ANDROPOV S P.R.

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00552R000404610006-2
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
July 19, 2010
Sequence Number: 
6
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
November 18, 1982
Content Type: 
OPEN SOURCE
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PDF icon CIA-RDP90-00552R000404610006-2.pdf58.79 KB
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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-0 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 0552R000404610006-2 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 ?Iast'.1 report the agency was paying him X35,- 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 rtitrrors." 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 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404610006-2