ANDROPOV'S P.R.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303410009-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: November 18, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303410009-3
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
18 November 1982
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Andropov's P.R.
Vladimir Kuzichkin has been de-
scribed as the highest ranking KGB
defector in 10 years. In a recent Time
magazine, he gives a lurid "inside ac-
count" of the Soviet coup in Afghani-
stan. We didn't have any particular
doubts before, but after checking his
account with Afghanistan specialists,
the only thing clear to us about him is
that he's a great mystery.
His Time interview claims that the
KGB opposed the armed Russian in-
vasion of Afghanistan, but that Brezh-
nev and the Politburo ordered it any-
way. How curious that this tidbit
should emerge just when Yuri Andro-
pov, until recently head of the KGB,
has become the top man in the Krem-
lin.
Other half-truths and omissions in
the Time account trouble Westerners
familiar with Afghan events. Kuzich-
kin, described as an undercover oper-
ative in Iran for five years, seems un-
familiar with the major Afghan play-
ers. His basic theme, that Afghanistan
was a blunder, follows the off-the-re-
cord line that Soviet diplomats are
dropping at cocktail parties around
the world. He ignores the Russian mil-
itary buildup in southern Afghanistan,
within striking range of the Persian
Gulf. To put it bluntly, warning bells
are ringing that we might be facing a
classic Soviet case of disinformation.
The past history of defectors
should be warning enough that they
come from murky waters. A bitter
controversy continues to this day over
Yuri ivanovich Nosenko, allegedly a
KGB lieutenant colonel who came to
the West in 1964 saying that he had
been Lee Harvey Oswald's case offi-
cer. His message was that the KGB
had had no interest in Oswald when
the man who later shot President
Kennedy had been a defector living in
Russia. So many parts of his story
failed to jibe that CIA officers con-
cluded he was a plant. But after three
years of questioning in "hostile" con-
ditions, they failed to break him. A
new regime ended .a messy situation
by rehabilitating Nosenko,:and at last*
report the agency was paying him $35,-
000 a year to lecture in its counterin-
telligence courses. But doubts about
his story have never been resolved.
Intelligence spooks live in such a
duplicitous world that one could go
mad trying to -get at the truth. One
noted participant once called it a
"wilderness of mirrors." When those
of us on the outside start hearing
spectacular revelations, especially
those that advance certain interests in
the Kremlin, we should reach for a
large shaker of salt.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303410009-3