They’re Red Hot: KGB in Big Orange

Move over, Boris Yeltsin. Drop your fishing reel, Eduard Shevardnadze. And, Mikhail Gorbachev, get ready to share the limelight.

The KGB has arrived.

In an odyssey that represents more than just the geographic distance between Disneyland and the Soviet intelligence’s neo-classic headquarters in Moscow’s Dzerzhinsky Square, the highest-ranking Soviet KGB officials ever to publicly visit the United States took Southern California by storm last week.

Shopping in the Malls

That’s right, Disneyland. And the circus. And Chinatown. And Marina del Rey. And, probably most of all, Southern California’s shopping malls.

Fjodor Sherbak and Valentin Zvezdenkov, two generals who both rose to the highest echelons of the KGB over a half-century in one the world’s most legendary intelligence services, seemed to rather like it all. In turn, for all the notorious cunning of the Committee for State Security, or the KGB, the generals also charmed everyone they encountered.

Asked his impressions of the United States during his first visit, Zvezdenkov, who looks a bit like a rugged Russian version of John Wayne, told of his trouble with American showers. The tap at the Holiday Inn in Santa Monica was a single unit for hot and cold; Zvezdenkov had trouble figuring it out. When he got in, the water was ice cold. He soaped up and tried to turn the circular control to warm. Instead, the shower turned scalding. He hopped out of the shower and rinsed off from the sink.

“In my country,” he explained earnestly, “we have separate taps for hot and cold.”

Then his blue eyes twinkled.

And when his KGB colleague’s bag was lost somewhere between Moscow and New York, Zvezdenkov considered himself lucky--until he was told that airlines were supposed to pay up to $500 if a bag is not traced within 48 hours.

“My bag went missing, too,” he told his American sponsor with great seriousness. “And it was bigger.”

Then his eyes twinkled again.

By week’s end, Zvezdenkov’s humor had become such a fixture that the former CIA officials and American terrorism experts whom he met at a conference at RAND Corp. had nicknamed him “the jolly green general.”

Not that any of the U. S. participants were naive about the generals’ past activities. Zvezdenkov was involved in Soviet counterintelligence for almost 40 years and, for the eight years until his recent retirement as a major general, he was head of the KGB’s counterterrorism section. Until a few months ago, Lt. Gen. Sherbak was KGB deputy director, overseeing the internal security directorate in charge of the gulags and the prisons.

“Once in the KGB,” said an American delegate to the conference on international terrorism, “always in the KGB.”

Indeed, the two men were more than reluctant to discuss their pasts. Zvezdenkov initially made a game of dodging questions. “Do you want the official version or the real story?” he responded to one query. “In one version, I was born in 1934. In the other, I am almost 69.”

Over dinner in Marina del Rey, one American teasingly threatened that all the Americans at the table would bore him with their life stories if Zvezdenkov did not at least provide an outline of his past. “Don’t bother,” he replied. “We already have them all in our files.” And he beamed that incorrigible smile.

Moments of Candor

But, as the days passed at the weeklong, closed-door sessions, there were moments of candor. Given a copy of “The New KGB,” a book by two American authors, Zvezdenkov perused a list of names, places and dates of KGB operations--and began making corrections in the margins. “Not a bad book,” he told an American counterpart. “But it doesn’t know as much about us as it claims.”

At other junctures, both the former U.S. and the Soviet intelligence officials were teasingly inquisitive about each other.

Ray S. Cline, former CIA deputy director and one of the U.S. delegates, got wind of Zvezdenkov’s six years of service in Cuba. “Were you in Havana during the Cuban missile crisis?” he asked Zvezdenkov. “I was deeply involved. I gave the pictures of the missile sites to President Kennedy.”

“No, I was stationed there a year later,” Zvezdenkov replied. Then he turned on his America counterpart and asked, “And what about you? Were you also involved in the Bay of Pigs?” No, Cline told him; he was in Asia then.

In another exchange between Sherbak and former CIA director William Colby, the Soviet said that he had read Colby’s book and enjoyed it.

But rather than dwell on the past, the focus throughout the talks was on the future. And there, the change was noticeable and substantive--especially for Sherbak.

Confined to a Room

In contrast to the virtual fete he was given last week, in 1956 while traveling route back from the Olympic games in Melbourne, Australia, Sherbak--the manager of the Soviet boxing, weight-lifting and wrestling teams--spent 10 hours in transit in Los Angeles. The Soviet teams and managers were herded together and isolated in a room, he recalled, bitterly, adding, “We were not even allowed to go to the bathroom.”

On this trip, though, after decades of attempting to conceal his identity, Sherbak also made his television debut. He was a guest, with Colby, on ABC’s “Nightline,” which dispatched a stretch limo to fetch him. The show’s subject was the potential for the United States and the Soviet Union to share intelligence on matters of mutual interest, specifically international terrorism.

Despite the doubt expressed beforehand by U.S. officials that the informal talks with the Soviets would produce anything more than vague principles, the generals were, in fact, forthcoming on specific means of sharing intelligence to combat terrorism. Among the final recommendations were bold measures, including exchanges of information about terrorist groups’ movements, plans and arms purchases, punishment of groups who target innocents, and even the recovery of missiles that might get into the hands of terrorists.

The Soviets also were candid about the price they might have to pay for cooperating with the United States. “Once the word is out that we are cooperating with the CIA, then the terrorist groups are going to reorder their priorities--to include us. We’ll become targets,” Sherbak said.

But while in Southern California, the Soviets also had other targets, such as shopping at the malls. Among their favorite purchases: jumper cables and assorted repair supplies for cars, paper diapers, tennis shoes and winter clothing.

On one outing, Zvezdenkov was escorted by a young American interpreter and her friend from a Soviet Jewish family which emigrated to Los Angeles 15 years ago. They helped the general buy underwear for his wife. Zvezdenkov asked how the Soviet emigres had accumulated enough money for the young woman to afford a new Mustang convertible and inquired about American dating habits, recalling that in his day it took great courage just to kiss a girl. After hearing descriptions of modern courting customs, he lamented that they were the same in the Soviet Union.

On a walk on the ocean front to Venice, the generals were intrigued with the live mannequins in a store window and said they found it strange that California women wear so much black. Where, they also wanted to know, were all the tall buildings for which America was famous?

Protective Hosts

By mid-week, the dialogue had progressed to the stage that the Americans had become protective of their KGB guests. During an evening at the Cirque du Soleil playing under a big top on Santa Monica’s oceanfront, the generals became tired and decided to leave at intermission.

“We can’t let them walk alone through the streets of Santa Monica by themselves,” said Bonnie Pearlman, the assistant to Search for Common Ground, a public interest group that co-sponsored the conference.

“And just how do you propose protecting them?” replied one American. “What are you going to do--tell any assailant that they’re confronting the KGB? Things have not progressed that far--yet.”