PRODUCER BUYS RIGHTS TO SHEVCHENKO BOOK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060004-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: July 3, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
1Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060004-6
Producer Buys Rights
To Shevchenko Book
Motion-picture rights to "Breaking
With Moscow" by Arkady N. Shev-
chenko, the best-selling memoir of
the highest-ranking Soviet official
ever to defect, have been purchased
for $450,000 by Lester Persky Produc-
tions.
"Right now we're getting a script,
contacting key directors and we hope
to begin shooting this fall, in time for
release next year," said Mr. Persky,
who has produced "Hair," "Yanks,"
"Equus" and some 20 other motion
pictures.
Concoction Is Alleged
The Shevchenko book, which has
been on The New York Times best
seller list for 18 weeks, and is the No.
5 nonfiction best seller, has come
under sharp attack in a cover article
in the current issue of The New Re-
public. Edward Jay Epstein, the au-
thor of the article, charged that Mr.
Shevchenko, the former Under Secre-
tary General in the United Nations
Secretariat, made up important parts
of the book, with the apparent com-
plicity of the Central Intelligence
Agency. Mr. Epstein described the
book's espionage episodes as concoc-
tions, and said, "The book belongs on
the fiction rather than the nonfiction
APPEARED NEW YORK TIMES
ON PAGE _Z_" 3 July 1985
list."
Mr. Epstein's allegations were for-
mally denied by the C.I.A. as well as
by Stansfield Turner, who headed the
agency at the tire Mr. Shevchenko
defected, and Ray Cline, former
deputy C.I.A. director. Senator Dan-
iel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of
New York, reiterated that Mr. Shev-
chenko, who said he spied for the
United States for almost three years
before defecting in the spring of 1978,
was working for us for a period until
that rather dramatic moment" of his
defection.
More Than a Spy Story
Mr. Persky said that the formal
C.I.A. denial of the Epstein charges,
and the support given to Mr. Shev-
chenko's charges by Senator Moyni-
han and by former intelligence offi-
cials, is evidence that the book is fac-
tual.
The producer, who completed the
purchase agreement on June 17, after
two months of negotiation with the
author, said that it is not just the spy
story that interests him. "Shev-
chenko didn't want to engage in espio-
nage," Mr. Persky said, "all he
wanted to do was leave the Soviet sys-
tem. The story as I see it is the tor-
ment of the man who has to decide to
leave the land he loves because he
just couldn't take it any more."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504060004-6