Shvets, Yuri B. Washington
Station: My Life as a KGB Spy in America. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1994. ISBN: 0-671-88397-6
Yuri Shvets was an officer of the First
Directorate of the KGB working under the cover of a TASS reporter in Washington
D.C. from 1985 to 1987. During this time he was tasked with developing political
and military sources in the Washington D.C. area. His task was made more
difficult by very aggressive FBI counterintelligence that was to completely
ream KGB operations by expelling all the KGB officers not working under
TASS cover in October 1986. He was able to develop one very useful political
source (called Socrates) who was a well-connected member of the Carter administration
and who was sympathetic to the USSR. Although this should have been a major
boost to his career, it served only to exacerbate the conflicts he had with
the KGB apparatchiks and he resigned from the KGB in 1990.
Shvets started writing this book as a fictional
account of his experiences while still in the USSR but then recast it as
non-fiction. This brought him into further friction with the KGB and he
left the country illegally with the manuscript and obtained political asylum
in the US.
Unlike most books from disaffected
agents (Shvets is not a defector), this one does not start with a patriotic
and enthusiastic recruit who gradually becomes disillusioned. Shvets was
already cynical about the whole enterprise by the time he completed training.
In common with many other Soviet field agents, he sees himself as someone
who wants to do the job he has trained for but who is in continual conflict
with cynical bureaucrats who are more concerned with protecting their careers
and grabbing any unclaimed credit available. In attempt to insure himself
against excessive damage from the shrapnel flying around in this conflict,
he decides to carry off the unusual feat of developing a US source of political
intelligence (who turned out to be Socrates). Shvets uses the tale of the
development of Socrates as a case study of the conflict. Although Shvets
takes care to protect Socrates' identity, we are told that he is being sought
overseas by the time Shvets leaves the KGB.
Much of the book is taken up with two
major cases (Bill, a janitor with an IQ of 200 who collects discarded documents
from the waste bins of defense contractors is the other major case) that
are compromised when bureaucrats take over the running of the sources. The
practical psychology of agent running appears to have been a neglected art
in the KGB of the 1980s. In addition there are some other lesser insights.
Shvets supports the claim that Yurchenko was a genuine defector who redefected,
but he lays the blame more on Yurchenko's unrealistic aspirations in love
than on CIA mishandling, and he provides some tantalizing evidence that
points to what was to become the Ames case. Some war stories told about
agents who had served in Washington and left should be taken to heart by
those who are somewhat casual with document security.
This book is a useful addition to intelligence
literature primarily because of the the insights it gives into the internal
politics of the KGB and the support it gives to the model of the organization
as one that is strongly polarized between bureaucrats and working agents.
The text is peppered with the cynical stories about the other camp that
are the currency of disgruntled workers and these help this aspect of his
story to ring true. The writing style is fairly typical of former Soviets,
but overall the book is easier to read than some others written by ex-Soviet
officers.
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