NOTE TO OFFICE OF CONGRESSIONAL LIAISON FROM ALAN CRANSTON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R000300070061-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
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• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
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• Content Type: NOTES

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STAT
ALAN a rOM
CAUPO UA
' 1tnifab , fafez .Senafe
June 8, 1978
Office of Congressional Liaison
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D. C. 20505
Enclosure from:
Re: Please respond to the constituent's concerns about
Nicolas Shadrin.
I forward the attached for your cons ideration .~--- Your report, in duplicate, along with th return of the enclosure
will be appreciated.
Please address envelope to:
Senator Alan Cranston
Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Att: Ryan Conroy
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May 2 , 1978
Senator Alan Cranston
452 Russe L.l Senate Office Building
Washington, D. C. 20510
I am writing to ask your help in clearing up and, perhaps, righting what
seems to me to be possibly grievous misjudgements by U. S. governmental of-
ficials on the Shadrin Case. (Nicolas Shadrin -- sea enclosed two articles
-- you will recall was a high ranking Soviet Naval officer who defected to
the U. S. in 1959 and then, Later, while in the service and under the pro-
tection of the sponsoring U. S. intelligence officials, disappeared in Do-
camber 1975 in Vienna.)
I write reluctantly for among other things I know that your in-basket is
un Like Ly to be short of prob Lems demanding attention and, indeed, have kept
putting this off in the hope that the Shadrin Case would somehow clear up.
It hasn't, and based on the gradually surfacing information, leads to the
impression that the mismanagement. was much worse than at first glance seemed.
Where previously the focus was on the questionable judgements and et.hica:L
behaviour of the U. S. officials on the case, the most, recently surfacing
material (see the enclosed Szu:lc and Talbot articles, respectively, N W YORK
Magazine, 8 May 1978 and TIM ragazine, 22 May 1978) more and more closely ::?essmbLe
the classic ;fora is Tragedy wherein the explanation justifying actions is
much worse that the actions themselves. Where previously the original judg=e-
ments and actions might be irresponsible and grossly neglectful of the prac-
tical operational intelligence consequences, the explanation (i.a., the Igor
operation referred to in both enclosed articles -- it. was code-named "Kitty
Hawk'?) is worse in that the misjudgements and behavior of those immediate:lzy
responsible appear to have been planned and therefore deliberate.
The SzuLe and Talbot articles present what, seems to me to be a reasonably
fair picture of the affair and although they are only two reports of.-nany
which have appeared in the past ten months, they are probably the mos-. rec=ur.
Ply Letter to the president. (copy enclosed) makes several important points,
.reasonable and serious questions, it seems to me, which deserve reasonable
response. The nearly two months-delayed reply, by Hodding Carter, the De-
part.ment. of State's Public Affairs representative, was polite and even fry e:.nd Ly
but avoided addressing any of the points explicitly made in the .lettei . :k:.,:.:
disregard smacicsof patronizing if not worse and is not just out of place In.',
into Lerab Le.
I would much appreciate, Senator, any he Lp you can give t.oxard cleartig up
this unhappy case. I think it would be useful for you to meet with id`s. :;ha-
drin (she lives in nearby Mclean, Virginia) to get her story and, if pe> i-
uadad, urge President Carter to himself meet with her -- and thus a liminai o
the possibility that, he is being shielded from a Ll aspects of the case.
Sincerely yours
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TIME Yay 22, 1978, page 29
;:,. Strobe Talh:ott
I.'inlomatic Correspondent
OR&
Double Trouble
In trying to fool the KGB, the
U.S. may have fooled itself
0 ne mystery that still haunts U.S. in-
telligence officials is the disappear-
ance of Double Agent Nicholas Shadrin
while on assignment in Vienna more than
two years ago. Did he fall into a KGB
trap? Or was he betrayed by U.S. in-
telligence officials?
Born Nikolai Fedorovich Artamonov,
he was a 30-year-old captain in the So-
viet navy when he defected to the U.S.
in 1959 with his Polish fiancee Ewa.
For nine months American agents ques-
tioned him about Soviet naval secrets at
safe houses in Virginia. Then Artamonov
changed his name to Nicholas Shadrin
and went to work for the Pentagon as
an intelligence analyst. He married Ewa,
became a U.S. citizen and settled into
the good bourgeois life in McLean, Va.
He made no attempt to hide his back-
ground as a defector; he testified about
it before the House Committee on Un-
American Activities in 1960.
In 1966 Shadrin was approached by
KGB operatives. At the request of Amer-
ican officials, he signed up as a Soviet
agent and began feeding his KGB spymas-
tern FBI-supplied information about U.S.
intelligence methods, much of it harm-
less but true to gain the KGB'S confidence,
and some of it false and misleading.
On Dec. 20, 1975, while ostensibly on
a skiing vacation in Europe with his wife,
Shadrin had a prearranged meeting with
two KGB officers on the steps of a church
in Vienna, then vanished. At Ewa's insis-
tence, the U.S. repeatedly asked the Sovi-
Nation
Shadrin on a wild-goose hunt in Maryland
Facts as cold-blooded as a Le Carre lot.
ets for information about Shadrin's fate.
Gerald Ford sent an inquiry to Leonid
Brezhnev, who replied vaguely that the
KGB had not kidnaped Shadrin. U.S. offi-
cials told reporters that Shadrin was prob-
ably dead or in a Soviet prison. In re-
sponse to suggestions of U.S. bungling,
some officials even suggested that Shadrin
had been a Soviet plant, a triple agent, and
his disappearance was a clumsy Russian
way of bringing him in from the cold.
Now more facts are emerging about
the Shadrin case, and they make it seem
every bit as complicated and cold-blooded
as a John Le Carre plot. TIME has learned
that in 1966 a KGB agent known is Igor
was posted as a diplomat to the Soviet em-
bassy in Washington. In an extraordinar-
ily straightforward way, he phoned the
home of CIA Director Richard Iteims and
talked to his then-wife Julia. Igor offered
to become a double agent, or, iril-A! Car-rd's
famous term, a "mole," who would burrow
deeply into the Soviet espionage network
and pass on secrets to the U.S. Julia
turned Igor over to her husband, who in
turn passed him on to U.S. counterintelli-
gence operatives.
Igor told the Americans that 'ii: could
possibly get a higher post z.v;thin the
KGB. He said he would have z. better
chance of this if he could recruit Shadrin
as a Soviet agent. U.S. intelligence offi-
cials, though suspicious, decided to help.
Thus, even before the KGB got i a touch
with Shadrin, he had been persuaded by
U.S. officials to become a double agent,
despite considerable misgivings on his
part.
Just why U.S. intelligence othcials al-
lowed him to walk into an apparent KGB
trap in Vienna nine years later is still a
mystery. Ewa, who is now a dent.st in Mc-
Lean, believes, despite official denials,
that he was set up and "sacrificed' as part
of a larger intelligence operation, presum-
ably involving the mysterious )For. U.S.
officials decline comment, but ,mere is a
lingering suspicion in intelligence circles
that in going along with Igor':: request to
help the KGB recruit Shadrin, the U.S. fell
for a Soviet plot. Igor could very well have
been a triple agent, as some U .S. officials
have suspected all along. One \rnerican
intelligence official speculated wryly that
the name Igor could be a play the Rus-
sian word for game. _ ^
Sunday, lay 14, 1978, the story appeared in the following publications:
The Washington STAR, page A-1 (front page)
The Washington PCGT, page J;-5
The New York TIMES, page A-14
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The Shadrin Allah:
A Double Agent Double-Crossed
By Tad Szulc
"... Shadrin disappeared after United States intelligence sense-
lessly thrust him into the role of double agent with the KGB . .."
It was through a stunning succession
of blunders, carelessness, and inexcus.
able acts of intelligence greed span-
ning a sixteen-year period that the
United States lost its most valuable
Russian military defector. The missing
man is believed to be either dead or
incarcerated in the Soviet Union.
There are still questions which prob-
ably never will be satisfactorily an-
swered, but all indications are that
the man known as Nicholas George
Shadrin was kidnapped by the Soviets
through the fault of American intelli-
gence agencies. There is little reason to
believe that he redefected voluntarily,
that he was killed by the CIA (as the
Russians have insinuated), or that,
tired of being a pawn for both sides,
he decided to create a new life for
himself somewhere in the world.
Shadrin disappeared in Vienna in
December 1975, after United States
intelligence had senselessly thrust him
into the immensely dangerous role of a
double agent working with the KGB,
the Soviet secret service. He vanished
under circumstances that make it clear
that he was cruelly used by his su-
periors as bait for the Russians. Spies,
after all, are expendable when they
become a problem.
That Shadrin, a gregarious, intelli-
gent, onetime Soviet Baltic-fleet de-
stroyer commander, was recruited by
the CIA in 1959, and had not simply fled
to the West to marry the woman he
loved-as alleged at the time by him
and the United States government-
was a closely guarded secret, until
now, and it sheds wholly new light
on his covert relations with the Ameri-
can intelligence establishment.
It explains why he agreed to serve
as a double agent under extremely bi-
zarre and controversial conditions, and
it may also help to explain the strange
behavior, after his disappearance, of
two succeeding administrations, their
unwillingness to open secret intelli.
gence files on him to his wife and her
lawyer in their search for the truth, and
the glaring inconsistencies encountered
during a private investigation of the
Shadrin case.
Defectors are one of the most sensi-
tive subjects in intelligence operations,
after all, and neither the administration
on the highest level nor senior intel-
ligence officers are prepared to discuss
various theories surrounding the Shad.
rin case. (This reluctance was further
enhanced by the defection last month
of Arkady N. Shevchenko, the Soviet
diplomat who served as undersecre-
tary general of the United Nations in
New York. Shevchenko is the greatest
diplomatic intelligence prize ever won
by the United States.)
At first, Shadrin was worth his
weight in gold to the United States. At
the time when the Soviet Union
launched a major buildup of its navy,
the information brought by Shadrin
was crucial to the United States Navy.
After he outlived his usefulness, how-
ever, he was transformed into a double
agent to satisfy the insatiable appetite
of American intelligence. If it were not
for this greed, Shadrin would be living
tranquilly in the United States today,
like other Soviet defectors.
His name originally was Nikolai
Fedorovich Artamonov, but on orders,
after his arrival in the United States,
he changed it to Shadrin-after the hero
of Pushkin's tale The Captain': Daugh-
ter (his wife's father is a Polish mer-
chant-marine captain). It was a. point-
less deception, because he tcst,fied as
Artamonov in an open session of the
House Committee on Un-Amer'::an Ac-
tivities in September 1960, ad the
audience included a Soviet diplomat
busily taking notes. Afterward, no ef-
fort was made to conceal his :earl iden-
tity, and Shadrin was the nearest thing
to a public figure in intelligence circles.
This was the first major blunder and
led to all the others.
Nobody, it seems, wishes t,4, delve
into intelligence secrets tha: could
cause considerable embarrassivent to
the United States. Full disclosure could,
for example, highlight the sixteen years
of blunders surrounding Shad::in's ac-
tivities in this country and abroad,
methods employed by Ameri:.an intel-
ligence, and conflicts involving the CIA,
the FBI, and the Pentagon's Defense
Intelligence Agency.
Shadrin was not a run-of--the-mill
spy or defector: He had high-level ac-
quaintances and friendships in Ameri-
can intelligence, which made him a
vulnerable figure.
One friend was Admiral Rufus L.
Taylor, who, as director of naval intel-
ligence, was his boss during t?,e time
the Russian ex-officer served a, a spe-
cial consultant to the navy. Arid Ad-
miral Stansfield Turner, for example,
got to know Shadrin sufficiently well
to write him "Dear Nick" letters (Shad-
rin had lectured at the Naval War Col-
Reproduced with the 7ermisa,er
of the author
from New York magazine
May 8,1978 issue.
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"... The CIA promised Shadrin a new life in America, -
plus a job and citizenship, for his defection..."
lege, in the early 1970s, when Turner
was its president).
It is noteworthy that after Shadrin's
wife, Dr. Ewa Shadrin, despaired of
any effective action by the Ford admin.
istration on his behalf and retained
Richard D. Copaken, a partner in the
prestigious Washington law firm of Cov-
ington & Burling (once Dean Ache-
son's firm), the White House volun-
teered payment of the legal fees.
Ewa Shadrin accepted the offer. She
is the Polish woman with whom Shad-
rin fled in 1959 and whom he married
a year later in Baltimore. Now she
practices dentistry in an office at their
house in McLean, Virginia.
The law firm's bills were paid from
February 1976 until August 1977, when
the Wall Street Journal and the Wash-
ington Post published the first stories
about Shadrin's disappearance. Pay-
ments have not been resumed yet,
though the government says it has the
matter under advisement.
Ewa Shadrin still does receive Shad-
rin's paychecks from the Defense In-
telligence Agency (DIA), where her
husband was ostensibly employed while
serving as a double agent. She gets
$720 biweekly (after deductions), which
adds up to $18,720 annually.
Interestingly, neither side denies that
Shadrin was a double agent. Immedi-
ately after his disappearance, CIA and
FBI case officers told Ewa Shadrin that
Nick, as he is known to his American
friends, had been working since 1966
for United States intelligence. She
claims he had never told her about it.
On the surface, the question seems
to be whose "double" Shadrin really
was-the Soviets' or the Americans'-
but the truth is far more complicated.
The Shadrin story begins in Septem-
ber 1958, when the destroyer he had
commanded for two years was as-
signed to the Polish naval base
Oksywie, across the bay from the port
of Gdynia. Under the supervision of an
admiral, the Soviet task force was en-
gaged with the Polish navy in the train-
ing of Indonesian naval officers and
crews in anti-submarine warfare. This
was the period of close collaboration
between the Sukarno regime and the
Soviet Union, which had supplied bil-
lions of dollars in arms to Indonesia.
Shadrin was then 30 years old, a
brilliant officer with a superb career
ahead. Born in Leningrad, he went
through Frunze Naval Academy-a
special distinction-and took a "com-
manders' course" in 1954. At 28, he
was given the command of a destroyer,
which he took on official visits to Den-
mark, Britain, and Malta. Finally came
the assignment in Poland, and the word
among his fellow officers was that
Shadrin was destined to become per-
haps the youngest admiral in the Soviet
navy.
It was at a party at the Gdynia of-
ficers' club in the fall of 1958 that
Shadrin first met an attractive Polish
medical student, Ewa Gdra.
By Ewa's account, Shadrin was a
"very amusing man . . . wherever he
went, he was the life of the party....
He could discuss any subject: His edu-
cation wasn't just narrow naval educa-
tion." He loved the theater and often
took his friends to concerts. He was
especially interested in opera: His
mother had been an amateur singer,
and Nick knew all the arias by heart.
In every way, it seems, Shadrin was
different from other Soviet officers. For
example: "Normally, Soviet officers
couldn't come ashore when they want-
ed," Ewa explained. "They had to ask
for permission, and it was rarely grant-
ed ... Nick informed the admiral that
he was going to town."
Several times, Ewa says, Shadrin
went ashore without telling anybody;
on one occasion he was caught and
had a dressing down. What emerges,
though, is the image of a man who
could get away with almost any-
thing, who was more trusted than his
fellow officers. This, of course, raises
the question of why he received special
treatment. CIA experts later wondered
whether Shadrin had KGB ties that
granted him special privileges. But no.
body has come up with a clear answer.
In any event, Shadrin's freedom cre-
ated the opportunity for CIA emissaries
to approach him. This was the period
when the CIA was engaging in its
first clandestine effort to bring about
the overthrow of Sukarno. A by-product
of this activity was an attempt to pene-
trate the Soviet navy: The Office of
Naval Intelligence was extremely anx-
ious at the time to gather information
on developments in the Soviet navy. It
wanted a deep-penetration agent or, if
at all possible, a high-ranking defector.
Several Indonesian officers among the
CIA's contacts-anti-Communist men
from wealthy families--had been as-
signed to be trained in Poland, and
Ewa remembers that an officer named
Purnomo came on several occasions to
the house of a Polish friend when
Shadrin was present and, at least once,
to her home to see him. Purnomo may
have been the CIA's emissary.
One of the most difficult intelligence
problems is to establish the motivations
of defectors or potential defectors. As
Ewa tells the story, Shadrin, estranged
from his wife in the Soviet Union, had
made up his mind to defect to- the West
as early as March 1959 as the only way
to-marry Ewa. Intelligence officers who
have read parts of Shadrin's secret files
at the CIA-the sections pertaining to
his recruitment by the agency-think
that while he undoubtedly wanted to
marry Ewa, the final incentive was pro-
vided by American intelligence. Thus
his motives were, indeed, mixed.
According to the CIA file, Shadrin
agreed to defect with a cache of docu-
ments-copies of the Soviet navy's
"commander reports" that included
current naval operational intelligence
-and to serve as an adviser to United
States intelligence on Russian naval
matters. However, he was to arrange
means of defection himself-the CIA
couldn't help him there.
In return, Shadrin was guaranteed
the new life in America, CIA payment
for the completion of Ewa's dental edu-
cation, his job, and citizenship.
He decided to flee by boat to Sweden
on June 7, a Sunday, because there
would be little traffic on the Baltic.
Shadrin and Ewa departed at 7:30
P.ivt. It was a clear and warm evening,
and the excuse was that they were go-
ing fishing. To avoid arousing suspicion
he took along 25-year-old Ilya Alek-
sandrovich Popov, the sailor who al-
ways handled the 22-foot motor launch.
Ewa was forbidden by Shadrin to
bring anything except for a handbag
and a raincoat. They both wore sports
clothes, although Shadrin had his uni-
form in the cabin. A gun was hidden
below deck.
The crossing took. 24 hours. There
was no conversation with Popov, be-
cause in the Soviet navy a sailor is not
permitted to address an officer without
first being spoken to.
They landed Monday evening in a
small fishing village on the Swedish
island of Oland. Popov thought they
were in Poland. The village was de-
serted, but after a while a few fisher-
men turned up. Shadrin and Ewa spoke
neither Swedish nor English, and all
they could do was to repeat the word
"police." They wanted to be taken to
the nearest police station to ask for
asylum. The Swedes were unresponsive
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until Shadrin produced a bottle of
French cognac. Finally, a taxi appeared
to take them, via ferry, to the town of
Kalmar, where Shadrin identified him-
self to a Russian-speaking interpreter
and asked for asylum. Within a day or
two, he and Ewa were taken to Stock-
holm and housed in a jail during their
interrogation. (Popov was returned to
Poland.) Meanwhile, the Swedish press
broke the story of the defection. It
caused a minor sensation around the
world, but to the CIA, Shadrin's flight
was a major intelligence coup.
,The next contact was with Captain
Sven Rystrom, a Russian-speaking of-
ficer who had served as Swedish naval
attache in Moscow. According to Ewa,
he warned them not to go to the United
States, because "the Americans have
the tendency to take advantage of peo-
ple and then forget them." She adds:
"And this is exactly what happened."
Two weeks later, though, when Shad-
rin and Ewa were released, Ewa pre-
sented herself at the American Embassy.
A Russian-speaking diplomat received
her in his office. Two days later, she
says, "we left for West Germany."
If Shadrin hadn't been expected, it is
highly unlikely that they would have
been flown out of Sweden so quickly.
Normally, preliminary defector exam-
inations last much longer.
Accompanied by a: CIA escort, Shad-
rin and Ewa were flown from Stock-
holm to Frankfurt aboard a small air-
craft-a CIA "black flight." They sat
in a specially constructed concealed
cabin. They arrived in Frankfurt on
August 1 and were immediately taken
to a CIA "safe house" outside the city.
After three weeks of intense interro-
gation, plus lie-detector and psychologi-
cal tests, the Inter-Agency Defector
Committee (made up of representatives
of the CIA, the FBI, the State Depart-
ment, and military-intelligence services)
apparently accepted Shadrin's and
Ewa's bona fides, and they were flown
to Washington (on another CIA black
flight) on August 21-again a relative-
ly short time for defectors.
The debriefing process, in three Vir-
ginia safe houses, took nine months.
Shadrin and Ewa were guarded around
the clock by three CIA security officers.
"They smoked cigars and watched tele-
vision," Ewa recalls.
Sometimes there were eight or ten
intelligence specialists questioning Shad-
rin about the Soviet navy. There were
CIA experts and specialists from the
Office of Naval Intelligence in addition
to Walter Onoshko, Shadrin's CIA case
officer. The CIA interpreter was Walter
Sidov. Among naval specialists were
Captain Thomas L. Dwyer, later coor-
dinator of intelligence operations for
the ship Pueblo, captured by North
Koreans, and William Howe, a civilian
with expertise in electronic warfare.
Naval Intelligence officers who de-
briefed Shadrin say that he was every-
thing the navy had wanted in the way
of a first-rate defector. Not only was he
familiar with operational data about
Soviet destroyers and anti-submarine
warfare, but he also displayed a pro-
found knowledge of the overall work-
ings of the Soviet navy.
The first meeting: Canadian Mounted Police
took this CIA-file photograph of Shadrin
meeting his KGB contact in Montreal.
On one occasion, Shadrin was taken
to Norfolk, Virginia, to participate in
anti-submarine-warfare exercises aboard
a United States destroyer and, in fact,
was given the command of the ship
for the operation. A Naval Intelligence
officer, impressed, remarked that "if all
the Soviet-destroyer skippers are half
as good as Nick, we have something
to worry about."
On June 1, 1960, Shadrin began
working as a consultant for the Naval
,Scientific and Technical Intelligence
Center (STIC), a branch of the Office
of Naval Intelligence. His six years
with STIC were probably the happiest
period in Shadrin's life in the United
States. His job was to evaluate Soviet
naval data with Naval Intelligence and
CIA experts. During this time he
worked closely with John Funkhouser,
the CIA's leading naval specialist.
With $10,000 from the CIA (this
was part of the original defection deal),
the Shadrins made the down payment
on a small house in Arlington, Virgin-
ia, across the Potomac from Washing-
ton, their first real home in the United
States. Ewa went to dental school for
three years to obtain her license to
practice in the United States (this, too,
was part of the CIA deal); Shadrin ob-
tained an engineering degree from
George Washington University. In his
spare time, he worked on building the
motorboat he had always wanted.
On September 14, the CIA made the
mistake of producing Shadrin before
the House Committee on Un-American
Activities under his real name zf Arta-
monov. The committee also mode a point
of stressing Shadrin's impo-tance by
saying that he had been "sing?ed out
for special attention and commenda-
tion in the Soviet press."
Shadrin's service as STIC t:cnsultant
ended, inexplicably, in June 1966. Af-
ter several weeks of unemployment-
and worry-Shadrin was offered a
job as consultant to the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA). This was
the period when Admiral Taylor,
Shadrin's old boss as chief of Naval
Intelligence, was serving a brief stint
as DIA's deputy director before be-
coming deputy director of the CIA.
It was perhaps not purely accidental
that Shadrin was hired by th.. DIA: It
appears to have been part o a larger
plan U.S. intelligence had for him.
Unfortunately, Shadrin found the
DIA job demeaning and boring. In
collaboration with small-fry military
defectors from Communist cots tries, he
helped translate Soviet military litera-
ture into English. For an evaluator of
naval intelligence, it was hunidiating:
Shadrin made no bones abouit this to
his wife and friend.;, anl before
long he wanted to do somet irg else.
"Something else".turned up almost
immediately, when Admiral Taylor
proposed that Shadrin become a double
agent as bait for the K.GB. There are
three versions of how Shadr n got in-
volved in espionage.
The "official" version-the an: given
Ewa Shadrin by the FBI a?ier her
husband vanished-was that Shadrin
was approached by KGB ..gents in
Washington in the summer ci 1966,
right after he joined the DIA. with an
offer to spy for the Soviet Un-on. Ac-
cording to this version, Shauirin re-
ported this approach at once to the
FBI, which asked him to p-et:nd to
accept the KGB proposal and, in effect,
act as a double agent.
The second American version is that
the reverse occurred. FBI alerts, ac-
cording to this version, hac learned
that KGB operatives with diplomatic
cover were stalking the Old Post Office
Building on Pennsylvania _~venue,
where Shadrin's defectors' unit and the
FBI field office were located. '1., FBI's
surmise was that the Russians were try-
ing to identify the bureau's agents and
to approach one or more detectors.
Since Shadrin was the most iri'ortant
person in this group, the FBI A,sumed
that he would be the principal target.
On the strength of this suspicion. an
assistant director of the FBI asked
Admiral Taylor to instruct Shadrin to
accept KGB overtures. should they oc-
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"... Shadrin's defection caused only a minor sensation.
To the CIA, however, it was a maj or intelligence coup..."
cur. Taylor did so and Shadrin is said
to have agreed without any hesitation.
And it was a self-fulfilling prophecy:
Ten days later, a Soviet diplomat named
Oleg Kozlov (known to be a KGB
agent) accosted Shadrin at a bus stop
at the corner of Lee Highway and Har-
rison Street in North Arlington to pro-
pose cooperation with the KGB. He
is said to have produced photographs of
Shadrin's first wife, along with a letter
from her asking him to return to the
Soviet Union. Still, according to this
version, Shadrin agreed. Then he went
to the FBI, which told him to establish
a permanent contact.
According to the third version,
which appeared in Moscow's Literary
Gazette, Shadrin approached a Soviet
Embassy employee at a local supermar-
ket and asked to be returned to Russia.
The Gazette says that the KGB agreed
to help if Shadrin would first perform
certain services.
All things considered, the second
American version is probably closest to
the truth, although Shadrin may have
made the initial contact with the So-
viets on the FBI's behalf.
Ewa Shadrin was presumably fed
the "official" version to dispel any no-
tion that her husband had been recruit-
ed for espionage by the Americans. It
would look better if Shadrin appeared
to be the victim of a KGB approach.
But even if the Americans did not
set up Shadrin (though this is the most
likely conclusion), it remains an act of
utter folly to have engaged a valuable
defector, with strong ties inside the in-
telligence community, in the double-
agent business. The truth is that the
FBI and the CIA didn't know what
they wanted-other than to spot KGB
agents-when they activated Shadrin.
To be sure, the FBI was gratified
that the first questions the Russians
asked Shadrin when they met for
lunch at a Washington restaurant con-
cerned the whereabouts of Nosenko,
Golitsin, and other KGB defectors in
the United States. Still, the operation
was a marginal proposition.
Even more interest developed when
the Russians wanted to know how the
United States obtains intelligence about
the Soviet navy. Now the intelligence
officers saw a chance to escalate the
Shadrin operation. Their notion was to
feed disinformation to the Soviets on
American intelligence methods. This
had to be done with extreme care, be-
cause Soviet experts at the other end
were certain to spot anything that
looked phony and conclude that Shad-
rin was a double agent. As an intelli-
gence officer put it, "We gave them
soft, but not false, information."
This relationship continued for near-
ly five years. Shadrin maintained his
high visibility, in part because he in-
sisted on leading a normal life, but,
in retrospect, Ewa thinks it odd that
Nick was the only visible Soviet defec-
tor and that he had no special' protec-
tion. She was never told, of course, that
he was a double agent.
The great turning point in Shadrin's
double-agent career came in 1971. Late
in the summer, his KGB contact asked
him to make a trip abroad. No reason
was given, and Finland was proposed
at first as a meeting site. This, how-
ever, was judged too dangerous by the
Russians themselves, and they changed
their minds, suggesting Montreal in-
stead. FBI and CIA handlers told
Shadrin that if the operation were to be
maintained, he had no choice but to
accept the trip. Thus the irrevocable
step was taken and, as one of Shadrin's
CIA friends said later, "Nick was
trapped." Had reason prevailed at that
time, the operation would have been
aborted and the ultimate tragedy might
have been averted. But intelligence
greed reigned, and the Shadrins flew
off to Canada in September.
Shadrin told his wife that the trip
would be their vacation, but that in
Montreal he had to meet a person who
had-worked for the United States for
25 years." This was the FBI cover
story. The Shadrins spent a night in
Montreal, and Nick spent the evening
out meeting his "friend." The next day,
they rented a car and drove to Mont
Tremblant.
Was it safe for Shadrin to leave the
United States on his own? The FBI
evidently had some reservations be-
cause it asked the intelligence division
of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
to provide protective coverage.
The Montreal coverage yielded a
long-lens photograph of Shadrin shak-
ing hands with a KGB agent at the door
of an out-of-town villa. More impor-
The Shadrin-Nosenko Connection
There are indications that Shadrin was caught up in some manner in
the long, silent battle within the intelligence community over the bona fides
of Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, the most famous KGB defector to the United
States. Although they never met in the United States, Nosenko and Shadrin
had been schoolmates at Frunze Naval Academy in Leningrad and Nosenko
was later connected with the naval-intelligence branch of the Soviet military-
intelligence service, while Shadrin went off to be a destroyer commander
with access to operational intelligence. Nosenko fled the Soviet Union in
1964, five years after Shadrin; he was the agent whose testimony had con-
firmed the belief of the FBI's late,director, J. Edgar Hoover, that Lee Harvey
Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy, had no ties with the KGB. This
helped to make the FBI's conclusions acceptable to the Warren Commission.
The CIA, however, developed subsequent suspicions that Nosenko was a
KGB "deep plant" and he remained imprisoned by the agency until 1967,
when the still-controversial decision was made, in effect, to clear him.
In charge of clearing Nosenko was Admiral Taylor, the CIA deputy
director who had persuaded Shadrin to become a double agent. One of
Nosenko's principal defenders was the CIA's Leonard McCoy, who was later
Shadrin's case officer, and who, after the disappearance, turned out to be a
source of contradictory information about the case. Bruce Solie, the CIA
officer who directed Nosenko's re-examination and was his handler follow-
ing imprisonment, was dispatched to Vienna in 1975 to escort Ewa Shadrin
back to Washington when her husband failed to return from the KGB
meeting.
What, if anything, is the meaning of these coincidences? Some intelli-
gence officers believe that the clearing of Nosenko, whom the CIA and the
FBI had finally decided to trust, suggested that American intelligence was
free of Soviet "deep plant" agents. If Nosenko was not a plant, the CIA
reasoning went, then it was safe to assume that Shadrin was not one, either.
This may have been stretching the point, but the fact remains that Shadrin
was activated as a double agent on behalf of the United States at the time
the process of rehabilitating Nosenko was under way. -T.S.
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tant, Shadrin was told that he would
soon be working with an "illegal" and
that he would be supplied in Washing-
ton with special intelligence equipment.
To the FBI and the CIA, this was sen-
sational news. Smashing an illegal net-
work is the dream of every intelligence
service, just as the fear that one may
exist is its nightmare.
If the intelligence agencies had any
lingering doubt that the KGB had
swallowed the Shadrin bait, it was re-
moved early in 1972 when the prom-
ised secret equipment was delivered to
the Shadrins' house. The equipment
consisted of a radio receiver and trans-
mitter (the CIA called it "communica-
tions capability"), a cipher code inside
a book with hollowed pages, and a
notebook with instructions on secret-
writing methods.
During 1972, Shadrin received his
Ph.D. in international affairs from
George Washington University. Then
he was instructed by his KGB contact
to travel to Vienna to be trained in the
use of the secret equipment and, possi-
bly, to meet the "illegal "
Again, the intelligence agencies in
Washington were overjoyed. The ille-
gal network seemed to be within
grasp, and the Shadrin operation be-
came one of the most closely guarded
intelligence secrets. There was no ques-
tion of Shadrin's not going to Vienna; in
fact, the CIA and the FBI claim that he
was eager to do it. But there was also
no thought of providing protection sur-
veillance for him in Vienna. Intelli-
gence officers say that this matter was
not even discussed in FBI-CIA confer-
ences on the subject.
Shadrin's Vienna meeting was sched-
uled for September 8, and he told his
wife that it would be part of a Euro-
pean vacation. Their first stop was
Madrid; from there they went on to
Munich for the Olympic games. Shad-
rin mentioned to Ewa that in Vienna he
would have an overnight meeting with
the same man he had seen in Montreal.
Arriving in Vienna, the Shadrins
checked in at the plush Bristol Hotel,
across the street from the Opera, and
Nick went out in the early evening to
keep his appointment. He took a taxi
to the Votivkirche, a Vienna landmark
church, and met his contact on the
steps. Then a car took them to a villa
out of the city. Shadrin spent about
eighteen hours there with several KGB
agents-one of them was Oleg Kozlov,
his Washington handler-and techni-
cal experts. They trained him in the
use of the type of secret equipment he
had at home. He returned to the hotel
at 4 P.M. the following day. The Shad-
rins stayed two more days in Vienna,
driving around in a rented car, then
flew to Athens before returning home.
Shadrin had not met the "illegal" in
Vienna, which somewhat disappointed
the FBI and the CIA, but they were
delighted that he had undergone the
technical training. In intelligence work,
patience is the cardinal virtue.
Before leaving Vienna, Shadrin had
been told to meet with a contact in
Washington on his return, but nobody
turned up. And, as it turned out, the
KGB broke all contact with Shadrin
for more than two years after his re-
turn from Vienna. The conventional
wisdom was that the Russians were
encountering difficulties in implanting
an "illegal" in the United States.
It didn't occur to anybody that the
KGB might have become suspicious
of Shadrin and was rechecking his
credentials. Again, prudence would
have counseled taking Shadrin out of
the operation altogether-but the greed
now was too great.
Although the FBI and the CIA main-
tained close contact with Shadrin dur-
ing this interval, he was becoming de-
spondent. He hated his translation job
at the DIA but had to keep it. He was
getting edgy.
Then, in the fall of 1974, Shadrin
started receiving mysterious calls at
home. On one occasion, a woman
speaking in English instructed him to
meet somebody in the Arlington area.
He was told to appear at once but de-
cided not to do it because he was
unable to contact either John Funk-
houser, the CIA naval expert, or James
Wooten, his FBI handler.
Early in 1975, a Russian-speaking
man telephoned Shadrin at home and,
trying to disguise his voice, told Shad-
rin that he would receive a secret-
writing letter. When the letter, bearing
an Oxon Hill, Maryland, postmark, ar-
rived, Shadrin deciphered it. The writ-
er wanted to know whether and when
Shadrin could travel again, where he
could attend a meeting with the "ille-
gal," and what his cover would be. The
instructions were to reply by invisible-
writing letter to a dead-drop address in
Berlin. Shadrin answered, proposing
Spain, but another letter from Oxon
Hill rejected this idea.
At a conference with FBI and CIA
officials, it was decided that Shadrin
should pick Vienna, "same time, same
place." That Vienna was chosen by
the agencies has been corroborated by
highly placed intelligence sources in
Washington; Leonard McCoy, the CIA
case officer, insists, however, that it
was the KGB that demanded the meet-
ing be held in the Austrian capital.
(This is one of the many mysteries sur-
rounding Shadrin's disappearance. It is
possible that McCoy has taken this
stance to prove the entrapment theory
and to remove the blame from the
CIA.) A further exchange of setters
set December 18 as the meeting date.
As in 1972, neither the CIA nor the
FBI wanted to provide protec+i 'e sur-
veillance for Shadrin on the ;,round
that the Russians would spot it And
this time the agencies were corvinced
that Shadrin would at last meet the
"illegal." As intelligence officers ex-
plained later, they had no reason to
think that the KGB was suspicous of
Shadrin-although nobody had valid
explanation for the two-year silence.
There was a difference in the 1975
operation, however. Shortly before the
Shadrins left for Vienna, the CiA ar-
ranged for them to meet a counter-
intelligence staff officer who was intro-
duced as "Ann Martin" (though cn one
occasion she was identified as '-Cynthia
Martin"). She was brought t the
Shadrins' home with the warning that
she should be identified as a dental
patient if they were interrupted
Ann Martin was a tall, L.nguiar
woman in her late forties, wits. a large
mole on her left cheek, and glasses. She
spoke Russian and German, and in-
formed the Shadrins that they would
meet again in Vienna. Then =Y- gave
Shadrin two emergency telephone num-
bers in Vienna, a daytime nutrh -r and
a night number, where she could be
reached by Ewa if anything unusual
happened.
The Shadrins arrived in Vienna on
December 17 and took Suite 3ttl at the
Bristol. The next evening Shad-in left
the hotel to meet his contact at the
Votivkirche. Ann Martin staye1 with
Ewa. When Shadrin returned. shortly
before midnight, the CL-k women took
him into the bathroom and, -.vi-h the
shower running, debriefed him.
He told her that he had had dirtier at
a small fish restaurant with the KGB's
Oleg Kozlov and Mikhail Ivanovieh
Kuryshev. There was only small talk.
and Shadrin was instructed _c come
to another evening meeting t:vc. days
later. Shadrin was also given S l ; )00 in
cash, although several thousand dollars
had been sent to him in Wasiington
by the KGB, and was told to r_rv a car
the following day to become acq .sainted
with the streets of Vienna.
At 6:30 P.M. on December 20, Shad-
rin left for his second meeting. Again,
it did not occur to the CIA handlers
that the sudden two-day delay before
the presumed encounter with the "ille-
gal" was a danger sign and tha: Shad-
rin should be withdrawn at once from
the operation. An intelligent officer
theorized later that Shadrin may have
aroused suspicions at the dinner on
December 18, and the KGB needed
time for new instructions frc?ri Mos-
cow. But the same officer said, "We
never anticipated a kidnapping.'
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"... Prudence would have counseled taking Shadrin out
of the operation-but the greed was now too great..."
Ann Martin did not stay with Ewa
that evening. She was attending a din-
ner party, and Ewa was told that in
case of trouble she could reach her at
her apartment at night. It was never ex-
plained why Ann Martin was not avail-
able most of the night, and Ewa Shad-
rin was unable to reach her until 1:55
A.M., when she became acutely con-
cerned about her husband.
Shadrin, of course, was never seen
again. But there are further mysteries.
Richard Copaken, the lawyer, says that
the acting chief of the CIA station in
Vienna, who had been informed of the
Shadrin meetings with the KGB, had
canceled all leaves and prepared sur-
veillance for Shadrin. But Copaken
learned later that Ann Martin had or-
dered the station chief to cancel sur-
veillance, allegedly on FBI orders.
One of the most senior intelligence
officers in Washington has said in a
private discussion of the Shadrin case
that there was no justification for al-
lowing Shadrin to operate in Vienna
without protective surveillance. He
said that if, indeed, Ann Martin had
ordered the local station chief to lift
surveillance, the CIA officer should
have called headquarters at once to
obtain the reversal or confirmation of
such a decision. He also said that it
was "inexcusable" for the FBI to have
been unaware that the Votivkirche is in
direct line of sight from the building
housing the American Consulate in Vi-
enna. Shadrin could have been ob-
served from consulate windows with-
out arousing Soviet suspicions.
What if the CIA had covered Shad-
rin? Two years later, intelligence offi-
cers admit that at worst the KGB
would have "broken surveillence" and
kidnapped him anyway. But, they say,
the Russians might have been scared
away and dropped Shadrin. A life
would have been saved.
On December 23, when Ewa pre-
pared to return home alone, Ann Mar-
tin took Shadrin's passport away from
her on the ground that he would not be
traveling with her. Later, the State De-
partment lost the passport. Although
she was escorted home by Bruce Solie,
a high-ranking CIA official, who in-
structed her to act as if she didn't
know him until they reached Frankfurt,
Ewa was not told that her husband was
a double agent until she was met at
Dulles International Airport by FBI
agents. The Austrian police were not
notified for weeks of Shadrin's dis-
appearance.
Ewa was instructed not to discuss
Shadrin's case with anybody. She told
friends that Nick was ill, traveling, or
busy working elsewhere. The Ford ad-
ministration was determined to keep his
disappearance secret-possibly forever.
Its diplomatic efforts to discover Shad-
rin's whereabouts were also limited.
Secretary of State Kissinger inquired
about Shadrin during a conversation
with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Do-
brynin. The ambassador denied all
knowledge, but Kissinger did give him
the names of the two KGB agents-
Kozlov and Kuryshev-with whom
Shadrin was known to have been deal-
ing. On January 20 and 22, Kissinger
raised the subject with Soviet Foreign
Minister Andrei Gromyko, who sug-
gested that it be discussed with Do-
brynin. On January 29, Kissinger re-
portedly told Senator John Sparkman,
chairman of the Senate Foreign Rela-
tions Committee, that he had "worked
and worked and worked" on the Shad-
rin case, but "there is nothing more"
to be done. On February 16, however,
Kissinger had another conversation
about Shadrin with Dobrynin, who
again insisted that "he is not in the
Soviet Union." Kissinger replied: "This
answer is not sufficient for the United
States."
In March, Richard Copaken met
twice in Berlin with Wolfgang Vogel,
the East German barrister who had
arranged the exchange of Soviet super-
spy Colonel Abel for downed U-2 pilot
Francis Gary Powers, to discuss ex-
changing Shadrin for Communist pris-
oners in the West. Vogel left the im-
pression that Shadrin was alive in the
Soviet Union and might be exchanged
at some stage-particularly if Ford
wrote directly to Brezhnev. On May 13,
Kissinger discussed Shadrin once more
with Dobrynin, who asked him not to
bring up the subject anymore. In mid-
May, Copaken mentioned the Shadrin
case to Ford during a White House re-
ception. The president said he was
aware of it and that something might
be done after the primaries.
After eleven months of trying, Ewa
Shadrin obtained a meeting with Ford
on November 5 and asked him to write
Brezhnev. Ford did so on December 3,
but on December 24 Brezhnev sent the
oral reply that the Russians didn't have
Shadrin, that he had never shown up
at the second meeting in Vienna.
Now the ball was with the Carter
administration. Secretary of State
Vance brought up Shadrin with Do-
brynin, but got the same answer: We
don't know where he is. In April 1977,
Copaken again met Vogel in Berlin and
handed him a letter from Ewa to her
husband. Vogel said he would return
the letter if it could not be delivered;
Copaken says Vogel never returned it.
The State Department informally
brought up the Shadrin situation with
the Russians on two occasions later in
1977, but President Carter turned
down Ewa's request for an appoint-
ment, through a letter from National
Security Adviser Brzezinski. The cur-
rent view in the administration is that
there is no point in Carter's either writ-
ing Brezhnev or seeing Ewa Shadrin,
unless new leads develop.
Such a lead did develop last August,
when Copaken received a mysterious
telephone call from London, followed
by suggestions that information about
Shadrin might be obtained if $3,000
were deposited in a Monaco bank ac-
count. The call followed the publica-
tion in American newspapers of stories
about Shadrin's disappearance, but cer-
tain credence was given to it because
the caller mentioned several key words
not in the public domain.
The money was paid and, through
complex procedure involving three
Western intelligence services, a man
seemingly connected with the caller
was found by Copaken aboard a yacht
off the south coast of France. He turned
out to be a British citizen with strange
background and connections, but he
provided no information about Shadrin.
Interestingly, however, this episode
commanded the instant attention of
CIA Director Stansfield Turner, who
dispatched the agency's Inspector Gen-
eral John Waller to France, held three
meetings with Ewa Shadrin and Copa-
ken late last year, and helped to ar-
range the sending of an FBI lie-detector
team to Europe to interview the Briton.
But in March 1978, the CIA advised
Copaken through Waller that it no
longer wished to maintain any contact
with Ewa Shadrin and her lawyer. The
reason given was that Shadrin was an
FBI problem. Elsewhere in the admin-
istration, the attitude was that since
the "European lead" turned into a dead
end, nothing further could be done.
The administration may be right.
The Russians are clearly not about to
discover that they have Shadrin after
all. But, if nothing else, the United
States government must assume some
responsibility for the fate of the de-
fector it recruited, then abandoned....
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The President
White'House
1600 Pennsylvania AT-anus
Washington, D. C.
Sir :
Iwould like, being much distressed on reading the recently-in-the-news
story about Nicolas Shadrin and his disappearance late in 1975, to call
your attention to two points which have not, to my knowledge, been brougham
out. You are, I think, acquainted with the Shadrin case ("The Carter Whi`.s
House," reports columnist Jack Anderson, "was briefed on the Shadrin Case.")
As you probably Imow the Shadrin Case is complicated, multi-faceted. and
possibly as difficult as they come and one can think of a number of que s-
tions regarding the past judgements and actions of governmental represen-
tatives throughout. But let us put all these to one side on the general
-premise that internal reviews and corrective measures have or will be ta-
Icen, and turn to two fundamental issues: the one in the realm of honor o---
ethics, the other in the pragmatic or what some term "the real world."
1. The immediate reaction one has to such developments is that, of "the
normal risks of the trade" and that those who choose to undertake such
activities are aware of and must accept the possible consequences and
-so on. It is crucially important in this instance to Imow that Shadrin
did not, in the "normal" sense of the term, volunteer for such work.
Indeed, quite the contrary. The U. S. government and its officia:L re-
presentatives cannot, therefore, rest their defense on the conventional
"the hazards of the trade" thesis and a fortiori have a particular re-
sponsibility to make a very serious and much more than "normal" effort
to retrieve Shadrin.
a. Shadrin, you should Imow, flatly refused, when first approached
for recruitment for the worts and, indeed, was so incensed at the
very notion (Who would know better the hazards?) that he refused
to "cooperate."
b. Finally, more than a year later -- and after FBI officials had
asked Shadrin's superior to bring pressure on Shadrin -- Shadrin
took on the job.
c. Shadrin's deep and long standing objections to this kind of under-
taking are reflected by the fact that he had hoped long before to
disassociate himself from intelligence-type activities entirely.
(Line officers -- and Shadrin was one -- are not always, one might
guess, happy in non-line work.) Following his initial period of
five years or so with ONI (I think it was ONI), Shadrin in fact se-
vered his connection and sought employment in private industry.
(His pursuance of graduate studies was in part with this notion in
Lii) I tried than -- rha others did too T don't Trno4T _- tri
yvi a u
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help him find a place in the private sector but without success..
(The middle sixties, you remember, were not expansive years in
either governmental circles or in the private sector.) Following
half a year of unsuccessful search for a position elsewhere, Sha-
drin asked to return to U. S. government work. He was taken on.
Economic factors played a role in pressing Shadrin to return to
government and, too, increased his vulnerability to pressures from
his superiors. (Economic fores affect all of us to some extent or
other but one can only guess how much more in the case of one who
had grown up in a system where careers and even lives are planned
from "on high.")- One is inclined (I am) in such circumstances to
view "pressure" from one's superiors as more akin to intimidatory
tactics rather than leading to "volunteerism," no matter the care-
fully, precisely couched language explicitly used.
When U. S. governmental representatives use such pressures to over-
come the personal judgement and strong objections of a subordinate
they willy nil-Ly assume a special responsibility and obligation,
the honor of the men and their society is on the line.
2. One must take into consideration, secondly, the potential long range
consequences inherent in the kidnapping and return to Soviet jurisdic-
tion of an important defector and especiall?r when accentuated by the ab-
sence -- and visible absence -- of highest level efforts to remedy mat-
ters. The signal broadcast to the world will be loud and clear and will
give serious pause to all who might find themselves contemplating the
notion of fleeing the Soviet system.
It ought hardly be necessary to observe that obligations incurred (however
wisely or "hair-brained") by one brance hof the government are also obliga-
tions for other branches. Bicker we may and argue among ourselves over re-
sponsibilities for the present state of affairs, about how and why the ship
got among the rocks and shoals, but recriminations are not particularly help-
ful, immediately, for getting safely back into deep water.
Copy to: Zbigniew Brzezinski.
-T
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