LETTER TO WILLIAM CASEY (SANITIZED)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87M00539R002804710014-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 10, 2009
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: September 9, 1985
• Content Type: LETTER

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I EXECUTIVE SECRETARIAT
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To 15: Please prepare appropriate response.
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STAT
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Doubleday
Director
Central Intelligence Agency
MacLean, VA
Executive Registry
f".5-
3546
September 9, 1985
Would someone please send me a copy of the CIA
testimony referred to here in this reply by Edward
Jay Epstein to criticism of his criticism of the
Shevchenko book, in which the agency "itself revealed
to the Church Committee" that The Penkovski (sic) Papers,
published by Doubleday in 1965, was concocted by the CIA's
covert action division"?
STAT
Doubleday & Company, Inc. 245 Park Avenue, NewYork 10167 Telephone [phone] P.- OW
0.2 A
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'BREAKKING WITH
Moscow':
AN EXCHANGE
Editor's note: In his best-selling memoir,
Breaking with Moscow, the former Soviet
diplomat Arkady Shevchenko describes a
colorful career spying for the United
States before his defection from a high
United Nations post in April
1978. In our issue of July
15&22, we published an arti-
cle by Edward Jay Epstein
asserting that many of the
details in Shevchenko's story
are demonstrably false, and
casting doubt on Shevchen-
ko's claim to have been a
valuable spy for the United
States.
In addition to the follow-
ing letters from Shevchenko's
editor and from the producer
of a "60 Minutes" presenta-
tion of his story, an anony-
mous representative of the
Central Intelligence Agency
telephoned TNR and several
other news organizations
with the following statement:
"Shevchenko provided in-
valuable information to the
U.S. government. The CIA
had nothing to do with
writing the book." Finally,
on July 31-a month after
the article was released-
Shevchenko himself held a
press conference at the Na-
tional Press Club in Wash-
ington, denying Epstein's
charges.
To the editors:
chenko accomplished before the end of
1975." It is illogical to assume that Shev-
chenko would not discuss what the So-
viets had done in the months before his
defection. Epstein further claims:
"There is no real evidence that whatever
valuable information supplied came be-
fore rather than after his defection." But
several people in positions of knowl-
edge, including Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan and Admiral Stansfield
Turner, have refuted that allegation,
chenko now also agrees that he could
not have considered approaching John
Scali about his defection in late 1975, be-
cause by then Scali had been replaced as
U.N. ambassador by Moynihan, but
that he thought about revealing himself
to Scali early in 1975, and not as he had
written.
What Epstein omits is equally instruc-
tive as to his line of attack. He disre-
gards Moynihan's published and broad-
cast support of Shevchenko. When
asked on "60 Minutes" of
his evaluation of Shev-
chenko, Moynihan said:
"For the first time we got
an understanding of how
Soviet foreign policy is
made and how it is oper-
ating." Your readers are
free to choose the more
reliable authority... .
It is only fair to ask
what Epstein is trying to
prove. That the CIA
wrote Breaking with Mos-
cow? (The agency officers
are portrayed as manipu-
lative and sometimes in-
sensitive.) That the book
is a piece of CIA disinfor-
mation? (The hawks in
this administration might
not appreciate Shevchen-
ko's conclusion that we
must continue "to seek
reasonable and practical
accommodation" with the
Soviets.) That Shev-
chenko was not a CIA in-
formant for more than
two years? (Various
American officials whom
Epstein apparently didn't
interview have attested to
Shevchenko's bona fi-
des.) Or is Epstein trying
Edward Jay Epstein's "review" of Ar-
kady Shevchenko's Breaking with Mos-
cow is so riddled with errors, misrepre-
sentations, and leaps of judgment that
one scarcely knows where to begin a re-
joinder. But having talked to the author,
as well as to knowledgeable authorities,
we are convinced that Shevchenko's
memoir is reliable....
The New York Times on July 1, 1985, ef-
fectively demolished several of Ep-
stein's charges; others of his accusations
reflect attempts to strip Shevchenko of
his verisimilitude. For example, Epstein
writes: "The book details a wealth of es-
pionage coups [Epstein's word] Shev-
and the CIA has issued a statement that
Shevchenko "provided invaluable intel-
ligence to the United States
government."
Of Epstein's many charges we have
been able to find only two with any va-
lidity, both minor confusions in chro-
nology. He is correct that the dinner
meeting between Shevchenko, Boris So-
lomatin, and Georgy Arbatov could not
have occurred in 1976, but Shevchenko
told me after reading the Epstein article
that it did take place in 1975, at a time
when Arbatov was certainly pondering
the 1976 elections, especially given the
political fallout after Watergate. Shev-
ASHBEL GREEN
Editor-in-chief, Alfred A. Knopf
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to connect Shevchenko to his favor-
ite espionage subjects, Yuri Nosenko,
Fedora, and Top Hat, all of whom
manage their way into his article,
and all of whom will presumably people
his own book on disinformation
that he is writing for Simon and
Schuster?
However much Epstein has tried to
damage Shevchenko, he has not made a
case. Breaking with Moscow stands as an
extraordinary memoir, and it will sur-
vive Edward Jay Epstein's bizarre
fulminations.
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To the editors:
In response to the article by Edward Jay
Epstein, I find it interesting that he
didn't go to any people who were in-
volved with Mr. Shevchenko at the time
he was a double agent. One of these
people was Stansfield Turner, former di-
rector of the CIA. Another was a deep-
cover CIA agent who participated in the
Shevchenko operation in New York. A
third was Senator Daniel Moynihan,
who was briefed by the agency about the
entire Shevchenko matter while he was
still a member of the intelligence com-
mittee. All verified to us the extent and
value of Shevchenko's service.
An additional note: One month after
doing the "60 Minutes" report on Shev-
chenko, we profiled President Jimmy
Carter. In an off-camera discussion the
former president verified and confirmed
to us the immeasurable value Shev-
chenko provided American intelligence.
IRA ROSEN
Producer, "60 Minutes"
Edward Jay Epstein replies:
There are few, if any, precedents for
the CIA identifying one of its own
alleged agents in a semi-anonymous
telephone tip to the media. The Shev-
chenko affair, however, is hardly set-
tled by this extraordinary phone call.
What the CIA avoided saying, even
when later pressed, was whether Shev-
chenko provided "invaluable informa-
tion" before or after his'defection. If be-
fore, he was a spy. If after, he was a
consultant.
There's no doubt Shevchenko had
contacts with American intelligence be-
fore his defection, as I stated in my re-
view. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
fixes the date of his initial feeler as De-
cember 5, 1975. That doesn't make him
an American spy. There were regular
contacts with other Soviet diplomats,
such as "Fedora" and "Top Hat," who
the FBI later decided were dangling dis-
information. This is one of the regular
occupations of Soviet diplomats at the
U.N. '
Admiral Stansfield Turner, who was
director of central intelligence at the
time of Shevchenko's defection, also
claims that he furnished "valuable intel-
ligence"-though without specifying
when. In his own recent memoir, Secrecy
and Democracy, Turner makes only a sin-
gle reference to Shevchenko, in which
he gets the first name of this alleged
CIA masterspy wrong ("Andrei" in-
stead of Arkady), misspells his sur-
name, and misidentifies his position
at the U.N. ("number two man in the
Soviet Mission," rather than under sec-
retary general). The only thing Turner
claims to have learned from Shev-
chenko, even after he had defected, was
that "even senior Soviet diplomats hesi-
tate to report frankly." While this may
have been considered "valuable intelli-
gence," it is not the secrets, coded mes-
sages, and missile negotiating positions
that Shevchenko claims to have
provided.
The CIA's denial that it wrote the
book-an allegation I never made-art-
fully evades the real issue: Did the CIA
foist the Shevchenko-supermole story
on the American public in order to im-
prove its image? To begin with, the CIA
was not an uninterested party. Unlike
most other spy books by Soviet defec-
tors that reveal KGB operations, Break-
ing with Moscow divulges what purports
to be a major CIA espionage success
against the Soviet Union. Every act of
espionage involves a double secret. The
first part is the stolen information. The
second part is the fact that the informa-
tion has been stolen. The second secret
is crucial because once an enemy finds
out that it has been the victim of espio-
nage, it can remedy the situation or
even turn it to advantage. That is why
spies photocopy or memorize docu-
ments, rather than remove them. Even
years after the fact, spies cannot reveal
operations without jeopardizing intelli-
gence services' prized sources and
methods.
If Shevchenko published the story of
his alleged spying without the ex-
press authorization of the CIA, and if
it was not fictional, he would be in
blatant breach of American laws de-
signed to protect intelligence secrets.
And the CIA would hardly endorse
such a leak. (The only other book that
reveals a major CIA espionage opera-
tion, The Penkovskiy Papers, published by
Doubleday in 1965, was concocted by
the CIA's covert action division, as the
CIA itself revealed to the Church
Committee.)
Shevchenko, who got paid $60,000 a
year as a consultant by the U.S gov-
ernment after his defection, was well
aware of these restrictions. Indeed, if
his arrangement was the same as previ-
ous defector-consultants, he had a se-
crecy obligation that specified: "Your
relationship with the Central Intelli-
gence Agency and this contract must
be kept secret and you may not discuss
any aspect of this relationship with
any person other than the authorized
government representative or such oth-
er persons as he may specifically ap-
prove." In the course of a 1981 law-
suit against his previous publisher, Si-
mon and Schuster, Shevchenko stated
under oath that he was not at liberty
to discuss any relations he had with
U.S. intelligence. His subsequent deci-
sion to publish his alleged adventures
with the CIA must therefore have been
authorized.
We also know that the CIA played
more than a passive role in promoting
the Shevchenko story. In 1979 a Soviet
defector named Stanislav Levchenko,
who was in the custody of the CIA
after being flown in from Tokyo, told
the story of Shevchenko as a supermole
to Reader's Digest editor John Barron.
Barron, in a letter to The New Republic,
protested that he did not know then or
now that Levchenko was under CIA
control. Though,I have no reason to
doubt his sincerity, the fact remains that
Levchenko did deliver CIA secrets to
Barron (including the identity and re-
cruitment of three CIA clandestine
agents) when he was under CIA parole.
This means that Levchenko could have
been arbitrarily deported, without any
redress, if he made a wrong move, or
otherwise displeased the CIA. He then
very possibly might have faced a Soviet
firing squad. In these circumstances,
Levchenko delivered the Shevchenko
story to Barron for publication and (as
Barron acknowledges) reviewed the
subsequent Reader's Digest story for ac-
curacy before it was published. It is in-
conceivable that Levchenko would gra-
tuitously violate his parole and divulge
CIA secrets to Barron, who was a total
stranger to him, unless he had done so
at the behest of the CIA. As in other
such cases, Levchenko presumably had
a "brief" from the CIA specifying exact-
ly what he could say to Barron about
Shevchenko. If so, the CIA planted the
spy story.
The CIA involvement with the Shev-
chenko story apparently continued up
until its publication. Ira Rosen, the "60
Minutes" producer, asserts that "a
deep-cover CIA agent," who purported-
ly was involved with Shevchenko while
he was at the U.N., verified Shevchen-
ko's espionage story. Since CIA deep-
cover agents do not (by definition) ordi-
narily blow their own cover and reveal
secret CIA espionage activities just to
help hype a book, this alleged agent pre-
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sumably told "60 Minutes" whatever it
was he told them at the behest of the
CIA.
That the CIA went to considerable
length to release, plant, and hype
this spy story does not, of course,
mean that it isn't true. The release of es-
pionage cases does, however, raise a
perverse -accuracy problem. Admiral
Turner, who saw an urgent need to en-
hance public and congressional support
of the CIA under his stewardship, dis-
cusses the dilemma in his book: "Clearly
it is impossible for the CIA to attempt to
raise public confidence by revealing
very much about how successful spies
are." The alternative would be pseudo-
spy stories, which brings us to Ashbel
Green's letter and Shevchenko's press
conference.
F OR A MONTH after my article
appeared, Shevchenko was not to
be found. Ashbel Green told reporters
on June 28 that Shevchenko was "out
of the country" and "unreachable."
Shevchenko's lawyer told journalists
the same thing. Actually, on June 28
Shevchenko was at his home at 4941 Til-
den Avenue Northwest in Washington,
D.C. On that day he wrote a
check for $16,850.62 to Simon and
Schuster (partial repayment of an ad-
vance they'd paid him), and sent it by
Express Mail. I have a copy of the signed
and dated Express Mail receipt. When
he suddenly surfaced at the July 31
press conference, Shevchenko conceded
that he had not been out of the country
when his spokesmen said he was.
At that press conference, Shevchenko
accused me of "terroristic journalism."
He called my allegations "ridiculous,"
asserted that "he didn't read my
book," and implied that I was work-
ing in cahoots with the Soviet Union
to undermine him. He asserted that
if his book is a fraud, "then two presi-
dents of the United States are frauds,
both Carter and Reagan, who knew
about my story." (Neither Carter nor
Reagan has verified Shevchenko's story.
Reagan, of course, was a private citizen
and resident of California at the time of
Shevchenko's alleged spying career.)
However, neither Shevchenko nor
Ashbel Green, in his only slightly more
subdued letter, has disproved any of my
specific examples of fabrication. In fact,
Shevchenko conceded several key false-
hoods. ("In some places, I was a little bit
mistaken.")
The most important admission of
falsehood (which Green cavalierly dis-
misses as a "minor confusion in chro-
nology") concerns Shevchenko's pur-
ported meeting with Boris Solomatin,
the Soviet deputy minister at the U.N.,
and Georgy Arbatov, the noted Soviet
Americanist, in 1976. This meeting,
which he describes in great detail, is im-
portant because it is the culmination of a
year of alleged spying. Shevchenko de-
scribes a session with his FBI case officer
("Grogan") and his CIA case officer
("Johnson") just before the meeting, in
which they tell him what they'd like him
to find out. He positively dates the
meeting by writing: "Soon after I de-
scribed that evening to Johnson, a new
rezident came to New York to replace Bo-
ris Solomatin ... Drozdov."
The problem, as I pointed out in my
article, is that Drozdov replaced Solo-
matin on July 22, 1975. That means that
this entire conversation with Solomatin,
set in 1976, and containing verbatim
quotes about the imminent American
election, could not have taken place
as described. Shevchenko now admits
he was in error about the date, and
claims the meeting occurred in 1975, be-
fore Solomatin's departure. Back-dating
the meeting, however, compounds
rather than solves the contradiction. For
if the meeting occurred in 1975, when
Solomatin was still in his post, then
it occurred before the earliest date any-
one claims Shevchenko made his initial
contact with American intelligence. Sen-
ator Moynihan, who undoubtedly veri-
fied the date with the Senate intel-
ligence committee, established that
Shevchenko was not a spy until six
months after Solomatin left his post.
Yet Shevchenko claims that he met
with the FBI and CIA in a CIA-supplied
"safe house" (a room at the Waldorf-
Astoria) before the meeting with Solo-
matin, and reported the meeting after-
ward to his CIA contact. The entire in-
telligence context to this alleged
meeting therefore must be a fabrication.
So must the entire part of Shevchenko's
espionage career that he describes as
having occurred before this climactic
meeting.
The New York Times article of July 1
that Ashbel Green describes as having
"effectively demolished several of Ep-
stein's charges" does nothing of the
sort. To be sure, Ray Cline, who is iden-
tified as "former deputy CIA director" is
quoted by the Times as saying that Shev-
chenko's story is "substantially truth-
ful." Actually Cline was deputy director
for intelligence in 1962, when he was re-
sponsible for nonclandestine intelli-
gence, not espionage. Since he retired
from the CIA in 1969, and had absolute-
ly no connection with the Shevchenko
case, he subsequently modified his au-
thentication, explaining to the Times
that he only intended to endorse Shev-
chenko's general view of the Soviet Un-
ion described in the book. As for Shev-
chenko's putative espionage career, "I
don't have a firm view about whether or
not he spied-that was all well after my
time."
The Times story also challenges my as-
sertion that a vivid car chase scene
Shevchenko describes in the book could
not have happened. Shevchenko claims
that he got a ticket from a Nassau Coun-
ty policeman while speeding to his first
rendezvous with the CIA in 1975. But
New York State motor vehicle records
show that Shevchenko did not get a
driver's license until October 1977, and
that there was no previous license. The
Times, acknowledging that it also found
no record of Shevchenko's having a li-
cense before October 1977, suggested
the imaginative theory that he may have
had an earlier license, the record of
which was expunged before he applied
for a new one in 1977. But New York
State law requires that driver's license
records be maintained for at least two
years after the license expires. In addi-
tion, the policy of the motor vehicle
bureau is not to remove a license from
its computer for at least two renewal
periods, or eight years. If Shevchenko
had a valid license in December 1975
(when he says he got the ticket), the ear-
liest it could have expired would be his
next birthday, October 1976, and this
record could not possibly have been ex-
punged before Shevchenko applied for
a new license in October 1977. In any
event, there is no record of any speed-
ing ticket.
In his new career as a professional ra-
conteur, Shevchenko told the American
Bar Association in 1980 that in his prior
career as a Soviet official he helped to
prepare fraudulent books and articles
for what he termed the KGB "disinfor-
mation apparatus." There is no reason
to assume he altered his standards of
truthfulness just because he defected.
He has now admitted fabricating crucial
incidents in Breaking with Moscow, and
has failed to disprove any of the other
charges of fabrication. Why believe any-
thing he writes without some independ-
ent substantiation? o
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