SPY STORY SHOWS AN UGLY BUSINESS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000606040004-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: November 18, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606040004-3
ON PAGE
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
18 November 1985
Spy story shows
an ugly business
By Stanley Karnow
The tangled tales these days of So-
viet defectors and refectory remind
me of my involvement in one of
these episodes a few years ago. The
experience was brief, but it afforded
me some insight in that murky
world.
I came away with the conclusion
that the agents and counteragents
and counter-counteragents who pop-
ulate the clandestine services are
probably less efficient than the po-
lice officer on the corner.
And they often get away with mur-
der in the very real sense of the term
because, operating in secrecy, they
cannot be held accountable.
My story has its origins in 1959,
when a Soviet naval officer by the
name of Nicholas Shadrin escaped
from Poland to Sweden, claimed po-
litical asylum and eventually was
taken to the United States after poly-
graph tests supposedly showed that
his defection was sincere.
He was accompanied by Ewa Gora,
a Polish woman later to become his
wife - an indication that his flight
from communism may have had
more personal than political mo-
tives.
In Washington, after passing addi-
tional tests to prove his honesty, Sha-
drin was given a job in the Pentagon
as an analyst of information on the
Soviet navy. Soon afterward, a tough
decision confronted him.
He was approached by a member of
the KGB, the Soviet espionage organ-
ization, and asked to work as a spy
for his former homeland. He re-
ported the overture to the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, which saw a
chance to use him.
The FBI turned him into a "dou-
ble" - furnishing him with phony
data to pass on to the KGB so that, in
the process, he could report back on
the activities on the Soviet appara-
tus. From then on, Shadrin met with
KGB men in different places.
On Dec. 18, 1975, Shadrin arrived in
Vienna with his wife, ostensibly on a
skiing vacation. In fact, he was due to
meet there with the KGB. He left his
hotel room in the late afternoon -
and vanished. A local CIA agent, as-
signed to keep an eye on -him, evi-
dently bungled.
I entered the act a couple of years
later after Mrs. Shadrin, dissatisfied
with the U.S. government's handling
of the case, hired a private lawyer,
Richard Copaken, to find her hus-
band. Copaken called me after his
various efforts had gone nowhere.
He had learned through a mutual
friend that I knew Victor Louis, a
KGB agent who poses as a Soviet
journalist. Copaken asked me to set
up a session with Louis. I agreed
after Copaken pledged me exclusive
rights to the story when we reckoned
it would not jeopardize Shadrin.
I thereupon contacted Louis and
arranged for him to meet us in Hel-
sinki. I told Louis nothing of the
subject in advance.
Our encounter in Helsinki was like
a scene from "Mission Impossible."
We sat on a park bench while Copa-
ken explained to Louis that Shadrin
was an innocent tourist who had
been abducted by the KGB.
Louis, however dubious a charac-
ter, is no fool. He took me aside later
and said: "Nonsense. The days of kid-
napping defectors are over. That Sha-
drin must have been a double agent
or something fishy."
Nevertheless, Louis promised Co-
paken to look into the affair - but
not before he had told the lawyer
that, in exchange, he wanted his le-
gal help in a libel action he was
pursuing in the United States.
Nothing came of that meeting.
The Shadrin case dragged on. Pres-
ident Ford raised it with Leonid
Brezhnev, the late Soviet leader, to
no avail. The CIA and FBI continued
their investigations, without success.
Finally, the other day, a recent
Soviet defector disclosed to CIA in-
terrogators what had happened to
Shadrin, and his revelation had the
ring of plausibility - or so U.S.
agents believe.
According to the defector's ac-
count, Shadrin had indeed been ab-
ducted in Vienna in 1975 by KGB
operatives who intended to pump
him for information. But in a strug-
gle that ensued, they tried to silence
him with chloroform and instead
killed him with an overdose.
Thus the KGB men had bungled
the job as badly as had everyone else
in the business. Quite plainly, it is a
business with a wide margin for er-
ror.
(Stanley Karnow is editor of the
International Writers Service.)
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606040004-3