared in the
my head." He claimed that he was London Sunday Telegraph last February,
drugged and put on an Alitalia flight from Bitov described how Moscow's leadership
Pisa to London with a forged British pass- used the press as an Orwellian "Ministry
port in the name of David Locke. of Truth," relying on an all-pervasive cen-
. Bitov declared that the "Sherlock sorship largely imposed by Soviet journal-
Holmeses" who interrogated him at an ists themselves. After the articles were
army barracks near London were unable
to prove that he was a KGB spy, despite
their use of "blackmail," "bribery" and
"physical violence." Once British agents
realized that he had no intelligence valu ,e
he said, they offered him "a well ,~aid,ob
in the gallery of mud_slin ing anti-Sovie-
teers" Bitov said he escaped by gaining
ifi s captors' trust and then slipping off un-
noticed to buy a one-way airline ticket to
Moscow. In an attempt to add credibility
to his story, he named his alleged captors,
gave the addresses of two safe houses
where e was ^ en y British intelli-
gence, and read out the telephone num-
rs o t e ante igence services London
offices-which enterprising Fleet Street
reporters promptly called. The phones
were answered by operators who refused
to give any information, and shortly after-
ward the lines were disconnected.
The British government, which had
granted Bitov political asylum last Janu-
ary, told quite a different story: Bitov orig-
inally had approached Italian police in
Venice in September 1983 and informed
them that he wanted to defect to the U.K.
The Italians in turn alerted the British
embassy in _Rome;_ an agent_of the Secret London safe house cited by the journalist
Intelligence Service met with Bitov and A Toyota, a book contract and $50,000.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100580004-5