THE PRESS CORPS TASS MASTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605430003-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 1, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: November 5, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605430003-4
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAG 6-1 -
The
Press Corps.
Tw . M~sto
Alexander Shalnev's New Style
On the White House Beat
By David Remnick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Alexander Shalnev, the White House correspondent
for the Soviet news agency Tass, stands to the side of
the briefing room and watches a form of discourse he is
unlikely to encounter in the Kremlin. UPI's Helen
Thomas is crossing swords with presidential press sec-
retary Larry Speakes. Thomas parries by challenging
Speakes' "sinking" credibility, and Speakes strikes back
with "What kind of garbage are you talking about,
Helen?"
A wicked Bill Buckley grin cuts across Shalnev's face.
He is a Russian version of a 38-year-old prep. He wears
loafers, pleated flannel slacks, a gold-buttoned blazer
and a red wool tie. Not a single polyester fiber touches
his body. Shalnev seems more like a visiting free-lancer,
from Private Eye or Punch than a servant of the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics.
-"This is bloody hilarious," he says as Thomas and
Speakes continue their weird fandango.
When Speakes announces that four Soviet journalists
will interview the president in the Oval Office later that
day, it comes as no surprise to Shalnev. That interview,
which appeared in yesterday's editions of the Soviet
,newspaper Izvestia, was the first such session since
Nikita Khrushchev's son-in-law, Alexei Adzhubei, spoke
at length with John F. Kennedy in 1961. Shalnev was
the intermediary between the
Kremlin and the White House.
Veterans in the White House
press room remember Shalnev's pre-
decessor-a hulking figure in som-
ber suits and heavy homburgs. But
no one, including Shalnev, remem-
beris his name.
"He was a big, beefy stereotype of
the Russian correspondent,". says.
WL9Jll1AulULN ruol
5 November 1985
Thomas. "He was almost square. He
was Khrushchev with hair." For once
Speakes agrees with Thomas: "He
looked like one of the guys you used
to see standing on top of Lenin's
tomb for parades before. Gorbachev
came along."
"I think his name was Boris," says
ABC's Sam Donaldson. "At least he
looked like a Boris. He was built like
a refrigerator. I'd try to get a rise
out of the guy and tell him 'Get out
of Afghanistan,' but he'd never re-
spond."
Shalnev has taken a different sty-
listic tack. Whether through training
or personality, he acts more like a
western correspondent -than any of
his predecessors.
Instead of gunny-sack-cut heavy
wonted wools, Shalnev looks like
he's' visited Brooks Brothers or J.
Press. He talks in the same -ironic
:key as any other veteran journalist.
His English is filled with an admix-
ture of British and American idioms.
When a Sam Donaldson takes a ver-
bal slash at him, Shalnev smiles and
slashes back.
"They think I'm a comedian?"
Shalnev says. "Oh, c'mon. It's not
true."
Although he was transferred from
the New York bureau of Tass to the
White House assignment more than
a. year before Mikhail Gorbachev
.assumed leadership, Shalnev can, in
certain superficial ways, be consid-
ered- a part of the new Russian inter-
est in image and press relations.
.. Shalnev is a "100 percent native
Muscovite," the son of a foreign min-
istry official. After graduating in
1969 from Moscow University's
"faculty of Oriental languages, where
he learned Hindi and Urdu, he spent
four years for Tass in New Dehli,
two years at the home office in Mos-
cow, four years in the London bureau
and another year in Moscow before
joining Tass' eight-person bureau in
-'Washington. He is the author of a
;book on Britain, "Between the Lines
'of.,the Unwritten Constitution," and
-one. on the United States, "Nine
Events in One Year."
Western correspondents seem
more comfortable with Shalnev than
they did with "Boris."
"He makes an effort to be one of
the boys," says Donaldson. "I called
him `the Colonel' like the guy before
.hips;, but Alexander said, 'No, no, I'm
-1u5t.: the Major.' And when I asked
him when we'd throw him a defec-
tion party, he actually smiled."
rsven a es as a en is po es
at Shalnev. After rendering one of
Me. president's particularly harsh
anti-Soviet stances, Speakes looked
-up, smiled at Shalnev and said, "Take
:that!"
"I don't know much about this
semimythical `Boris,' " says Shalnev.
"My style is just my style. I've al-
ways thought that this approach
- i'ould be best, instead of just brows-
. ing'hrough all the papers and watch-
ing-the television reports. You, have
to et along with people."
,Shalnev says he does not exactly
find all the kidding at his expense
Various, but "I accept it as the usual
thing. I'm accustomed to it, though
sometimes I Wonder." -
Tass may seem roughly analogous
to, say, the Associated Press, but the
resemblances are slight. And to say
that Shalnev is a "western-style" re-
porter because he makes an occa-
sional joke would be like mistaking
Yuri Andropov for a "western-type
leader" because he may have listened
to Benny Goodman.
Like every other Soviet press or-
ganization, Tass is an arm of the
state, and Shalnev is first and fore-
most a government employe.
When he asks questions at. White
House briefings they are almost al-
Ways about U.S.-Soviet affairs.
Sometimes he does more than ask
questions. At yesterday's press con-
ference announcing the return from
the West to the Soviet Union of Vi-
taly Yurchenko, a top KGB official,
Shalnev's question included a dia-
tribe against the "monstrous" way
Yurchenko had been treated by the
country that "talks loudest about up-
holding human rights."
Once Shalnev and Speakes got
into a brief argument over an ex-
change between the late Soviet lead-
er Konstantin Chernenko and the
president. Shalnev demanded of
Speakes a "yes-or-no answer" as to
whether the president rejected cer-
tain statements made by Chernenko
in an interview.
With his face reddening, Speakes
.said, "I would leave that to the judg-
ment of you and the Soviets, which
are one and the sane in your case."
Though Shalnev is only partly a
reporter in the western sense, lie
says, nevertheless, that "Mv role, as
I see it, is to get as much information
as I can from the White House... I
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605430003-4
 can't afford to miss a word on Soviet-
American relations and arms control
especially.
"It's hard to say how we're similar
or different from American corre-
spondents, but we're covering the
same news and we try not to be
scooped by the other. wire services."
Andrew Nagorski, a former News-
week correspondent in,Moscow who
was thrown out of the Soviet Union'
for engaging in "impermissible meth- -
ods of journalistic activities," says, "It
would be ridiculous to think that the
guy who was dour and built like a
refrigerator was really very different
from the newer, more sophisticated
version. They all work for the same
employer-the Soviet govern-
ment-and they all work on a num-
ber of levels."
Beat reporters for Tass cover the
State, Dep?and' rtment, Capitol Hill, the
Pentagon the White House.
There is also a bureau in'New York.
Tass headquarters is located in a-,
modern building on Moscow's Bou-
levard Ring Road. Supplying Pravda'
and Izvestia and other Soviet- papers
with news from abroad is but a small
part of the agency's function.
Using a FAX machine, telex or
computer terminal, Tass foreign re-
porters file huge amounts of raw,
"unprocessed-" data: texts. of
speeches, press conferences;, reports
and western news copy.
Their problem is' not so'much get-
ting information as dealing with the
pile of material that mounts up every
day. "I have the same access to press
conferences and the releases as the
American correspondents," says
Shalnev. "I don't expect to be briefed
in secret in some room in the West
Wing, but I'm not complaining."
In Moscow this mass of informa-
tion is turned into a daily booklet
called White Tass. The public does
not see White Tass, but it is distrib-
uted widely among bureaucrats as
well .as high government officials.
White Tass, however, contains little
or no anti-Soviet information. Red
Tass (printed on red paper) contains
a greater. number of "unwelcome
facts" that may reflect critically upon
the Soviets. ,This is available only to-
a higher realm of editors, bureau-
crats and party members. .
Finally, only a select few are per-
mitted to see Green Tass, 'which
contains relatively unadulterated
reports from around the world, in-
cluding anti-Soviet analyses printed
in the western press.
Sometimes correspondents write
their own stories, but often the dis-
patches from Tass that appear in the
pages of Pravda or Izvestia are culled
Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605430003-4-,IS,
from the raw material filed from
abroad and written in Moscow.
Pravda and Izvestia also have their
own ? correspondents in Washington
and NeNv-York.
Western correspondents in Mos-
cow depend heavily on the Tass
wire, not only to hear about news
within the Soviet Union but also to
get a sense of the Soviet interpre-
tation of news from abroad.
Tass also acts as a strident mouth-
piece of the government against
"anti-Soviet". subjects; The agency
once described the late Henry Jack-
son as "the henchman of reactionary
"circles of the military-industrial com-
plex, the right-wing leadership of the
AFL-CIO and of Zionist organiza-
tions." Objectivity is not a top prior-
ity. Reports will often begin with
something on the order of "The
White House has issued yet another
falsification."
"You'get a lot of throat clearing in
the first paragraphs," says' Dusko
Doder, a former Moscow bureau
chief for The Washington Post.."You
usually get" the news somewhere
near the bottom. You have to learn
how to read it."
The Washi atop field` office of the
FBI as well as 'counterintelligence
arms of the CIA and the Defense
Department monitor the activities of
Soviets working in Washington, in-
cluding journalists. Says one FBI
source, "Journalists have a . certain
access and freedom of ? movement
that other Russians may not, so we
always assume there are intelligence
officers in that context."
David Satter, who was Moscow
correspondent for Britain's Financial
Times for six years and is now writ-
ing about information in Soviet so-
ciety, says, "The KGB has access to
everything and'anyone. There's no
separation" saying this one's only a
journalist? or-x diplomat." .
In 1956 Lt.?Col. Ismail "Ege who
fled to the West after 17 years in the
Soviet Army, told the Senate inter-.
nal security, subcommittee" that 80
percent of the personnel of Tass "are
Soviet spies." n tat image has
persisted. But one source said
that while a lass re orter is likely to
keep in contact wit the he is
not likely to- be carrying top-secret
information or engaging in high-level
espionage. "The Russians tend to use
their 'illegals,' or low-profile people,
for that sort of work, not journalists,"
,the source said..
A number of Soviet press repre-
sentatives have been expelled or ar-
rested for intelligence activities, but
Shalnev dismisses the spying issue as
"nonsense?-
"Do you want a scoop? All that -
stuff, it's not correct. It's a funny
question. You should be more ma-
ture. But what can I expect?"
Shalnev drives a company Chevy
every morning from his apartment in
Alexandria to his office at the Na-
tional Press Building on 14th Street
NW. He lives here with his wife Ye-
lena, but his daughter lives in Mos-
cow. "She's 17, too old for, the Rus-
sian school here, so she went back,"
says Shalnev.
"Life is terrible here; almost all
the time you are working," he says.
"It's the life style of Washington,
D.C. It may be the craziest city I've
ever been to. Sometimes you think
to yourself, 'Good grief, you've got
to do something other than work.'
But it's rare."
Shalnev's work habits are legend
among. White House officials.' Karna
Small, 'an assistant to National Se-,
curity Adviser Robert McFarlane,
says, "Invariably, whenever Bud
McFarlane gives a speech, the first
call the next morning is a request for
the transcript from Alexander."
Shalnev says he relaxes "once in a
while" with a book, an occasional
movie or shows on public television.
He gets a kick out of Neil Simon.
But the Soviet Union has not sent
Shalnev to Washington to visit the
theater.. Last week, when senior
journalists from Pravda, Tass, Izves-
tia and Novosti arrived in Washing-
ton to meet with the president, Shal-
nev was busy escorting his seniors
around town.
Shalnev relayed the president's
desire to meet with the Soviet press
to officials in Moscow this 'summer,
and then acted as intermediary ih the
ensuing negotiations. During the
Reagan interview Shalnev did not
ask questions, but rather stood off to
the side as an observer in deference
to his seniors.
The White House assignment, is
one of the top jobs in the foreign
press corps, and the predictable path
would be for ~halnev to return to the
home office. "I don't know exactly
what I'll do," he says. "If .I had to
guess, I'll probably stay in Washing-
ton for a.year or two and then go
back t9 Moscow."
BY RAY LUSTIG-THE WASHINGTON POST
Alexander Shalnev: "You have to get along with people."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605430003-4