Farewell’s tips unmasked Soviet agent—book

Press, 10 January 1986, Page 6

Farewell’s tips unmasked Soviet agent—book

NZPA-NYT Paris A KGB officer working in Moscow told French Intelligence officials of Soviet plans to steal Western technological secrets, according to a book to be published this month. The book asserts that information provided by the Soviet officer, code-named Farewell, led to the unmasking of many Soviet agents and alerted Western Governments to the scale and intensity of Moscow’s efforts to acquire advanced Western technology. The book says the Soviet agents supplied the French with information for 18 months between 1981 and 1982.

The author, Thierry Wolton, who spent 2% researching and wnang,

“The KGB in France,” says he received help from French Intelligence officials. A first instalment of excerpts from the book was published on Monday in the French magazine, “Le Point.”

While details of the story Mr Wolton tells cannot be verified, Western diplomats and Intelligence officials in Paris have confirmed persistent rumours in recent months that France had obtained important information about Soviet technological spying and was sharing it with its Western allies.

One Western official recently described the operation as “one of the great post-war Intelligence coups” and said he believed the French Intelligence services

planned to disclose more information about it now that their source was no longer active.

Rumours of a French Intelligence success first began circulating after the semi-official magazine, “La Revue de la Defense Nationale,” published an account of the organisation of Russia’s technological espionage services in December, 1983, showing them to be far larger than generally realised. Its publication came at the end of a year in which France expelled 47 Soviet diplomats for espionage. According to Mr Wolton, the article was in fact written by the senior Intelligence officer handling Farewell and was based on the more than'-4000 documents about

the Soviet Union’s technological espionage effort that this source provided. Farewell could write French and claimed to have served in the Soviet Embassy in Paris in the 19605. Because of his senior position he knew he would never be allowed to leave the Soviet Union again. French Intelligence agents speculate that nostalgia for France might explain his decision to become a spy.

Farewell disappeared without any explanation in 1983. French Intelligence agents think his disappearance may have been connected with rumours of a vice scandal at the top of the KGB that resulted in the murdir of a Soviet police, man.