Russian double agent ‘betrayed by journalist’

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(Good article on Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen)

Sunday Times
Mark Franchetti, Moscow



OLEG GORDIEVSKY, the Russian double agent who passed secrets to Britain for 11 years, was betrayed to Moscow by a Washington-based British journalist, according to a former senior KGB spy.
Viktor Cherkashin, who was handler to the two highest- ranking American intelligence officers ever to have spied for the KGB, says the journalist warned him in 1985 that Gordievsky was working for the British.

Cherkashin immediately reported the information to Vladimir Kryuchkov, the head of the KGB’s First Directorate, handling foreign intelligence. Gordievsky, who at the time was expecting to be promoted as “rezident” of the Soviet embassy in London — its most senior KGB officer — was swiftly recalled to Moscow and placed under surveillance.

“The British journalist wasn’t a proper paid agent but a friend of the KGB,” said Cherkashin. The journalist had provided no documents or other proof, “but the tip-off was enough to alert Kryuchkov”, he added.

“The information was persuasive but we lacked hard proof of Gordievsky’s spying. The source told me in a moment of drunken indiscretion.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1423193,00.html