THE COMMUNIST WORLD TALL TALES BY GORDON LONSDALE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000600270006-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 29, 2000
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: October 22, 1965
• Content Type: NSPR

THE GUARDIAN
Manchester England
Approved Fo.r Rplcas 2909408/p22ICionril75-.3:10W9R000690270006-4
THE COMMUNIST, WORLD r- BY VICTOR ZORZA
CPYRGHT
all tales
. ?
;.
The memoirs of Gordon
Lonsdale, the Soviet spy who
was ? allowed to go back .to
; ?
Russia after serving three of !
the 25 years to which he was
sentenced at the Old Bailey, :.
.are much More than a spy's ?
story of how he managed to :
outwit for years . the intel-
ligence services of. Britain and ,
the United States. . ?
That the book is designed to t
discredit the Western intel-
ligence services by showing up
their incompetence is clear. But .
it goes farther than that. "Spy".1
? (published today by ' Neville .'
Spearman, 25s) also offers quite ,
gratuitously information about .
traitors . within ?,the ranks' of ,
Western intelligence organisa6 '
tions .who . have sold out ? to :
Russia.
Is the KGB, the Committee for ;
State Security for. which Loris.
dale works, paying off old scores .
to double-agents for whom it has :
no further need, or who have.
proved disloyal ? Or is it
simply " planting" information
on Western intelligence services :
to cause confusion and dissen- i ..
? tion within their ranks? ,
Sometimes the ? information '. ? it
about the alleged traitors'. is .
r , ?some professor of English 1.itera- ' career in the United States is,
detailed enough to make Mame- n unist literature. On yet another
ture . at the KGB's academy for i largely, and demonstrably, an
diatc identification possible, level, it tries to sow dissension ,
spies. on the assumption that, : invention. He claims to have
between Briton and German,'
Sometimes just enough is since the, British lapped up " been born as Gordon Arthur
American and Briton. German ''
revealed to cause a great deal of
?' George Bernard Shaw's criticism - Lonsdale. in Cobalt, Ontario, in '
work in .attempting to track and American, by retailing
of British society, they would .1924. In 1932 .ho. left Canada
down the people involved?if. stories of the contempt or dis- .. ,. with his , Finnish 'mother and
indeed, they 'exist. ' Unless the trust that each is supposed to 11 welanne some more of the same'
from a convinced Soviet spy. step-father to return- to. Finlane.,
information is -I obviously false have for the other?and true :; ; but,"byhappy. chance," they
examples' of .which are, indeed,. ? The KGB literary expert has I
to be found in each of these ',forgotten that GBS had other I ended up in Lvov, which was .
, .. 1 qualities as well, and this forget- .
' then in Poland and was to be
countries. ? .. ?? ? '
fulness will certainly prove the annexed by P.ussia at the begin-
But even all this does not '
plumb the depths of this book's undoing. The more people ning of the war.
i read the book in Britain?as the From Lvov he went to Warsaw
remarkable book. Pretentious
KGB would certainly want them and, after the Palish capital was
criticism of the American way of
to read it?the more will reeog-. overrun by the Germans, he
Even if it ultimately ' all life provides the background for '
, ? nisc it the transparentlyfalse.' joined a group in the Resistance
movement. When the Germans
attacked the Soviet Union, his
group was ordered deep into .
German-occupied Russia to estab-
lish a ? partisan unit. From tlis
he graduated into intelligence'
proper, was sent to Berlin to,
work as the radio operator of an
already established Soviet spy,
and after the war married a
Polish girl and hunted down '
Nazis In Berlin. ,
He then stud' 1 i ? until 1950,
and was brought back into the
intelligence service, which sent '
him by way of West Germany to
the ' United States as a radio
operator to be attached to one.
"Alec,' who, he makes it clear,
was the Soviet ace spy Colonel
Abel,. later to. be captured and
exchanged for' the ? U2 pilot.
Garry ? Powers. . ? 4 ?
Cont 1 nal
Already the Central Intelli-
gence Agency has replied by
1 releasing for publication the
?? "Perikovsky papers," sent out ef
-; Russia by one of the most effec-
tive Anglo-American spies of
.! recent years. My guess is that
? the "Penkovsky , papers" ' will
cause much more damage in
? Russia than the Lonsdale
memoirs will in the West, 'if
' only because the political stand-
,ing of imports-'.. people in. the
Soviet Union is unsafe at the
best of times. .
Mr Khrushchev's Is -not
the only example of this. Many
Soviet leaders at the second and
third level below- him have
'fallen a long way in recent years
owing to purges and political
Intrigue. ? The ." Penkovsky
.; papers" will now point the
finger of suspicion at some
others, and even if their careers
do not suffer immediately their
enemies in the Soviet leadership
will seek to use the ammunition
' thus provided in some future ,
political criiis '.r Intrigue, .
.life.
The. Lonsdale book
, includes 'outright lies, half-;
la...i,ulii..,
?
Gordon Lonsdale ' ; ,;; ;,:; ?
truths,' and distortions, but the
first half of it, dealing with his
e %early life and his espionage
as to be ludicrous?as some of
Lonsdale's "plants" undoubtedly
are?no intelligence service can
afford to ignore it.
Bad ,blood
proves false, some bad blood may
well be caused between the set.- '
vices involved, and within them,
by the very fact of an investiga-
tion being ordered. And even if '
Western intelligence organisa-
tions?which are used to having
information of this kind planted
on them, though by more con...
yentional in emerge ,
unscathed, there will inevitably
be some people who will say
there is no smoke without, fire.'
There always are.
On another level, the book con- ?
stitutes a unique attempt by the
Soviet Union to purvey to the
Western public, by .explolting its .
curiosity about spies, a large
amount of mist w'ena.;
ganda which
only those who buy openly Coni-
the
descriptions o Lens a e s
propaganda exercise that it is.
spying.' service 'the 'United Nevertheless, In its objectives,
States, while the, British section if not in execution, the book is
Of the book is full of stories the first serious attempt to found
about the corruption said to he a new typo of political spy
rampant in the. British police fiction as well as to forge a new
forces, the unfairness of British, weapon for psychological warfare
justice, the inefficiency of the between nations and for deadly.
British penal system, and the :intrigue ", between intelligence
pitiful unimportance of Britain services.
in the modern world, compared i
Even If this book fails - to
with such giants as Russia and
the United States. ? ? accomplish its objectives, as It
, assuredly will, It will probably be
no effort to have the book pub- , followed by others of the same
kind, just as the first. artillery
"tside Britain also,'"" shell that falls wide of the target
'?
it is just possible that sonic is followed by more accurate
of
the foreign readers.may be pre-J
pared to accept Lonsdale's: shots, We 'are in ,on the birth
may hnoev?iviliiterio-riSrilxnwAsh_
account of. It, in so far
the bo s
? gli,loai tended j
GOMM ZUR i
miCIAIRCIP15-001t49R00y, &Ouzo Rima6mer
Wears to have been planned by continues.? ?
The KGB will certainly spare
4?10
Approved
CPYRGHT
0 OCT 22 1965
i-or
leaA?190FlitutiNattinta,41MAN,10-Yiulfie9SIWPWAY(PtglPIP,cd ?
the passport which he claimed in In providing , cover stories for
the name of Lonsdale, and then Soviet spies ror? other thai.
he went on to Britain to literary purposes, he is clearly
establish ?the spy network that , due for a refresher course in
was to lead to his undoing in the history of Soviet border
1961, Three years latt ?lie was, lands?where many cover stories
exchanged ...for ?? the . British originate?or even for retire- '.
business Man' Greville Wynne, ment. There is other evidence --
arrested by the , Russians .. for ' of sloppiness in the composition
acting as the contact-man. for ' of the cover story which would'
Penkovsky. ? ' ? ? . be of interest to experts only,
This is what is known, in but the basic facts are, Of course,
intelld'gence parlance . as a ,,wrong from beginning to end,
"cover story," and a very poor ?Iand are known ti Western Intel-
. one at that. What made Lens- ligente to be wrong, :
dale persist in it, in defiance of ?
s?the facts clearly established by ? "i? True' story
Western intelligence investiga- ? ??4?.-- ? ?r ?,? .
tions into his true background 7. The spy was born in Moscow
?His KGB literary advisers pro- ...an January 17, 1922. His name
hably thought that it, _would .Konon ?Trofimovich Moledy.
,make a more appealing story-4- ' His father . was a well-known
what ,with a disil'lusioned
dian family returning' =!science writer and editor. After ?
Eastern Europe, the Polish the father'c death in 1929. the
resistance moveMent, the Rus- family fell on difficult times.
sian partisans behind the .! Two of the boy's aunts had ?, .
German lines, and, later, hunting 'emigrated earlier to the US, and.'..
-down Nazi evildoers in East and .in 1932 one of the aunts obtained '
West Germany, 'America and an entry visa to the US for
Britain (for this, the book gives ? Konen by passing him off as her ?
to understand, was Lonsdale's own son.
, real life's work?not' spying. In 1939 he returned to Russia, ?
Or i it simply that, as he ;
possibly because the intelligence .
s ,
! service regarded his American
'claims In the book, he hopes -
"that many FBI man-hours will 'background as promising, rose1
be wasted in search of the ...to the rank of major in the',
, Army ? and, after his first
identity I used in the United ;marriage broke up. Married .
States. I-Ie adds, for good again. - He left 'Russia in the
that they will be wasted, -
? measure, that he has little doubt ? 'autumn of 1953, travelled by way t
. :,
"because -however efficient the of the US to Canada where?and '
here the two stories meet for:
1FBI may be in . pursuing ' the first time?he applied for a ?
!gangsters and bootleggers,' they passport in the name of Gordon.:.?
are out of their depth when ' Lansdale, on the strength ,of a
trying, to deal with a sophisti-
-Canadian birth certificate Issued ?
catedintelligence network.
.oues,s, which.; . 'in that name. There had, in fact.
- ? ; been a child of that name who ,
left Canada in the early thirties
? , with his family for Russia, where
?' Sonic chapters ?later, he des.'
eribes Britain's "by no means,
first-class police organisation" as .
"no match for a well trained and
? experienced 'intelligence officer
inspired by love of principle and .
, country." Guess who. Back in ;
Moscow now, he must have for-
,gotten that, it was the British
police. that caught him.'' .
As for his own highly profes,,
. sional intelligence organisation,
.seems to have been unable
, to' compose a. fool-proof cover
[ story even for the purposes of
this book. In order to account
?:for . the disappearance .of his.;
"family" in Lvov, he recalls '
'how he learned, at the beginning -;
.the war, that the family had ,
.vanished "during the short ?
German occupation" 'of the area.,
The difficulty about this is that
the "short Germ= occupation "..
had at that time stopped just
short of Lvov, and that the pilerof the cover story cannot'
have checked his facts.' which
ought to' be available In any ;
:good tritOligence service library.'
all trace of them disappeared
This Is the true story of.Konon
Melody, alias Gordon Lonsdale,',
who will probably go. down in
history as the founder of a new
school of literature that com-
bines a spy's adventures with
psychological warfare,
gence Intrigues with political '
propaganda, and publishing with:-
money-making; .? And we, ? can
never even be sure that. he wrote':
the book himself. -1 ? '`
(Copyright reserved)''-r,' ?c?
?
Approved For Release 2000/08/03 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000600270006-4