OUR HISTORY OF BAD TRADES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000705910013-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 8, 2011
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: September 7, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000705910013-9
AT T.aaatawivo rvoI
ON PU ~, 7 7 September 1986
&niel Schorr
Our History of Bad Trades
Whatever made the KGB thialt it could
take hostage an American correspondent,
to be bartered for an accused spy, flouting
all decency and the process of justice?
We did. That is, the United States goo.
ernment did by its history of willingness to
make such deals.
When Nichols DaniloEf. Moscow corre.
spondent for U.S, News & World Report,
was arrested immediately following the jail-
ing in New York of Gennadi F. Zakharov,
Soviet employee of the United Nations, the
Russians were merely playing out a familiar
scenario mare than 20 years old.
In 1963 Igor A. Ivanov, a chauffeur for
the Soviet Amtorg trading company in New
York, was arrested on espionage charges,
Within a few days Prof. Frederic C. Bar.
ghoorn, Yale University scholar on a visit to
Moscow, was arrested in a staged encoun.
ter with a Soviet citizen, who thrust papers
into his hand.
Sevetal days later Barghoorn was re.
leased in response to what was termed a
Personal appeal from President Kennedy.
The other shoe dropped slowly. Ivanov was
convicted, sentenced to 20 years in prison,
released to the Soviet Embassy pending his
appeal and eventually permitted to return
to Moscow.
The script was rerun in 1978 when two
Soviet employees of the United Nations,
Valdik Enger and Rudolf Chernayev, were
arrested as spies. The KGB then seized a
visiting American businessman, F. Jay
Crawford of the International Harvester
Corp., on smuggling charges.
The three were released in custody of
h
t
eir respective ambassadors. Crawford
was found guilty and permitted to leave the
Soviet Union. The two Soviet agents were
convicted, sentenced to 50 years in pris-
on-then traded for five imprisoned Soviet
dissidents.
The spy-for-dissident equation, adding a
new dimension to prisoner barter, reached
its full flower with the arrangement for the
release of Anatoly Shchasaaticy. He ws
freed last February as part of a "package
deal" that included three West Germans
imprisoned in East Germany and five Soviet
bloc agents held in the West.
The key agent in the trade was Karl F.
Koecher, Czech-born former employee of
the Central Intelligence Agency-the first
East European spy known to have penetrat-
ed the CIA. Sent by the Czechoslovak
intelligence service to become an American
citizen, study at Columbia University and
from there work his way into the CIA, he
was finally caught in November 1984, with
his wife on the point of leaving for Vienna.
Koecher instructed his American lawyer,
Robert Fierer, of Atlanta, to fly to Prague,
where he would find his government ready
to intervene with Moscow to exchange him
for Shcharansky. To his own amazement
Fierer discovered the Czechoslovak gov.
WM,tiYFoeTKV*FIMNdreOrAlM W
ernment, and then the State Department, that the next time a Soviet agent without
Prepared to negotiate such a deal.
The outcome was a closed-door session diplomatic immunity was arrested and jailed
last Feb. 3 before judge Shirley Wohl Kram would without be bail, almost an immediately soak nlomat
in Federal District Court in Manhattan, od medately taken as a
Koecher and Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce negotiating chip for the next deal?
-
A. Green signed a formal agreement in that it What was jdifferentournalist this time was u only
which the Czech agent pleaded guilty to was a rather than a bsi
Y nessman or professor. Other American cor-
pionage, renounced his American citizen- respondents have been harassed by the
ship and accepted a term of life imprison- KGB and expelled. (As a CBS News corre-
meat-to be immediately commuted "at spondent in 1957, 1 was arrested and held
such time as the United States government for an hour and a half on a phony charge,
determines that the conditions of the [pris- and eventually excluded from the Soviet
over] exchange have been met." Union.) But Daniloff was the first American
So the Koecbers and Sbcharansky went, correspondent
in opposite directions, across Berlin's Glien- first whose arrest go as o il. He was also the
cyni ally announced
icke Bridge, well known since the exchange the KGB se was
cal imitation
uem nt
of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers and Sovi- the FBI's tpress conference announcement
et master spy Rudolf Abel, as "the Bridge ge of Zakharov s arrest,
of Spies." At the Geneva summit last No- Prisoner exchanges are motivated by
vember, President Reagan had appealed to some combination.of compassion and expe.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to release diency the Jewish dissident, imprisoned on Soviet.
oviet' But when a democracy plays the
trumped-up charges of spying for the CK S the ow innocent, game of exchanging the guilty
ut re.
as a humanitarian it buys trouble for the future.
as a a humanitarian gesture. When freedom As with terrorists, you may only be encour-
cs, Soviet spokesman told the German aging them to do it again.
exchange him as an agent-
against
ir? - --
anyone, then have keen . rnri..4 Ar.#;-../ ni
?
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000705910013-9 tvw.