For sure, FBI Counterintelligence believes former KGB Major Yuri Shvets's allegations that the KGB arranged Donald Trump's trip to the Soviet Union in 1987. Shvets's reports to the FBI are a big reason why the FBI thinks that Russian Intelligence controlled Trump.
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Yuri Shvets's autobiography Washington Station, published in 1994, begins with these paragraphs:
Soon after I resigned from the KGB in September 1990, I started to work on a book based on my experiences as a spy. Since my former bosses at the KGB were watching me closely, I decided to write a novel to avoid prosecution for revealing state secrets. My novel, however, consisted largely of true facts about recent KGB efforts to recruit U.S. citizens.
When the book was finished, I started to look for potential publishers. I could not publish my novel in Russia; even though the Soviet Union had collapsed, the KGB remained as powerful as before. So in February 1993, I walked into the Moscow office of the Washington Post and gave the Post an interview. This interview helped me to find my literary agent in America, and in April 1993 I came to the United States to meet with publishers and negotiate a possible book contract.
Since my publisher was going to be based in the United States, I no longer had to disguise my book as a novel. And in fact, all the U.S. publishers I met with were interested in knowing about my actual KGB experiences in Washington and Moscow.
I returned to Moscow to write my book. My former bosses at the Russian intelligence service were becoming increasingly alarmed even though they believed I was still writing a novel. My application for a new foreign passport was denied, and I was told that I was under an eight-year ban against travel abroad.
In September 1993 I crossed the Russian border illegally and came with a draft version of my new book as an immigrant to the United States.
A few pages later, Shvets begins to tell about his spying experience:
One evening in late April 1985, I arrived in Washington, D.C., with my wife and two sons as a correspondent of the Soviet news agency Tass. I was thirty-three, could speak English, French, and Spanish, and was somewhat ambitious, even though I had already realized that in my country ambition was a recipe for misery.
At that time very few people know that, in fact, I was a KGB officer attached to the First Chief Directorate (external intelligence). My position as a journalist was a convenient cover.
About five years and four months later, on September 12, 199, Shvets resigned from the KGB.
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| Yuri Shvets |
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| The cover of Shvets's 1994 book |
Shvets was born in 1952. In 1980, he graduated from Patrice Lumumba People's Friendship University, in Moscow, which was attended by many foreigners. He majored in international law.
From 1980 to 1982 he attended the Soviet Union's Intelligence Academy, and from 1982 to 1985 he worked in the KGB First Chief Directorate's North American Department.
From April 1985 to April 1987, he worked as an intelligence-collector (under a journalist cover) at the KGB's "Washington Station". During those two years, his wife and two sons lived with him in Alexandria, Virginia.
Then he was rotated routinely back to the KGB's North American Department in Moscow. That is where he resigned in September 1990.
After that resignation, he apparently worked as a journalist in the Soviet Union. His autobiography Washington Station does not not say anything about his post-KGB journalist work.
The book Washington Station does not say how he left the Soviet Union illegally in September 1993. I assume that he left with his wife and sons.
(I vaguely remember meeting Shvets for a few minutes about twenty years ago, when he gave me a little help on a Russian-translation job that I was doing for the US Justice Department. In our conversation, he mentioned that one of his sons played on a local high school's football team.)
In his book, Shvets does not say whether he ever collaborated with a US Intelligence service during or after his KGB years. In particular, he does not say whether the US Government helped him and his family to escape from the Soviet Union in September 1993. However, the book gave me the impression that that he managed to escape before he began any such collaboration.
He applied for political asylum in the USA in April 1994, and his initial application was denied. He appealed and then was granted political asylum in May 1994. From that sequence of events, I suppose he began to provide information to the FBI during April or May 1994.
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The book Washington Station does not say anything about Donald Trump or anything related to Shvet's recent allegations against Trump. Shvets does not say anything about any KGB activities in New York.
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In about the second half of 1985, Shvets recruited a married couple as informants. The husband was John Helmer, to whom Shvets gives the pseudonym Martin Snow in the book and to whom the KGB gave the code name Socrates. The wife was Claudia Wright, to whom Shvets gave the pseudonym Phillis Barber in the book and to whom the KGB gave the code name Sputnitsa (a Russian word meaning "female companion").
Wright came to the KGB's attention because she wrote many articles that were "virulently anti-American". Shvets arranged to meet Wright, who then introduced him to her husband Helmer. Both Wright and Helmer were Australian leftist journalists based in the USA. Shvets introduced himself to Wright and Helmer as a Soviet journalist, which Shvets indeed was.
Of the two, Shvets's more important informant was Helmer. (Wright was becoming incapacitated because of a neurological disorder.) The Wikipedia article about Helmer includes the following passage:
Born and raised in Australia, Helmer graduated in political science from Harvard University in the United States, and worked in the White House as an aide of President Jimmy Carter.
He published several books on military and political topics, including essays on the American presidency and on urban policy in the US and essays on Greek, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern politics and foreign policy. Since 1989 he has published almost exclusively on Russian topics.
He was married to Australian journalist and foreign correspondent Claudia Wright who died in 2005.
He was allegedly recruited by the KGB in the 1980s (according to the claims of Yuri Shvets) and left to live in Russia permanently. However, Victor Cherkashin claims that Helmer was unaware that Shvets was a KGB officer, and that Cherkashin himself called Shvets off. Later, after Shvets' concerns attracted controversy, Cherkashin confirmed that Helmer was not an agent.
Helmer has been based in Moscow since 1989 and, from there, has worked for The Australian Financial Review, The Australian and other newspapers.
Although Helmer allegedly had occupied some unspecified position in President Jimmy Carter's White House staff, Carter had left the White House in January 1981 -- more than four years before Helmer met Shvets.
Helmer seems to be merely a free-lance journalist during his collaboration with Shvets. While Shvets was stationed in Washington, his relationship with Helmer essentially was a Soviet journalist and an Australian journalist sharing news tips with each other. The only remarkable aspect of this relationship was that Shvets was a Soviet spy -- not merely a journalist -- and therefore was very secretive about meeting with and obtaining information from Helmer and Wright.
The most important information that Helmer provided to Shvets was some early indications about the US attack on Libya in April 1986 and about the the Iran-Contra deal, before it became public in November 1986.
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After Shvets rotated routinely from Washington to Moscow in April 1987, the KGB brought Helmer and Wright to Moscow, where (according to Shvets) Helmer was formally recruited to become a witting agent. Although Cherkashin denies that Helmer did become an agent, I believe Shvets's account.
At that time, Wright was very incapacitated by her neurological disorder, and both Wright and Helmer were impoverished free-lance journalists. Helmer agreed to become a Soviet agent largely for monetary motives. Helmer was hoping that Michael Dukakis would win the 1988 Presidential election and then would appoint Helmer again to a position on the White House staff. In the meantime, though, Helmer was just a desperately impoverished free-lance journalist with a very sick wife.
The last part of Shvets's book is largely about his futile efforts to convince his KGB superiors that Helmer eventually might turn out to be a valuable agent. Shvets's frustration in this effort was a major cause of his decision to quit the KGB in September 1990. In general, Shvets felt that his intelligence-collection for the KGB might provide valuable information to Mikhail Gorbachev, whom Shvets admired and supported.
However, Shvets's hopes about Helmer's potential intelligence value seem, in retrospect, to be futile. The skepticism of Shvets's superiors about Helmer's reliability and potential value seems to be well justified.
Having read Shvets's book, he impressed me as a dedicated, intelligent, energetic and well-meaning KGB official, who sincerely wanted to help Gorbachev to reform the Soviet Union. However, Helmer was a useless agent, and so the KGB leadership's evaluation of Helmer was wiser than Shvet's own evaluation of Helmer.
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I speculate that Shvets managed to bring his family into the USA on his own resources in early 1994. At that time, he intended to make a career as a free-lance writer. However, the rejection in his initial request for political asylum in April 1994 compelled him to reveal himself to the FBI in April 1994. Following that revelation, he was granted political asylum in May 1994, but agreed to provide all his knowledge to the FBI Counterintelligence Division.
I perceive that in recent years Shvets has speculated recklessly about Donald Trump being targeted and controlled by Russian Intelligence. In this regard, I hope that Shvets himself will refute -- or at least refrain from -- such reckless allegations about Trump, a legitimately elected US President.
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Shvets interviewed on BookTV about Washington Station in 1995
Shvets and Craig Unger on BookTV about the book American Kompromat
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Continued in Part 2
