Book Commentary: Shadrin: The Spy Who Never Came Back

After Artamonov arrived in Sweden, the author implies that the U.S. Navy was somehow responsible for bringing him to the US. Not so. As stated herein, British intelligence had sent their expert to Sweden to try to get him to the UK. What is not stated here is that Khrushchev was about to visit Sweden, which placed Artamonov in danger of being returned to the USSR at Khrushchev's personal request. That is when I went to Angleton, described the situation to him, and he called Dulles to have him contact Swedish official Olaf Palme. Artamonov then was turned over to us, and we worked very closely with the U.S. Navy, especially Lt. Cdr. Tom Dwyer, to debrief Artamonov, after he had been processed at the Defection Reception Center in Frankfurt. Oddly, the author says CIA had little interest in Artamonov—untrue, as we had an Interpreter working with him almost every day for the first few months. He was not "turned over to naval intelligence”, but shared with the navy for the first few months.

When the effort to recruit Artamonov for the double agent operation with the KGB is cited, there is an implication that I may have had something to do with recruiting him for that assignment. That never happened—l met Artamonov only once, probably in 1963, well before the call to Helms which initiated the double agent operation, and had no knowledge of the operation at all until I entered the CI Staff in March 1975.

The mistake is repeated here—that DCI Colby fired Angleton—not so—he offered him another job, basically to do a review of his 20 years as chief of the CI Staff, and Angleton declined. Nor did Angleton retire in December 1974, actually not until almost a year later, and he stayed in his own office for several weeks before the new chief, Kalaris, had the courage to ask him to move to the adjacent office. Angleton's staff and several of his key analysts, including the one who had made a case that Angleton was a KGB agent, retired at the same time.

The assumption that I had any knowledge of the call from the KGB officer to Helms, and had anything to do with Artamonov’s "recruitment" by the KGB is untrue. The discussion is handled as though the recruitment and running of Artamonov were CIA functions—not so, as the case belonged to the FBI, and CIA became involved only when Artamonov was met in Montreal and Vienna. 50 it was not CIA's decision to have Artamonov meet with the KGB again, but the FBI's.

Cynthia Hausmann, who was to be the CIA contact with Artamonov in Vienna, had not worked with me in the Reports Branch, nor was she still in the Soviet Division CI branch, as stated here; she was now working for me in the CI Staff. Another inaccuracy is the speculation that my trip to Australia in mid-1977 had anything to do with Artamonov—it was entirely for another CAZAB meeting with the Australian service as our host. An unfortunate event after that was the meeting of Mrs. Shadrin and her lawyer, the relentless Copaken, with DCI Turner. I knew that Turner had met with the president's security advisor and I told Copaken that the case had been taken up with the president. I expected Turner to explain to Copaken that he had spoken to the security advisor, but was certain that the advisor would pass the message to the president—instead, Turner flew into a vulgar rage. My subsequent transfer overseas was not because of the KGB-concocted CKTRIGON cable about Secretary of State Kissinger leaking SALT strategy to Soviet ambassador Dobrynin. My assignment to Europe had been decided some months previously.

The author goes into the Nosenko case, unfortunately essentially accepting the case made against him. That argument includes the standard argument that any KGB asset we had who supported Nosenko’s bona fides also was under KGB control.

Shadrin: The Spy Who Never Came Back, Henry Hurt, 1981

http://www.amazon.com/Shadrin-spy-never-came-back/dp/0070314780