Washington Station

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Under cover as a TASS reporter, Shvets was stationed in Washington, D.C., from 1985 to 1987 as a KGB operative whose primary mission was to recruit Americans who could provide classified information. Much of the narrative deals with his limited success in ``developing'' a former White House adviser and his journalist wife. Neither one is identified. We're only told that the adviser's code name was Socrates, that he was a former Harvard professor and worked for the Carter administration. Shvets's dealings with these two are less interesting than the account of his elaborate countersurveillance measures to thwart the FBI agents keeping tabs on him and the story of his growing disgust with the bureaucratic paranoia of the KGB. His shallow, inflated, clunkily translated memoir is worth reading if only for its exposure of obtuse and counterproductive KGB policies and of the schemes that led Shvets to resign in 1990 and seek asylum in the U.S. The most arresting aspect of the book is his argument-regrettably undeveloped-that spying in general is a waste of effort and that the profession should be eliminated. ``Certainly in this age of technological sophistication,'' he concludes, ``it is difficult to justify human intelligence.'' (Jan.)

Gilbert Taylor

When CIA officer Ames was caught last spring, rumours abounded of other spies at high levels--an ex-White House aide was also passing information to the Soviets, according to a contemporaneous "New York Times" article. Shvets reveals here everything but that man's real name. The informant taught at Harvard, worked for Carter, hated Reagan, moved in Dukakis circles, and was hard-pressed for cash--a vulnerable target for the KGB in the mid-1980s. It was Shvets' task to identify and reel in such malcontents in the American capital, where the KGB officer posed as a TASS journalist. Imbued with professional pride in the guile and blandishments he used to identify and persuade "Socrates" to cooperate, Shvets, nevertheless, is contemptuous about the value of human intelligence. In his view, it was worthless except as currency in KGB office and career politics, but his position against spying is contradicted by the case of "Bill." "Bill" was a star agent, all the more spectacular because he was a lowly janitor, but one who cleaned the DC offices of defense contractors. Shvets claims that "Bill" supplied 50 percent of all technical intelligence collected by the KGB in 1982--rather a vindication than condemnation of secret intelligence gathering. The world's second-oldest profession is not apt to go away because of Shvets' criticisms, revelatory as they are about the infighting and incompetence in his department of the KGB. Rather, interest in espionage may increase with his regalements of the cloak-and-dagger methods for defeating surveillance and the recruiting and running of these two agents. Since "Socrates" is under FBI investigation, libraries can back-up breaking news with this intriguing memoir of intrigue.