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A Bumper Harvest of Spies
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11388 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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11 / 1986 |
15,073 Words |
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John and Louise Rees
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Gennadi Zakharov On Saturday evening, August 23, 1986, Gennadi Fyodorovich Zakharov, a 39-years-old Soviet citizen employed by the United Nations Center for Science and Technology, Saw his Guyanese contact, a computer specialist employed by a U.S. defense contractor, waiting, as arranged, on the subway platform in New York city's suburban Queens borough. Zakharov handed him $1,000 for the package he had brought. But as soon as the transaction was complete, FBI agents placed him under arrest. Zakharov struggled to break free and was forcibly wrestled into handcuffs. The package contained classified documents that Zakharov had told his contact to obtain.
According to Justice Department officials, Zakharov was an "illegal", a Soviet KGB officer operating under cover without diplomatic immunity. His principal role, they have charged, was to spot likely candidates for recruitment as spies. Zakharov was under close FBI surveillance for some time; and it has become apparent that the contact whom he was meeting had been working for the FBI as double agent for some time. According to and affidavit submitted by FBI special Agent Daniel K. Sayner, the contact alerted the FBI in April 1983, after Zakharov approached him on the campus of Queens College, where he was a third-year student in computer science. Zakharov eventually converted what started as an open friendship with the student into clandestine relationship. Meetings that once had taken place in luncheonettes became meetings at various subway stations ins Queens. There were more than 40 of these before Zakharov was arrested.
Zakharov is said to have cultivated the student for more than two years before suggesting that he taken a job with a U.S. defense contractor in which he would have access to classified information. The convert relationship was made formal in that Zakharov had the student agree to a 10 year espionage contract in which he would supply classified information and would be paid based on to quality of the information he obtained.
Veteran U.S. Counterintelligence officers have speculated that Zakharov, who had lived quietly in the Riverdale section of Bronx with his wife, Tania, and daughter, Irina, age 13, may have pressed his contact into providing classified documents in order to advance his career within the KGB, They noted that he was in the last eight months of his four year UN contract. Others believe that Zakharov may have been the recruiter or case officer of a much larger ring of technological spice operating under the direction of the KGB's Science and Technology Directorate. This might explain why the Soviets went to extraordinary lengths to obtain the release of Zakharov.
On August 30, exactly on week after Zakharov's arrest, the KGB in Moscow seized Nicholas Daniloff, 52, the correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. Daniloff, who was about to leave the Soviet Union since his tour as correspondent was at an end and his replacement had arrived, was lured to meet a Soviet contact in Moscow park-not an unusual place for a foreigner to meet a Soviet acquaintance. Daniloff gave his Soviet friend, whom he had known for some four years and was identified only as Mischa, two of Stephen King's horror novels. In return, Mischa handed Daniloff what he thought was pack of clippings from local soviet newspapers. He was immediately jumped by the KGB and charged with espionage. Mischa's package contained tow maps marked "secret" that appeared to have been added by the KGB to the clippings brought by Mischa. The Soviets immediately floated
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