CIA ACCUSED OF GHOSTWRITING SOVIET DEFECTOR'S BOOK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302390015-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 13, 2012
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: June 27, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302390015-2
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
27 June 1985
CIA ACCUSED OF GHOSTWRITING SOVIET DEFECTOR'S BnOK
BY DANIEL F, GIL!)PF
WASHINGTON
A best selling book by Arkady N. Shevchenko, the highest-ranking Soviet
official ever to defect to the United States, actually was written by the CIA,
an American critic has charged.
Edward Jay Epstein, author of a "book that challenged the official findings
that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in President John F. Kennedy's assassination,
said Shevchenko not only did not write the best selling ''Break with Moscow''
but was not a 'super mole'' supplying top intelligence to the CIA.
Epsteins's views on Shevchenko's book are contained in a lengthy review to be
published in the July 15 issue of The New Republic magazine.
Shevchenko left his position as U.N. undersecretary general for political and
security council affairs and defected to the CIA in 1978. He has been on the
CIA payroll since as a consultant.
Epstein, who describes himself as an intelligence expert, said Shevchenko
''had little knowledge of the inner workings of current Soviet policies or
intelligence operations'' and that,an earlier book of memoirs he actually
authored was turned down by publishers as innocuous and not saleable.
After this failure, Epstein claimed, the CIA ''entered the fiction market"
and fabricated a ''thriller'' complete with car chases, heroic escapes, secret
meetings and recollections of ''intimate'' conversations with Soviet leaders.
Asked for comment, the CIA issued a statement saying, " Arkady Shevchenko
provided invaluable intelligence information to the United States. The CIA had
nothing to do with writing his book.''
Ray Cline, an intelligence veteran of 30 years and former deputy CIA
director who has met with Shevchenko, said, ''The CIA denial is correct and
the Shevchenko story substantially truthful.''
Ashbel Green, a senior editor for New York publisher Alfred Knopf, which
published the best seller, told United Press International in a telephone
interview that the work he edited ''is certainly true as far as I'm concerned.
People I know in the intelligence community confirmed he was what he said he was
and I frankly believe them more than Mr. Epstein.''
Green pointed to a Sunday New York Times book review Feb. 3, which quoted
Sen. Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y. a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
that Shevchenko's disclosures ''were invaluable ... nothing like it has ever
before occurred."
Epstein, in his review, quoted unidentified analysts at the Defense
Intelligence Agency that Shevchenko ''had nothing of value to offer American
intelligence, aside from some dated biographical material.'
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302390015-2
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302390015-2
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The critic said that according to his own investigations, Shevchenko could
not possibly have had the experiences he claimed because of conflicts in dates
and circumstances and could not have had top level access to Kremlin leaders and
secrets.
Shevchenko, now 54, was appointed to his high U.N. post in 1973. Several
years later, he said, he began feeding intelligence information to the CIA and
then defected.
Shevchenko's wife returned to Moscow where she was said to have committed
suicide. He also left a son and daughter in the Soviet Union.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302390015-2