Admitted Spy Zakharov Named Two High Soviet Agents, U.S. Official Says

Gennady F. Zakharov, after admitting that he was a Soviet spy, named a KGB station chief at the United Nations and the head of Soviet military intelligence in New York, Administration officials say.

“He sang like a tweetie bird,” one U.S. official told the Associated Press.

One official said Thursday that Zakharov identified Valery Savchenko, listed as a Soviet U.N. mission counselor and said to be the KGB station chief at the mission, and Vladislav Skvortsov, a senior counselor said to be the New York chief of the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence.

Zakharov fingered three Soviet spies in all, but the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, was uncertain who the third Soviet was.

Among 25 Expelled

All three were among the 25 Soviets at the United Nations whom the United States recently ordered to leave the country, the official said. The last of the 25 Soviets, who worked at U.N. headquarters in New York, left the United States on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, another U.S. official said Savchenko and Skvortsov were among the last five of the 25 Soviets to leave, along with Gennady Tarasov, a Mideast specialist reputedly in the KGB; Viktor Sbirunov, a first secretary; and Valery Anikeyev, a counselor.

ABC News on Thursday night said Zakharov, who until his arrest was a scientific affairs officer for the Soviet Union at the United Nations, made the admissions during a four-hour interrogation.

Zakharov, 39, was questioned after his arrest on Aug. 23 on a New York subway platform as he allegedly tried to pay an FBI informant $1,000 for classified documents on military jet engines.

Within a week after Zakharov’s arrest on spying charges, the Soviets arrested American journalist Nicholas Daniloff in Moscow on espionage charges.

Zakharov pleaded no contest to three counts of espionage and was returned to the Soviet Union on Sept. 30, the day after Daniloff, a U.S. News & World Report correspondent, was released by the Soviets.

Other Results Surface

The negotiations that led to the release of Zakharov and Daniloff also resulted in the immigration of Soviet dissident Yuri Orlov and his wife. The talks also led to an agreement between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to meet last weekend in Iceland.

Shortly after the release of Zakharov, Justice Department officials, speaking on condition they not be identified, said his no-contest plea violated Justice Department guidelines opposing such pleas unless the government is allowed to present a public statement of the evidence it has gathered in the case. This was not done in Zakharov’s case.