THE MISSING KGB LINK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201520013-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 19, 2012
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: September 25, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST"T
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/1
ARTICLE Ak"ED
ON PAGE iIi I
WASHINGTON TIMES
25 September 1985
1VIISS~NG
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201520013-1
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201520013-1
'' RALPH DE TOLEDANO
J n the murky world of espionage
and counterespionage, little
facts put together add up to
major discoveries.
During the Korean War, a friend
who had served in counterintelli-
gence during World War II was able
to work out the U.S.-Republic of
Korea order of battle simply by link-
ing seemingly unimportant bits of
information carried in the newspa-
pers. Today no one seems to care.
I cite as Exhibit A the visible tur-
moil in KGB operations in Europe.
The defections of the last month and
a half should have told the U.S. media
that something of great importance
was taking place. But the defections
have been reported as if each of
those events was independent of the
others.
Let me join the pieces.
? Item: Hans Joachim Tiedge, a
senior West German counterintelli-
gence official, for no apparent rea-
son suddenly picked up his marbles
and skedaddled to East Germany.
Until then, no one
had suspected
him.
? Item: Oleg
Gordievski, a
KGB agent who
for 10 years had
been supplying
information to
NATO counterin-
telligence, as sud-
denly surfaced in
Britain, with no
explanation as to
the timing. Why?
? Item: Her-
bert Willner, an
important official
of West Ger-
many's Free Dem-
ocratic Party with
political ties at the
highest level -
entrusted with
monitoring Soviet
espionage activi-
ties - and his
wife, Herta-
Astrid, a secre-
tary in the office
of Chancellor
Helmut Kohl with
access to highly
classified military information,
broke off a vacation in Spain. They
turned up in East Berlin where Mr.
Willner stated publicly that he had
defected because he feared criminal
prosecution for breaches of security.
No one had suspected that the Wil-
Iners were Soviet spies.
? Item: The NATO intelligence
community has been noting res-
tiveness in its KGB counterpart and
has suspected that more than a few
KGB operatives were being recalled
to Moscow.
A tyro in espionage matters, add-
ing it up, would have known that
somewhere a bomb had gone off and
that the KGB was running for cover.
It takes years to "develop" an agent
and set him in place." What inspired
important KGB agents to blow their
cover by fleeing eastward? Could it
all be a coincidence? Obviously,
there had to be a very compelling
reason for the events of the past
weeks.
And there was. That reason is
named Vitaly Dzhurtchenko or Jurt-
chenko - choose your own
transliteration of the Cyrillic - the
No. 5 man in the KGB. He holds in
his head the identities of scores of
Soviet agents in Europe and of the
additional thousands of "sleepers"
- not to mention those witting and
unwitting individuals whose job it is
to spread disinformation and confu-
sion in the West.
Only Gen. Walter Krivitsky, head
of Soviet intelligence in Western
Europe during the late 1930s - the
man who stole the text of the Axis
pact from the Nazi Foreign Ministry
in Berlin - may have known as
much then as Mr. Dzhurtchenko
knows today - and Gen. Krivitsky
was "suicided" in a Washington hotel
room after he
defected to the
West. Others who
have broken with
the Kremlin since
knew only a frac-
tion of what Gen.
Krivitsky carried
to his grave.
Vitaly Dzhurt-
chenko defected
in Rome on July
24 - something
the media in this
country seems
determined not to
report. His defec-
tion has created
shock waves in
the KGB, and the
tremors reach up
to Comrade-
dictator Mikhail
Gorbachev. This
fact ties together
the defections of
Mr. Tiedge and
the Willners, the
surfacing of Mr.
Gordievski, and
the movement of
KGB agents back
to their home
base.
It is my information that Vitaly
Dzhurtchenko is now in CIA hands,
transferring his encyclopedic
knowledge of KGB identities and
operations to a computer. But even if
he just fell into the Tiber and was
washed out to sea, he presents the
KGB problems of crisis proportions.
For the KGB is forced to assume that
he is spilling his guts - which
means that it must suspend oper-
ations.
T he KGB must pull in its effec-.
tives and begin the long and
difficult task of building a new
apparatus. Other agents, you may be
sure, will defect to the East, fearful
that if they remain in place they will
be apprehended.
Vitaly has sneezed mightily, for
which we can say, "Gesundheit!"
Ralph de Toledano is a nationally
syndicated columnist.
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201520013-1