DOUBLE AGENTS IN A SECRET WAR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100370016-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 6, 2012
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: May 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100370016-7
In the shadowy
world of spy versus
counterspy, the West
has a mayor advantage:
corruption in the
are the stories of four--
brave men who repudi= _
masters to work for
treecdom
-- Oleg Lyalin
DURING THE PAST 14 YEARS,
Western nations have been safer
and world peace has been more
secure because of a Russian named
Oleg Lyalin. Until now, his story
has never been made public.
As a youth in a Soviet sports
club, Lyalin became expert in
hand-to-hand combat, and later an
excellent marksman and parachut-
ist. Inducted into the KGB, the lean,
dark-eyed Lyalin underwent pro-
longed examination by specialists,
who judged him capable of killing
for, a cause. In seeking staff assas-
sins, the KGB places great value on
stability and patriotic idealism.
Given his Marxist values, Lyalin
was a moral and honest man-too
much so, as it turned out.
In the early 196os, at an airfield
near the Baltic coast, the KGB
caught two Jewish dissidents trying
to flee in a small plane. They were
READER' S DIGEST
May 1985
dragged off and stuffed into the
bomb bay of a . military aircraft.
Pretending to take off, the pilot
taxied the plane down the field,
then revved the engines to a high
pitch. The two dissidents were told
that the plane was losing altitude
and they had to be jettisoned. The
bomb-bay doors were opened and
the men fell a few feet to the
ground beneath the stationary
bomber. The psychological shock
killed them both. Lyalin saw them
literally frightened to death, and he
never forgot.
Assigned to London in 1967 as a
"trade representative," Lyalin wit-
nessed corruption everywhere in
the KGB Residency. In quest of
career advantage, some officers
regularly gave or took bribes and
falsified reports. Others embezzled
from operational funds to buy
Western goods to sell on the Mos-
cow black market. At the same
time, Lyalin concluded that a free
British society had better fulfilled
its promises than had Marxism.
Finally something snapped. and
Lvalin called a British official. Af-
ter talking for hours with British
intelligence, he agreed to serve as
a British agent within the KGB.
Over the ensuing months, Lyalin
detailed elaborate KGB preparations
to terrorize London, Washington,
Paris, Bonn, Rome and other West-
ern capitals. He was not talking
about some theoretical wartime-
contingency plan, but rather of a
plan to commit widespread murder
and mayhem in peacetime. -
Lvalin had been ordered to select
British politicians, journalists, aca-
demicians and businessmen for as-
sassination. His KGB counterparts
in the United States and Western
Europe had drafted similar death
lists. Soviet agents had then record-
ed the daily movements of the
marked men so they could be
quickly liquidated whenever Mos-
cow ordered.
Officers of Department V, the
KGB's assassination and sabotage
apparatus, had also developed
agent networks. Posing as messen-
gers, deliverymen or tourists,
agents were to enter government
buildings and litter the corridors
with tiny, colorless capsules.
Crushed underfoot, the capsules
would emit vapors fatal to anyone
breathing them. And the more res-
cuers, the greater the fatalities and
the terror.
To create more chaos, the KGB
intended to infiltrate, by plane and
submarine, squads of Soviet sabo-
teurs to blow up power stations,
bridges and rail junctions and to
poison municipal-water supplies.
When the incredulous British
demanded proof, Lyalin supplied
it-sometimes in the form of KGB
documents, sometimes leading
them to his own agents.
To defuse the threat, on Septem-
ber 24, 1971, the British suddenly
wiped out the KGB Residency in
London, expelling 105 Soviet "dip-
lomats." Then they announced
Lyalin's defection.
These actions. produced pande
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monium in the Politburo. Soviet
rulers feared that Lyalin's dts-
closures might abort detente and
cost them coveted Western capi-
tal, technology and foodstuffs.
The Politburo abolished Depart-
ment V, summoning home all its
officers.
With Lyalin's help, British coun-
terintelligence, MI-5, had cut the
darkest core out of the KGB and
eliminated the risk that the Soviet
Union, by launching waves of ter-
ror, might provoke World War Ill.
Vladimir Rezun
AS A JUNIOR TANK COMMANDER in
the Soviet army, Vladimir Rezun
witnessed the same deceit, bribery
and embezzlement Lyalin had seen
in the KG13. He concluded that the
corruption was caused by the moral
degeneracy of the Soviet system
itself. The U.S.S.R.'s invasion of
Czechoslovakia, in which Rezun
participated, solidified his judg-
ment that he must do all he could to
remove the curse of the system
from the Russian people.
Assigned to military intelligence
and posted to Switzerland as a So-
viet "diplomat" in 1974, Rezun
awaited .his opportunity. Boyish,
smiling and polite, he and his at-
tractive wife were welcome guests
on the diplomatic circuit. At one
reception, he took a chance and
spoke to a visiting Englishman.
About a week later, he met with
British-intelligence officers.
Rezun had a warning for the
West. It concerned Spetsnaz, a se-
cret, elite element of Soviet military
intelligence (GRU) consisting of
about 27,000 men and women. Its
mission: to destroy, as Rezun put it,
the "brains and nerve centers" of
Western nations by killing political,
military and scientific leaders, and
by sabotaging critical installations.
Assassination and sabotage
teams of specially trained Red
Army officers-often posing as So-
viet athletes-would be slipped into
the West just before an outbreak of
war. This surprise attack would
quickly be followed by parachute
landings of Spetsnaz troops deep in
hostile territory.
The West knew that Spetsnaz
existed, but Rezun defined its
strength, missions and methods as
no one before ever had. More impor-
cant, be Showed how to rec ognvc the
signs that Spetsnaz w;is about to he
launched. Among the telling clues
he cited: groups of Soviet "torl!ists"
and "cultural delegations" with till
usually fit voting men arid wonn?n:
Soviet merchant ships with ahnor
rnally large crews in port: huge
contingents of "workers" imported
to repair or renovate a Soviet diplo-
matic installation abroad.
Because of Rezun's explicit
warnings, the Soviets cart no longer
count upon Spetsnaz to surprise the
West. Thus, a lone Spy has greatly
reduced the chances that the Sovi-
ets will dare employ that force.
Rezun intended to rcrnain inside
Soviet intelligence, ferreting out its
secrets. But on a Friday in June
1978, Rezun and all other GRU
officers were called to an emer-
gency meeting in the Geneva Resi-
dency, where a special Aeroflot
flight to Moscow that weekend was
announced. -
Someone was obviously going to
be forcibly returned to Moscow.
Fearing he was the one, Rezun
flashed a prearranged signal to
British intelligence. Within hours,
Rezun, his wife and child were
safely hidden in England.
Arkadi Shevchenko
As IT HAPPENED, the special flight
was not for Rezun. Instead, it took
away the rising young Soviet diplo-
mat Gennadi Shevchenko, whose
father, Arkadi, was Undersecre-
tary General of the United Nations
and at home in the highest Soviet
councils. The KGB had just dis-
covered that the elder Shevchenko
was a spy working for American
intelligence.
A member of the Communist
Party oligarchy, Arkadi Shev-
chenko enjoyed power, privilege
and luxury. Whatever he wanted-
money, a country villa, Western
goods-the party delivered. Arriv-
ing at the United Nations in 1973,
he lived lavishly in New York. But
Shevchenko had a sense of decency
buried deep within him. Ultimate-
ly, it impelled him to recoil from
the system, even though he was
among its prime beneficiaries.
Shevchenko confided to an
American acquaintance that he
would like to defect. Furtive ex-
changes of secret messages led
Shevchenkc' to a Manhattan apart-
ment and the CIA. Eventually,
Shevchenko agreed to work in
place, to ferret out whatever infor-
mation he could that might be of
use to the United States.
Shevchenko provided the CIA
with volumes of Kremlin secrets.
At the U.N., he performed his act
so well that in 1978 the Soviets
successfully induced the United
Nations to extend his contract as
Undersecretary General.
Not long afterward, the KGB
realized that the Soviet Union was
suffering a horrendous leak of se-
crets concerning its strategic-arms
negotiations. Shevchenko became a
prime suspect and was summoned
to Moscow for "consultations." But
just before he left, a friend sig-
naled Shevchenko that he was in
peril. Shevchenko then requested,
and was granted, political asylum.
The full consequences of this
Western penetration of the Soviet
hierarchy may never be known.
But one significant, continuing ef-
fect is discernible. From 1980 to
1983, the Soviet Union made a
ferocious effort to intimidate the
West into agreements precluding
installation of new American mis-
siles in Europe. Had the Soviets
succeeded, a dangerous military
-imbalance surely would have re-
sulted, and NATO might have un-
raveled. But partly because of
Shevchenko's warnings, the West
resolutely resisted the Soviet strate-
gy. Convinced that a one-sided
treaty is unobtainable, the Soviets
may now be willing to sit down for
serious talks.
- Col. Andrzej Sokolowski -
IN 1982, at the request of the
Senate, the CIA submitted a re-
markable document detailing ad-
vanced U.S. technology stolen by
Soviet agents. The list was stagger-
ing: computers, lasers, ultra-secret
"quiet" radar designed for the B-I
and Stealth bombers, and missile
systems. How did the CIA know so
precisely what the Soviets had ac-
quired? Part of the answer was a
source high in Polish intelligence: a
colonel known by the alias of An-
drzej Sokolowski.
Though in his youth Sokolowski
had believed in communism, he re-
pudiated it after witnessing the cor-
nue,
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rut,tior. of I'ohsh part. lcadcrs who
were allowed to live like potentate
in return lot keeping their pci,plc
vassals of the Soviets. He came to
look upon individual liberty as the
essential foundation of any political-
economic system and, ultim atel?.
on the United States as the greatest
protector of liberty. Andrzej Soko-
lowski was in a position to do much
for America.
Polish intelligence, known as the
SB, functions primarily as an auxil-
iary of the KGB. Any secrets the
Poles obtain go, literally overnight,
to Moscow. At SB headquarters in
Warsaw, Sokolowski worked inti-
mately with KGB officers stationed
there and often learned what the
Soviets had succeeded in stealing
I from the United States.
He reported that a Polish agent
inside the Hughes Aircraft Corp.
was systematically looting secret
U.S. military technology. In 1981
this information led to the convic-
tion of Hughes engineer William
Holden Bell.
Sokolowski also reported that,
through a California businessman,
the Soviets were obtaining masses
of secret data on American missiles.
In 1984, his information resulted in
the conviction of James Durward
Harper, Jr., of Mountain View,
Calif.
By learning precisely which
weapons systems had been compro-
mised, the United States has been
able to repair much of the damage.
Because of one spy, great hemor-
rhages of technology have been
stanched. Andrzej Sokolowski and
his family are now safe in the Unit-
ed States.
THE IMPACT on contemporary his-
tory of the secrets so bravely sup-
plied by Lyalin, Rezun, Shevchenko
and Sokolowski defies measure-
ment. The four differed greatly
from one another in personal it'
and background, vet each rebelled
against the corruption he perceived
in the Soviet system. So lone, as this
degeneration continues-and it is
accelerating-others are likely to
join the rebellion.
In the secret war, time no longer
is on the Soviets' side.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100370016-7