WIFE OF SOVIET DEFECTOR SAYS C.I.A. MAY HAVE CAUSED HIS DEATH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R000600230042-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 24, 2004
• Sequence Number: 42
• Publication Date: May 25, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

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NEW YORK TIMES PAGED-
W if a of Sovi
DATE j
a .12P, IVY w r uRii i 1 JJu11#'i)AY, MAY 25, 1978
ector Says the. C.I.A. May Have -Caused His Deat
By NICHOLAS M. HO OCK V
Special to The New Ya m~
WASHINGTON, May The wife of
a Soviet defector has asked President
Carter and the Senate n lli ce Com-
mittee to investigate disclosures that
hus-
band's life may have been needlessly sac-
rificed by the Central Intelligence Agency
in a counterintelligence operaton.
In. letters prepared by her lawyer and
sent to Senator Birch Bayh, the Indiana
Democrat who heads the intelligence
cdrnmittee, and President Carter, Eva
Shadrin, the defector's wife, said that in
the two and a half years since her hus-
band disappeared in Vienna she had re-
ceived information that contradicted offi-
cial versions of the case given her by
the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investi-
gaffon and the White House.
Mrs. Shadrin says that she has recently
received information that indicates the
C.I.A. may have used her husband to help
solidify the position of a Soviet agent
in the Soviet intelligence service despite
the f
t it
'
ac
strongly suspected the Russian
was an agent provocateur.
If this is true, she said in an interview,
this would have been a needless and cyni-
cal use of her husband's life. Mrs. Sha-
drin, who has been trying to find out
what happened to her husband since his
disappearance, told officials of both the
C.I.A. and F.B.I. about the information
through her lawyer in April. She was
advised that the two agencies had told
her all they could under national security
regulatios and that they did not know
what had happened to Mr. Shadrin.
In her letter to Mr Carter eha re1Amth
United Press international
Eva Shadrin
had been brought back from foreign as-
signment and was living in Virginia under
the name Alexander Orlov.
Igor told his C.I.A. contacts that to
prove his value to his superiors and to
obtain a permanent assignment at the
Soviet Embassy here, he needed to recruit
Mr. Shadrin as a double agent.
Mrs. Shadrin and her lawyer said they
believed that this was the real reason
that in June 1966 Adm. Rufus W. Taylor,
then Deputy Director of Central Intelli-
gence, urged Mr, Shadrin to take on the
her appeal for an audience and entreated risky assignment. They charged that the
him to help her find her husband or the next nine years, during which Mr. Sha-
truth about his fate. drin kept in contact with Soviet agents
The request for an investigation has
brought renewed attention here to the,
murky world of defectors and double
agents.
Nicholas G. Shadrin Is the American
name of Nikolai F. Artarnanov,, command-
er,pf a Soviet Navy destroyer who defect-
ed Eo the United States in 1959. Mr. Sha-
drin disappeared in Vienna on Dec. 20,
1975, ostensibly while on the way to
meet with Soviet intelligence agents.
Contradictions Are Noted
Mrs. Shadrin, who accompanied her
husband on the Vienna trip, said she was
told later by the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and
the White House that at the time of his
disappearance her husband was serving
as a "double agent" for the F.B.I. and
the C.I.A.
She said that the agencies had told
her that he had become a double agent
in 1966 after he reported that members
of the K.G.B., the Soviet intelligence serv-
ice, had tried to recruit him while he
was living here and working as a consult-
ant for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
But Mrs. Shadrin and her lawyer, Rich-
ard D. Copaken, said that new informa-
tion, in press reports and from sources
they had interviewed, sharply contradict-
ed this version.
Mrs. Shadrin said that she believed that
her husband might have been sacrificed
to aid the C.I.A. in its dealings with a
Soviet official named Igor, who first ap-
proached the agency by calling the home
of its director in May 1966 and offering
his services to penetrate the K.G.B. He
held out the promise that he could be
the C.I.A.'s man in the higher echelons
of the Soviet intelligence service.
Part of the story of Igor was published
two weeks ago in Time magazine and
independently confirmed by The New
York Times.
According to former intelligence offi-
cers, one of the tidbits Igor offered to
get the relationship under way was the
charge that a longtime Soviet operat@
for the C.I.A. code-named Sasha was in
fact a K.G.B. plant. By this time Sasha
were a waste because the American au=thorities had strong suspicions that Igor
was a K.G.B. plant.
The Times has confirmed independently
that C.I.A. and F.B.I. officials were deeply
skeptical of Igor's "bona fides," the infor-
mation by which they seek to verify the
legitimacy of defectors and penetration
agents.
If the American intelligence services
doubted Igor, Mrs. Shadrin said in an
interview, they should never have al-
lowed her husband to come under Soviet
control on two trips to Vienna, one in
1972 and the other in 1975 when he
disappeared.
Several present and former intelligence
officers told The Times that the publica-
tion of Igor's name and the details of
his case endangered "hislifeand others,"
as one source put it, and was detrimental
to United States security.
Yet the Russians themselves seem
aware of many of the contradictions in
the Shadrin story. On Aug. 17, 1977, in
response to the first press report here
about Mr. Shadrin's plight,awell-known
Soviet journalist, Genrikh Borovik, pub-
lished the Soviet side of the story in an
article in Literaturnaya Gazeta, a weekly
newspaper.
The article was unusual ha that it is
rare for Soviet publications to discuss
their intelligence operations or refer to
K.G.B. files. Mr. Borovik uses as the
pseudonym for the K.G.B. agent in the
article the name Igor Aleksandrovich
Orlov.
This seems to couple the Igor of the
telephone call with the named used by
the agent called Sasha since Sasha is
a short form for Aleksandr.
C.I.A. Complicity Suggested
The article suggests that instead of
Soviet agents capturing Mr. Shadrin, the
C.I.A. may have had complicity in! his
disappearance to avoid the embarrass-
19oreF410l.e 120041(>ik7/O8oh
and publicly denouncing C.I.A. methods.
Mrs. Shadrin' said that thelgor matter
was not the cn'y contradiction she had
found between her own investigations
and the official information given her.
She said that when she accompanied Mr.
Shadrin in his flight from Poland in 1959,
she believed. that his defection was an
impromptu act to permit them to marry
and live in the West.
She said she had novi received infor-
mation that her husband wesinfactre-
ccruited for the C.I.A. Ly Indonesian Navy
officers whn were being trained by Mr.
Shadrin and others at the Polish port
of Gdynia.
In ner letter to the Senatecommittee,
she saidthis factor placed a whole new
complexion on her husband's decision in
1866 to work as a douh e agent and sug-
gested that he had l ttle.choice but to
take on the assignment.
There is no firm indication of Mr. Sha-
drin's fate since his d'sappearance. The
C.I.A. has said it believes that he was
killed or kidnapped bythe K.G.B. The
3orovil: article in effect cha_-ges that t:ie
C.I.A. kil ln- d him.
The.cn.y indication that he may 'r.
alive and in Soviet hands came last yea
then Wofgang Vogel, the EastGermr.
.awyer who has negotiated the exchange
of prisoners between East and West, ert
red preliminary discussions about an e.t-
han e involving Mr. Shadrin. According
o Mrs. Shadrin's lawyer, Mr. Vogel d:d
r of affirmatively state that Mr. Shadrin
was alive or in Soviet hands.
The Senate Committee on Intelligence
clay be the only source from which Mrs.
hadrin can receive accurate informaticn
bout how the case was handled. Spoke,-
i ien for the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. have
refused to make any publiccomment on
tie grcund that the case involves tco
riany sens'tve national security matters.
The ccm,nttee, however, has the power
ti command reports and evidence from
tie intelligence services for aud'y in si-
c -et by its members.