“In 1981, an unidentified Soviet scientist approached an American journalist in Moscow and handed him a mysterious package. Sometime later the package found its way from the journalist to the CIA. The journalist asked for and received a pledge of secrecy from the agency…the package was an intelligence windfall. Analysts at the CIA’s Office of Scientific and Weapons Research examining the 250 pages contained in the package found data on the Soviet strategic weapons program that had until then been the subject of only the most speculative analysis. The level of detail and precision in the documentation could redraw American assessments of Soviet nuclear weapons development…the Soviet weapons experts inside the US intelligence community were unanimous: The information included in the package was simply too sensitive, too revealing, to be disinformation designed to confuse the West. The information was so good, in fact, that the anonymous volunteer held the promise of being one of the most highly prized sources the CIA might ever obtain on the Soviet nuclear target.”

If the above reads like a script pitch for The Russia House, a 1990 film adaptation of John le Carré’s 1989 book of the same name, it is because the two narratives coincide. In The Russia House, a British publisher named Bartholomew “Barley” Scott-Blair, played by Sean Connery, becomes entangled with a young Soviet lady named Katya Orlova, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Orlova had handed a “manuscript” prepared by a noted Soviet physicist to Nicky Landau, played by Nicholas Woodeson. Landau was supposed to hand the “manuscript” off to Barley, but instead turned it over to British intelligence, who determined the papers contained highly secret information about the Soviet Union’s strategic nuclear forces. The information was so sensitive that the British, together with the CIA, approached Barley to contact the Soviet physicist. The narrative then unfolds into your classic spy-versus-spy, man-meets-woman, adventure-love story that Hollywood is famous for.

The first narrative, however, doesn’t come from the fertile mind of le Carré or Hollywood, but from the annals of reality. The passage is from a book, The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB, published in 2004. The co-author of The Main Enemy is Milton Beardon, the legendary CIA officer who served as the CIA’s Chief of Station in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, where he managed the CIA’s covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Beardon went on to head up the CIA’s Soviet/East European Division during the final years of the Soviet Union. Beardon’s co-author is James Risen, who at the time the book was published was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The New York Times.

In The Main Enemy, Beardon and Risen offer up some insights into the murky connectivity between journalists and the CIA, as both pursue information inside the tightly controlled territory of the former Soviet Union. In doing so, they shed important light on the case of Nicholas Daniloff, the US News and World Report bureau chief arrested by the KGB in 1986 and subsequently charged with espionage, and the ongoing case of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal journalist recently arrested by Russian authorities on similar charges. While it is too early in the Gershkovich case to draw meaningful parallels with the Daniloff affair, there are some similarities which, when examined from the perspective that all was not what it seemed with Daniloff’s arrest, may not bode well for Gershkovich going forward.

“I was Moscow bureau chief for US News & World Report,” Nicholas Daniloff recently wrote in an OpEd published in the Wall Street Journal, “on Aug. 30, 1986, when the KGB arrested me and falsely accused me of being a spy. I know,” Daniloff wrote, “what Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and his family are going through.”

Scott Ritter will discuss this article and answer audience questions on Episode 61 of Ask the Inspector.

According to Daniloff, his travails began after, as he put it, “I met a friend, or so I thought, to say farewell in a park near my apartment. We exchanged parting gifts. A white van I had noticed earlier pulled up beside me. The door slid open abruptly and half a dozen men emerged.” Daniloff was arrested and taken to prison, where, in his words, “I was lined up and photographed outside the prison holding the plastic bag containing the gift my so-called friend had given me.”

That “so-called” friend was one Mikhail Anatolevich Luzin, better known as “Misha,” described by Daniloff as “a bright young man” in his mid-20s, and a well-known Soviet “fixer” who worked the hotels in the city of Frunze (present day Bishkek, the capitol of Kirghizia). Daniloff had first met “Misha” in 1982 and, according to Daniloff, the two met in a wooded lane in the Lenin Hills neighborhood of Moscow. Daniloff, whose five-year posting to Moscow was coming to an end, claims the meeting was simply two friends saying farewell to one another.

The Soviets tell a different story.

On August 29, 1986, Daniloff received a phone call from “Misha,” who informed the journalist that he was in possession of information Daniloff had previously expressed an interest in obtaining. According to statements made by “Misha” to Soviet authorities afterwards, Daniloff had asked him to gather information about restricted areas in the city of Frunze (a well-known transit point for Soviet forces heading in and out of Afghanistan), along with photographs of Soviet military equipment used in Afghanistan, data about military units being prepared to be dispatched to Afghanistan, and the contact information for Soviet soldiers demobilized after serving in Afghanistan.

“Misha,” it seems, had followed through on Daniloff’s requests.

At 11 am on the morning of August 30, Daniloff was waiting at the entrance of the Leninsky Propekt station of the Moscow Metro when “Misha” approached him. Soviet surveillance picked up the following conversation.

Daniloff: “Have you brough it?”

“Misha”: “Of course. Just as I promised.”

Daniloff: “Let’s go then.”

The two men then walked toward the Moskva River embankment, where they positioned themselves behind a large shrub intended to shield them from view. Daniloff handed “Misha” some books, and in turn “Misha” passed to Daniloff a package which was in Daniloff’s possession when Soviet authorities arrested him moments later.

In the package was a map of Afghanistan, marked “Secret,” with handwritten notes annotating Soviet troop dispositions, a hand-drawn diagram showing the location of Soviet military equipment in Afghanistan, and 26 photographs showing Soviet soldiers and equipment in Afghanistan.   

This wasn’t the first time “Misha” had passed information of this nature to Daniloff. In the summer of 1985 Daniloff had received a package of similar material, including a map of Afghanistan marked “Secret,” which he had passed along to US News & World Report, which filed it away without making use of it. This repeated contact with a Soviet citizen for the purpose of collecting what amounts to state secrets led Soviet authorities to accuse Daniloff of trying to recruit “Misha” on behalf of the CIA.

This last action begs the question as to why the information from “Misha” was so important to a journalist who was literally days from completing his tour of duty? There was no chance of follow-up, no opportunity to develop the story further. This was a “farewell” meeting, according to Daniloff, so there was no effort to turn “Misha” over to Daniloff’s replacement. The information “Misha” had turned over seemed destined to be “filed” with the earlier packet of information, information no one would use, deemed not to possess any meaningful newsworthiness.