Washington Station: My Life as a KGB Spy in America

Under cover as a TASS reporter, Shvets was stationed in Washington, D.C., from 1985 to 1987 as a KGB operative whose primary mission was to recruit Americans who could provide classified information. Much of the narrative deals with his limited success in ``developing'' a former White House adviser and his journalist wife. Neither one is identified. We're only told that the adviser's code name was Socrates, that he was a former Harvard professor and worked for the Carter administration. Shvets's dealings with these two are less interesting than the account of his elaborate countersurveillance measures to thwart the FBI agents keeping tabs on him and the story of his growing disgust with the bureaucratic paranoia of the KGB. His shallow, inflated, clunkily translated memoir is worth reading if only for its exposure of obtuse and counterproductive KGB policies and of the schemes that led Shvets to resign in 1990 and seek asylum in the U.S. The most arresting aspect of the book is his argument-regrettably undeveloped-that spying in general is a waste of effort and that the profession should be eliminated. ``Certainly in this age of technological sophistication,'' he concludes, ``it is difficult to justify human intelligence.'' (Jan.)