SOVIET DEFECTOR ACCUSED OF FABRICATIONS IN BOOK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060005-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: July 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060005-5
'ARTICLti APP RE ___ . NEW YORK TIMES
ON PAGE- 1 July 1985
Soviet Defector Accused
Of Fabrications in Book
By EDWIN McDOWELL
A magazine article charging that a
former Soviet diplomat made up im-
portant parts of his best-selling book,
with the apparent complicity of the
Central Intelligence Agency, has
evoked heated denials from the
American intelligence community.
Moreover, defenders say that even if
some dates in the book are incorrect
and some passages embellished, the
overall thrust - that the author spied
for the United States while serving as
the senior Soviet official at the United
Nations, until his defection in 1978 -
is essentially correct.
The story by Edward Jay Epstein,
titled "The Spy Who Came in to Be
Sold," appears in the issue of The
New Republic on sale today. It sets
out a lengthy bill of particulars
against the book "Breaking With
Moscow" by Arkady N. Shevchenko,
the highest-ranking Soviet official
ever to defect.
Mr. Epstein's article seeks to cast
doubt on Mr. Shevchenko's claim that
he spied for the United States begin-
ning in 1975, while he was the senior
Soviet diplomat at the United Na-
tions, until his defection.
It attempts to debunk Mr. Shev-
chenko's claim that he furnished the
C.I.A. with details of Soviet strategy
on arms-control negotiations, includ-
ing the strategic arms limitaton
talks.
And it asserts that the "car chases,
meetings, conversations, reports,
dates, motives and espionage activi-
ties" in the book, which has been on
the best-seller list for 18 weeks, were
concoted to create "a spy that never
was."
C.I.A. Issues Response
Mr. Shevchenko, who did not return
a message left on his answering ma-
chine, is said by his publisher and
friends to be out of the country on
vacation and unreachable. But last
week, while galleys of the Epstein ar-
ticle were circulating in Washington
and New York, the C.I.A. took the un-
usual step of responding publicly to
Mr. Epstein's article, saying that Mr.
Shevchenko "provided invaluable in-
telligence information" to Washing-
ton and that the C.I.A. "had nothing
to do with writing his book."
Nevertheless, the Epstein charge
that the book is a fraud caused both
the book's publisher and Time maga-
zine, which ran two lengthy excerpts
from the book earlier this year, to re-
examine its accuracy. Both pro-
nounc%d themselves satisfied that it
is accurate.
But Mr. Epstein, who has written
books challenging the Warren Com-
mission conclusion that Lee Harvey
Oswald acted alone in killing Presi-
dent Kennedy, said he sticks by his
account. In the magazine article and
in telephone interviews, he said the
spy fraud was perpetrated in order to
produce a "success story" at a time
when "the C.I.A. was in disarray"
following Congressional revelations
of past abuses, and the agency was
concerned about K.G.B. espionage
successes. the
Mr. Epstein's article makes
numerous allegations, and cites a
number of seeming inconsistences in
Mr. Shevchenko's account. Mr. Shev-
chenko's inaccessability and the re-
fusal of some present and former offi-
cials to discuss the various matters
have greatly complicated the task of
independent observers in rechecking
the accuracy of many points raised in
the article. Nevertheless some of Mr.
Shevchenko's assertions that have
been questioned by Mr. Epstein can.
be supported and certain inconsisten-
cies of Mr. Epstein's account have
come to light.
Kissinger Cited In Article
For example, a major Epstein
claim is that "one former national se-
curity adviser to the President" -
whom he subsequently identified as
former Secretary of State Henry A.
Kissinger - told him "there could
have been no such spy as Shevchenko
purported to be" without his knowing
about it. But Mr. Kissinger did not re-
turn a number of telephone calls to
his New York office, seeking to verify
that claim.
However, Stansfield Turner, who
headed the C.I.A. from 1977 to 1981,
said in a brief telephone conversation
that, "Shevchenko gave good intelli-
gence." And Ray Cline, former
deputy C.I.A. director, said that the
C.I.A. denial is correct "and the
Shevchenko story substantially truth-
ful.?
Mr. Epstein, reconstructing a
timetable based on incidents reported
in the book, says Mr. Shevchenko's
spy career could not have begun be-
fore 1976. "Yet the book details a
wealth of espionage coups Shev-
chenko accomplished on behalf of the
C.I.A. before 'the end of 1975,'" Mr.
Epstein writes.
The Shevchenko book is vague on
dates - as indeed it should be, in the
opinion of current and past intelli-
gence officials. And Mr. Epstein is
correct that Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynahan, when he was later vice
chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, wrote that ea on
Dec. 5,1975, that Mr. Shevchenko had
told an American in the Secretariat
that he wished to defect.
But Senator Moynihan, who had de-
scribed the Shevchenko information
as "invaluable," said he was reluc-
tant to discuss details in the Epstein
article, except to reiterate that Mr.
Shevchenko "was working for us for a
period until that rather dramatic mo-
ment" of his defection.
Information an Arms Talks
Mr. Epstein writes that one of those
espionage coups claimed by Mr.
Shevchenko in 1975 was that of
providing information about the
strategic arms limitation talks. Yet
Mr. Epstein said in conversation that
Mr. Kissinger told him he had never
heard of Mr. Shevchenko passing
along information on those talks.
"And if that claim is wrong than the
book's a lie even if none of the other
details are wrong," he added.
But Strobe Talbott, the Time maga-
zine correspondent who recom-
mended that Time publish the Shev-
chenko excerpts, and the author of
several books on arms negotiations,
said he is convinced that the Shev-
chenko story stands up. "A former in-
telligence community official with dl--;
rect knowledge told me one reason he
remembered the Shevchenko epi-
sode, although he did not know Shev-
chenko by name, was because this
Soviet source at the U.N. was provid-
ing information that was useful on
arms control," he said.
Mr. Epstein's article describes Mr.
Shevchenko's three-page account of a
1976 dinner party at the two-room
apartment of Boris Solomatin, the
head of the K.G.B. in New York, at
which they and Georgi A. Arbatov,
the Soviet authority on the United
States, discussed President Ford's
chances of winning re-election - dis-
cussions that he said he relayed to the
American case officers.
But "there could not have been
such a meeting," Mr. Epstein writes,
because Mr. Solomatin returned to
the Soviet Union in July 1975, six
months before Mr. Shevchenko began
his alleged spying for the United
States and more than a year before
Mr. Arbatov would have come to the
United States to appraise the presi-
dential elections.
Discrepencies Not Explained
William Geimer, a former State
Department official and close friend
of Mr. Shevchenko, concedes that he
has no ready explanation for the ap-
parent discrepency. He said he has
not been in contact with Mr. Shev-
chenko since he left the country early
last week. "But my suspicion is that
Solomatin came back into the country
and Epstein missed it," he said.
Even if that were true, Mr. Epstein
said, the apartment that is described
in such detail as having been Mr.
Solomatin's would then have be-
longed to his replacement.
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060005-5
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060005-5
zme article says, on two sides the
reference section is exposed by plate-
glass windows to onlookers and on a
third side Is in the-direct line of sight
of the head librarian, who at the time
of the alleged meetings was a Soviet
official presumed to be in the K.G.B.
In fact, there are two reference
rooms in the United Nations library,
one on the first floor and another on
the second, but neither has plate glass
windows on both sides. An employe
who has worked in the library for 16
years and has read Mr. Shevchenko's
book said it was conceivable that an
information drop could have taken
place unnoticed on the second floor,
where it is usually quite quiet and
where volumes of United Nations
documents and records are arranged
according to number.
But more important, a source who
would not speak for attribution said
that he picked up.material from Mr.
Shevchenko in the library. He added
that it happened the way it is de-
scribed in the book and that any mis-
takes are of a secondary nature.
Mr. Epstein makes much of the fact tion and guidance."
that Mr. Shevchenko describes a But the decision to `juice up" the
series of clandestine meetings with book was the author's according to
Americans in the "otherwise empty" Mr. Geimer, who denied there was
reference section of the United Na- any C.I.A. involvement with this
tions library, where he exchanged book.
messages - even though, the maga- "Arkady had always wanted to
write a memoir but never intended to
disclose his relationship with the
C.I.A.," Mr. Geimer said. "That was
the thrust of the five chapters he sub-
mitted to Simon and Schuster."
Later, when told that the espionage
activities were widely known in
Washington, Mr. Shevchenko decided
he could no longer ignore the sub.
ject." Ashbel Green, the book's edi-
tor, also said there was no C.I.A. in-
volvement.
As for the verbatim conversations,
Mr. Geimer said the gist of the Khru-
shchev conversations were in a chap-
ter in the earlier version. "But Ar-
kady tried to make it more vivid for
the new book by reconstructing them
in quotation marks," he said.
After Mr. Shevchenko signed a
$150,000 book contract in 1980 with Al-
fred A. Knopf and Ballantine Books,
divisions of Random House, Alfred A.
Friendly Jr. was paid $50,000 to write
the first draft. But Mr. Green wanted
substantial revisions. Mr. Geimer
said Mr. Shevchenko's American
wife, Elaine - the Soviets claim that
his Russian wife Lina killed herself
defection, he claims she was mur-
dered by the K.G.B. - did much of
the work on the revisions, but that
Mr. Green put the language into
shape for publication.
of the author's espionage activities Opening Scene Called invention
and contained no revelatory first- Mr. Epstein describes as an inven-
hand conversations with Soviet lead- tion the book's opening scene, which
ers - in contrast to the dramatic ver- describes Mr. Shevchenko, on the
batim conversations with Nikita S. way to his first meeting with a C.I.A.
Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders contact in 1975, roaring away at high
in the current best seller. speed from what he mistakenly
"My basic feeling is that somebody thought to be a K.G.B. surveillance
juiced up the manuscript of his new car - then being pulled over by a
book quite a lot to make it more com- Nassau county policeman and given
mercial," said Michael Korda, editor a ticket for speeding.
in chief of Simon and Schuster, who Mr. Epstein describes that as a
rejected Mr. Shevchenko's original --cinematic detail" that "never hap-
manuscript. "My impression was pened" because police records show
that a lot of work was done on the that Mr. Shevcbenko did not receive a
book by the C.I.A., because he was ticket in 1975, or any other year, on ei-
completely living under their protec- ther a New York or an international
driver's license. And he did not even
Mr. Epstein points out that an
earlier version of the book, which
Simon and Schuster rejected, and
which was also turned down by Read-
er's Digest Press, made no mention
First-Hand Conversations after returning to Moscow after his
have a driving license until Oct. 20,
1977.
Records of the New York State De-
partment of Motor Vehicles confirm
that a license was indeed last issued
to Mr. Shevchenko on the date cited
by Mr. Epstein. But Lars Allanson,
an agency spokesman, said that was
not necessarily Mr. Shevchenko's
first license. Drivers are normally
given one- to two-years grace period
to renew expired licenses, after which
all record of the license is expunged
from the department's computer.
Mr. Sbevchenko writes that he did
not "invoke diplomatic immunity" in
hopes of avoiding his traffic ticket,
but Mr. Green said Mr. Shevchenko
recently explained that he later took
the ticket to the security office of the
United Nations to arrange to have it
dropped.
Irene Payne, a press spokesman
for the United States Mission, said
that until this year the United Nations
security chief would arrange for traf-
fic violations to be dropped by clear-
ing them with the United States mis-
sion if the diplomat or United Nations
employee was entitled to diplomatic
immunity. Mr. Shevchenko had such
diplomatic immunity, she said.
Mr. Epstein also said Mr. Shev-
chenko's account of his defection -
which included a midnight flight from
the 26th floor of his East Side apart-
ment building, down the stairs and
out the service door - was fictitious
because "this door is sealed shut
every night at 7:30 P.M."
The door has a bar on a hinge that is
padlocked after 7 P.M., according to
Robert Hammer, managing agent of
the building, The Phoenix. However,
until 2 A.M., the garage in the sub-
basement is open and its entrance
leads directly onto 64th street, along-
side the service entrance.
44.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060005-5