ESPIONAGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000600250053-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 18, 2000
• Sequence Number: 53
• Publication Date: November 12, 1965
• Content Type: NSPR

NUV 1 2 19
200126 : CIAE-f UA-X169R000600
Honest-to-Badness
tion of missiles installed by Russia in
Cuba before the crisis of 1962 (infor-
mation that may have aided Washing-
ton in calling Khrushchev's bluff).
Penkovsky's memoir-smuggled out
of Russia on one of the secret routes
that carried Abram Tertz's and Boris
Pasternak's works westward-is gritty
and gripe-ridden in its condemnation of
Moscow's tipper-echelon morals, and
filled with "revelations" presumably in-
tended to compromise Soviet agents.
SMIRCH or Conjecture? Gordon
Lonsdale's memoir is not nearly as re-
vealing. Though the Moscow-born Lons-
dale (ne Konon Trofimovich Molody)
rants against the FBI ("hated enemy of
the CIA") and Scotland Yard ("no
match fora well-trained intelligence of-
ficer"), he slips quietly past the fact
that the Yard nabbed him in 1961 Red-
handed. Lonsdale's main aim is to com-
promise a number of double agents ap-
parently still working for both Russia
and the West. This aggressive note has
led such knowledgeable Western Soviet-
ologists as Britain's Victor Zorza to de-
cide that Lonsdalc is working for the
KGB's "Department of Disinforma-
tion"-an outfit dedicated to sowing
dissent and confusion among Western
intelligence networks, and hence worthy
of the nickname SMIRCH.
Both books are chock-a-block with
colorful but valueless details. Penkovsky
quotes verbatim a lecture on how to
spy in America: "Agent meetings can
be held-at golf courses . . . at, let us
say, the 16th hole or at sonic other
hole (there is a total of 18 holes)."
"Each motel room has its own en-
trance." "A taxi can be stopped any-
where by loudly shouting 'Taxi!' The
driver writes in his log the place a fare
entered, the place he got out, and the
time. Therefore an intelligence oflicer
must never take a taxi directly to the
meeting place." Lonsdale cites "dead
drop" sites, such as a cistern in the
"gents" on Baker Street, the "loo" in
Leicester Square's Odeon Cinema, and
it phone box near the Savoy.
But despite this amusing, primerlikc
detail on how to he an agent, neither
account MIN Much about what the spies
actually learned. The paucity of star-
tling, specific examples of the agents'
enterprise suggests that both hooks were
carefully edited-Lonsdale's by the
KGB and GRU, Penkovsky's presuma-
bly by U.S. and British intelligence-to
safeguard sources and techniques that
kmight still have value to the enemy. But
if those heavy-editing hands snatched
much of the meat from both books,
there are still some rewards. Lonsdale,
Approved For Release 2001/67Y2E't'E IAInRIDP7 491~A60f@02,@b(~ t is assured of $140,000 in his
West, Penkovsky turned his embittered 'L n%les alone.
talents !'to transmitting everything he - - ~' -
sion head in the.Ccntr;tl Intelligence
Agency, with important contacts in the
Pentagon."
According to his journal, Penkovsky
approached Western sources-both in
Moscow and abroad-many times be-
fore he convinced the West that he
was a legitimate informer. His reasons:
sheer hatred of Nikita Khrushchev,
coupled with fear, of thermonuclear
9DYRGHT
LONSDALE PENKOVSKY
Fuddled, footnoted and heavyhanded.
20 years in the upper echelons of the
British government is now available in
Europe under the title Spy, and Oleg
Vladimirovich Penkovsky, executed by
the Russians in 1963...afjer 16 months
of spying for the CIA/ and Britain's
M.I.5, whose, fuddled and , footnoted
journal '.is due this month under the
title The Pen kovsky Papers.
Hating Nikita. Penkovsky was the
optimum spy: unlike the mere informa-
tion gatherers, he had the -golden gift
of evaluation. As a colonel in the GRU
(Russia's military intelligence agency),
he not only had access to top defense
information but was also trained by no
less a lot of key figures than Top Spy
Ivan Scrov and Missile Boss Sergei
Varcntsov to spot what was most valua-
ble in the Soviet military treasure chest.
Penkovsky's equivalent in U.S. circles,
say his U.S. editors, would have been
"a vice president of the Rand Corp., a
graduate of West Point and the Military
War College, a close friend of the gen-
eral in charge of SAC, secretly a divi-
cyon ,
this is the year of thcpy. Television
abounds with glamorous and garrulous
agents: movies are bottled in Bond and
sandwiched with Ipcress. But the truth
the West. Penkovsky's contact
was Greville Wynne. a businessman and
go-between for British intelligence who
Thrni,gh W;Irmo and nthnrc~ Prn_
kovsky leaked details of the impend-
ing Berlin Wall operation (apparently
dishelieved by the West, or at least not
artr.l iinnn~ and thr nrrcrnrr ant Inro_
nage, will never be told on film-or
even through the written word. Last
week the West was buzzing with two
new spy "memoirs," both of which,
proved once again that while honest-to-
badness spies really exist, their reflec-
tions are inevitably suspect.
. The authors are Soviet Agent Gor-
don Lonsdale, whose account of his
 Fwnt ? 14. Ousts.
Pace Page' Pape
Approved For Re a Q01,/QZ/ 6 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000600250053-4
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
MONITOR
gets [ U.S. spy debate
By David K. Willis
Staff correspondent of
The Christian Science. Monitor
CPYRGHT Washin
A lively debate has caught fire her
American security.
It centers on "the Penkovsky papers" -+
_Ile story of a Soviet intelligence colonL5t
Colonel Penkovsky's own diary' is apfieaft
g in a series of 14 newspaper installments
The diary contains many details of how
onswr.re meticulously trained `Tn-tj~ying.
Colonel Penkovsky, married to a general's
aughter, moved in high Soviet society and
ble information, said here to have helped
merican planners during the Berlin crisis
1961.62 and the Cuban missile crisis of Oc-
ber, 1962.
He was detected and executed in 1963.
Some members of the government here
ring," and that "many of the observation
contained therein have been borne out b
events."
. Much of what Colonel Penkovsky, sai
of Soviet opinion at the highest levels," offi
dials said.
`On balance . . . '
change program and the American Govern
inent's measures to defeat Soviet espionag
methods.
It had been long recognized, they said
particularly technical data. But, they said
Allen W. Dulles th Soviet Union had made "only minima
n,?nlrt?AkC "
'Th;t is a naofnl hnnk- and a vahlahle One' American goals'were different: They wer
sing avidly followed. by newspaper readers. ican Government is well aware. of Soviet
revocation' question They do not believe that the'consular treaty
to open up boviet society, to oe,l in an evu
lution in the country which "might result _i
more acceptable international behavior" b
They say it will only feed the fears of the should be blocked. their aims, "on balance, the net sin sit
ink this
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r a small additional number of Soviet din- I~llrllsllellev .I and'are continuing to act to minimize Sovi
nsulates in major cities. - nor should our diplomatic relations with ~ Intelligence experts have said Mere w
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