FORMER CIA CHIEF ARRIVES IN MOSCOW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100150011-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 15, 2012
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: May 15, 1990
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/15: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100150011-4
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Former CIA chief arrives in Moscow
By GERALD NADLER
nicely received.''
Colby said he often wanted to visit the Sovet Union.
MOSCOW (UPI) Former CIA director William Colby stepped off the
overnight train 'il esda from Lenin ad and promptly gave Mikhail
Gorbachev high marks or handiing East-West negotiations and the Balt
crisis.
I have great respect for his political skills,'' Colby said. "I
don't think he is a great ideologue with a specific vision for the
Soviet Union, but he is masterful at his way of working through
problems. I think that is what he is doing and I wish him all the
success in the world.''
Colby, 70, who will participate in a two-day panel by New York
University's Center for War, Peace and the News Media, said Gorbachev's
dilemma will be in handling the unemployment and inflation his economic
reforms will spawn.
"How much turbulence can you handle that is Mr. Gorbachev's
dilemma," Colby said. "That is the most dificult problem he has and
consequently it is the most important problem.
The most positive is the way he has approached same of the major
East-West problems such as the positions he has taken in strategic arms
talks and covnentional forces reduction talks and the way he has handled
the problem in the Baltic states,'' Colby said.
That's a problem, but he seems to be handling it with a great
deal of finesse,'' Colby said of Gorbachev's attempt to moderate the
drive for independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The three
states were annexed by Moscow in 1940.
To illustrate Gorbachev's bold and canton-sense approach in weapons
talks, Colby noted the Soviets have offered to rid Europe of 10 times as
many tanks as the U.S. side 30,000 versus 3,000.
Colby, sitting in a large suite in the massive Ukraine Hotel that
was built on dictator Josef Stalin's orders, expressed amazement at
being in the capital of the archenemy he used to analyze as head of U.S.
intelligence.
- I obviously followed the Soviet Union for years,'' he said. "I
wouldn't have dreamed that I could cane here. But that is an indication
of how things have changed.
I don't feel embarrassed about corning here. I certainly don't
feel very worried about it, and on the other hand I have been very
COW NUM
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/15: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100150011-4
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/15: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100150011-4
T12971 The May 15 07:52:59 1990 Page 2
" I have thought of visiting the Soviet Union in previous, years but
(that) was turned away as not a very good idea," he said. " I obviously
have been interested in the Soviet Union, very interested for many
years.
'The fact that I have been able to visit is not only a personal
satisfaction of curiosity, but is also a mark of how far we have come,"
he said.
Like, any tourist, Colby said he wanted to visit the Kremlin and Red
Square "to get a feel for it.'' And if the opportunity arose, he would
visit the headquarters of the archrival KGB.
A spokesman at the KGB, answering a recently installed telephone
number for press queries, said Monday 'khigher-ups '' would decide
whether Colby would meet KGB director Vladimir Kryuchkov at the secret
police headquarters.
As for meeting Gorbachev, Colby said, He is a busy man and he
doesn't need to see me.'' Colby noted Secretary of State James Baker is
arriving Wednesday for vital negotiations less than three weeks before
the superpower summit in Washington.
The thought of an ex-CTA chief taking the fared " Strela, '' or
Arrow, " overnight sleeper from Leningrad to Moscow would have been
spy,fantasy before glasnost.
I like trains,'' Colby said. He also expressed his fondness for
the tea he was served in the morning in a glass with a traditional
Russian filigreed metal holder while the train sped to Moscow's
Leningrad station.
He said he found Leningrad " a spectacular city ... but a tired
one'' and blared the downtrodden look of the once magnificent
Czarist-era capital on the poor state of the Soviet economy.
Colby is not the first former CIA chief to visit Moscow. George
Bush, who headed the CIA briefly, visited officially as vice president
to attend the funeral of Leonid Brezhnev, one of Gorbachev's
predecessors, in November 1982.
Colby, who headed the CI