THE SPY WHO CAME IN TO BE SOLD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706270003-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: July 15, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sl Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 :CIA-RDP90
STAT
11RTICI+R;~
pp p~GB
NEW REPUBLIC
15 ~ 22 July 1985
The invention of Arkady Shevchenko, supe
THE Sr~r WHO CAME IN To BE S
BY EDWARD jAY EPSTEIN
ARKADY SHEVCHENKO, the under
secretary general who mysterious-
ly defected from his post in the United
Nations Secretariat some seven years
ago, reemerged in February on CBS's 60
Minutes in a new role: a Le Carman
supermole. While ostensibly working
as a United Nations bureaucrat, he was,
the report revealed, the CIA's most suc-
cessful spy. "Nothing like it had ever
before occurred," it was authoritatively
reported. For the quality of his access to
Soviet state secrets, he was compared to
"Al Haig, when he was deputy to Hen-
ry Kissinger." The broadcast further
disclosed that this espionage coup had
been such an extraordinarily closely
held secret that no more than five
men-including the president of the
United States-had known about it.
Shevchenko was portrayed equally
graphically the next morning on the
cover of Time magazine, which featured
a gaping man-size hole in the brick wall
of the Kremlin. In the dramatic breach,
below an exposed red hammer and
sickle, the cover line read: "A Defector's
Story: The highest-ranking Soviet diplo-
mat to break with Moscow since World
War II describes the Kremlin's inner
Breaking with Moscow
by Arkady N. Shevchenko
(Knopf, 378 pp., $18.95)
workings." The special section inside
was condensed from Shevchenko's
book Breaking With Moscow, and imagi-
natively illustrated with artist's render-
ings of his espionage career.
It was, according to Time, "far more
than atrue-life spy story...." Time's
executive editor described it as "win-
dows on history." To further enhance
its credibility, Strobe Talbott, Time's
Washington bureau chief, noted on the
publisher's page: "Those of us working
on the project thought it important to
verify the bona fides of the author and,
as far as it was possible, his story." The
lead paragraph began dramatically with
Shevchenko's disappearance from the
U. N. on "Friday, April 6, 1978." (In
fact, Friday that year fell on April 7.)
With this bold send-off, the film rights
were quickly sold for ahalf-million dol-
lars, and the book itself rose to the
top of the best-seller lists.
It was not always, however, such a
success story. Originally Shevchenko's
value as a source of reliable information
was much more modestly appraised. In
October 1978-after Shevchenko was
filmed by NBC News in a Washington
restaurant with a call girl named Judy
Chavez, to whom he had paid most of
the 560,000 that he received from the
CIA as his anriuity-Time reported that
"the CIA has been relatively lax with
Shevchenko because he has been far
less valuable as an intelligence source
than had been anticipated." The maga-
zine concluded, based on its intelli-
gence sources, that "he had little
knowledge of the inner workings of
current Soviet policies or intelligence
operations."
This assessment was shared in the in-
telligence community-at least in 1979.
For example, analysts at the Defense In-
telligence Agency, with full access to
the "take" from what Shevchenko had
told his FBI and CIA interrogators, con-
cluded that the defector had nothing of
value to offer American intelligence,
aside from some dated biographical ma-
terial. Book publishers, moreover, were
similarly disappointed. In the summer
of 1978 Simon and Schuster signed a
5600,000 contract with Shevchenko,
who was then repre-
sented by Morton Jank-
low, for a book tenta-
tively titled From
Captivity into Freedom.
When the manuscript
finally was submitted in
ole.
OLDI
1979, Richard Snyder,
the head of Simon and
Schuster, and Michael
Korda, the editor-in-
chief, concluded that it
did not contain suffi-
cient new material
about the Soviet Union
to merit its publication.
There were no revela-
tory firsthand conversa-
tions with Soviet lead-
ers-and no mention of
any espionage activities
by him. In addition to
rejecting the book, Si-
mon and Schuster suc-
cessfully sued Shev-
chenko for the 5146,875
it had actually advanced
him. Even with 5600,000
at stake, however, he
was not willing to claim
he was a mole. When he
was deposed by Simon
and Schuster's lawyers
in December 1980, he
still steadfastly main-
tained that he had accu-
rately described his defection in his
chapter "Decision to Defect," which
made no mention of any espionage ac-
tivities on his part.
The book was sent next to the Read-
er's Digest Press. Steven Frimmer, the
editor-in-chief, also concluded that it
lacked both substance about the work-
ings of the Soviet system and personal
vignettes. Before rejecting it, however,
Henry Hurt, the star investigative re-
porter of Reader's Digest, intensively in-
terviewed Shevchenko for some 20
hours to ascertain whether Shevchenko
could add, possibly with his collabora-
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 :CIA-RDP90-009658000706270003-0