AN EASTERN DEFECTOR'S FAMILY IS TAKEN FOR A RIDE HOME

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000606510001-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: November 23, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000606510001-4
%- T C. E iPFESF.Z0
WALL STREET JOURNAL
23 November 1983
7 ! ,-tee
An Eastern Defector's Family Is
Taken for a Ride Home
Europe
No. 2 was Vladimir Kostov, who had
been through it before. First victim of the
by Claire Sterling secret agents famous-they attacked him
ROME-Over the weekend of Nov. 12- with one in Paris, in April 1978-he was
13, the wife and young son of a Bulgarian lucky enough to survive. (His compatriot
defector living in Munich disappeared at- _ Georgi Markov died after a stab in the
ter boarding a train for Vienna. Suspicions. thigh with an umbrella just like it, in Lon-
that they had been kidnapped by Bulgarian don, a month later.) Since then, Mr. Kos-
agents were confirmed a few days later
when Bulgaria's own state news agency
announced that wife and son were both
safe in Sofia, and "very happy" to be
home.
toy has been a highly effective broadcaster
for Radio Free Europe in Munich.
No. 3 was Velicko Peikev. Formerly
with Bulgaria's state information service
in Sofia, Mr. Peikev grew up with the Bul-
rate more than a short wire-service item in garian national Sergei Antonov, arrested in
Tl a Vest. In the precarious world of East- Rome just a year ago for alleged complic-
ern Europe's political emigres, things like ity in the papal plot. On the invitation of
this happen all the time. Investigating Judge flario Martella, . Mr.
Yet there was an extra element of raw, Peikev visited Mr. Antonov in jail. His re-
deliberate cruelty here that might be com- port of the meeting made quite a splash
pared to a public flogging. The condemned in the Italian press.
man must not only be punished but must Mr. Antonov was most certainly "an in-
be seen to be punished, to make an unfor- telltgence agent in Rome." he later told
gettable impression on his audience. the New York Times. "Antonov has lied
The Bulgarian in this case is no faceless
emigre. He is Col. Stefan Sverdlev, the
highest-ranking officer ever to defect from
the Bulgarian secret service. He has been
a magnet for Western reporters since Bul-
garia was first implicated in the plot to
rill Pope John Paul.
Lengthy interviews with Col. Sverdlev
have. appeared in dozens of publications,
including the New York Times, Newsweek,
the Reader's Digest, the left-wing Paris
daily Liberation, the conservative Le Fi-
garo and the Italian Socialist Party's
Avanti. The burden of his message has
been not only that Bulgaria was indeed be-
hind the papal plot, but that its security
service "is totally subordinate to Soviet
policy, and entirely under the KGB's con-
Col. Sverdlev has been warned that he
troI."
would "pay dearly" for this "treacherous
behavior." Since last October, in fact, he
has been No. I on a publicly circulated hit
repeatedly (since his arrest), even in small
things, and the Italians can prove it.
.. ?.
,
Antonov is afraid. He knows he could
spend a long time in prison. But even if
he's sent back, he realizes his life would be
in danger. He knows too much."
No. 4 was Iordan Mantarov. A senior
intelligence officer in-Bulgaria's Palm
bassy who defected in 1981, Mr. antarov
caused an international sensation in his in-
terview with the New York Times's NicWo-
las Gaze last March 23. He claimed that a
still higher-ranking friend in the Bulgarian
security services had told him all about the
papal plot beforehand, and provided Mr.
Gage with some riveting details.
Officially,* Bulgaria dismissed Mr. Man-
tarov as an impostor and a fraud, who had
never even worked at the embassy. t(.5.
intelligence analysts, tilting consistently
list of four "evil Bulgarian exiles," "dan- toward Bulgaria on the whole case, also
gerous traitors" taking part in "the wild__wrote off his story as "third-rate bear-
and irresponsible anti-Bulgarian campaign
which started in Italy."
The hit list was mailed out to the entire
Bulgarian emigre community in West Ger-
many, on a costly engraved letterhead
bearing Bulgaria's coat-of-arms, by anony-
mous "intellectuals in exile." Like Col.
Sverdlev, who headed the list, Nos. 2, 3 and
4 had "upset" Bulgarian leaders griev-
ously-that.was the word used-by insist-
ing on Bulgaria's guilt before the whole
world.
The story seemed too commonplace to
say") Yet it hardly s me likely that Rnl-
Earia would out a mere impostor and fraud
mn so carefully selected a hit list as the
Ine.
Evidently the regime in Sofia is deter-
mined to silence a very particular kind of
Bulgarian emigre: the kind who can bear
witness in the West to Bulgaria's role in
the papal shooting.
The method used for Col. Sverdlev was
classical entrapment. His wife Pavlina's
80-year-old mother in Bulgaria wrote on
Nov. 4 that she had miraculously gotten
permission to join a bus' tour for Vienna
the following weekend. This might be her
last chance to see her daughter. Would
Pavlina join her at the-Hotel Fuchs in Vi-
enna?
The Sverdlevs were not overly suspi-
_cious, because Pavlina's mother had mi-
raculously gotten permission to make the
same trip a year before, and nothing had
happened when Pavlina joined her. This
time, Pavlina even took along her 13-year-
old son.
The pair never reached the Hotel Fuchs
in Vienna. Neither did Pavlina's mother,
who probably did not see through the fic-
tion of her miraculous journey until it was
too late. No busload of Bulgarian tourists
showed up at the hotel either, nor had any
reservations been made for them.
While Bulgaria does not customarily
publicize its successful abductions of run-
away citizens, it made a point of announc
ing this one. Nobody was going to be left in
doubt about the fate in store for Col. Sverd-
lev's recklessly talkative gang of four.
"Pavlina and her son are in Bulgaria
and enjoying the amnesty here," reported '
the Bulgarian telegraph agency four days
after she and her son had vanished. "We
have returned of our own free will .. .
with the help of my mother. Our mother is
capable of doing anything for the happi-
ness of her child," Pavlina was quoted as
saying. "We are very happy to be back
and grateful for the human understanding
surrounding us here. ." She had
"dreamed" of coming back ever since her
husband forced her to leave, added the
Bulgarian news agency.
Pavlina and her husband had walked
many. miles through the night, carrying
their five-month-old baby, to slip over the
border into Greece in 1972. She did think
often after that about coming back-ex-
actly the way she was brought back. The
thought, according to Col. Sverdlev,
haunted both her and himself. Some might i
call that dreaming.
Claire Sterling, author of "The Terror
Network," will soon publish "The Time -of
the Assassins" (Holt, Rinehart & Winston),
a book about the shooting of the pope.
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