WAS THIS 'TEDDY BEAR' REALLY A MOLE?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504730023-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: March 5, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504730023-1
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
ARTICLE APPEARED 5 March 1986
Dii Z
Was this `teddy bear' really a mole?
W ASHINGTON-OleTumanov,
the staunchly anti-Communist
s ie editor of to -run
broadcast operation, Radio Liberty,
vanished in Munich last wee
friends are waiting for him -to turn up
dead. murdered byte KGB. is ene-
mies t him to sow up at a
Moscow press conference -as a
USt_.
Tumanov, 42, is "a cuddly teddy
bear," who jumped off a Soviet Navy
vessel in the Mediterranean Sea 21
years ago and swam six miles to shore
just to escape communism. He had
worked at Radio Liberty's Munich
headquarters for the past 20 years,
rising to a post in which he checked and
cleared all scripts before they were
broadcast to the Soviet Union.
When he suddenly cleared out his
apartment, his bank account, his stamp
collection and his cameras Feb. 26, the
Bavarian police sealed up his apart-
ment. His friends said he was broke, in
debt, drinking heavily and disappointed
in love.
Some of his colleagues also raised
the suspicion that he was a mole who
had risen to the key editorial position at
one of America's most important prop-
aganda outlets to the So%"iesUnion-and
had re-defected.
Everybody knew there was a mole at
Radio Liberty-maybe more than one.
From time to time, the Soviet satirical
magazine "Krokodil" runs sketches
about the intrigues and love affairs at
the station, which is manned largely by
Soviet emigres.
"The 'Krokodil' articles were clum-
sy-but they were accurate," a station
employe said. "We knew somebody here
was giving them information."
If Tumanov was a mole, he did more
damage than just spreading gossip. In
August 1984, the station broadcast a
commentary in which the entire rise of
communism in Russia was blamed on a
Jewish assassin, Dmitry Bogrov, who
shot Count Pyotr Stolypin in 1911.
If not for this dastardly deed by a
"cosmopolitan (Stalinist jargon for
'Jew') with nothing Russian in his
character," the broadcast said, Stolypin
might have initiated reforms that would
have saved Russia from Bolshevism.
The broadcast was condemned by the
station's Broadcast Analysis Division as
"anti-Semitic and the most offensive
terested, just out of curiosity, but it has
no police powers.
Meanwhile, Radio Liberty officials
are looking back at Tumanov's career to
see what other damage he might have
done-and what he might do if he does
program aired by the Russian service in Radio Liberty.
10 years."
Tumanov was the editor who put it
on the air, station staff members say.
A Jewish employe of the station,
Vadim Belotserkovsky, complained that
the broadcast "perfectly com-
plemented" the Soviet Union's own
anti-Jewish propaganda and risked
undermining Radio Liberty's credibil-
ity. When Belotserkovsky made his
complaints public, he was fired.
Until last December, Boris Shragin,
a Russian exile now living in Queens,
produced a Radio Liberty program call-
ed "Democracy in Action." James
Critchlow, former overseer of Radio
Liberty's programming, described Shra-
gin's series as an "apolitical, hard-
hitting, straightforward" show that wor-
ried the Kremlin because it successful-
ly rebutted articles appearing in the
official Soviet press.
In December, Tumanov succeeded in
having Shragin removed as producer of
the series.
Tumanov's friends agree that he may
have defected-but insist he could not
have been a mole. "He was a very
balanced, responsible person-not the
sort of person to be a spy," said an
acquaintance who visited him every
summer. "He was very anti-Com-
munist."
Anti-Communist behavior doesn't
persuade some skeptics at the State
Department. "They had a Pole over
there at Radio Free Europe (Radio
Liberty's sister station) who wore a'Kill
a Commie for Christ' button right until
the day he re-defected and denounced
the station," one official said.
If history repeats itself, Tumanov is
going to turn up at a press con erence
in Moscow saying the s a ion is run by
the CIA (as it once was;, a former
Qfficial predicted.
Until he oes turn up, we can only
wait.
T HE FBI SAYS Tumanov is not
their concern because he's not a
U.S. citizen or, technically, a
government employe. The State Depart-
ment security office says he's not under
its jurisdiction The CIA might in-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504730023-1