SHEVCHENKO STORY CALLED CIA FICTION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301860017-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2012
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: June 27, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Si Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 :
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WASHINGTON TIMES
27 June 1985
Shevchenko story
called CIA fiction
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Soviet defector Arkady N. Shev-
chenko made best-seller lists and the
cover of Time magazine with his
sensational account of a career as a
CIA supermole. But The New
Republic magazine says the mem-
oirs are fiction.
"What is fabricated here are not
just car chases, meetings, conversa-
tions, reports, dates, motives and
espionage activities, but a spy who
never was," Edward Jay Epstein
writes in a New Republic cover story
scheduled to appear on newsstands
next week.
"Shevchenko himself did not con-
coct the mole story," adds Mr.
Epstein, author of investigative
books challenging the Warren Com-
mission conclusion that Lee Harvey
Oswald acted without accomplices
when he assassinated John F Ken-
nedy.
He says the defector's supermole
image first arose in a 1983 book by
John Barron, "The KGB ibday: The
Hidden Hand." The story, he says,
was released to Barron by the CIA.
Thus did the CIA, after reportedly
viewing Mr. Shevchenko as being of
little value, retroactively establish
"a thoroughly successful spy for
itself. It elevated Shevchenko to a
spy so important that he was capa-
ble, among other things, of keeping
the ClAinformed of the Soviets' real
intentions in the sensitive SALT
negotiations," Mr. Epstein writes.
Mr. Shevchenko's book,
"Breaking With Moscow," details his
life as a CIA spy while serving as an
under secretary general in the
United Nations Secretariat. The
book, published by Knopf, sold
180,000 copies and was serialized in
Time.
Ashbel Green, a senior editor at
Knopf who edited the Shevchenko
book, said Mr. Epstein had "gone
extremely wrong. My connections
in the intelligence community have
always confirmed Shevchenko's
role. There's no question in my mind
that he was a CIA informant."
"I have to be skeptical right from
the beginning because of the person
who wrote the article," Mr. Green
said. "He's a well-known conspiracy
theorist."
Mr. Green said Mr. Shevchenko
was "out of the country and on vaca-
tion" and could not be reached for
comment on the forthcoming article.
A corporate spokesman at Time
said there would be no immediate
response to the Epstein article. The
CIA had no comment either.
In galley proofs distributed by
The New Republic, Mr. Epstein
traced the following evolution of the
Shevchenko autobiography:
Simon and Shuster, the book pub-
lishers, signed a $600,000 contract
with Mr. Shevchenko in 1978 but
decided when the manuscript was
received in 1979 that it did not con-
tain enough new information to war-
rant publication. It had no firsthand
conversations with Soviet leaders
and no mention of espionage activi-
ties. Simon and Shuster successfully
sued Mr. Shevchenko for the return
of a $146,875 advance.
Readers Digest Press also con-
cluded the manuscript lacked sub-
stance and personal vignettes, Mr.
Epstein says. An investigative
reporter interviewed Mr. Shev-
chenko for 20 hours before the book
was rejected and concluded, accord-
ing to Mr. Epstein, that "Shevchen-
ko's reminiscences were far too
vague for a successful book."
Three years later, says Mr.
Epstein, a completely different
manuscript arrived at Knopf ? and
this one "had all the elements of a
spy thriller. ... cinematic car chases,
CIA case officers in safe houses,
meetings with the KGB rezident,
recall telegrams and escapes from
danger."
In addition, Mr. Epstein writes,
the book had "dramatic verbatim
conversations with Soviet leaders,"
including Nikita Khrushchev, which
supposedly occurred when Shev-
chenko was in his 20s and at the bot-
tom rung of the power ladder at the
Foreign Ministry
Mr. Epstein says his research
IA-RDP90-00965R000301860017-9
Glogau Studio
Arkady N. Shevchenko
revealed numerous discrepancies in
the book, among them:
? It opens with a 1975 car chase
during which Mr. Shevchenko says
he received a traffic ticket. But
police records show he did not
receive a ticket that year and did not
even have a driver's license until late
1977.
? Mr. Shevchenko tells of spying
in 1976 on the chief of the KGB in
New York, Boris Aleksandrovich
Solomatin, and gives a verbatim
account of a dinner party at the
Solomatin apartment. But Mr.
Epstein says Mr. Solomatin returned
to the Soviet Union in July 1975.
? The book closes with Mr. Shev-
chenko leaving his sleeping wife,
running down 20 flights of stairs
because the service elevator didn't
run after midnight and emerging
through a service door. But Mr.
Epstein says the apartment building
has five 24-hour-a-day elevators and
the service door is sealed every
night at 7:30 p.m. He also says door-
men on duty that night told him Mr.
Shevchenko's wife was not at home
and he had moved in a "dishy bru-
nette."
Asked about the discrepancies,
Mr. Green replied. "I just don't know.
These errors to me are very minor,
but I can't explain them without talk-
ing to the author"
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000301860017-9