ATTACHE CASE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000302700004-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: March 2, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000302700004-7
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Attache Case
A night in the Ukraine, a fast
goodbye to Moscow
W hen Assistant Army Attache James
Holbrook. 41, left Moscow one day
last January for a routine reconnaissance
trip deep into the western Ukraine, he
had no intention of partying along the way
-particularly not at a bacchanal funded
(and photographed) by the Soviet secret
police. But just hours after arriving in the
small city of Rovno (pop- 167,000), sourc-
es say. Holbrook's. traveling companion
-a fellow U.S. Army attache-was
drugged, and Holbrook himself obliged to
fend off an incipient blackmail scheme.
The uncompromised pair returned to
TIME MAGAZINE
2 MARCH 1981
Moscow immediately. In keeping with
U.S. procedure in such matters, Holbrook
was whisked back to the U.S., his 21-
month-old assignment to the Soviet
Union at an abrupt and curious end.
Most of the details of Holbrook's
Ukrainian misadventure-and exactly
how far the entrapment attempt pro-
gressed before Holbrook grew suspicious
and fled the party scene-remain top se-
cret. (The Soviets claim he was caught
with a woman in his Rovno hotel room.)
Nor is there any firm consensus about So-
viet motives in attempting to compromise
Holbrook, or pretending to attempt to
compromise him. The leading theory
among U.S. officials is that the Soviets
considered Holbrook an especially acute
pest: he speaks perfect Russian and had
made many friends among the Soviet mil-
itary. The Soviets regard the dozen or so
U.S. military attaches in Moscow as little
STAT
more than spies anyway. Indeed. Hol-
brook and his unfortunate fellow tripper
-Lieut. Colonel Thomas Spencer. still
among the American officers who work
out of the Moscow embassy-were head-
ed toward a particularly sensitive area:
Lvov, a Soviet military headquarters city
only 40 miles from the Polish border.
Intriguingly enough, just weeks before
the Rovno incident, Holbrook was one of
four Army officers recommended for a job
as Vice President George Bush's aide-de-
camp. Was Holbrook the target of a long-
shot plot to slip a Soviet "mole" into the
White House? An attractive speculation,
but doubtful. Says a State Department ex-
pert: "The KGB can be much slyer than
this when it is really recruiting a spy."
Holbrook, now reassigned to the De-
fense Intelligence Agency in Washington,
calls the affair "an obvious no-comment
situation." But if the Soviets merely want-
ed to neutralize an effective military at-
tache, then their attempt, however clum-
sy, was a complete success.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000302700004-7