Britain Big Blow to the Kgb

By Michael S. Serrill.

Alexei Nikiforov, the acting spokesman for the Soviet embassy in London, stood on the sidewalk outside his mission in Kensington Palace Gardens last week, surrounded by a clutch of reporters. As the newsmen jostled for position, Nikiforov read slowly from a prepared statement: "All accusations as to the alleged illegal activities of the Soviet representatives have nothing to do with reality," he said. "The Soviet embassy most strongly protests against these provocative measures." Nikiforov finished with an abrupt "No questions," and quickly retreated behind the embassy's heavy iron gates. As well he might, for the questions would only have added to the embarrassment of a Soviet intelligence establishment that had just suffered one of its biggest setbacks in at least a decade.

Only a few hours earlier, Soviet Charge d'Affaires Lev Parshin had been summoned to the Foreign Office. There, Deputy Under Secretary David Goodall told him that Oleg Gordievsky, officially an embassy counselor but now also identified as a senior operative of the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency, had defected to Britain. With that, Goodall handed Parshin a list naming 25 Soviet diplomats, trade officials and journalists whom Gordievsky had identified as spies. Parshin was told that all would have to leave Britain within three weeks.

The defection could hardly have come at a more opportune time for Western intelligence officials, who are still smarting under the impact of the Walker spy case in the U.S. and the defection to East Germany last month of Hans Joachim Tiedge, a senior West German counterintelligence officer. The British, so often in the postwar years on the losing end in the spy business, were especially delighted. Said one British official: "This coup by our intelligence services wipes the slate clean of lapses in British security over the past decade." A top-ranking intelligence source told TIME that "this is much bigger, very much bigger, than Tiedge and the East German moles."

British officials also suggested that Gordievsky was a much more important catch than KGB Officer Oleg Lyalin, whose 1971 defection led to the expulsion of 105 Soviets from Britain. Some experts even thought that Gordievsky might prove as valuable as Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, a highly productive spy in Britain's service who was snared by the Soviets and executed in 1963.

Gordievsky, 46, first posted to London in 1982 and recently promoted to head KGB operations, or the "residency," in London, apparently had been working for the British for some time. Intelligence sources in London said last week that his knowledge of Soviet agents and British moles enabled him to tip off British counterintelligence regarding a wide range of Soviet spying. He was also said to have provided sophisticated assessments of Soviet foreign and military policy: he reportedly advised his British contacts well before Konstantin Chernenko's death that Mikhail Gorbachev was certain to assume the Soviet leadership, and provided information on the Soviet Union's military space program.

The claim that Gordievsky had been a longtime double agent for the West first surfaced when Erik Ninn-Hansen, Denmark's Justice Minister, asserted in a television interview after the London disclosure that Gordievsky had cooperated with the Danish government while he was assigned to the Soviet embassy in Copenhagen from 1972 to 1978. But British officials disputed the notion that they had simply taken over the Soviet agent when he moved to Britain.

Why Gordievsky chose to come in from the cold at this time remained a matter of intense press speculation in London. Allegations that he had acted for material reasons were dismissed as "rubbish" by government officials. Said one: "He defected for principle, not money or women or the bright lights." In fact, the KGB may have been on the verge of unmasking Gordievsky as a double agent. Had it been safe for him to stay in place, British intelligence certainly would have wanted him to do so. Moreover, Gordievsky, described as a man deeply attached to his family, defected while his wife and children were still on summer vacation in the Soviet Union. Gordievsky's whereabouts were unknown last week, but it was believed that he was being debriefed at a safe house outside London.

In the meantime, the 25 Soviets fingered by Gordievsky, including three embassy first secretaries, were packing their bags. Nearly half those on the list given to Charge d'Affaires Parshin were purported trade officials. In Britain, as in the U.S. and other Western countries, such representatives spend their time attending industrial shows and gathering all manner of data that might be helpful to Soviet technology. Shortly after the defection had been revealed, a delivery van arrived at the Soviet Trade Mission in London carrying a British-made Apricot home computer. It had been ordered by Viktor Logush, who was on the expulsion list; Soviet officials refused to accept the delivery.

One of the five Soviet journalists ordered to leave Britain was Mikhail Bogdanov, an affable correspondent for the newspaper Socialist Industry, who often entertained British colleagues at the House of Commons press bar and at dinner parties. One British newsman remembered a gathering at which Soviet guests, including Bogdanov, began joking about spies and the KGB. "Of course, I'm a KGB officer," said Bogdanov, smiling. "But Nadia (his wife) is more senior. She is a colonel. I am only a major."

It took the Soviets two days to retaliate: then they listed 25 British diplomats, businessmen and journalists who would have to leave Moscow within three weeks. Ambassador Sir Bryan Cartledge was called to the foreign ministry and told that those being expelled had engaged in "activities incompatible with their status," diplomatic language for spying. Cartledge described the charges as absurd. At week's end it was not clear whether Britain would raise the stakes by ejecting still more Soviet officials who might have been fingered by Gordievsky.

With reporting by Frank Melville and Christopher Ogden/London