Spies Held Sensitive State Dept. Posts, Defector Says

Soviet intelligence had at least two “sources” working in policy-level jobs at the State Department in the 1970s, a former KGB officer said Friday at a crowded press conference.

Victor Ivanovich Sheymov, a 33-year-old KGB major specializing in codes and communications intelligence when he defected on May 16, 1980, said he saw reports containing State Department documents on arms control and other foreign policy issues that could only have come from highly placed spies.

Sheymov, whose appearance before reporters marked the end of a decade of secrecy following his 1980 defection, also said:

--He saw messages indicating that KGB head Yuri A. Andropov, later Communist Party chief, planned to assassinate Pope John Paul II. In 1979, he said, he saw a cable instructing KGB stations to obtain information about how to “get physically close” to Pope John Paul II--a KGB euphemism for assassination. He said he told the CIA what he knew of the plot in 1980, months before Mehmet Ali Agca attempted to kill the Pope in May, 1981.

--The KGB assassinated Hafizullah Amin, the former Afghan president who was killed during the Soviet invasion of his country in December, 1979. Sheymov said the organization first made Amin paranoid about the possibility of assassination plots and convinced him that only the KGB could protect him. Amin employed “an all-KGB bodyguard team which actually killed him.”

--The plane crash that killed Pakistani President Zia ul Haq, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and a number of other high-ranking Pakistani officials in 1988 may have been caused by the KGB. He said Zia’s support for Afghan rebels was causing trouble for the Soviet government at the time. However, he admitted he had no direct information about Zia’s death and was “just trying to gauge by the style and not anything else.”

Discussing the KGB “sources” at the State Department in the 1970s, Sheymov said he concluded there were two sources because the same documents often turned up in separate reports received by the KGB. He said he also inferred from reports reaching Moscow that a U.S. diplomat in Eastern Europe was reporting to the KGB.

Sheymov said he did not know the names of the spies because they were referred to in the reports only by code names. He said only that they were active during the time he was a KGB officer, from 1971 until he defected.

He refused to comment when asked if Felix S. Bloch, a career diplomat who was suspended by the State Department after being publicly identified as a Soviet spy but was not charged with a crime, had reported to the KGB.

Sheymov said he decided that 10 years was long enough to keep his defection secret. Besides, he said, he has written a book and is looking for a publisher.

After his defection, Sheymov provided extensive information to the CIA, which fitted him with a new name and identity that obliterated any reference to his past as a spy. He is now an American citizen.

A Bush Administration spokesman familiar with the case described Sheymov as “a major defector who made a highly valuable contribution to our country and national security.”

At his press conference, Sheymov used the name Victor Orlov, a pen name that he used about 18 months ago when he wrote a story for the Washington Post. He was identified as Sheymov in a story in the Post Friday. The Administration official confirmed that he was known to the U.S. government as Sheymov.

The defector refused to give the name he now uses or to reveal where he lives. He sported a thick shock of sandy hair that looked suspiciously like that staple of the spy trade, the ill-fitting wig. He wore black-rimmed glasses with a slight tint to the lenses.

Mixing humor and tales of espionage, Sheymov said:

--The Russian Orthodox Church, both in the Soviet Union and abroad, “was penetrated thoroughly, not only with agents but with full-time KGB officers.” He said that young KGB officers were regularly asked if they wanted to become priests. The chief of the KGB operation in Israel was a priest assigned to the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Jerusalem, he said.

--A top official of the government of Cyprus under Archbishop Makarios, who was deposed in 1974, was “a full-time, paid KGB agent.” The Cyprus Embassy in Washington declined to comment on the charge.

--Most intelligence services in Communist countries, including the nations of Eastern Europe before the recent political upheavals there, provide information to the KGB and perform operational tasks for the organization. He said the only exception to this “one-way street” of cooperation was Poland’s intelligence service, which maintained its independence from the KGB and once was “caught red-handed” spying on a Soviet military installation.

--He believes that Yuri Nosenko, a KGB operative who defected to the United States in 1964, was a genuine defector and not, as some CIA counterintelligence officials believed, a phony planted by the KGB. He said he saw exchanges of messages concerning an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Nosenko, apparently as punishment for his treason.

--He believes that Vitaly Yurchenko, a former KGB official who walked away from CIA handlers at a Georgetown restaurant in November, 1985, and returned to the Soviet Union, was a genuine defector who changed his mind. However, he said he has no first-hand information about Yurchenko because the incident followed his own defection. The Yurchenko case became a major embarrassment for the CIA and raised serious questions about the way the agency deals with defectors.

Everything Sheymov said at the press conference seemed plausible, but none of it could be verified independently. For instance, it has long been widely believed that the KGB was behind the attempt on the life of the Pope, although no one has been able to prove it.

Sheymov said he was somewhat shocked when he saw a cable to the Warsaw station of the KGB requesting “all the information possible on how to get physically close to the Pope.” He said there was no question that the message implied an assassination because “words like murder and assassination are never used (in KGB messages). They are replaced by much gentler words.”

He said the order was signed by Andropov, who is considered the mentor of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Sheymov said that Andropov is considered in the West to be “the godfather of perestroika, “ Gorbachev’s program of restructuring society. But in fact, he said, Andropov was a ruthless KGB chief, just as his predecessors had been.